The Dollhouse

by Brian Tracy

Over the course of your lifetime you may have a thousand different goals. Think about it. How many goals have you made for yourself in the past year?

All of these goals will fall into one of four basic categories. Everything you do is an attempt to enhance the quality of your life in one or more of these areas.

The Key to Happiness

The first category is your desire for happy relationships. You want to love and be loved by others. You want to have a happy, harmonious home life. You want to get along well with the people around you, and you want to earn the respect of the people you respect. Your involvement in social and community affairs results from your desire to have happy interactions with others and to make a contribution to the society you live in.

Enjoy Your Work

The second category is your desire for interesting and challenging work. You want to make a good living, of course, but more than that, you want to really enjoy your occupation or profession. The very best times of your life are when you are completely absorbed in your work.

Become Financially Independent

The third category is your desire for financial independence. You want to be free from worries about money. You want to have enough money in the bank so that you can make decisions without counting your pennies. You want to achieve a certain financial state so that you can retire in comfort and never have to be concerned about whether or not you have enough money to support your lifestyle. Financial independence frees you from poverty and a need to depend upon others for your livelihood. If you save and invest regularly throughout your working life, you will eventually reach the point where you will never have to work again.

Enjoy Excellent Health

The fourth and final category is your desire for good health, to be free of pain and illness and to have a continuous flow of energy and feelings of well-being. In fact, your health is so central to your life that you take it for granted until something happens to disrupt it.

Peace of Mind is the Key

Peace of mind is essential for every one of these. The greater your peace of mind, the more relaxed and positive you are, the less stress you suffer, the better is your overall health.

The more peace of mind you have, the better are your relationships, the more optimistic, friendly and confident you are with everyone in your life. When you feel good about yourself on the inside, you do your work better and take more pride in it. You are a better boss and coworker. And the greater your overall peace of mind, the more likely you are to earn a good living, save regularly for the future and ultimately achieve financial independence.

Control Your Attention

Life is very much a study of attention. Whatever you dwell upon and think about grows and expands in your life. The more you pay attention to your relationships, the quality and quantity of your work, your finances and your health, the better they will become and the happier you will be.

Action Exercises

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

First, take time on a regular basis to think about what would make you really happy in each of the four areas.

Second, set specific, measurable goals for improvement in your relationships, your health, your work and your finances and write them down.

Third, resolve to do something every day to increase the quality of some area of your life - and then keep your resolution.

by Brian Tracy

Your ability to achieve your own happiness is the key measure of your success, of how well you are doing as a person.

You learn the key to happiness that has been the same through all of history. You learn how to dispel the two myths that may be holding you back and how to achieve more happiness in everything you do.

Dedicate Yourself to Your Best Talents

The key to happiness is this: dedicate yourself to the development of your natural talents and abilities by doing what you love to do, and doing it better and better in the service of a cause that is greater than yourself.

This is a big statement and a big commitment. Being happy requires that you define your life in your own terms and then throw your whole heart into living your life to the fullest. In a way, happiness requires that you be perfectly selfish in order to develop yourself to a point where you can be unselfish for the rest of your life.

Please Yourself First

In Edmond Rostand’s play Cyrano de Bergerac, Cyrano is asked why he is so intensely individualistic and unconcerned with the opinions and judgments of others. He replies with these wonderful words: “I am what I am because early in life I decided that I would please at least myself in all things.”

Your happiness likewise depends upon your ability to please at least yourself in all things. You can be happy only when you are living your life in the very best way possible. No one can define happiness for you. Only you know what makes you happy. Happiness is an inside job.

Your Happiness is Up to You

The biggest myth about happiness is when people say that it is not legitimate or correct for you to put your happiness ahead of everyone else’s. Throughout my life, I’ve met people who have said that it is more important to make other people happy than it is to make yourself happy. This is nonsense.

The fact is that you can’t give away to anyone else what you don’t have for yourself. Just as you can’t give money to the poor if you don’t have any, you can’t make someone else happy if you yourself are miserable.

The very best way to assure the happiness of others is to be happy yourself and then to share your happiness with them. Suffering and self-sacrifice merely depress and discourage other people. If you want to make others happy, start by living the kind of life and doing the kind of things that make you happy. 

