Power – the essential ingredient for success

Photo by Adam Hawkins http://anodizeproductions.com

At our monthly events we’re following the Steps to Success as outlined by Napoleon Hill in Think and Grow Rich.

How to master procrastination and make decisions

Why making decisions is crucial to success

The procrastination I’m talking about is not about putting things off but rather about not making decisions. Until a decision is taken no action is possible and it the lack of action that causes most failures. Procrastination is a complex psychological behavior that affects everyone to some degree or another. While it can be a minor irritation for some people it a source of considerable stress and anxiety for others.

Procrastination is sometimes confused with time management but this is not really the issue.

An analysis of over 25,000 people who had experienced some kind of failure revealed that the inability to make decisions was near the top of the list of reasons. (Napoleon Hill ‘Think and Grow Rich’)

Henry Ford was renowned for attributing his success to his ability to make decisions quickly and stick to them, often despite fierce opposition from his advisors.

Are you easily swayed by others?

If you find you are easily swayed by the opinions of others and constantly change your mind because you are afraid of what others might say or think about you, procrastination will cripple you and stop you from making a decision and more importantly, from taking action. The ability to make decisions comes back to understanding exactly what it is that you want, to the burning desire and definite purpose that underpins all achievement.

Leaders in all walks of life decide quickly and firmly and the world has a habit of making room for the person who knows where they are going and why.

Have you worked out how you make decisions?

Do you work from logic, from gut instinct or do you take advice from others? Recent studies have shown that decision making can be affected by our prejudices, our past experience and even our surroundings.

However, the reason that most people put off making a decision is the fear of getting it WRONG.

Procrastination leads to inaction. Inaction leads to failure. Failure leads to loss of confidence which make it hard to make decisions. The only way out of this loop is to have courage, make a decision in the full knowledge that whatever happens you will deal with it and remember that most fears are about things that never happen.

Steps to Success

(Inspired by Napoleon Hill’s “Think and Grow Rich”)

1. Decide what you want. Desire is the starting point of all achievement.
2. Believe that you can get what you want. Self doubt will prevent you from taking action.
3. You don’t have to do it all yourself. Surround yourself with people who know what you don’t know and who can do what you can’t do.
4. Make practical use your imagination. Work out how to turn your dreams into reality.
5. Create a plan, organise your ideas and take continuous action.
6. Avoid procrastination and make decisions. Use information and knowledge from others but let the decisions be your own.
7. Persist. Things will go wrong, people will let you down. If your desire is strong enough you will find a way through all difficulties to achieve your desire.
8. Aquire power and learn how to use it. The ability to lead others in a spirit of harmony to achieve a definite objective is a major source of success.
9. Understand that sex is the most powerful of human desires. When this desire is harnessed into a creative process it can be the source of genius.
10. Learn to use the power of the subconscious mind which can work for or against you but which can be controlled.
11. Develop and learn to trust the ‘sixth sense’. Intuition can help us to avoid dangers and grasp opportunities.
12. Deal with fear, the major obstacle to achievement.

Join us at our next event on November 18th when keynote speakerAndy Gibney shows how mastering the art of influencing people removes fears and obstacles and makes it easier to make decisions.

http://theinspiredgroup.com/inspired-events/

Putting Desire into Action

Here are the pictures from the event

According to Napoleon Hill ‘Desire is the starting point of all achievement’. Bob Garbett takes it one step further and says ‘Desire is nothing without passion’.

Passion was in evidence in every word of Bob’s presentation as he explained how his military training is easily translated into taking action to get a business idea working.

His main points are:

*If you aren’t passionate about what you’re doing – do something else. He describes passion as a crazy mad emotion that you absolutely have to satisfy, not a rational reasoned argument for doing something.

*Aim for complete success – why would you settle for anything less?

*Don’t do it for the money.

*Don’t listen to reason, just the facts. There will always be people who tell you it can’t be done and why – you may even tell yourself this but if the facts add up and you’re passionate enough you’ll make it happen.

*Make decisions not deliberations. Don’t spend so much time weighing up the pros and cons that you drive yourself mad. Just get on with it.

*Never give up. You may need to find a way around obstacles or take a different route but keep going until you get there.

*Think fast and move fast. Don’t look back in ten years time and wonder why you didn’t get anywhere.

*Manage the risk. What will you need or risk in terms of money/ getting the right team/ the right environment?

*Just do it. We regret the things we didn’t do more than the things we do.

*Follow through. It will get rough, you will get criticism, you will fail occasionally, but if you follow through you cannot FAIL.

