FREEDOM TO CREATE YOUR OWN LIFE

Have you heard the quote that, "Those who do not read are
no better off than those who cannot read?" I often ponder
the truth that those who will not use their freedom to
create a great life are little better off than those who
live in bondage. Too many of us live our lives in bondage
to tradition or habit or a thousand other false limitations
of modern life.
We work at jobs we don't like, or live in communities that
no longer serve us. We "don't have time" to learn a new
hobby, write a book or change careers. We are trapped by
fears of failure or embarrassment or ridicule. We play too
small!
Last week, I spent three days at a conference with some
wonderful, talented people who took a risk to make things
better. Some of them flew across oceans, others drove long
distances. All of them invested time and money, and took a
risk that attending a "think tank" conference would open
doors or empower them in some way. I like to believe that
each of us "won" that bet!
The glorious truth is that you are free to invent, or re-
invent yourself, to create a life of your own any time you
choose. I urge you to take that very seriously.
When we "bet" on ourselves, we always win. Granted,
sometimes things don't turn out quite like we hoped, but
when we "play large" and "go big", we always win, sometimes
on a far larger scale than we ever imagined.
Since the founding of our country, valiant men and women
have fought wars and political battles to guarantee us the
freedom to think for ourselves and to speak or write
whatever we wish. They have shed blood on distant fields so
we can read controversial books or freely travel wherever
and whenever we wish. We are free to invest our time and
money and talent, and to reap the rewards. This weekend is
the holiday when we pause to honour these freedoms.
But when do we pause to honour and seize the "smaller"
freedoms to create our own lives? When do we ponder, and
then choose the life we truly desire?
In my speaking and training events, I often encourage the
audience to "live out loud." I encourage them to tell the
rest of us who they are, where they've been, and where
they're going in life.
I want to use this issue to challenge
you in the same way. How will you make the most of your one
and only, glorious life? Do not die with "your music still
inside you!" Start small if you prefer, but move in the
direction of your unique talents and interests. Take time
for the people you love. Learn a new skill or teach someone
who desperately wants to learn. Make our world a better
place and unleash the greatness that is in you.
I know of no better way to honour those who gave their lives
so we can have this incredible privilege!

MANAGE THINGS LEAD PEOPLE

There's an saying that you can manage things, but you must
lead people, and it is absolutely critical for leaders to
profoundly get that distinction.
Philip Humbert said, "In the companies I've led, we have never used the title of
"Manager" because I felt it was essential for every member
of the organization, from myself and members of the Board,
down to the newest hire, to know they were hired and paid
to be leaders. If you want to build your business, there is
no alternative. Many years ago I worked in our County Mental Health
department and (to avoid any hurt feelings) I want to say
that I worked for and with great people. But the system
encouraged us to be "worker bees," and the managers were
primarily paper-shufflers. They were trained to manage the
budget, manage the staff and manage the clients. They were
good at those things, but they were not LEADERS, and both
morale and productivity suffered".
Achievement comes from leaders. Leadership sets the
direction and the pace. Leaders model appropriate
attitudes, behaviors, and values. Great leaders never have
to refer to the company policy manual or explain the
mission statement because from a new employee's first day
they see, taste, smell and get what the company is all
about.
Ford Motor Company used to have a slogan that "Quality was
job one", and it's a great slogan, but here's an even
better slogan when it comes to selecting, promoting and
rewarding people in executive and decision-making roles:
Leadership is Job One!
To grow your business, select, train, support and empower
leaders. They'll take you places!

HOW TO FIGURE OUT YOUR LIFE PURPOSE IN 10 MINUTES

How does one discover their true purpose in life?

How do you know that you even have a purpose?

How do you know you’re not just BS-ing yourself?

Of course you have a purpose. You’ve just been conditioned to ignore the internal screaming occurring within yourself, and then label that as being “normal”.

We’re taught to label emotional states like complacency, apathy, and depression as “normal”. That’s just the way life is, kids. Sorry you can’t cope with how boring and unfulfilling it is to be a human consumer in the 21st century. Go play with your digital toys or something!

