Meaning

What you do every day should contribute to giving your life meaning. If it doesn't, why are you doing it?
Don Hutcheson

Have you ever given any thought to why you do the things you do every day? Do you do things because they come up and they need to be dealt with? Do you do things because other people told you that you should? Do you do things because you want to impress others in some way?
Do you do things because you're too tired to do anything else, or because you need to fill in the time with something?

For most people, their actions become as automatic as their thoughts. They think the same things over and over and they do the same things over and over; and since they are unaware of their thoughts, they are unaware of the reason for their actions. Something they haven't given any thought to is what gives their life meaning. What are you here for? What do you want to accomplish with your life? Most people can't really answer those questions.

The first thing to do is to determine your mission in life. What would you want to be remembered for? The next thing is to determine how everything you are doing now fits in with that mission. If it fits in, continue doing it. If it doesn't fit in, stop doing it and find something more useful to do.

For all the hours we spend watching television every day, do we know the real reason why we watch it? How much does it help you acheive anything? How many things does it prevent you from doing that would help you accomplish what you want to get done more effectively? Turn off that television and go out and do something meaningful, something that really satisfies you.

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Goal Setting

"Happiness, wealth, and success are the by-products of goal setting; they cannot be the goal themselves"
Denis Waitley

Is your goal to be happy, wealthy, and successful? Most people don't understand that those things are the result of reaching your goal, not the goal itself. No matter what you set your goal as, you will be happier, more successful, and possibly wealthier as a result of reaching it.

If you set your goal as being happy, how do you know if you have reached it? How do you know what you have to do in order to reach it? How do you know how long it might take to reach it? The answer is that you don't. If you set your goal as, for example, to invite 6 new friends to your house in the next month, then you will have ideas about how to accomplish that,and you will know when and if you have reached it.

The knowledge that you are moving forwards towards your goal is what will make you truly happy. The knowledge that you are reaching your goal is what will make you feel successful. And, depending on what your goal is, the actions that you took towards your goal is what will make you wealthy.

Decide that you want something that is concrete and measurable. Decide what you need to do to get started on your path towards it. And expect to find happiness, wealth, and success along the journey. Don't wait till the end of the journey for them. They are not the goal.

For ideas about how to be truly successful, visit http://www.reachingmypotential.com

Reaching Your Destination

"What you get by reaching your destination is not nearly as important as what you will become by reaching your destination."
Zig Ziglar

We all focus on what we will get when we accomplish something. We focus on getting more money, more things, more fame, more popularity, more prestige. That is typically our motivation for working to improve our situation. We look outside ourself to the way that our surroundings are going to improve. We do whatever we do so we can feel more comfortable or popular.

But it is important to look inside yourself too. In order for your outside situation to change in the way that you want it too, you have to change inside. If you want more money, for example, then you have to be able to offer more people more value. If you want more popularity, then you have to develop sensitivity, caring, integrity, sincerity, respect for others etc. In both cases, you have to become a better person.

There are two ways to reach your destination. You can be motivated by what you will get and in the process will become a better person. Or you can be motivated by the desire to become a better person and in the process will get the things you want. The latter is the best way because
if you focus on becoming a better person the rewards will be much greater than just having something you want. Being a better person will impact all areas of your life, and the lives of others as well in ways you could never predict.

For ideas about how to be truly successful, visit http://www.reachingmypotential.com

Emotions

"Even raw and messy emotions are a form of light, crackling, bursting with energy. We can use that light of rage in a positive way, in order to see into places we cannot usually see.
Clarissa Pinkola Estes.

You can learn a lot from your anger. Most people just use it to think of a way to get back at someone who has hurt them. It fuels their thinking that something is wrong with the other person. It tells them that they don't like the other person at the moment, and that they want to hurt them in the same way that they have hurt us. But anger can be used more constructively that that.

Anger can be used to show you something about yourself that you had chosen not to see before. It could show you how quick you are to judge a situation in which another person is not doing what you want them to do not because they are purposely being mean to you but are simply thinking about something else, or even because they misunderstood what you wanted.
A favorite story illustrating this is the one about two people who agreed to meet at the statue in the park. Each one sat for hours waiting for the other and growing angrier all the time. The next day they talked to each other and realized that there were actually two statues in the park and each person waited at a different statue. There was just a misunderstanding about where to wait. How often does this kind of situation happen in your life?

Your anger can also be used to show you what you really value and what your goals in life really are. Most people don't stop to think about WHY they are angry; they just figure the important thing is that they are angry and that it is the other person's fault. The truth is that it is not about the other person at all, your emotions come from your own interpretation of what the other person has done. Once you realize what this interpretation is, then you can change it to something more closer to the truth. Use the light of rage in this positive way.

