The Before and After YOU! How To Become The Best Version of YOU!

Happy New Year to all of you! Have you always wanted to become the best version of YOU? Well lets start off the new year right! In previous posts we talked about setting goals and developing a personal mission and vision statement for your life. This is very important work, but you first have to DISCOVER your WHY? You have to discover your PURPOSE! God put you on this earth and designed you in such a way to accomplish great things for His Kingdom. But first, it is God’s dream to have a personal relationship with you. He wants you to call him Father! And for this reason, it is important that you have a conversion story! This is the time for you to take a different road. A time for you to do a U turn and find your true purpose. Perhaps you have heard others talk about their “Damascus Experience”? This is the time when once they were heading in one direction in life and now, they are heading in a different direction. I love the story of the Apostle Paul’s encounter with Jesus. It is told 3 times in the Book of Acts (9:1-18, 22:1-16, 26:1-18). So how does this apply to you? Well, the fact is God wants to see every person on this earth have a Damascus road experience. Perhaps not as dramatic as the Apostle Paul’s experience, but the experience that God has planned for you. He wants us to turn and experience a spiritual re-birth. God wants all of us to have a life changing experience with Jesus. (John 1:12, 2 Corinthians 5:17). This is the only chance we have for finding a life of PURPOSE.

The Power of a Spiritual Download

"Religion or Relationship"

With all of the scandals going on today, I rest in knowing that ever since the beginning of man, these things have been going on because we live in a fallen world. Racism, sexual immorality and all of what we are hearing about on the news today is rooted in one cause:”Spiritual Death”. And when someone is dead spiritually, (and we all are before undergoing a spiritual download) we all do and say things that we should not. But why is it so important to receive a “spiritual download” in the first place? Well, we all need forgiven and we don’t have any means to do this unless we accept God’s free gift-his spiritual download! After we receive this free spiritual download, God launches a massive continuous improvement in our life! He begins to show us our OWN sin, our own betrayal and our own MESS that we have created! That doesn’t mean we are now 100% sinless, it just means that He is working on us each and every day and cleaning up the MESSES we have made in life! So, with Christmas right around the corner, ask God for this FREE SPIRITUAL DOWNLOAD and watch how your life improves beyond AMAZING! USE THIS CODE WHEN ASKING: “JESUS, I am a sinner, please come into my heart and clean me up”.

Do You Know Your Life’s Mission and Purpose?…

One of the most frequent questions I receive when working with clients is:”How to I figure out my purpose in life? What is my personal or life’s mission? The key to determining your life’s mission is to begin with the end in mind first. The first thing I recommend is to think about how you want to be remembered in life. What two or things would you want written on your tomb stone for all to see. Perhaps you want to be a great father, great husband or great business partner. Perhaps you want to be a great teacher, or professor or preacher. However you want to be remembered in life is where you begin. If you are still having trouble with this, think about what what motivates you and what your passions are and what people often ask you to do. This is an indication on what is important to you and can lead to clarity in determining your life’s mission. Now, break down each of the two or three ways you want to be remembered into monthly goals or action steps that you need to take to achieve that result. Don’t waste your time trying to live someone else’s dream for your life. Determine your purpose and life’s mission and do something towards it each day.

What Do Really Want?

Isn’t this the 10 million dollar question? When I ask people what they really want in my work, there is often a blank look on their faces. Many tell me they want material possessions, many talk about being financially independent of their jobs, but from my work with hundreds of people in these past 30 years, people are searching for their “why” in life. I call this finding purpose in life. Isn’t that what we are all trying to figure out? When we find our purpose in life that gives us clarity and when we have clarity, we find energy to pursue our goals. When we realize our unique Godly design, we begin to see how our gifts and talents help and inspire others. When we find our WHY, we find the reason we EXIST. And when we find the reason we exist, we begin to fulfill our MISSION in life. And when we start to live out our MISSION, we have a new VISION in life on how we will fulfill our purpose.

Double your Productivity???But How?

We have been talking a lot about setting goals, improving our results and changing and breaking old paradigms down. But now its time to execute and that is all about how productive we become. I like to call this concept “YOU SQUARED”. Its about maximizing your productivity with simple steps that improve your results. Lets get started.

First you need to set aside time during the day when you are in peak performance mentally and physically. For me that is from 6:30am to about 2pm. After 2pm, I tend to fade off a bit and then move to tasks that require less concentration. But I try to make sure that I am at the very least putting 5 hours of productive time to my revenue producing activities. So define what yours are and then think about focusing your time on those.

Second, you must eliminate or minimize distractions. For me distractions are answering emails, answering phone calls, searching on facebook, instagram or whatever social media platforms you are using. For me these are TOTAL TIME KILLERS and I can literally waste hours of productive time doing these non productive tasks.

Third, remember to just GET STARTED in whatever goal or project you are desiring to complete. Getting started is the single biggest challenge to overcome because it takes inertia to start something and to bring it to life.

Fourth, you will be able to FEEL the difference between an unproductive day and a productive day. Believe me, a productive day feels much better! Just start trying to have as many productive hours, then days then weeks. After a month or so, you now have a set of new habits that will carry you through.

Finally, YOU SQUARED, is a combination of awareness, setting goals, executing goals, improving personal productivity, and gaining mental clarity and focus in life. Remember, worry fear and angry all work against YOU SQUARED!