But what if you want to unveil your purpose once and for all?

What if you want to take a peak behind the curtain that is the very social conditioning keeping you separated from your truth?

Doing so will avail you of immense personal power, focus, drive, and clarity. These tools are very useful for people who are sick of the default program of society, and wish to make their own lives on their own terms.

The first step is to begin the process of consciously disassociating your thinking with disempowering thoughts. This is easier said than done, of course; but with time you will become proficient in this practice.

This is just a warm up, however. It’s similar to stretching before the gym. The real magic lies in what happens next:

How to Figure Out Your Life Purpose in 10 Minutes

A few quick pointers before we get started:

The more honest you are, the better your results are going to be here.

You gain nothing by looking for answers, finding a worthy exercise to help you sort out those answers, and then lying to yourself to prevent temporary emotional discomfort.

That’s exactly why you are where you are if you’re reading this article! Take that in stride and use it to your advantage here!

Ok, here we go:

1. Grab a blank piece of paper and/or open up your favorite word processor.

2. At the top of the page, write “My Purpose Is…”

3. Begin writing down answers as they arrive. Any and all answers. Do not resist ANYTHING here. This is imperative! You need to write down everything that comes to mind. This is the entire reason for this exercise; it will free up the mental RAM needed for clear thinking (for once)!

4. Repeat step 3 until the answer which makes you begin to cry appears.

Congratulations…you’ve just realized your purpose.

Clarity is The Secret

That’s it and that’s all.

It doesn’t matter if you’re a lawyer, cell phone salesman, or CEO.

This exercise will work for you if you keep at it.

For some people, they’ll keep going and going well over 10, 15, even 30 minutes. This is highly suggested. You might find yourself cycling through 100 or more answers before anything remotely interesting comes up. It might take you a thousand or more. The numbers and time spent are not the point; articulating your mind and clearing out the garbage which presently fills it is the point!

To some this exercise will make perfect sense, and be exactly what they needed.

To others, it will be a stupid exercise that showed them nothing.

If you need a little more correlation on this process, check out my complimentary article Why Purpose is Imperative to Happiness.

Again, 10 minutes is just a suggestion. That’s the minimal amount of time it will take you to start getting a mental flow going in the right direction. Your mind needs to warm up just like any other muscle. Do this for an hour, and your clarity will be much higher than if you stop at the 10 minute mark.

Now, for some, there may come a point where you’re just sitting there listing things, and nothing’s coming up. You’ll feel tempted to say “screw this”, and go do something else instead. This is completely normal and is NOT to be resisted. If you feel like getting up, that simply means you’re not ready to face yourself yet. While this might sound like a bad thing, it’s actually still a HUGE step in the right direction.

The reason this is a step in the right direction is because even though you reached a temporary personal limit, you committed to pushing yourself to try this exercise. You dove in. Even though you didn’t complete it, you took on a daunting new self-growth exercise and ran with it until it pushed you too far.

Congratulations my friend, you’re growing as a human being.

Some answers might come close to making you cry, such as by providing a small surge or emotional response. Hang on to those answers if you can; highlight them, use an asterisk to mark them, whatever. You can still use and incorporate that information later on!

If you truly feel you don’t have a purpose (or that humans in general have no purpose), then start with “I don’t have a purpose” at the top of the sheet and go from there. I’m serious. You’ll be surprised at how your subconscious mind could care less what your conscious mind chooses for an ideology. It’s going to unload the universe onto your hard disk (brain) whether you like it or not.

The more you simply accept this, the more you can work with it and use it to your advantage rather than your detriment.

The less you resist this, the more you’re going to get out of it. Most people are stuck because their entire experience is based on resisting what the truth of reality is trying to show them.

Knowing your purpose makes it a hell of a lot easier to not only move through resistance, but also discern which types of things are actually obstacles, and which are all smoke and no fire.

Conclusion

This exercise is a fast and simple way to begin articulating your own destiny as an individual, empowered human being.