For ideas about how to be truly successful, visit http://www.reachingmypotential.com

Comfort

"Minds, like bodies, will often fall into a pimpled, ill-conditioned state from mere excess of comfort"

Minds, like bodies, are meant to be used. They are meant to be challenged to improve. You know how lousy you feel if you've been sitting around all week doing nothing. Your body longs to be used, to get exersise. It doesn't want comfort for long, just long enough for it to repair itself from its growing pains and get ready for more growth. People who don't get much exersise tend to get sick more easily and they just feel worse than those people who exersise frequently. We all know that about our bodies, but we often don't seem to understand that our brains work in the same way.

Minds that stay within their comfort zone don't grow and expand. So many people aren't even aware that they have a comfort zone, because they don't realize that there's something outside of it. They see their family and freinds all thinking the same way and assume that's all there is. If we never explore new ideas or new ways of doing things, then our mind rots. It becomes incapable. And most importantly, we become depressed. Life becomes boring without the thrill of discovery. It becomes a drudgery.

A truly successful person is constantly pushing both their minds and bodies to improve. Just as they exersise frequently, they are always reading and listening and learning. They seek out ideas that are different from their own, so as to find the bigger picture. They learn and grow.

For ideas about how to be truly successful, visit http://www.reachingmypotential.com

Forgiveness

"One of the secrets of a long and fruitful life is to forgive everybody everything every night before going to bed."
Bernard Baruch

This may be one of the most difficult things a person can do, but then it is probably one of the most valuable ones too. The truth is that the anger, resentment, and desire for revenge that you feel about someone you haven't forgiven is a waste of energy that should be being spent on productive action to move you towards your goals. Another point to consider is that all those negative feelings about past hurts are only attracting more hurts into your life.

You need to learn whatever lessons there are from the hurt, forgive, and move on. This means forgiving yourself as well as other people. Some of us find it easier to forgive others than to forgive ourselves. But we are all imperfect people, making mistakes, and hopefully learning from them.

Bring yourself back to the present. Learn from the past and take action in the present to avoid letting the hurt happen again. You needn't condone a person's actions or ever trust them again.
But don't let them rob you of energy and your attention on reaching your own goals. Forgiving other people is a gift to you, not them.

For ideas about how to be truly successful, visit http://www.reachingmypotential.com

Life

"You can't do anything about the length of your life, but you can do something about its width and depth."
Shira Tehrani

Are you really living your life? Do you wake up excited and eager to begin your day? What is preventing you from doing that? Most people are afraid of death, but they aren't afraid of having a shallow life. I think most people think that a shallow life is how it's meant to be. They don't know anyone with a life that is very deep and wide.

One reason that most people have a shallow life is that they haven't determined what their real mission in life is, why they were sent into this world at this time. In the process of dealing with all the small emergencies that come up and all the requests of the people around them, they have forgotten what really makes them passionate and excited. Life becomes a drudgery of doing what other people want you to do, instead of taking the time to explore what you want for yourself.

It has been said that most people spend more time planning a vacation than they do in planning their life. Take some time for yourself to really ask yourself what you want to do with your life. What do you really beleive in? What would make you wake up excited? You can do something about the width and depth of your life, and when you do the length of it won't be so important. You will be able to reflect on your deathbed that you really accomplished a lot in your time on earth, and every moment was worthwhile.

For ideas about how to become truly successful, visit http://www.reachingmypotential.com

Preparation

"Circumstances may cause interruptions and delays, but never lose sight of your goal. Prepare yourself in every way you can by increasing your knowledge and adding to your experience, so that you can make the most of opportunity when it occurs."
Mario Andretti

This is why it is so important to have a goal that is more important than the circumstances around you. Even when we have a goal, we get so distracted by the way things are now, and by the random things that life throws out at us. As soon as our circumstances cause an interruption or a dely of our plan, we get frustrated and give up. Our mistake has been to make our circumstances more important than our goal is. We must have a burning desire to acheive our goal, no matter what the circumstances are. Giving up must be out of the question.

We know that everything always changes. Bad circumstances will change to good over time, and vice versa. That is why there are windows of opportunity. Although God will continue to give us different opportunities until we finally get around to taking one, you never know when and where and how the next opportunity will arrive. This is one of the things that make life exciting and fun.

It is important to prepare for opportunities with learning and experiences so that you can first of all recognize them and then take advantage of them while they are still available. Whatever your goal is, start learning and experiencing the things you will need for when an opportunity appears for you to move closer to your goal, or perhaps even reach it. Be ready to catch the next bus to your ideal future.

