How to Quantify Your Goals

Quantifying your goals can be a long process. You'll have to gather a lot
more information before you're ready to set specific targets. Eventually,
you'll probably want to put those goals together in the form of a business
plan.

But before we move on to the process of getting that information, let's
take a look at some of the guidelines you should follow when quantifying
your goals:

* Be specific ­ establish targets that can be easily measured, and use
numbers as targets whenever possible. For example, you may set a goal of
selling your goods or services across a particular number of counties or
states, having a certain number of employees, or reaching a particular
level of sales. Tie those numbers to specific time frames (within six
months, within two years, within 10 years, etc.).

* Be realistic ­ having high expectations is great, but make sure that you
establish targets that are reasonable and potentially achievable. If you're
opening a fast-food restaurant, to say that you want to be bigger than
McDonald's within six months is not realistic.

* Be aggressive ­ you can be realistic and still aim high. Don't set goals
that are too easily achieved; also, set both short-term and long-term
goals. If, after six months in business, you accomplish all of your goals,
then what? Don't sell yourself short; if you want to be bigger than
McDonald's within 20 years, go for it.

* Be consistent ­ Beware of inadvertently setting inconsistent goals. For
example, a goal of growing fast enough to have three employees within two
years might be inconsistent with a goal of earning a particular amount of
money if the cost of adding the employees ends up temporarily reducing your
income below the target level. There is nothing wrong with having both
goals. Just be aware that the potential conflict exists, and establish
priorities among your goals so that you'll know which ones are most
important to you.

In developing your goals and objectives, you should be specific where
achievements can be measured. Normally you would have a numbered list of a
few selected objectives. Keep your list to about ten, because long lists
make it hard to focus.

Making your goals concrete is the best way, possibly the only way, to tell
when you've achieved them. Your chance of implementation depends on your
being able to track progress toward goals and measure results, and
implementation is critical. Set measurable objectives such as sales or
sales growth, profits or profitability, market share as published by an
objective and accessible source, gross margin as percent of sales, for example.

Avoid listing vague goals that can't be tracked. Where general or
intangible goals are important to your business, find a way to make them
specific. For example, if customer satisfaction is a priority, put your
objectives in terms of percent of returns, specific numbers of complaints,
or letters of praise, or some other measure related to satisfaction. If
image or awareness is a priority, include a survey to measure the change in
percentages in your plan. You can build a customer satisfaction survey into
your plan, set the sample size and satisfaction scores you want to achieve,
then carry out the survey to check on success.

Since you deal with products, you might watch gross margin or unit sales,
so you should set objectives for these key factors. If you are a
distribution company, for example, then you will also want to focus on
tight management of logistics, working capital, and personnel costs. If you
are a publisher, then you might focus on product quality, titles, or
marketing. This obviously depends on your type of business.

About the Author:
Brian Hazelgren is a globally recognized expert in business planning,
strategic planning, infrastructure development, training, sales and operations.

"Love Strategies"

As you may know, ten years ago, I worked with Tony Robbins for three years.
My favorite event during those years was a 3-day program called "Unlimited
Power." That event had many very powerful components to it, but I was
recently reminded of one exercise we did at the event that I found
particularly powerful and I wanted to share it with you today.

The exercise was called "Love Strategies."

The core concept behind the exercise is that all of us desperately want to
feel loved, yet we all have different "strategies" for what it takes to
actually feel totally and completely loved.

As you may also know, Tony's original work flowed from the science of
neuro-linguistic programming (NLP) which teaches that there are three
primary modes of communication we all use:

1. Visual (what we see)

2. Auditory (what we hear)

3. Kinesthetic (what we feel)

In the Unlimited Power program, we taught that Love Strategies flow along
the lines of those three modes of communication too. Some people have
Visual strategies for feeling loved, some have Auditory strategies, and
others have Kinesthetic strategies.

