Isn’t it true that results we achieve that come about by surprise bring a greater sense of satisfaction than results that take huge effort to achieve?  It certainly is for me.  In contrast, the results I get that take weeks or months of effort always seem to be more of a relief than an achievement should feel.

Building Up to Success

Often I feel that personal development can be one of those areas where you have a long time building up to success.  Change takes effort and making changes often comes at a price of long term dedication to tirelessly keep working away to change habits and to bring about change.  Not only a single change at a time, but in fact, many many changes combined can have the same effect of adding up to be a long term effort. For me there is certainly a combination at work with this type of experience as on one hand, my persistence to change I know will overcome whatever obstacles I face and on the other it can be disappointing when it takes as long as it does.  This certainty in achievement is a great confidence to build up and helps you tackle all of those unknown situations and obstacles.  Building that kind of confidence only occurs through repeated successes over time and having the ability to recognize achievement and be grateful for it.  After all, if you don’t know what success looks like along the way, then you certainly can’t build those successes up into self confidence.  Success and confidence can become a repeating cycle and what I’ve found is that it can actually become an insignificant event when achieving that success becomes expected simply due to your persistence. This kind of drawn out achievement being expected by a person eventually seems quite meaningless and in fact, it becomes the normal way of building up to success.

Achieving It!

So with all this building up to success there comes the point where you actually achieve what you were after.  If it was a long drawn out process this point may feel more like a relief than anything.  The work associated with this achievement could be gone now and that might be similar to having a chore or some other painful tasks gone forever.  However, the achievements that seem to feel the best and give you the biggest ‘high’ are the ones that come suddenly or unexpectedly.  There is no time passed to destroy your pleasure with an associated heavy workload and so the gratification that exists can be so much higher!  I know that any achievements that come my way out of surprise are often an opportunity to discover something new about myself where I am shocked to learn of some new skill or impact I had to help me achieve it.  It’s a joy to learn of these things and exciting to know that sometimes there is a great achievement just around the corner we don’t expect!

Posted by Mike King under Success | 10 Comments »

Passion is an awesome subject as just the very word typically excites people!  The word represents such a powerful expression that it seems to raise the spirits just by its very mention.  Not only that, but there is so much going on to pursue, express, seek and develop passions in people’s lives it’s an excellent subject for personally development.  So what is passion?  Passion is a feeling or expression of great excitement and enthusiasm towards a subject.  It raises spirits and surges energy in however and whoever it is expressed to.  It’s incredibly hard to express passion by writing and I truly wish I was speaking this right now as its much easier to be expressive and enthusiastic with your voice, your body movements and actions.  Doing that with text is nearly impossible unless I started adding large flashy colored text, which I will definitely spare you the pain of.  So, you will have to imagine me speaking this with expressive tone, body language and enthusiasm!  Let’s get to it.

Welcoming Passion

Passion is not visible everyday.  For some it may be, but for most people, it is an expressive burst that is not a regular activity and so when it does show up, it definitely gets noticed.  Passion usually has a benefit of engaging the audience more, which is particularly useful when it is being expressed by speakers.  It makes everything more memorable and builds credibility for a public speaker when they show that they really are passionate about and care for the subject they are speaking on.  This occurs in all areas of life though, not just public speaking.  It can occur in your business, your friendships and even online.  Showing passions in these areas demonstrates with sincere meaning what you are emotionally connected to.

When you have the opportunity to see someone else express their topic or ideas with passion, how do you respond?  Do you encourage it, add to that excitement or make an effort (often subconsciously) to stay calm, non-responsive to balance out that person with a less expressive engagement?  I hope you add to that passion and even if you don’t connect with the content shared directly, you can certainly support the energy and willingness to bring that passion to you.  If you can share in that passion and ensure they know that you are happy to see the passion, by contributing your own energy, you really welcome the passion.  You can also welcome it by reminding people of passions and how you’ve enjoying expressing them or seeing it in others.  This helps to influence people to share their own passions and makes it feel a bit safer. In business this is especially true as we often are so careful to follow the rules and expectations of others around us, we often don’t share or express the things we really love.  Are there passions expressed in your business that could use your support and energy to encourage them?

Expressing Your Own Passions

There may not always be someone else around expressing passions that you can reinforce.  Of course, that doesn’t mean you can’t add passion by sharing your own!  What are the things you love to do, love to debate, or have dreams of experiencing.  These are potentially areas of passion for you and they are great to express to bring more vitality to a group of people, friends or business.  Expressing your passions will allow you to reveal something about yourself and to encourage others to share their own as well.  Passions are often contagious because of the energy they activate in people.

Your passions are often seated at a young age in life and so thinking back to your childhood years (around age 6-13) what were the things that you most loved to do?  Where you a creator, inventor, story teller, teacher, dreamer, helper, connector, influencer or follower?  These areas as a child are likely the secret to some deep passion you have today, whether you know it or now.  It’s a sign of who you are or want to be and can often reveal passions not yet explored or dreams worth seeking that develop into great passions.  Expressing these stories from your early years is a great way to discover and express your own passions with others.

Expressing your own passions is sometimes risky.  Anytime you expose something that is meaningful to you, you risk being judged for that and it not being accepted.  The great thing with passions is that people are a lot more tolerant of passions than other characteristics of a person.  I think the reason for this is that when a passion is often expressed, it is expressed with deep connection and even love for that subject.  People tend not to attack or debate things we love and when a passion fits that category of something we really love, it is often protected from that social criticism just because we express the significance of that  subject.

