How to Commit to Your Habits Using the 20 Second Rule

Good for New Year resolutions!

How to Commit to Your Habits Using the 20 Second Rule

June 16, 2014 By Sam Thomas Davies

http://www.samuelthomasdavies.com/the-20-second-rule/?utm_content=9947128&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook

You have to sell yourself….

Artists, doctors, social workers, IT professionals, accountants, medical professionals, designers, business people…..Everyone needs to sell themself in some way or another. You could have the best thing, the best skills, the best way to help people – but you need to spread the word and get people to listen, to try it…..no matter what role you have in life, you need to sell yourself.

With that said, here is a good article that sums it up — especially what selling is and isn’t….see the bold bullets below…

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What To Do If You Hate “Selling Yourself”

By Jason Leister

I really never had what it takes to succeed inside a corporation of any size. Just like when I was working as a church musician, I had two fundamental flaws:

1. I couldn’t help speaking my mind.
2. I got really angry at jerks in positions of power.

The worst part was, I’d sometimes do both of those things at the very same time.

So it’s no surprise that I’m not navigating the political maze of some big company somewhere. I just wasn’t made to do that. Instead, I trudged off into the big bad world to work for myself. The majority of my experience is in and around the service businesses I started.

As a new business owner, I had a big obstacle to work through. The obstacle was the “artist” mentality I had brought with me from my former life as a musician. When you’re young and naive, you think that “how well you play” is the deciding factor for how your career is going to go.

This could not be further from the truth, of course. Let me explain…

Service professionals sometimes fall into the same trap. It’s easy to think the level of your expertise is the deciding factor in your success. Sadly, this isn’t how it works.

As Zig Ziglar says, “Nothing happens until someone sells something.”

And there’s the rub for the service professional. In order to build a successful business, you actually have to figure out how to sell yourself. Either you figure that out, or you go hungry.

For some reason, I grew up with a very bad view of salespeople. They were a kind of lower level human that manipulated other people in order to buy fancy cars and big houses.

Isn’t it odd that I ended up in a position where I either “sell” or my kids don’t eat? Kind of funny really. (But I’m used to it dear Universe…)

Why Car Salesmen Have It So Wrong

My first real attempt at “selling myself” was in the car business. I didn’t do very well because I had no idea what I was doing. Plus, I was surrounded by “successful” salespeople who only knew one way to sell.

The method was to spot the prey, chase it down, and hang on for dear life.

I’m hardly an “alpha-male,” so you can imagine how well that worked out for me. I should have seen the clues even back then. For some reason, the only cars I could sell were Corvettes to middle-aged affluent men.

You don’t sell those guys with brute force. You simply go along on the test drive (wear your seatbelt), allow them to talk, ask them questions, and watch them sell themselves.

No wonder people have such a hard time “selling themselves.” For many folks, the only type of selling they’ve ever seen is the brute force variety that makes your skin crawl.

I had no idea back then that there was a completely different type of “selling.” It was one where the customer actually walked away happy instead of leaving beaten and bruised from battle.

This other type of selling was something I could get behind because, to the customer or client, it didn’t even feel like selling.

How to Dissolve Your Internal Blocks About “Selling Yourself”

Let me make a suggestion:

If you have internal blocks about “selling,” then being in a service business focused on selling yourself is going to come with some serious struggle.

You’ll kind of be fighting yourself… forever. And don’t think your clients can’t feel that. It’s not at the level of thought, of course, it’s deeper. But they can feel even you aren’t “all in” about the “product” (you) they are looking to buy. And they will respond accordingly.

As I got a little bit wiser, I realized that if I was going to do this, I had to redefine what exactly “selling” meant.

When I started, it was clear to me that selling meant imposing my will on another. That’s what it looked like, anyway. And I think a lot of people probably do view it that way.

These days, I’ve completely flipped my thinking about selling around. A total 180 degree turn.

• Selling is not pushing a product you want to sell down someone’s throat.
• Selling is setting up a beautiful table full of food and inviting starving guests to take a seat.
• Selling is connecting a human being’s pain with something that can relieve that pain.
• Selling is being committed to helping make someone’s life better tomorrow than it is today.