Making the list and allowing your emotional intelligence to guide you is the easy part.

The real challenge comes in consciously committing to living by your purpose, and refusing to die with it in you. I will argue that this is what your true, over-hanging purpose is; to figure out your purpose, and then live it!

LONG-TERM SELLING RELATIONSHIP

Did you know that building and maintaining long-term selling relationships is the key behavior and skill of the top ten percent of the money earners in sales?

If you could take everything we know about communications, put it all in a large pot, boil it and distill it down into its critical essence, it is about the importance of relationships in successful selling. Building and maintaining long-term selling relationships is the key behavior and skill of the top ten percent of the money earners in sales, in every field, selling every product and service.

The Reason for Success

Most of your success in life will depend on your ability to get along well with other people, and on the quality of your relationships. Psychologist Sidney Jourard, found that 85 percent of a person's happiness in life comes from happy interactions with other people. The reverse holds true as well: 85 percent of a person's unhappiness or problems in life comes from difficulties in getting along with others.

Sell to Lots of People

Anyone can sell to a few people, some of the time. But only the very best human relations experts can sell to a wide variety of people, and sell to them repeatedly.

The only way that you can make the kind of big money that you are capable of is by selling more easily, and more often, to the prospects you talk to, and by having those prospects open doors to others through testimonials and referrals. All top salespeople build and maintain high quality business relationships with their customers and sell to them repeatedly year after year.

Decide Emotionally, Justify Logically

We are all sensitive to the quality of our relationships with other people. We are primarily emotional and we make most of our decisions on the basis of how we feel inside. We may carefully consider all of the logical and practical reasons why or why not with regard to buying a product or service, but in the final analysis we tend to go with our gut feeling.

We listen to our inner voices. We obey the dictates of our hearts. We buy on the basis of how we feel about the relationship that we have with the other person. Where there is no relationship, there is no sale.

Focus on the Key Variable

Everything that you ever learned of value in the profession of selling, regarding your product or service, or personality, is only helpful to the degree to which it contributes to the building of high quality relationships with customers.

Action Exercises

Here are two things you can do immediately to put these ideas into action.

First, become a relationship expert in sales. Focus first on the relationship, above all, and the sale will take care of itself.
Second, take care of your relationships once you have built them. Never take them for granted. Tend to them as you would to a flower garden.

BRANDING AT 50 PACES

What color shirt does Tiger Woods wear almost every Sunday?
Golfers around the world know this one: RED!
Now, here's a more obscure test for older golfers:  What
color did Gary Player wear almost every weekend? Answer:
For 30 years, Gary Player was known for his black shirts
and slacks.
Why is that important? Because branding makes a difference!
Here's a true story. Recently, Philip Humbert says "I needed a small gift to
repay a favor from a friend, who I know enjoys cigars. I
asked another friend for a recommendation and instead of
giving me a name, Bill Honsowetz walked me across the
parking lot to his car and gave me two beautiful cigars. I
ask him why and his response was that giving a good cigar
(for prospects who enjoy such things) is part of his
marketing and branding program.
Well. I'd never heard anything quite like that, but I gave
the cigars to Jeff and to my surprise, he was delighted and
immediately asked me where I got them. I told him the
story. Apparently Jeff called Bill and within two weeks, he
had a new business client. Hmmm….
The point is NOT about cigars, folks!
A good friend and coaching colleague is known for her
bright red outfits and big, floppy red hats. At any
coaching convention, you can spot her across the hotel
lobby at 50 paces. It's memorable, tasteful, and
distinctive.
For the past several years, when I lead corporate
workshops, I've worn a "uniform" of dress slacks and a nice
white golf shirt with my logo and a slogan tastefully
embroidered on the breast. I've become known for it, and
when I travel, it certainly keeps packing to a minimum!
The point is this: Whatever your profession or role, if you
can develop a distinctive and appropriate "uniform," it
will dramatically increase your brand memory and
recognition. I'm not sure about the cigars, but everyone
knows the Golden Arches, right? Think about it.