Change Your Life Starting NOW!



Want to change your life? Get serious now! Schedule a 15-minute appointment with yourself in your Day-Timer planner and answer these 4 questions:
  1. “Which of my goals did I accomplish in 2003?” (You did have goals, didn’t you?)
  2. “Could I (or should I) have done more? If so, why didn’t I?” (Now’s not the time to be easy on yourself.)
  3. “Have I set specific, measurable goals for 2004? If not, by what date will I do so?”
  4. “How will I apply what I learned last year into 2004 to make the biggest difference in my life?”
Fact is, most people reading this ezine won’t answer these questions. Why? Human inertia: that powerful, life-wasting force that stops many of us from realizing our life’s potential. How do you break through? Take baby steps! Here’s how…

Step 1: Right now, cut and paste the 4 questions above into an empty document. Congratulations… you’ve accomplished step 1.

Step 2: Schedule 15 minutes in your Day-Timer planner right now when you’ll type your answers to those questions in that same document.

The mere act of taking Step 1 can help push you past the human inertia that may have been shackling you in years past. It’s a simple technique called “chunking down,” or “swiss cheesing”… reducing tasks into bite-sized, manageable pieces. Taking Step 2 puts a process into place that helps keep you moving forward. Make sure every action plan ends with a step that requires further action.

Want more ways to keep the momentum going? Here are our all-time favourite techniques to help you reach most any goal in life:

7 Day-Timers Secrets for Keeping Your Resolutions

SUCCESS TIP #1: The Life-Changing Power of Specificity! Tell a friend you’ll exercise together some day and you probably won’t. Tell him you’ll meet at the gym at 1:00 pm on Monday, 16 February, and you’re far more likely to do so! Likewise, most New Year’s resolutions fail because they’re merely dreams, not quantifiable goals. Remember the book you’ve thought about writing? Don’t say, “One day I’ll write that book.” Instead declare, “Tonight I’ll work on the title of my book for 1 hour or until I have at least 3 good possibilities.” Assigning dates and numbers – specifics – moves your goals from dreamland to reality.

SUCCESS TIP #2: Swiss Cheese Your Way to Success! Nibble away at your goals instead of taking huge, overwhelming bites. Want to quit smoking? Swiss cheese the task by smoking 1 less cigarette a day. Want to save money? Have your employer automatically put 5% (or more) of every paycheque into a company-sponsored RRSP. (You’ll likely never miss it!) Want to learn another language? Resolve to learn 2 new words every day. Change your image… upgrade your vocabulary… become more informed! Make a list of what you specifically want to improve and work on just one item a week… that’s not so tough. Break down your goals into tiny pieces that are so ridiculously simple you can’t fail to begin!

SUCCESS TIP #3: Observe the “Pareto Principle.” Italian economist Vilfredo Pareto found that 80% of the wealth in most countries is controlled by about 20% of the people. It’s now a management principle that says the majority of your success in most any endeavour is the result of focusing on the 20% of the activities that are really important. In other words, “Don’t simply work hard, work smart.” That means identifying the activities in your life that make the biggest difference and focusing on them. Things getting hectic? Getting overwhelmed? Unless you identify the 20%, you won’t know what you’re letting slip through the cracks and how to best prioritize.

SUCCESS TIP #4: Change Desires into Action Statements. Desires are great, but unless you follow up with action, you’ll never fulfill those desires. Instead of simply wanting a better relationship with your spouse, create an action statement saying what you’ll actually do to improve your relationship. Rather than simply saying you want to be financially independent, state what action steps you’ll actually take to make more money. Begin thinking with an action mindset. Keep asking yourself, “What will I do? What steps will I take? How do I get from point A to point B?” You don’t have a plan to succeed if it doesn’t contain any action verbs!

SUCCESS TIP #5: Copy-Catting, Modelling, Mentoring… whatever you call it, find someone who did it successfully and learn from them! Is the achievement of your goal worth $50 to you? Did you ever think about offering a $75 consultation fee to pick someone’s brains for a few minutes? How much could you learn from someone who has spent 10 years in the field? You’d be amazed how many top-achievers are willing to offer you a helping hand for little or no compensation. And in most cases, all you need do is ask! If you could get the best of someone’s decades of experience in one hour, would it be worth it? Of course! Your job is simply to ask the right questions. Phone consultations are best, because with permission you could record the conversation instead of taking notes and thereby cover far more ground.

SUCCESS TIP #6: See Setbacks as Guides, Not Failures! Plan didn’t work? What did you learn? Try something different! Still didn’t succeed? Try something else! There are thousands of ways to do things. It’s your job to find the many ways that will work. That’s your part of the bargain… and why educating yourself first speeds you to success. Begin to regard so-called failures less emotionally, as simply “outcomes,” and keep trying until you get the outcome you desire. Life is a game of cause and effect. For every cause, there is a corresponding effect. Good cause, good effect. Bad cause, bad effect. No cause, no effect. If you’re convinced it can be done, then it’s simply a matter of finding the “cause” that returns the desired “effect!” The world is impersonal – it doesn’t care who succeeds or fails. It’s all a matter of finding the 20% of the causes that return 80% of the results you want. So keep trying. And remember the great expression, “Failure isn’t the falling down, it’s the lying down.”

SUCCESS TIP #7: Remind and Reward Yourself! Post your goals on your car’s dashboard… computer monitor… Day-Timer planner… refrigerator! And be sure to reward yourself for hitting each plateau or for each month you’ve stuck with your goal. Remember: “The Rule of 21” says it takes 21 days to form new habits. After that, your new behaviours will become easy and automatic! Test it with any new success habit. Force yourself to do it for 21 days… then watch it become a part of your new success routine! Think how much you can accomplish using this one tip alone.

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