What do I mean by that? It breaks down like this:

Visual Love Strategy
People who have this strategy need to "see" that you love them. Seeing it
takes the form of receiving flowers or gifts, unexpected thoughtful acts
(like a special romantic evening or getaway, a massage, a day of pampering,
etc.). People with this strategy need to see "evidence" or "proof." Does
that make sense?

Auditory Love Strategy
People with this strategy need to hear the words "I love you" (or similar
words) to feel totally and completely loved.

Kinesthetic Love Strategy
People with this strategy need to be touched in certain ways or in certain
places to feel totally and completely loved. It might be massaging the
scalp a certain way, kissing a certain spot under the neck, rubbing an ear
just so, etc. It should be noted that this strategy rarely if ever involves
touch of a sexual nature.

During the Unlimited Power program, we also taught that if you don't know
what your significant other's Love Strategy is, and if you don't use it on
a regular basis, they'll never feel totally and completely loved by you, no
matter how many times you use another strategy. And ultimately, that's not
good for a relationship.

Now, before I continue, I must add that we all like being "told" we're
loved using all 3 strategies, but we all have one that's our preferred
mode, one mode that really "does it" for us and has the most powerful impact.

When I first did the Love Strategy exercise, I discovered that I had a
Visual Love Strategy, which meant that you could tell me you loved me all
day long, touch me in all kinds of ways, and while I might think those
gestures were nice, they wouldn't really make me feel totally and
completely loved unless you did something to "show" me. Since I didn't have
many people around me at the time, or during my childhood for that matter,
who used a Visual Love Strategy with me, I rarely felt totally and
completely loved.

Since I knew my strategy before marrying my wife, Cecily, and since I told
her about it, she can use it to make me feel as loved as she wants me to feel.

That's very important. In fact, one of the times in my life I felt most
loved was a few years ago when Cecily took me on a surprise trip to Key
West, Florida for my birthday. She spent hours researching and choosing the
best bed and breakfast to stay in. She planned out special dinners, set up
massages for me, rented bikes for us to ride all over the island, and a
bunch of other things. Plus, she paid for all of it with her own money
which was no small gesture. Then she allowed the weekend to unfold in
mysterious ways, not telling me anything in advance. The fact that she
"showed" me her love in such a powerful way was amazingly impactful on me.
I'll never forget it - or how I felt the entire time we were there.

Similarly, since we eventually did the exercise together, I know what
Cecily's Love Strategy is and can use it to help her feel totally and
completely loved too. This helps our relationship in major ways - for
obvious reasons.

Here are a few guidelines you can use to determine your Love Strategy and
the Strategy of your significant other. The guidelines should be used by
both partners, even though I word them below just from your perspective:

1) Ask your partner the following question, using these exact words: "In
order to feel totally and completely loved, do you need to hear the words,
'I love you?'" If you get a no, repeat the question with the next Strategy:
"In order to feel totally and completely loved, do you need to be touched
in a certain way?" If you get a no, repeat the question with the third
Strategy: "In order to feel totally and completely loved, do you need to
see it through actions?" In each case, ask your partner to say yes or no
and tell you the answer that first pops into their mind. No thinking or
analyzing. Then test it. If they said they need to hear it, experiment with
telling them in the weeks that follow and notice the impact it has.

The same goes for the other strategies. The trickiest one is the
Kinesthetic Strategy since you'll need to dialog and experiment to find the
special spot and the special way to touch it. Sometimes your partner knows
and can tell you, and sometimes you have to experiment until you find it.
If you don't discover the Strategy using this method, try repeating the
questions at another time when you're both more relaxed and focused, or go
on to the following options to discover the Strategy, or to look for the
clues that'll lead you to the Strategy.

2) Ask your partner: "What do you desire from me above all else?" This may
lead directly to the Strategy - or provide great clues.

3) Ask yourself: "What have I most often requested from my partner?" This
may lead directly to the Strategy - or provide great clues.

4) Ask your partner: "What have I most often noticed as missing in my
relationship?" This may lead directly to the Strategy - or provide great clues.