Do you realize what’s missing in all of these new scenarios? What’s missing is any focus on you!

And that’s how you remove your internal blocks about selling yourself. You take the focus off of you, you take the focus off what you want to achieve, and you truly show up and serve someone. Yes, service is not limited to just clients, you can do it all along the way… even with prospects that never become clients.

Try that a few times and see what happens. What happens when you “need nothing” and you walk around broadcasting that to your clients?

Well, you tend to get everything… and more.

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Jason Leister is a direct response copywriter, internet entrepreneur and editor of the daily e-letter, The Client Letter, where he empowers independent professionals who work with clients. He has seven kids and lives and works in the mountains of Arizona

Frey Freyday- Trust

( Frey Freyday is simply a bunch of inspirational, motivational and other quotes meant to make you think, reflect, smile, even laugh a bit. Hopefully helpful, useful stuff….)

To be trusted is a greater compliment than being loved.-George MacDonald

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Love all, trust a few, do wrong to none.-William Shakespeare

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Trust is the glue of life. It’s the most essential ingredient in effective communication. It’s the foundational principle that holds all relationships.-Stephen Covey

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Trust yourself. Create the kind of self that you will be happy to live with all your life. Make the most of yourself by fanning the tiny, inner sparks of possibility into flames of achievement.-Golda Meir

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Whoever is careless with the truth in small matters cannot be trusted with important matters.-Albert Einstein

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Trust yourself, you know more than you think you do.-Benjamin Spock

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He who does not trust enough, Will not be trusted.-Lao Tzu

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One must be fond of people and trust them if one is not to make a mess of life.-E. M. Forster

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Put not your trust in money, but put your money in trust.-Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
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Bonus

Video -http://www.ted.com/talks/paul_zak_trust_morality_and_oxytocin

What drives our desire to behave morally? Neuroeconomist Paul Zak shows why he believes oxytocin (he calls it “the moral molecule”) is responsible for trust, empathy and other feelings that help build a stable society

Is it Useful?

“Adjust your habitual vocabulary—the words you consistently use to describe your emotions and sensations—immediately change how you think, feel and live.”

Did you ever notice someone who has some believe from long ago that seems to hold them back?

I know of someone that was once not afraid to fly, then one small thing seemed to happen once on a flight 15 years ago, and now this person is very afraid to fly. She holds onto the belief that she is scared to fly and it is part of her story. Is it useful to have that belief?

Maybe even one event happened in there lives and from that point on, they just hold this belief?
Sometimes we have a judgement, fear, perception, or whatever.

Or, do you ever see someone getting upset, angry, or emotional and it is hurting their judgement or how they are handling a certain situation?

Worrying is another thing that some people do – some people even believe that they ‘need’ to or ‘should’ worry.

Many of our mothers worry about things. There are people that stay awake at night worrying. Is this useful?

(Of course I know that none of the above items ever apply to you or I)

Here is a question to ask in any of the above situations:

IS IT USEFUL?

• Is that belief, that story from the past, that judgement, fear, perception…..
• Is it useful to get angry in all occasions or upset at all times?
• Is worrying useful?
• Maybe there are times when the above make sense, but asking the question ‘is it useful?” may make us more aware of those times when we have a belief that limits us.

Sometimes we have to be aware of our thoughts, beliefs and actions and be willing to let go of things that are not useful so that we can grow and move on.

 

How to Sustain Hope

Secrets to an energized, engaged, and fulfilling life from #1 New York Times bestselling author Brendon Burchard

Click here http://youtu.be/iY9lNNXbsv4

Transcript:

That you have a single breath within your body right now and that you are alive in this moment is hope.

That you can see all these people walking on the streets smiling is hope.

That all these entrepreneurs are posting their art online every single day now, there is hope there.

That there is a single person out in this world whose soul is still burning alive with love is hope.

