Anyway,

One of the things Mr. Rohn harps on is the magical power of “until.”  Until is magic, it means you will keep going until you are dead, it means you will persist and overcome until you achieve whatever it is you’re working on “until.”  It means taking pleasure in the small accomplishments along the way as you work and work until you achieve your goal.  Related post: The Climb of My Life

Make sense?

A word of caution though, what you want and your plan must be sound.  If you have ever watched Shark Tank or Dragon’s Den then you would have seen entrepreneurs who have what is really a terrible idea or are so stuck in their ways they won’t consider other options or solutions, and are losing all their capital in the process.  This can be tricky, because you can’t  necessarily trust your own confidants.  Often even those closest to you will try to sabotage your plans, or discourage you, perhaps because they don’t understand or perhaps because they are just plain jealous.  This is one of many reasons a Mastermind Group is so important, so you have a group you trust and can bounce ideas off of.

In “The Power of Ambition,” Jim Rohn talks about how when you are in pursuit of your definite major purpose, you will start to notice a change in the little things that aid you in your quest.  One of these things is that maybe you go to bed a little earlier, and get up a little earlier, and maybe you notice that your day goes smoother, and that the people that always irked and annoyed you are actually not that irksome.

Let me tell you, beyond a doubt, it’s easy to get up early when you have something waiting that you are insanely passionate about.  For me, it’s this blog, and other projects that are helping me to craft the lifestyle of my dreams.

Since hearing the Jim Rohn audio book I have been thinking and noticing other things in life related to this idea.  I’ve noticed that the people who I respect the most and who are the most successful do indeed get up early.  They say it’s essential because it allows them to get a head start on the day, to get small and necessary things done, and to get in some exercise to fuel them for the day.

About a month ago I started to get up around 5 or 5:30.  This allows me to get around 2 hours of productivity in before I even start my day, while the world is still sleeping and cannot interrupt me.

The results have been fantastic.  I get about 10 hours more work done every week and I feel like I have a better grip on my day, which makes me feel like I have more control, which gives me more confidence, which makes me more productive.  It seems every week this feeling redoubles and now I know I am further ahead and closer to my dream than I was when I got up later.

What do you think?  I would love to hear your thoughts, so please leave a comment below.

The whole climb took about 9hrs to go up, and it got really really difficult at times.  It’s funny climbing volcanos in Central America, because it looks so simple, you just go up, right?  To get home, walk down.  But it is anything but.  The climb is full of chasms and mesas that make the climbing techerous, and if you did not have a guide you could very easially get lost.  And it’s steep, like so steep you have to remember not to stop leaning forward when you stop for a break or you would just roll all the way down like a stone.

It wasn’t easy, but we made it to the top.  I often think of that trek when I am doing something else difficult.  I got through it by just focusing on the next step and not worrying about where the top was or how long it would take me to get there.  I knew if I could just take the next step and then the one after that, that I would make it to the top.

If you’re struggling with confidence I suggest you try and do something that you think you can’t do, like climbing a volcano in one day.  When you accomplish it, you will feel so good and have so much more pride, you’ll think you can do anything!

Do you have any experiences where you overcame and felt the reward?  Please leave a comment below.

In “The Power of Ambition” by Jim Rohn, there is a great quote where Jim talks about his discovery that poor people have 24hrs in a day and poor people have … well, about 24hrs in a day.  It’s all about how we spend those 24hrs.

For me, I try to plan my day and my week ahead of it, so I can make the most of it and be as productive as possible.  When I start a project, I start a list of all the things I have to do for that project.  That way, when I have time to work on it, I can just sit down and get right to it, just take the next step.  This way, I have found, I spend way less time thinking about “what is next” and just doing “what is now.”  I find working with a flow to be a big help with this as well, and it too has made me more productive.

There was a great, short article on SelfMadeVip.com yesterday regarding the bank of time.

Pilots need checklists because their jobs are very complicated and survival of hundreds of people depends on them doing their very challenging, very complicated jobs very well.

If you are entreprenure then you probably have a very complicated job as well.  Checklists help make sure all your systems keep running smoothly.

I create checklists called “DailyPM”, “Daily AM”, “Weekly”, “Monthly” and others.  I do them for every single project I start, as well as things I need to do around the house from day to day and month to month.

I then set up a Google Calendar called “checklists” and create recurring events with the name of the checklist.  I set a reminder by email or pop-up, then at whatever frequency (daily, weekly, monthly, etc) I get the reminder and execute the checklist.

When I think of something I need to do, I simply add it to the checklist and it gets done the next time I get a reminder about the checklist.

It takes discipline to keep on top of your checklists, and they only work and help if you do them when you get the reminder.