5) Ask your partner: "What does my partner do that hurts me most deeply?"
Sometimes, what causes a hurt like that gives a major clue to the Love
Strategy too, since it's may be the opposite of the Strategy.

6) If you're an Invisible Path to Success or 11th Element veteran, use the
System to ask for help to uncover the Love Strategies for you and your
significant other.

Take the time to discover your Love Strategy today, and that of your
partner. I can't tell you how much of a difference it makes in your
relationship and in your own emotional "quality of life."

- By Bob Scheinfeld

Jim Rohn Quote

"The greatest form of maturity is at harvest time. This is when we must
learn how to reap without complaint if the amounts are small and how to
reap without apology if the amounts are big."
Jim Rohn

Vision

"Being rich has more to do with a picture than a bank account... it is all
about the picture you see in your mind about your life... that determines
what's in your bank account."
Doug Firebaugh

Vision

"There's a wonder in the way we're always free; to change the world by
changing how we see."
Cyndi Craven

Vision

"Nothing great has ever been achieved except by those who dared believe
something inside them was superior to circumstances."
Bruce Barton

Vision

"Visionaries are NOT special people. The gift of true vision requires only
a willingness to open your eyes to first, find the horizon. Once fixated on
the horizon comes the ability to see beyond, where the true magic of life
exists."
Rick Beneteau

Acting On Your Dream by Les Brown

I have not often admitted this, but I was inspired to become a public
speaker by perhaps the worst motivational speaker I've ever heard in my life.

This fellow is still working, surprisingly, so I won't give his name. He
was the opening speaker in a seminar I attended early in my speaking career
and he nearly closed the show early with his monotone, unenthusiastic
presentation. As he spoke, the room grew as quiet as a graveyard between
funerals.

I went to sleep to be awakened by what could only be called courtesy
applause for his presentation. You could make more noise clapping with one
hand. After the less-than-stirring speech, I leaned over to the guy sitting
next to me and said, "That was really boring." And he said, "You should be
so boring for the kind of money he makes." The fellow told me this terrible
speaker was getting $5,000 for each terrible speech.

After hearing how much a really bad speaker could make, I decided it was
time for me to go after this dream. A few days later, I caught a Greyhound
bus from Miami to Orlando where I'd signed up for a seminar for beginners
held by the National Speakers Association. It seemed like the bus ride took
weeks. I know it took every last dollar I could scrape together. And so I
was road-weary but eager to hear some inspiring, motivational, and dynamic
speaking when I finally took a seat at the event. But who should walk out
to lead the first session but that same terrible $5,000-per-speech speaker?
I could not believe it!

All that time on a stinking bus, stopping in every one-horse town between
Miami and Orlando, to hear this guy again? I nearly got up and walked out.
By the time he'd gotten halfway through his speech, nearly half the
audience had fled. But I stayed on until the bitter end and the speaker's
parting shot, as it turned out, was worth the price of admission. He
obviously had noted the exodus of the audience and the drooping eyelids of
those who remained because, as he built up to his anticlimax, he stopped
suddenly, looked out at the remaining numbers of aspiring public speakers
and said, "You know, the only reason that I am standing up here and you are
sitting down there is that I represent the thoughts that you have rejected
for yourself."

I don't know about the other dozen or so people in the audience, but Mr.
Monotone hit me right between the eyes with that shot. It was true. He had
acted upon something that I had only dreamt of doing. I'd spent years
dreaming of becoming a public speaker. But dreaming was all I had done.
This guy may not have had any talent for it. He may have been the most
undynamic public speaker in history. But he was up there while I was still
dreaming. And so that is how I became motivated to start a new career by
perhaps the worst motivational speaker I have ever heard.

Power Pitching: Get The Personal Edge by Patricia Fripp, CSP, CPAE

Whenever and whatever you're pitching, dozens of factors will figure in the
final decision of your prospects. All else being equal, you have the edge
if you can establish a personal connection. Connect emotionally and
intellectually, so they like and trust you more than your competitors. How
can you get your prospects to like you? Try these tips.