Inspired events are very different and very special – join us at the next one on November 18th when Andy Gibney will be talking about“How to Master Procrastination and Overcome Obstacles”

Putting Desire into Action

Some people make things happen, some people watch what happens and others sit and wonder what the hell happened

Having good ideas and a strong vision is not enough. Organised planning is the key to taking the right action that will bring the right results. Many people have a desire to achieve great things but the key steps to this achievement involve putting into practice true leadership skills so that other people buy into your vision and help you to achieve it.

This is just one of the steps to success – the others are outlined below. You can read more in other posts here and join a dynamic group of business owners as they put them into action.
http://theinspiredgroup.com/inspired-events/

Steps to Success

(Inspired by Napoleon Hill’s “Think and Grow Rich”)

1. Decide what you want. Desire is the starting point of all achievement.
2. Believe that you can get what you want. Self doubt will prevent you from taking action.
3. You don’t have to do it all yourself. Surround yourself with people who know what you don’t know and who can do what you can’t do.
4. Make practical use your imagination. Work out how to turn your dreams into reality.
5. Create a plan, organise your ideas and take continuous action.
6. Avoid procrastination and make decisions. Use information and knowledge from others but let the decisions be your own.
7. Persist. Things will go wrong, people will let you down. If your desire is strong enough you will find a way through all difficulties to achieve your desire.
8. Aquire power and learn how to use it. The ability to lead others in a spirit of harmony to achieve a definite objective is a major source of success.
9. Understand that sex is the most powerful of human desires. When this desire is harnessed into a creative process it can be the source of genius.
10. Learn to use the power of the subconscious mind which can work for or against you but which can be controlled.
11. Develop and learn to trust the ‘sixth sense’. Intuition can help us to avoid dangers and grasp opportunities.
12. Deal with fear, the major obstacle to achievement.

Join us at our next event on October 14th when keynote speaker
Bob Garbett, military veteran, MD of RMIS Ltd and Founder of O4RB brings his own brand of leadership skills, military and business experience together in a riveting talk that explains why some people make things happen while others are still wondering what to do.
http://theinspiredgroup.com/inspired-events/

Are you an achiever or a dreamer?

(inspired by Napoleon Hill’s “Think and Grow Rich”)

1. Decide what you want. Desire is the starting point of all achievement.
2. Believe that you can get what you want. Self doubt will prevent you from taking action.
3. You don’t have to do it all yourself. Surround yourself with people who know what you don’t know and who can do what you can’t do.
4. Make practical use your imagination. Work out how to turn your dreams into reality.
5. Create a plan, organise your ideas and take continuous action.
6. Avoid procrastination and make decisions. Use information and knowledge from others but let the decisions be your own.
7. Persist. Things will go wrong, people will let you down. If your desire is strong enough you will find a way through all difficulties to achieve your desire.
8. Aquire power and learn how to use it. The ability to lead others in a spirit of harmony to achieve a definite objective is a major source of success.
9. Understand that sex is the most powerful of human desires. When this desire is harnessed into a creative process it can be the source of genius.
10. Learn to use the power of the subconscious mind which can work for or against you but which can be controlled.
11. Develop and learn to trust the ‘sixth sense’. Intuition can help us to avoid dangers and grasp opportunities.
12. Deal with fear, the major obstacle to achievement.

Keynote speaker Molly Harvey

www.corporatesoulwoman.com

addressed Step 4.

The imagination is the workshop of the mind. The great leaders in the worlds of business have become so because they have developed the faculty of creative imagination. Ideas are the beginning point of all fortunes but they need to be harnessed into practical action.

Molly suggested that many people spend their lives on the threshold of greatness, neither failing nor achieving but just existing. She urged us to question what we are dismissing in our lives and to examine what we hang on to because its comfortable. The past can have such a huge influence on us that we become driven by memories rather than inspiration so whenever you hear yourself say “someday” make a decision that it needs to be now.

What are your three top strengths – the things you do easily and well? To be truly effective and creative we need to play to these and delegate everything else.

As Mother Teresa famously told Bob Geldof,  “I can’t do what you do and you can’t do what I do but together we can change the world.”
Decide what it is that you want, use your imagination to create a plan for the future and surround yourself with people who want the same as you. Use your combined talents, take massive action and prove the saying that all great achievers are practical dreamers.

Join us for the next step to success on Oct 14th when Bob Garbett, military veteran, MD of RMIS Ltd and founder of O4RB talks about

Organised Planning – Putting Desire into Action.

For photos of our September event click here

Book for October here

How to outwit the six ghosts of fear

You don’t have to look far to find something to be afraid of – the internet is full of dire warnings and also, strangely enough, its also full of people who’d like to sell you the things that can protect you from the very things of which they tried to make you afraid.