It’s so easy, during these days when sometimes there’s darkness, when you see all this negative media coverage, or maybe you have a series of bad days or bad weeks, or your lucky break just isn’t coming, or you’ve been fighting for that dream but you just don’t sense any of that progress that you need to still feel enlivened, engaged and enthusiastic about something, or someone breaks up with you, or you lose your job, or something happens with your health.

That’s part of life—that there’s going to be so many struggles, disappointments, challenges, setbacks and dark days.

Part of sustaining and making it through all of that is maintaining hope. And hope isn’t something that’s just some airy fairy concept; it is a psychological need to believe that we can endure. A psychological need to believe that we can not only endure but that we can succeed and thrive and we can have our way in the world, so that we can accomplish our dreams, make influence and make our own difference. Have hope.

But, even as I say that, let me reconfigure that statement and phrase because too many people say, “Well, you have hope or you can lose hope.” But hope isn’t something you actually “have” or lose, even though we say that phrase at such a popular level.

Years ago, a metaphor came into my life that changed my life forever. It changed my attitude, my actions and how I thought about life and frankly, how I felt every single moment of the day. It was something that lifted me to a whole other level of joy and vibrancy in life. It was this simple metaphor: The power plant doesn’t ‘have’ energy, it transforms and generates energy.

At the same level, we don’t “have” hope. We transform the energy around us and generate hope. We don’t “have” happiness; we generate happiness. Similarly, we don’t “have” sadness or fatigue. We don’t “have” those feelings that so many people think are negative that just land on them. We are, in our own actions, our own thoughts and interpretations—the very thoughts that we’re feeding our psyche—those very things are generating an emotion. And hope is something that is generated by us.

When it feels like it is gone, it becomes a to-do list for us to generate it once more, just like when your phone is dying you plug it in to charge it up. Well, when your hope is dying, it’s time to generate and charge it up again. It’s the same thing with happiness and aliveness and enthusiasm. Those are things when they’re going down you have to get focused and plug back into your passions, to your dreams, to tomorrow to charge yourself back up again and it begins with first and foremost, keeping perspective.

Keep Perspective

A lot of people “lose” hope because their focus goes off. They become very myopic to their own ego, their own emotional reality, their own tiny little world and they miss the joy, abundance, the connection, the incredible energy of this buoyant and jubilant world all around them, even when sometimes the immediate people in their lives or their immediate tribe or culture is not so good.

We have 7 billion people alive today and somehow we haven’t all killed each other—that sustains and motivates hope.

The reality that so many people are making it, that freedom is starting to perpetuate around the world more, that wealth and abundance is coming to more and more and more people, that more and more people are able to dictate their aims, attitudes and dreams today because more information is available than ever before… These things give us hope.

So as soon as we lose perspective and just go into our little tiny day, our little tiny moment, it’s time to expand your awareness and consciousness to the greater stream of life that is happening all around.

Go for a walk in the woods. Look at nature and realize how lucky we are to be here. Go for a stroll outside and look at people as they smile and realize how lucky you are to be here. Walk into a restaurant and see people flirting with each other and having fun at dinner or celebrating, and you start getting a different sense of life. Sometimes you have to get out of your house to feel hope, to keep perspective.

Remember Your Strength

If you’re down right now and struggling, don’t forget to also pull forth and integrate those successes that you’ve had before, those times in your life when things did go well, those times in your life when you surprise yourself with how well you did something or how kind you were or how much you cared or how good of a piece of art you did create. Remember those strength times, those times that there was success, those times that good things did happen. Pull them, feel them, sense them and bring those things to the moment at hand where things do feel frustrating, challenging, disappointing or dark.

Don’t lose perspective. You’ve had beautiful days before. They’ll come again. It’s believing in that that sustains our hope.

Make a Plan

It’s easy to lose hope if there’s no plan. If there’s no vision the people perish. That’s biblical, right? So you have to have a vision for your life.

What is it you see out there for yourself? What is your plan to go and get it?

Believe in your ability to go and be able to make those things come true, even if you’re frustrated and challenged right now, because in this moment, you can choose new thoughts. In this moment you can choose new actions. You can choose to go now and learn some new things, get more and better mentors, to get around a more positive group of people, to read better books and watch better programming. You can choose to direct your focus in ways that will support your growth and have the ability to achieve a plan.