Focus and be sincere. If you appear nervous or unsure, you may seem devious
or incompetent. If your presentation does not respond to their concerns and
you just grind on with a prepared pitch, they will decide you don't care
about them and their problems. Look people right in the eyes and convince
them that you stand 100% behind the ideas, products, or services that you
want to sell them. Pick up on their concerns, and address them.

"Divide and conquer." If you're doing a presentation, shake hands with
everyone as they enter the room. Connect with them so you see them as
individuals, and you become more memorable to them too. (People are usually
more shy of groups of strangers than in one-on-one contacts.)

Use technology to enhance your presentation, not drown it. PowerPoint can
keep you on track, but it can't establish trust.

Keep it simple and memorable! When your prospects have a debriefing
afterwards, you want them to remember what you said more than anything your
competitors pitched to them. Break your talking points into snappy sound
bites that are easy to write down and remember. Make them interesting and
repeatable.

Steer clear of technical language and jargon. Rehearse your presentation in
advance with your spouse or an intelligent 12-year-old across the dinner
table. If there's anything they don't understand, it's too complicated.

Tell great stories. People are trained to resist a sales pitch, but no one
can resist a good story. Let's say you're trying to get money to fund your
software company. Tell a story about how the prospective investor's life
will change when you bring the product to market: "Imagine that a year from
now you'll come to work and use this software to do in 5 minutes what now
takes you 45 minutes. I don't know what that would do to your life, but in
all our test markets or pilot programs, people tell us . . . " Then add
more stories.

Take a lesson from Hollywood. Give your stories interesting characters and
dialogue, plus a dramatic lesson that your prospects can relate to. Don't
say, "Certain companies have used our software." Don't even say, "IBM has
used our software." Instead, say, "Joe Smith at IBM said to me, 'If we
don't increase sales turnover by 20%, we won't make our projections'. We
guaranteed them they could if they used our software. Six months later, Joe
called and said, 'You guys saved us.'"

If you are pitching a product that hasn't been built yet, build a story
about what it will be like for someone using it.

Everything else being equal, you're way ahead of any and all your
competition when your prospects relate to you, like you, and trust you.

Making Good Decisions by Zig Ziglar

If you find it difficult to make decisions, or you worry that your
decisions are not good decisions, or you lack the confidence to make
decisions in a timely manner... you're not alone! Many people express their
concerns about their decision-making abilities. But if you ask them,
"What's your routine for making decisions?" they often will tell you they
don't have one.

Truthfully they do, but they don't recognize it, or they don't like it.
Their decisions are based on Something, and if they stop and think about it
they'll discover what it is. However, it's much better to purposefully and
thoughtfully develop your decision-making system, and then follow it
whenever you need to make decisions

If you ask Zig Ziglar how he makes decisions, he'll tell you that he
follows some basic rules. Here they are:

1. If I'm really tired, I don't make significant decisions (except in
emergencies).

2. If someone is pressing me to decide something "right now," unless an
immediate decision is critical, I say, "If I have to decide now, the answer
is no. After I have had a chance to catch my breath and review the facts,
there's the possibility it could be yes." Then I put the ball back in his
or her court and ask, "Do you want my decision now, or should we wait?"

3. I like to determine the maximum benefit of a decision, assuming that
everything goes my way. Then I ask, "Suppose nothing goes my way? Suppose
this doesn't develop and materialize as I expect it to? What is my maximum
exposure? What would I lose?"

4. For significant business-related decisions, I run them past my advisors.
These people are successful in their businesses and professions and have a
considerable amount of knowledge, experience, and wisdom, all of which are
musts in the decision-making process. I get their advice and follow their
recommendations, with good results in most cases. If the decision is too
minor to involve my advisors but I still want input, I get my family
together to look at the pros and cons.