Action Exercises

Here are three steps you can take immediately to put these ideas into action.

First, define for yourself the activities that you really love and enjoy, at home and work, and then organize your life so you do more of them.

Second, believe in yourself and trust your own feelings. Then, please at least yourself in all things. 

Third, determine what it is that you do that brings the most happiness to others and then organize your life so that you can do more of it.

unscriptedconversations:

Unscripted Featured in the April 2012 issue of Sense & Style.

Many thanks to Margaux Salazar!

By Robin Sharma

1. They get that the #1 way to build a global brand is one customer at a time.

2. They obsess around having an impact vs. growing their income (and so their income soars).

3. They listen more than they speak. And they deliver more than they promise.

4. They use their most valuable hours to do their most valuable work (don’t check email first thing in the morning).

5. They get that you can’t have an A-level company if you hire B-level people.

6. They are deeply aware that jealousy is the tribute mediocrity pays to Mastery. And so they fearlessly pour their Genius into the world.

7. They understand that what the amateur calls genius, the professional calls practice.

8. They are fanatics around building a systems-driven company. Everything has a system built around it. This ensures consistently fantastic results. And allows the entrepreneur to take extraordinary amounts of time off.

9. They trust their vision when everyone else is doubting their vision.

10. They provoke their teammates to do work they never imagined they could do.

11. They know that good enough just isn’t good enough. Outright perfection is their ideal.

12. They have discovered that extra hard work is Success’ true best friend.

13. They use flight time to get ahead and review their plans vs. playing Angry Birds and watching bad movies.

14. They get that progress often shows up in failure’s clothing.

15. They invest deeply in their education and development knowing that the fastest way to double your net worth is to triple your rate of learning.

16. They focus on value versus cost.

17. They hold themselves to performance + ethical standards higher than anyone could ever expect of them.

18. They make the time to think, plan and prepare – understanding that clarity breeds mastery. And there’s no point in brilliantly executing the wrong things.

19. They get that their 3 most valuable assets are their mental focus, physical energy and internal creativity. And so they protect them ferociously.

20. They are “Apple-like” in their willingness to think differently and ensure their products leave customers breathless.

21. They stick to their convictions – especially in the face of criticism.

22. They relentlessly stay true to their clearly articulated vision – even when confronted with the most heartbreaking of obstruction.

23. They adore the mantra: “How may I best serve the most people?”

24. They challenge the way they worked yesterday for the sake of even bigger work tomorrow.

25. They get that either you disrupt the status quo in your industry (and within your life), or you will be disrupted. And it will hurt.

26. They spend their days doing real work versus fake work. And getting important things done versus being really busy being busy.

27. They know that if they’re not frightened a lot they’re not achieving a lot.

28. They appreciate that Leadership’s no longer about ensuring compliance but inspiring connections, being of service and getting great things done.

29. They work hard to craft a high-performance culture, understanding that the culture of the organization stages the performance of its people.

30. They are more fascinated in building a company that will endure the generations than an enterprise that is hot for a few quarters. Iconic is their obsession.

31. They get that failure is the foundation of innovation.

32. They are acutely aware that the winning formula that made their company successful just might be the one that makes their company obsolete. And so they break what works. And stay foolish and hungry.

33. They deliver results versus voice rationalizations.

34. They view angry customers as breathtakingly great opportunities to create fanatical fans.

35. They know that if people are not laughing at your 24 Month Magnificent Obsession, you have the wrong vision.

36. They perceive connections with their community as the main aim of commerce.

37. They are devoted to getting into their absolute best physical condition. They have zero desire to be the richest people in the graveyard.

38. They understand that the greatest gift you can give a teammate (or a customer or your child) is the gift of your undivided attention.

39. They know that logic is the dream killer. Instead, they trust instinct, creativity and passion to lead them to where they need to go.

40. They have learned that few things feel better than the pride you’ll feel on a job beautifully done.

41. They are good at starting things. And even better at finishing them.

42. They get that confidence grows via the doing of difficult things. And so they pursue discomfort.

43. They identify themselves as virtuosos. Best in World is the only place they play.

44. They bravely donate their lives to a cause larger than themselves. And – in this way – transform the world through their presence.