Sit down tonight, amidst all the turmoil and craziness of the world if that’s what you’re feeling, sit with a piece of paper and pen and spill out hope onto the page of what you want to do with your life. Spill out hope onto the page about what it is you want to give, what it is you want to accomplish, achieve, connect and contribute with the world or create. Write it down. Write out reasons to be grateful. Write out reasons to go achieve things. Write out things you want to make happen and start putting a plan towards that.

What would be step one, step two, step three? As you start marching along to achieve that and you fall or falter, don’t give up on yourself. Know that there’s always a new step. If you fail at one step, create a new step to get back up to the next step.

Don’t give up just because it’s challenging or struggling because your dreams are worth it and your dreams don’t care how hard it gets. Your dreams don’t care if you get frustrated. Your dreams don’t care if there’s going to be dark days. Your dreams know they are worth it and it’s time for you to believe in them again and start working towards them at full capacity.

That brings up the third thing.

Stay Persistent

To have hope we have to stay persistent. To keep at it no matter what.

If we’ve got our perspective in mind. If we have our plan then we have to be persistent, to keep working towards it.

There were so many times that I almost stopped doing these videos. So many times that I thought I’m not going to write another book. So many times I thought no one cares about my blog posts or Facebook posts. No one cares about my YouTube show. No one cares about me. Oh, whoa is me.

We can all sit on the couch, eat a bunch of potato chips and watch stupid television and feel sorry for ourselves, but that does not contribute to our aliveness. It does not contribute to the connection of those we love and care for and it does not contribute to the things we create and ultimately give to the world.

We have to say you know what, what are we going to persist at? Sitting and eating potato chips and watching TV? That’s not going to be good.

What we have to do is persist towards our dreams.

What are the three things you could accomplish this very day and tomorrow and start moving towards your dreams?

Every day wake up with an intention: I’m going to do at least three things to move myself forward to something that matters. At least three things—everybody can do that.

What are the three things I’m going to do to move my life forward this day?

Who would I need to reach out to, to be able to move forward?

What could I read or study online to move forward?

What could I do just one simple request or movement or step to move forward and persist at that over and over again?

That’s how things change.

People look at me now and they’re like, “Wow, you know, you have millions of views on YouTube and millions of followers online from Facebook to your email, number one bestselling books” and all these things. There were a million times I could have given up, but I sustained hope that it would ultimately make a difference, that if I just kept persisting at it and kept working that one day it would turn out. If I stayed on the path of my dreams and kept removing distractions. I didn’t say yes to everything. I said yes to what moved me towards my dreams. I worked towards that with such persistence that now I get to do this and it’s true joy.

I couldn’t have done it without, not only your support, but without the realization that hope is important to sustain.

Be Patient

If you’re really frustrated and hating it right now, the easiest way for hope to go out the door is to get in a hurry. So you’re getting in a big hurry, you’re pushing and now you don’t sense the win, the momentum or progress anymore, you’re just more, more, more. You’re in such a big hurry to have more things that sometimes it feels like you have nothing and the reality is you do. But a part of achieving anything is having the patience to work towards it, and having the patience with other people.

Sometimes we lose hope in other people, not really that we lost hope… we just forgot to be patient with them. You need to give a lot of patience to the people in your life if you’re going to sustain hope for them and for your relationships with them. Patience is a critical element. It’s not discussed a lot, but it’s so fundamental to having hope: to be patient with it.

I hope you’ll take those things to mind because I know the days can get dark, but you deserve to have your dreams. You deserve to keep at them. You deserve to sustain that full power, that full energy that hope can cultivate in you, because when you have full hope you’re more confident and willing to go for it or willing to try. You deserve it. Your dreams deserve it and each day starts to feel a little more bright, each day starts to feel a little more magical, each day you start to notice the things to have hope for. Each day you notice the things you’ve done that make other people hopeful.