5. I like to pray about my decisions. I ask God to help me see the truth of
my motives and to lead me in the way I should go. If I'm about to make an
unwise decision, I simply don't have peace about that decision, and I
consequently act on that feeling of unease. I ask myself, "How will this
decision affect all the areas of my life--personal, family, career,
financial, physical, mental and spiritual?" Obviously, not all decisions
affect all areas, but if the decision involves a financial reward but also
carries considerable family sacrifice, for example, I think carefully as to
whether what I give up is compensated for by what I gain.

One final note: Prioritize your decisions. Some are more urgent than others!

Wherever You Are, Be There by Jim Rohn

One of the major reasons why we fail to find happiness or to create unique
lifestyle is because we have not yet mastered the art of being.

While we are home our thoughts are still absorbed with solving the
challenges we face at the office. And when we are at the office we find
ourselves worrying about problems at home.

We go through the day without really listening to what others are saying to
us. We may be hearing the words, but we aren't absorbing the message.

As we go through the day we find ourselves focusing on past experiences or
future possibilities. We are so involved in yesterday and tomorrow that we
never even notice that today is slipping by.

We go through the day rather than getting something from the day. We are
everywhere at any given moment in time except living in that moment in time.

Lifestyle is learning to be wherever you are. It is developing a unique
focus on the current moment, and drawing from it all the substance and
wealth of experience and emotions that it has to offer. Lifestyle is taking
time to watch a sunset. Lifestyle is listening to silence. Lifestyle is
capturing each moment so that it becomes a new part of what we are and of
what we are in the process of becoming. Lifestyle is not something we do;
it is something we experience. And until we learn to be there, we will
never master the art of living well.

To Your Success,
Jim Rohn

You Can, When You believe You Can

Success is a state of mind.
If you want to be successful, start thinking of yourself as being
successful. You are what you believe yourself to be.
Don't be afraid of what life has to offer you. If you believe that life is
worth living, your belief will help create the fact.
The barrier between you and success is not something that exists in the
real world. It's simply composed of doubts about your ability.
Your only limits to your realization of tomorrow will be your doubts of today.

by Max Steingart

Seven Character Traits of Successful People

1. They are hard working. There is no such thing as easy money. Success
takes hard work and people who are willing to do it.

2. They are honest. Those who are successful long-term are the honest ones.
Dishonest people may get the first sale, but honest people will get all the
rest!

3. They persevere. How many success stories will go untold because they
never happened? And all because someone quit. Successful people outlast
everybody else.

4. They are friendly. Have you noticed that most successful people are
friendly and people oriented? This endears them to others and enables them
to lead others to accomplish the task.

5. They are lifelong learners. Successful people are people who stretch
themselves and grow continually, learning from all areas of life, including
from their mistakes.

6. They over-deliver. The old statement of under-promise and over-deliver
became famous because it made a lot of people successful, including the
richest man in the world - Bill Gates

7. They seek solutions in the face of problems. Problems are opportunities
to do the impossible, not just complain. Successful people are the ones who
find solutions.

by Chris Widener

The "Acid Test" of Listening

The "Acid Test" of Listening

Paraphrase Your Customer's Words
The customer is only sure that you have been listening when you paraphrase
what the prospect has said and feed it back in your own words. This is
where the rubber meets the road in effective listening. This is where you
demonstrate in no uncertain terms to the prospect that your listening has
been real and sincere. This is where you show the prospect that you were
paying complete attention to what he or she was saying. Paraphrasing is how
you prove it.

Question for Clarification
When the prospect has finished explaining his or her situation to you, and
you have paused, and then questioned for clarification, you paraphrase the
prospects primary thoughts and concerns, and feed them back to him or her
in your own words.

Use the Right Words
For example, you might say, "Let me make sure I understand exactly what you
are saying. It sounds to me like you are concerned about two things more
than anything else, and that in the past you have had a couple of
experiences that have made you very careful in approaching a decision of
this kind."