This is just one small part of my overall “Project Management System”, learn more about “flow” here.

What made the difference for me, and I gather many others (in fact pretty much anyone who has ever been successful, I know for a fact that Andrew Carnegie used these same six steps to become incredibly wealthy), is the discovery of this secret in ‘Think and Grow Rich’ by Napoleon Hill.

Are you ready?  These six steps can and will change your life, if you follow them passionately while vehemently defending your definite major purpose.

Ok, here you go:

1. Fix in your mind the definite amount of money you desire.
2. Determine exactly what you are willing to give in return for the money you desire.
3. Establish a definite date to possess the money you desire.
4. Create a definite plan for carrying out your desire, and begin at once, whether you are ready or not to put this plan into action.
5. Write it out.  Write a clear, concise statement about 1-4
6. Read your written statement twice daily.  Once at night and once upon rising.  As you read, see, feel, and believe yourself already in possession of the money.
7. Bonus Step – Exchange money for what you want.

“If you desire something so keenly that it is an obsession, you will have no trouble convincing yourself you will acquire it.  The object is to want it, and to become so determined to have it, that you will have it.”

- Napoleon Hill

Let’s look at each step in greater detail:

Fix in your mind the definite amount of money you desire.

Just saying “I wish I was rich” or “I want to make more money” is not good enough.  Wishes are fuzzy but dreams are definite.  You need to define the exact amount of money you want.  For example you may write “I will have $100k dollars” or “I will make $10k a month.”  Life will pay whatever you like, but be careful, once you set your rate you can’t go back and ask for more.  Don’t worry about how you will acquire the money.  You are doing this exercise to simply demand the money, how you will get there will be revealed to you as you go about your mission.  The idea is to fix in your mind what you desire so as you go through each day, you are receptive to the stimuli that will guide you towards your goal.  This works much in the same way as when you get a new car, you suddenly notice it seems everyone else has the same car when you never noticed that before, or if you and your partner become pregnant, you all of a sudden notice everyone else is pregnant or pushing a stroller or whatever.  When you make achieving your dreams the centre of your conciousness, you will notice clues and keys that will guide you to the fulfilment of your dreams.  All though those clues were always there, you could not notice them because you were not receptive to them because you had not yet defined and fixed on your definite major purpose.

Determine exactly what you are willing to give in return for the money you desire.

This is not a joke.  What are you values in life?  What does life balance look like to you?  You can answer “everything” to this question, but you have to mean it.  That means your family or favourite sport or activity, or whatever, is subservient to your dream, your definate major purpose.  It means if life says “you must give up your spouse to have what you desire” then you can and will do it.  So be careful, make a list of what you are willing to give up and what you are not.  For some, the joy of their family or something else is too important, than they need to define their dreams in terms of not giving up the things in life that are important to them.  What are you willing (and not willing) to give up in pursuit of your dreams?

Establish a definite date to possess the money you desire.

“Sometime soon” or “in the next couple of years” are not definite, they are fuzzy.  April 22nd, 2012 or Jan 1st 2014 are definite dates.  There is a great story in ‘Think and Grow Rich’ of a preacher who had a wish for years, then he created his definite major purpose and said he would get $1,000,000 within one week, and he did.

Create a definite plan for carrying out your desire, and begin at once, whether you are ready or not to put this plan into action.

A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.  Take that step today.  Write out your vision today.  It’s okay if you don’t have all the pieces or resources in place.  You are like a climber staring at the side of a mountain.  You cannot see all the footholds from the ground, you have to grab the one you can reach, the one you can see.  With the faith that the next will present itself to you, and repeat.

Write it out.  Write a clear, concise statement about 1-4.

Now write all this down.  Here are a couple of examples:

I will make $100,000 by April 15th 2013.  I will accomplish this by staying diligently adherent to my definite major purpose.

I will have a monthly income of $10k per month, doing something I love, by June 1, 2014.  I will accomplish this by…

Read your written statement twice daily.  Once at night and once upon rising.  As you read, see, feel, and believe yourself already in possession of the money.

This is the pudding.  By reading your statement twice a day, with the feeling that it has already been accomplished, is of utmost import.  This is how you will train your mind to pick up on the millions of cues and clues you come in contact with each day that will lead you to the realization of your dream and definite major purpose.  It is hard to stay disciplined to do this sometimes, but you must or failure is guaranteed.  Everything effects everything else.  If you do not have the discipline to read your statement twice daily, with feeling, how will you have the discipline to make your definite major purpose a reality?

Bonus Step – Exchange money for what you want.

A lot of success mindset and personal development literature is framed around money.  If it’s money you want, then go for it, but you can use the same six steps to acquire anything you want.