The next thing you know, suddenly you have this incredible life that’s full of hope, aliveness, joy and full of light, and that’s what we call The Charged Life.

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Like this post? Please share it your friends and family. Let’s bring the charge and spark and joy to others.

Frey Freyday- Define

( Frey Freyday is simply a bunch of inspirational, motivational and other quotes meant to make you think, reflect, smile, even laugh a bit. Hopefully helpful, useful stuff….)

Do you want to know who you are? Don’t ask. Act! Action will delineate and define you.Thomas Jefferson

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The first responsibility of a leader is to define reality. The last is to say thank you. In between, the leader is a servant.-Max de Pree

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If you carefully consider what you want to be said of you in the funeral experience, the obituary, you will find your definition of success.-Stephen Covey

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We can each define ambition and progress for ourselves. The goal is to work toward a world where expectations are not set by the stereotypes that hold us back, but by our personal passion, talents and interests.-Sheryl Sandberg

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When you judge another, you do not define them, you define yourself.-Wayne Dyer

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We must avoid defining events, experiences, even people as bad or good. Instead we must be open to the event, the experience, the person so we can learn, grow and face things without bias and live it in the moment.– Jim Frey

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Never be bullied into silence. Never allow yourself to be made a victim. Accept no one’s definition of your life; define yourself.-Harvey Fierstein

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My definition of success is to live your life in a way that causes you to feel a ton of pleasure and very little pain – and because of your lifestyle, have the people around you feel a lot more pleasure than they do pain.-Tony Robbins

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We can each define ambition and progress for ourselves. The goal is to work toward a world where expectations are not set by the stereotypes that hold us back, but by our personal passion, talents and interests.-Sheryl Sandberg

Rejected! 5 Lessons

We all get rejected in different parts of our lives, and I find that many people just plain don’t take action because they fear that they will be rejected (they don’t even try).

Either way, here is a very good video and blog link about Rejection, persistence, and strategies for life.

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FROM Brendon Burchard’s blog

http://brendonburchard.tumblr.com/post/102898496063/rejected-5-lessons-from-getting-dumped-by-my-publisher

Summary:

Brendon’s latest New York Times bestselling book, The Motivation Manifesto, was at first rejected by Simon & Schuster. He had a near-million-dollar deal with them, but when he turned his book in they said it was unpublishable. Brendon was stunned. Basically, they said they didn’t like it, and threatened to cancel the contract and demand their money back if he didn’t change the voice and add more stories.

What did Brendon do? What would you do?

Change your art to meet the desires of people who are uninformed about your expertise and passion?

Or fight for your voice and give the money back?

Brendon chose to fight for his vision. He agreed to give the money back and then released the book via a distribution deal with Hay House. The book immediately debuted as a bestseller on the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, USA Today, Amazon, and Barnes and Noble bestseller lists.

This is his story and 5 lessons learned fighting for his voice and dreams.

Brendon says, “Never let someone tell you that you or your dreams are impossible, improbable, or not ‘good enough’ for their liking, especially when they have no experience or knowledge of your true heart and powers.”

In this video he shares these 5 lessons:

1. Have vision for your life and art. And stick to it through your doubts and fears, through all the petty judgements and social oppressions.
2. Believe in your ability to figure things out. With enough time, effort, and discipline you will learn and grow and achieve.
3. Have fun chasing your dreams – no matter what. Bring joy to each experience and realize the journey is something to be cherished and grateful for.
4. Be patient but always persistent. Go easy on yourself but hard each day toward your dreams.
5. Respect and love others also playing this same game of life. Everyone is struggling to express themselves and achieve their dreams – so give them the same respect, patience, appreciation and love you desire for yourself.

 

Easy Ways to Think About Hard Finance Stuff

By Morgan Housel | fool.com
November 26, 2014 |

Finance doesn’t have to be hard. You just have to think of it in simple terms.

How to think about market volatility: Pick a million random people from around the world every day. Some days, 51% would be in a good mood, 49% in a bad mood. The next day maybe it’s the opposite. Other days, random chance could mean 8% of people are pissed off for no explainable reason. This is basically what the market is on a day-to-day basis.