Feed it Back Accurately
You then go on to feed back to the prospect exactly what he or she has told
you, pausing and questioning for clarification as you go, until the
customer says words to the effect of, "Yes, that's it! You've got it exactly."

Earn the Right to Sell
Only when you and the customer completed a thorough "examination" and have
mutually agreed on the "diagnosis" you are in a position to begin talking
to the customer about your product or service. In general terms, this means
that you can not pull out your brochures and price lists and begin telling
the customer how your product or service can solve his problems or achieve
his goals until about seventy percent of the way through the sales
conversation. Until then, you have not yet earned the right. Until then,
you don't even know enough to begin an intelligent presentation without
embarrassing yourself.

Be a Good Listener
The more and better you listen, the more and better people will like you,
trust you and want to do business with you. The more they will want to get
involved with you as a person and the more popular you will be with them.
Excellent listeners are welcome everywhere, in every walk of life, and they
eventually and ultimately arrive at the top of their fields.

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

First, remember that your first job in the sale is to get the customer to
like you and believe that you understand his situation. Paraphrasing is the
way you accomplish this.

Second, be sure that the customer agrees with you completely when you feed
back his concerns to him. Only then can you really start selling.

Brian Tracy

Time management

"Time management is a vehicle to take you from wherever you are to wherever
you want to go."
Brian Tracy

Secret of the Rich

"Time-management is the best kept secret of the rich."
Jim Rohn

When?'

"Time is amazing... it has only one thing to say to anyone... 'When?'"
Doug Firebaugh

Time will not delay

"You may delay, but time will not."
Benjamin Franklin

the 'niche talent'

"Whatever your talent is, you should craft it, nourish it and build on it.
It is the 'niche talent' that will take you to the top of your field.
-- Mark Victor Hansen

Persistence by Bob Proctor

Persistence by Bob Proctor

If you were to choose just one part of your personality to develop that
would virtually guarantee your success, I'd like to suggest that you place
persistence at the top of your list.

Napoleon Hill, in his classic Think and Grow Rich felt so strongly about
this subject, he devoted an entire chapter to it. Hill suggested, "There
may be no heroic connotation to the word persistence but the quality is to
your character what carbon is to steel."

Think about it. If you took a quick mental walk down memory lane and
reviewed some of your accomplishments in the past - large and small - you
would have to agree that persistence played an important role in your success.

Napoleon Hill studied many of the world's most successful people. He
pointed out the only quality he could find in Henry Ford, Thomas Edison or
a host of other notable greats, that he could not find in everyone else was
persistence. What I found even more intriguing was the fact that Hill made
comment of the fact that these individuals were often misunderstood to be
ruthless or cold-blooded and that this misconception grew out of their
habit of following through in all of their plans with persistence.

It's both interesting and sadly amusing to me that, as a society, we would
be quick to criticize people for realizing they had an unshakeable power
within them and were capable of overcoming any obstacle outside of them.
This power would ultimately move them toward a greater chance of achieving
any goal they set for themselves!

Milt Campbell is a good friend of mine. He and I have shared many hours
together... discussing the very topic of persistence. Milt was a Decathlete
in the Olympic Games held in Helsinki, Finland in 1952. His goal was to
capture gold for the US. Unfortunately, another fierce competitor who had
taken home the gold four years previous in London wasn't satisfied with one
gold, Bob Mathias wanted two; Milt had to settle for silver. That did not
deter Milt one bit. He had formed the habit of persistence and four years
later in Melbourne, Australia, Milt won the gold medal, earning him the
title of the greatest athlete in the world.

On numerous occasions Milt has said, "There were many guys in school who
were far better athletes than me, but they quit." I can recount story after
story about individuals who overcame obstacles so great, but only did so
because they dared persist. These individuals are no different than you and I.