For ideas about how to acheive true success, visit http://www.reachingmypotential.com

Artists

"There are painters who transform the sun to a yellow spot, but there are others who with the help of their art and their intelligence, transform a yellow spot into sun."
Pablo Picasso

A truly great painter can take something insignificant like a yellow spot, and turn it into something magnificent, like a sun. We all have that creative genius inside us, but for most of us it is very dormant. We need to acquire a deep awareness of what is happening around us right now, and a deep desire to make these things into something special. We need to be able to see the beauty in the ordinary. We need to be able to listen to our intuition and follow its instructions. And we need to really enjoy life. If we can do those things, then we too can become an artist, and create something magnificent in our lives.

For ideas about how to become truly successful, visit http://www.reachingmypotential.com

Happiness

"To be without some of the things you want is an indispensable part of happiness"
Bertrand Russell

Have you ever said to yourself "I'll be happy when I get ..." or "I'll be happy when ... happens". This is not a good way to think. For one thing, it shifts your happiness out to some point in the future, instead of today. For another thing, you are making your happiness dependant upon some thing which may or may not ever happen, and even if it does it may get taken away from you at any time.

If you had every thing you want you would not be happy. You probably would get bored with all those things. To appreciate the things you have, you must also know what it is like to want.
Desire is only a bad thing, after all, if we think we won't be able to get what we want. It is those times when we really wanted something and knew we would probably get it that we have felt most alive. It is those times when we have felt happiest. God meant us to want things that we don't already have. It is what makes life meaningful and fun.

For ideas about how to be truly successful, visit http://www.reachingmypotential.com

Playing Your Cards

"Life consists not in holding good cards but in playing those you hold well"
Josh Billings

We are all jealous of those people who seem to sail through life having all the right things; the ones who were born rich and seem to have all the advantages. We forget that life happens to everyone, and life consists of problems and obstacles along with the joys and fun. People who never have problems never learn how to deal with them; and when one happens, which it inevitably will, they won't know how to cope.

We also forget that each of us has our own good cards, our talents and abilities, even when our hand is bad. If we can take good advantage of them, and play them in the right way, we might still win the game. When our hand is bad, we are forced to learn how to use our good cards properly if we ever plan on winning. Having a bad hand can sometimes be good for you because it teaches you have to play the cards you hold well.

For ideas about how to become truly successful, visit http://www.reachingmypotential.com

Revenge

"People who fight fire with fire usually end up with ashes.
Abigail Van Buren

People who are hurt by someone else, tend to want to hurt them back. "They're going to pay for what they did to me" Sometimes this revenge mode lasts for generations. Many times we hear of people who went to their deathbed not talking to each other. This kind of behaviour really is senseless.

When two people aren't even speaking to each other, what is accomplished? We've probably all experienced the frustration of wanting to explain our behavior and perhaps even apologize to another person who refused to even listen to us. In a situation like that, how is the original problem ever going to get solved? More than likely it will take on a life of it's own and a molehill will become a mountain in the eyes of the participants. Completely needlessly.

Most of us need to learn communication and problem solving skills. But most of all we need to change our attitude. We need to take ourselves less seriously. We need to realize that we are not always right or knowledgable, and there is a lot to learn from someone else's veiwpoint. Most of all, if someone seems like they want to apologize for their actions, we should always listen; and if they're sincere we should always forgive them. That way both of us can feel good about ourselves, instead of having us both feel bad about ourselves because we're mad at each other.

For ideas about how to acheive true success, visit http://www.reachingmypotential.com

Leading

"You cannot manage men into battle. You manage things, you lead people
Grace Murray Hopper

If you are going to become successful, you need to understand the difference between management and leadership. And if you work with men instead of things, which you almost certainly will, you need to become a good leader.

Napoleon Hill lists 11 important attributes of leadership. They are 1) unwavering courage and self-confidence, 2) self-control, 3) a keen sense of justice, 4) definateness of decision, 5) definateness of plans, 6) the habit of doing more than he is paid for, 7) a pleasing personality, 8) sympathy and understanding with his followers, 9) mastery of detail, 10) willingness to assume full responsibility, and 11) cooperation. Leadership is far more effective when the leader has the consent of and sympathy with the followers.

He also lists the 10 major causes of failure of leadership. They are 1) inability to organize details, 2) unwillingness to render humble service (any sort of labor they would ask others to perform), 3) expectation to be paid for what they "know" instead of what they do with that which they know, 4) fear of competition from followers, 5) lack of imagination, 6) selfishness, 7) intemperance (immoderate or violent), 8) disloyalty to anyone, 9) emphasis on the "authority" of his leadership (trying to instil fear in the hearts of his followers), and 10) emphasis on his title. How good a leader are you?

For ideas about how to become truly successful, visit http://www.reachingmypotential.com