Newspapers TV and radio are no better except that they often seem to peddle fear just for the hell of it, under the guise of ‘news’.

Everyone must, at some time in their lives, have experienced the gut wrenching, heart stopping sensation that we call fear and yet, for all the scary stuff that is manufactured by others we are the main culprit when it comes to creating our own fears.

It is the thing that most people acknowledge is the major factor that holds them back from achieving their full potential and they give it all sorts of names: fear of failure, fear of success, fear of losing what they’ve got, fear of the unknown, etc., etc., etc.

What are most people afraid of?

Writing at the end of the Great Depression in 1937, Napoleon Hill suggests that most people have six basic fears. They are: fear of poverty, criticism, ill health, loss of love, old age and death.

When questioned if these are still relevant today, it was fear of poverty that caused the most dissent amongst a group of business owners. There was a strong argument that in our modern Western world, poverty is a relative term, even when we have lost all our material possessions. However, there was an equally strong argument that it is this fear of losing everything that is the biggest driver in our society, especially for people in business who seek to create a sense of security by being in control of their own means of earning a living.

Looking at Hill’s list again, all those fears related to losing something: our material possessions, pride, independence, status, love, connection, and of course, life itself.

What became clear is that almost every feeling of fear we experience is the result of an IMAGINED situation, not a real one.

Moreover, in almost every case, the imagined situation that we most fear never happens.

When a situation that we had feared actually materialised, most of us dealt with it without any real consequences.

Beyond the survival instincts that keep us safe, there appears to be only one real fear and that is the fear that we won’t be able to handle whatever happens to us. The fact that most people do handle even the most horrendous occurrences indicates that most fear, which usually concerns a future event that never happens, is completely unnecessary.

Bob Newhart had his own suggestion for how to deal with this:

Coping Strategies

In all the suggestions that proliferate in how to deal with the physical symptoms of fear (usually manifested as stress) no one mentions, booze, sex, drugs or rock ‘n’ roll but I’m guessing that at some point, most people will use at least one of these in an attempt to banish fears and anxiety.

The thing that everyone agreed on was what doesn’t work is trying to ignore it, suppress it or pretending the fear doesn’t exist. This can often result in real physical damage – perhaps that’s why booze, sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll weren’t offered as serious means of coping!

Strategies to cope with fear usually involved taking action to arrive at a point where the fear is no longer felt as a physical sensation. This involved a whole range of activities from talking and sharing the fear – being talked off the ledge, as one person described it, to strenuous exercise to deal with the excess adrenaline. Some people are able to use relaxation techniques or meditation to calm themselves while others seek the help of a range of physical therapies that often results in them being able to talk about their fears. 

Why do we need strategies to cope with IMAGINATION? 

Having established that most fears are about thing we only imagine MIGHT happen or how we imagine we’ll cope if our worst fears are realised it seems a little strange that we need external coping mechanisms.

If we create the fear in our heads, surely we can get rid of it the same way? The six ghosts of fear (or however many we allow ourselves to have) are just that – GHOSTS. They aren’t real, they only exist in our heads.

Human beings have control over only one thing – our thoughts. Whatever we allow into our heads creates emotions and physical reactions and so the person who is able to discipline their thoughts has a huge advantage in controlling how they deal with both real and imagined situations.

This is not the same as the parroted phrase that has become popular with fans of The Law of Attraction – the one that says “Thoughts Become Things”. If that were true, teenage boys would get lucky several times a day, no-one would be sick and everyone would have as much money as they wanted.

Many unexpected and unwanted things happen to us in a lifetime and they are not the result of what we think. It is the way we choose to deal with them that is in our control and this means we need to exercise discipline over our thoughts. To catch a thought as it is formed and ask, “Is this useful to me or not?” and develop it or reject it accordingly means that the time wasted on fearful thoughts that paralyze and impoverish us can be freed to use on creating new ideas and enriching our lives.

When we believe and prove to ourselves that by controlling out thoughts we will cope with whatever life throws at us we truly have nothing to fear.

What are you most afraid of?

Writing at the end of the Great Depression, Napoleon Hill suggests that most people have six basic fears. They are: fear of poverty, criticism, ill health, loss of love, old age and death.

According to more modern surveys, some of the most commonly feared objects are spiders, snakes, heights, water, enclosed spaces, tunnels and bridges, social rejection, failure and public speaking. In an innovative test of what people fear the most, Bill Tancer analyzed the most frequent online search queries that involved the phrase, “fear of…”. This follows the assumption that people tend to seek information on the issues that concern them the most. His top ten list of fears consisted of flying, heights, clowns, intimacy, death, rejection, people, snakes, success, and driving.