Ultimately persistence becomes a way of life, but that is not where it
begins. To develop the mental strength - persistence - you must first want
something. You have to WANT something so much that it becomes a heated
desire ... a passion in your belly. You must fall in love with that idea.
Yes, literally fall in love with the idea and magnetize yourself to every
part of the idea. At that point, persistence will be virtually automatic.

Persistence is a subject I have studied all of my adult life and I can tell
you one thing I know for certain: very few people ever, mentally or
verbally, say to themselves ... this is what I really want and I am
prepared to give my life for it, and thus, they never develop the
persistence to achieve it.

Persistence is a unique mental strength; a strength that is essential to
combat the fierce power of the repeated rejections and numerous other
obstacles that sit in waiting and are all part of winning in a fast-moving,
ever-changing world. As Napoleon Hill found out, there are hundreds of
highly successful men and women who have cut a path for others to follow,
while leaving their mark on the scrolls of history... and every one of
these great individuals was persistent. In many cases it was the only
quality that separated them from everyone else.

It is generally believed that a lack of persistence is a consequence of a
weak willpower. That is not true. A person could have a highly evolved
willpower and still lack the persistence required to keep moving forward in
life. In more cases than not, if a person lacks persistence, they do not
have a goal that is worthy of them, a desirable goal that excites them to
their very core.

Though willpower is important in moving a person toward their goal, if
there is ever a war between the will and the imagination, the imagination
will win every time. What that means is: you're powered by desire and
fuelled by the dream you hold. Once you start to use your imagination to
help you build a bigger picture of your dream, to define and refine it
until you get it just right in your mind, the emotion that is triggered by
that desire far outweighs any force that may be caused by sheer will alone.
I am not suggesting the will does not have to be developed, it does. It
must become highly developed in order to direct you toward the image with
which you are emotionally involved.

Your intellectual factors hold the potential for enormous good when they
are properly employed. However, you must remember that everything has an
opposite and any of your intellectual factors can turn, without warning,
into destructive lethal enemies when they are directed toward results that
are not wanted. It is easy to find individuals who are persistently doing
what they don't want to do and achieving results that they do not want. A
lack of persistence is not their problem; that person is persisting to
their own detriment. Ignorance and paradigms are the enemy that we must
defeat. Everyone is persistent. Our objective must be to put persistence to
work for us rather than against us.

Vision and desire have to be the focus of your attention if you're going to
develop persistence into the great ally it can become.

Another excellent example of persistence was demonstrated when, in 1953, a
beekeeper from Auckland, N.Z., Edmund Hillary and his native guide, Tenzing
Norguay, became the first two people to climb Mt. Everest and return, after
having tried and failed the two previous years.

Hillary had two obvious character strengths that took him to the very
top-vision and desire. Even despite the seemingly insurmountable
challenges, he had no trouble persisting with the strenuous acts that were
required because every act was hooked into the image of him standing on top
of the mountain. They were expressed because of his persistence, but he was
persistent because he was emotionally involved with the image. Without
persistence, all his skills would have meant nothing.

Persistence is an expression of the mental strength that is essential in
almost every profession, where repeated rejection and obstacles are part of
a daily routine.

In closing, let me give you four relatively simple steps that will help you
to turn persistence into a habit. These steps can be followed by virtually
anyone.

1. Have a clearly defined goal. The goal must be something you are
emotionally involved with, something you want very much. (In the beginning,
you may not even believe that you can accomplish it-the belief will come.)

2. Have a clearly established plan that you can begin working on
immediately. (Your plan will very likely only cover the first and possibly
the second stage of the journey to your goal. As you begin executing your
plan, other steps required to complete your journey will be revealed at the
right time.)

3. Make an irrevocable decision to reject any and all negative suggestions
that come from friends, relatives or neighbors. Do not give any conscious
attention to conditions or circumstances that appear to indicate the goal
cannot be accomplished.

4. Establish a mastermind group of one or more people who will encourage,
support and assist you wherever possible.

What do you dream of doing with your life? Do it. Begin right now and never
quit. There is greatness in you. Let it out. Be persistent.