3 Things That Keep Your From Achieving Your Goals In Life

What is the PRIMARY CAUSE OF MY RESULTS? YOU ARE and here 3 major things that hold you back in life from achieving your goals, improving your results and living a life of purpose and significance. Here they are:

1. I KNEW THAT
2. I’VE DONE THAT BEFORE
3. DISTRACTIONS

How many times have you tried to help someone and they say:”I knew that”, but in reality they didn’t and it was their attitude about it that held them back? Or have you ever been in a situation where you are trying to implement a new idea or concept to a group or mentor someone and they say:”I’ve done that before” and you can see them automatically shut you out? And finally, many times, folks who lack good results have another problem. They have too many distractions throughout their day and they don’t spend the necessary time working on productive measures and goals that will change their for the better. So, it is very important to look back and see what habits, attitudes, paradigms are causing your results. And then, if you don’t like your results, set new goals that are more in the direction that you want to go. Finally, gain greater awareness of how others are achieving their results ask them to show you what they do! By keeping an open mind and reducing the 3 issues above, your results will improve.

We Set Goals When Our Level Of Awareness is at the Discipline Awareness Level

My last post was a request from a fellow person from my TRIBE. I was delighted to learn that he shared my content with his tribe and wanted more information. I want to revisit my post on WHY WE SET GOALS now that you know the 7 levels of AWARENESS. We set goals and we execute goals when we are DISCIPLINED enough to know that Goals executed successfully change our results and change our direction. But you first have to move past Animal, Mass, Aspiration and Individual Levels of awareness. Only when you can write out your goals and have the ability to give yourself a command to execute them, will you have success. In the next post, I will talk about how EXPERIENCE awareness can take you places you never dreamed of.

How Do We Set Goals…..

Yesterday’s post was titled “Why We Set Goals” and today’s post is “How Do We Set Goals”. Over the years, I have struggled to find a method that truly works effectively for me. Perhaps you are like me in this regard. I have great intentions, but find it difficult to spend the time to write down my goals in a format that works. So, in this post i wish to share with you what works for me. If you have another style that works for you, that is great as well. Often times I struggle with mental clarity on what to write and clarity of what to accomplish. I can see the BIG PICTURE, but breaking it down into individual steps becomes difficult. So, I produce a one page yearly sheet that just has 3-5 major end results that I want accomplished. My categories are Finance, Health, Spirituality, Family. Within those 4 categories, I just write simple sentences where I would like to be. For example, I fix a figure of income for my company that i want to achieve. For health, I normally have targets, like weight, exercise, doctor visits etc. For spirituality I set targets for scripture reading, church attendance and growing in Christ. And that is how I do it. From those goals, I go to just steps needed to accomplish those goals. I just try to make it as simple as possible. Then, each week, I think about what I have accomplished towards those goals and if I achieve it, I check it off of my list. So, I try not to be too critical of myself because that only frustrates me. I think what is important is to revisit your goal sheets weekly and keep them close to you. I have them next to me at all times for easy access and review.

Keep in mind that when you start to see real progress towards these goals, it truly gives you energy and a sense of accomplishment! This energy builds on itself and before you know it, you have achieved your goal!

Why We Set Goals…

Each year around November I start to think about what i did or did not accomplish. I think about my plan and how well the plan was executed. And nine times out of ten, when I fall short it is caused by lack of focus and follow through. Do you suffer from that as well? Research has proven that when you write out your goals and plan accordingly, you have significantly improved your chances of achieving those goals. But why is it that more people don’t plan for their future? Well, here are a few insights:

1. Most people feel the need to work towards their purpose in life but they struggle with defining their purpose.
2. Clarity is key when achieving anything, but clarity is sometimes very difficult to achieve because we are consumed with trying to earn money and cover our basic needs.
3. Life’s curve balls come at us all the time in various forms and they often times push us into different directions away from our plan.
4. Procrastination to execute our plan keeps us in a low energy state of mind.

So what can we do about this to jump start our ability to achieve our purpose? First, we need to take time to begin thinking about how we want to be remembered in life. IF we take the time to think about what is really important in life, we will be in a better position to develop clear goals. For example, I want to be remembered as a great father to my children. So, I take the necessary steps each year to plan for that result in life. I build time with my kids and try to make sure I am living a life that adds value for them.
Second, I try to think on the big picture of life and try not to get involved in DRAMA. Family drama is one on the keys to staying “stuck” in life. Work towards isolating yourself from negative family members who love to bring you down to their level. Third, build productive time each day to completing what you have planned for. I am currently working on rebuilding my platform and I need to work everyday towards building it. Take time as well each day to learn new technologies. In today’s environment, it is very important to stay as current as possible with technology. Technology is very essential in platform building. And Finally, take time to seek the truth in life and don’t rely on the what reality TV presents as reality. There is a truth that exists and keep focused on that truth. In times like these, where everyone wants to make up their own truth, resist and keep focused on God’s plan for your life.

Here is what is important in life…

Dear Friends: I lost a friend that I met in 2008 when I attended Halftime Institute in Dallas Texas. He was the first person I met at the training and I shall never forget him. He lost his battle to last week. I encourage you to watch and learn, love and cry. You are in my thoughts and prayers Greg and I will see you someday in Heaven. RIP Greg.