I challenge you to do this right away, right now, and to commit to reading your statement twice daily.

I discovered this secret in ‘Think and Grow Rich’ by Napoleon Hill.  This book is required reading for success.

The answer is definite of purpose.  Definite of purpose is easy to learn but hard to do.  The concept is simple, but implementing it can be very challenging.

Your Definite Purpose is the same as your mission statement, it is the one statement that is true for all things that you do.  Your day, week and month need to be organized around your mission statement in order to achieve your goals.

So how can you get in on the #1 secret of the rich?

Step One: Write it down!

You have to get your mission statement out of your head and onto paper, you need to make it real.  A file on your computer called “mission statement.docx” is not going to cut it.  Write it down and put it on your wall.  Read it aloud at least twice a day, with the conviction of knowing this is the only one true truth.  Everything else you know is relative to the truth of you Definite Major Purpose.

You have to get this right.  If you do you can have whatever you dream of, if you get it wrong you will be stuck forever.

Once you have written down you Definite Major Purpose, you are ready for the 6 Steps to Acquiring Anything.

Certainly in your life there have been things you  have desired, and you have achieved or acquired them, but did it make you happy?

When I returned to Canada from a failed business venture in Costa Rica, I had literally less than nothing.  No car, no job, no apartment, no nothing.  Me and my maxed out credit cards moved in with my parents.  I got a job immediately, and had to take the bus to work in one of the worst winters in Canadian history.  I wanted a car desperately so I would not have to walk and wait in the cold.  I also wanted to get an apartment desperately to get out of my parents house.  I acquired both within 3 months of my return, and while I took great pleasure in my success and not having to take the bus any more, I wasn’t really any happier than I was when I returned.

You have things now that others desperately want, yet your sights are set on the next big thing, and when you acquire/achieve that, you will set your sites on the next thing.  This is important, this is how successful people make keep achieving and achieving.

So you must have dreams and things you want or want to do, the secret is to focus on being happy everyday.  Everyday, you need to commit to being positive.  Take responsibility for all the things in your life.  If there is something that is making you unhappy, fix it, and live each day fulfilled while still intensely pursuing your ambition.  Harness and channel your desire to serve your ambition while simultaneously being free from you desire and in a state of appreciation for the day and all that you have already acquired and achieved.

It’s a tricky balance, to remain ambitious while appreciating the day, but it is the secret to happiness and you can do it!

This philosophy is at the core of ‘Rich Dad, Poor Dad” by Robert Kiyosaki.  It is also an excellent book and accounting 101 for entrepreneurs.

I use Google Tasks on my iPhone to manage new items coming into my flow, as well as the “today” list of things I will do that day.  Everything else is loaded into Excel spreadsheets that I can sort and filter to focus on the tasks I need to get done.  I use adjacent columns in these spreadsheets to group and prioritize my tasks.  I use separate spreadsheets for each “Manager” and check my “Managers” when I’m reminded by a reminder that is linked to a “Checklist.”

My basic flow looks like this:

By loading things into my flow, I don’t have to take up room in my mind to remember to do them, they just get done when I get to them in the natural flow.  The only secret is that you have to use your flow all the time because you need to trust it in order for it to be successful, otherwise you will use just as much mental energy worrying about your flow as you do trying to keep everything in your mind.  To master the flow, consider reading “Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity” by David Allen.

What project management system or schema do you use?  Please leave a comment below.

Are you someone who just builds foundations?  Do you start a project or undertaking only to just sorta forget about it a day or a week later, only to look back and see scattered, crumbling foundations with no structures on top?  Is it easier to just wish than to turn around and confront your sea of failure?  It may be easier, but you will never have the house you want if you just drift from foundation to foundation.

I had to face this about myself.  I had to say “I am not someone who says what they mean or does what they say.  I am someone who talks a lot, but never puts the money where the mouth is.”

But I solved it, and it was such a relief.  Here’s how I did it:

1. Decide right now that you have no responsibilities or plans.  You don’t have to go to work tomorrow, you don’t have to work out this evening, you don’t have to do anything.
2. Take out a blank sheet of paper.  This is now what your life consists of: nothing.  It is as clear as the sheet of paper.
3. Write down your responsibilities.  Are you going to work tomorrow?  Are you going to start walking the dog around the block every evening.  Write it down, what are your new repsonsibilities and disciplines?
4. Read the paper twice a day.  Once in the morning and once in the evening.  Say aloud: “this is my life, these are my responsibilities and disciplines.  I will do what I say I will do.”

There you go, now you can stop thinking about all those crumbling foundations and focus on building your first structure.