In general, people appear to be most afraid of two things: the threat of pain or death, and the threat of social rejection or isolation. I would go further and suggest that, beyond the survival instincts that keep us safe, there is only one real fear and that is the fear that we can’t handle whatever happens to us. The fact that most people do handle even the most horrendous occurences indicates that most fear, which is usually about a future event that usually never happens, is completely unnnecesary.

Fear is nothing more than a state of mind and so if we learn to control and direct our thoughts it no longer has any power over us.

Tell me what you are most afraid of and we’ll discuss it at our next event. See Inspired Events for details

Influencing the subconscious

What an inspiring night! To me, what made a huge impact were all the possibilities in terms of personal development that were expressed in Sanjay’s talk. The networking was great, but this profound understanding of the human mind by Sanjay and Billy was very impressive. I took a lot of lessons home, and I’ve decided to start applying them right now!  :o) Marie Luccetta  www.e-translationservices.com

Look below the surface – you’ll be amazed at  what you find! 

Napoleon Hill suggested that one of the things that successful people do is use their imagination to create a belief that they can have what they desire and to communicate between the conscious the subconscious mind.

The subconscious mind is protected – which is usually a good thing as it contains all the things we have ever learned and we wouldn’t want to have to re-learn most of them. However, it also contains less useful things that may stop us from achieving all that we might otherwise be capable of. Fear of failure, of taking risks, of criticism, of losing, of being thought pushy or arrogant or proud are all stored there along with beliefs about whether we are entitled to expect, or deserve, more than we already have.

Anything that comes to us through our five senses is unlikely to affect the subconscious so how do we reach and change those things that are not useful to us?

Hill suggests (long before NLP was invented) that in order to create the belief that we can have something we must imbue it with emotion, imagine that we already have it and create the experience of already having it.

Vividly imagine having whatever it is you desire and experience how that will feel and what you will see, hear, taste and smell. The emotions and physical reactions caused by these thoughts are generated internally rather than coming to us externally through our senses (and could be described as non-sense) and so are more likely to escape the gatekeeper of the subconscious mind.

The subconscious has no critical faculty. It doesn’t decide whether a thought is good or bad, useful or destructive and so once the thought is lodged there it can be useful as a new belief enabling us to do things we previously thought impossible.

There has been vigorous research into how emotions cause physical reactions, how physical sensations trigger emotions and how both emotions and physical reactions can be produced by thought alone. Belief may not move mountains but it can remove limitations and control physical experiences.

Our speaker on the third part of Napoleon Hill’s Steps to Success was Sanjay Shah. Sanjay offers a quick route to change by employing NLP, firewalking, Enneagram analysis and emotional freedom techniques, all of which are based on this psychology.

One of the most popular sayings arising from these theories is that “Thoughts Become Things” and while it is undoubtedly true that this can be the case, it can also be too simplistic. I have seen already distressed people puzzled and hurt at the implication that they have brought misfortune on themselves because their thoughts are not positive enough. Moreover, if we all got what we focused on most of the time, teenage boys would live in a constant state of bliss!

However, that doesn’t change the fact that we are still discovering amazing things about the power of the mind and by using it to create useful thoughts and emotions there is no doubt that we can make life easier and more satisfying.

For more information on Sanjay’s work see www.pslifecanbeeasy.com

Our next speaker, on July 15th is Dr Michael Sanderson, CEO of 1Spatial.com http://annhawkins.com/inspirational-events/

Here are the pictures from the June event: http://tinyurl.com/m49cxr

WONDERFUL evening.Very much enjoyed, and learned/cemented a lot of useful practical information. Great motivation. Also networked bringing me contacts not only for the Lady Florence River Cruise Restaurant, but also giving me contacts for computer systems, possible franchising etc. Compliments to the chef also.An evening that had so much to offer and well worth the three hour drive from the coast. MANY THANKS. John Haresnapewww.lady-florence.co.uk

Desire is the Starting Point

Simon Scott's Burning Desire

The first lesson in Napoleon Hill’s 13 proven steps to riches is that  Desire is the starting point of all achievement. He also said this:

You must have a definite major purpose – do you want money, fame, power, contentment, personality, peace of mind, happiness or something else?

You must know what you want, what you will give to get it and a definite plan and time by which you will get it.

All earned riches have their beginning in an idea.

Opportunity often comes in a different form to the one we might have been expecting.

When one is truly ready for a thing it puts in an appearance.

Disappointments and difficulties do not turn aside true desire.