How to think about hedge funds: Probably 100 are legitimately talented and can consistently beat the market with below-average volatility. They won’t take your money. The rest charge ten times the fees of mutual funds for half the performance of index funds, pay half the income tax rates of taxi drivers, and have triple the ego of rock stars. Basically a conduit between public pension funds and private jet brokers.

How to think about (many) economists: A car mechanic who says your air conditioner is fixed if you just assume there’s cold air coming out of it. Your car doesn’t even have an air conditioner. This doesn’t change his opinion.

How to think about recessions: Everyone wants to see Kobe Bryant play all game. But sometimes he can’t. You’ll wear the poor guy out. He needs to sit on the bench once in a while. The sponsors will say, “You can’t do that! We don’t make money off him when he doesn’t play!” They’re right, but only in the short run. Everyone – the team, the fans, the sponsors, and Kobe himself – will be better off in the long run if you let him take a break once in a while. He needs to rest his overworked knee and learn from the mistakes he made last quarter. Don’t worry; he’ll be back.

How to think about IPOs: There’s a new movie out. It looks awesome. You can go see it opening night but the lines are probably really long. Or you can wait a few weeks, go see the same movie, without the crowds, and pick a better seat in the theater. Do that.

How to think about dividends and capital gains: Dividends are your annual salary – pretty steady and even, and you should consider it a huge part of your overall pay. Capital gains are your Christmas bonus – big some years, nonexistent other years, and no one will feel bad for you when it’s volatile.

How to think about pundits: People who profess to have knowledge about things that can’t be known. Combines the skill of an actor, the ridiculousness of a comedian, the believability of priests, and the credibility of politicians.

How to think about margins of safety: You’re building a foot bridge. You can design how much weight it can hold. The heaviest you’ve ever been is 165 lbs. An engineer says, “Let’s build it to hold 166 lbs.” You think that’s crazy, and say it should be able to hold 250 lbs. The engineer doesn’t understand. After a freak illness causes you to put on 50 lbs., he gets it.

How to think about Warren Buffett: If Michael Jordan looked and sounded like such a normal guy, you’d think you could dunk from the free-throw line, too.

How to think about economic data: Ideally we’d have 500 years of unimpeachably perfect data. In reality we have about 50 years of so-so data. If we had the former, we’d learn that so much of what we’ve learned from the latter is wrong and incomplete.

How to think about patience and investing: A guy pulls grapes off a vine, smashes them in his hand, drains the juice into a cup and says, “This wine is awful.” Someone tells him he needs to let it age first. An hour later he says it still doesn’t taste like wine, and gives it to his friend. His friend stores it in his basement for 20 years and has the best wine you’ve ever tasted.

How to think about long-term investing: The labors of your past self work hard while your current self does nothing so your future self will be better off.

How to think about compound interest: Little slaves that work for you while you sleep and breed like rabbits.

How to think about chart patterns: Palm reader with an Etch-a-Sketch.

How to think about bubbles: The masses lose their minds ever 10 years. Afterwards, you fool yourself that you won’t lose yours 10 years from now.

How to think about bull markets: Most businesses, CEOs, consumers, and countries wake up in the morning wanting to do a little bit better and make the world better off. Rising stock prices over time reflect their progress.

How to think about bear markets: They overdo it sometimes. Not a huge deal. Everything that lives and breathes needs a break once in a while. Let it rest and wait for it to get back in the game.

How to think about people who disagree with you: Guy from Minnesota says it’s cold in the winter. Guy from Mexico disagrees, says it’s hot in the winter. Both have a hard time realizing they’re each right based on their own unique life experiences. They call each other idiots in the comments section of news article that has nothing to do with weather.

How to think about the intersection of politics and investing: As little as possible.

How to think about behavioral finance: Just watch this video.

Rewire your brain to be happy…

Rewire your brain to be happy…

You can re-wire your brain to be happy by simply recalling 3 things you’re grateful for every day for 21 days.

-Shawn Achor