Don’t Seek Passion, Bring Passion

Obviously you can share your passions and seek them out, but its just as possible to learn the symptoms of passion and how to express it, how to connect with a subject and how to feel the passion in areas you love.  Personally, I think passion can go much farther than what you love however, and that you can actually love to be passionate.  Once you learn to be passionate about something, you can choose to bring the passion to anything you do, instead of having to seek it.  Bringing the passion to what you do brings on all those great side effects of influencing people, gaining attraction and momentum because of the excitement and expression.  Even if you were not initially caring about a subject, bringing the passion to it can actually activate you to connect and to feel much more for that subject.  Passions don’t have to be things you seek, it can be something you simply know how to do and to bring into whatever you choose.  That’s what I love about passion and what I’ve learned by studying.  Of course, there are subjects I am more passionate about than others, but the ability to bring passion into anything I do helps me get motivated, stay connected and gain influence through that higher level of enthusiasm and energy towards a subject.  What area of your life do you wish you had more passion for?  Is there a passion you have learned from that you can mimick and bring the benefits of into new areas of your life?  Please share yours!

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Posted by Mike King under Purpose/Passion | 19 Comments »

There are so many challenges we face everyday it is no wonder we easily find ourselves falling into the trap of saying, "I can’t ."  Its an extremely negative response and really does nothing for us as it’s more of an easy excuse than a real useful reason.  Without getting into all the specifics as to why you should have a more positive outlook I’m going to focus on doing just one thing more positive.  That is to change your thinking and response anytime you would have said, "I can’t" to "How can I?".  There are 4 major areas I’ll explore around the benefits of changing this response.

Stay Open to New Things

Saying "I can’t" will immediately shut down any opportunity as you don’t even consider any way to work with the suggestion.  Changing that response to look at how can I do something is far more positive.  It allows you to look for ways and if nothing else, think about ways to do that.  Even if you don’t act on those new things, staying open minded about them keeps options available for the future.  You never know when you will change your mind and want to focus on that very thing you otherwise would have said, "I can’t" to.

People learn from your responses and if you have a habit of saying "I can’t" then others remember that and come to you less and less frequently with those new opportunities.  "How can I" lets you question it yourself and gives you a chance to see those new things from different perspectives.  People will be much more likely to come to you again with an idea or question if you look for ways to do it instead of simply shutting down the idea in the first place.  Keep your interaction with others open and welcoming simply by changing this response.

Don’t Limit Yourself

Keeping that open mind lets you experience new things, new relationships and lets you see areas to make changes in your life.  Some of these for the better, some not so, but keeping the choice available is useful.  There is no point in limiting your choices in life and that’s exactly what "I can’t" does.  It becomes a mind set to you and others that you are not willing to even try and that you give up easily.  This is not a limiting belief that anyone should have!

Find and Offer Help

My favorite reason to never say I can’t and instead ask the question How can I is that it is often a way to find or offer help to someone else.  Most of the things we say we can’t do are because we don’t believe we have the ability to accomplish something on our own.  This is a perfect chance to then find some help and to see the same situations for others where you can offer help.  Offering help is easily a substitute for saying, "I can’t" as well since you are still willing to be involved but perhaps at a simpler level, just offering help.  This is very powerful in the workplace since even though you may already have a full workload, offering some help can be a huge benefit to others while requiring little of your own time.  Obviously this depends on how much help you are offering, but there is nearly always something you can do to help, even if it is just a few minutes of your time.

Accomplish More

As others discover you have a habit of looking at ways to accomplish something instead of avoiding it, you will keep them interested in coming to you.  You will have more accomplishments under your belt as well since as you develop a way of looking for solutions and ways to achieve things instead of ways to avoid them.  Balance this using priorities with your other work and focus on the most important tasks only will keep you from being overloaded can give you a massive boost to accomplishing many things.  Keeping some time available to always ensure you can offer help or ask when needed will allow you to ask that question of "How Can I?" without feeling overwhelmed by more new tasks.

Posted by Mike King under Life | No Comments »

Whatever you believe, you are right in that. Everything is what you believe and everything you do is because of your beliefs. So, if you want to change the things you do (to get different results) then it all leads back to your beliefs. This article covers a few different angles of beliefs but focuses on how you can create, reinforce and use your beliefs to impact your life in a positive way. The beliefs that I am writing about here are core beliefs that drive you with reason to do the things you do. Not simple or dispositional beliefs like statements or opinions on a subject such as "Do you believe a tree makes a sound if it falls where no one is there to hear it?". These core beliefs are not easily changed and are not formed by a simple thought or guess, they are developed over time.

The Root of All Beliefs

Some people feel that you can develop beliefs by choosing them (I certainly agree with that) and others feel that beliefs come about only through experiences that train you to think about things a certain way, which eventually becomes a belief. Looking at both of these options, there are obvious arguments for both side as to which happens most often, but I look from the perspective of which I want to happen more often and that is certainly creating or choosing my own belief. I don’t really like the idea of waiting for things to happen and then root a belief around that, I much prefer the idea of building a foundation based on decisions and choices that I make. This seems to latch more responsibility and personal accountability to the belief since it is something I deliberately made. So, even if I choose and develop my own beliefs, that is just the root of it, it says nothing of the way that belief will actually affect me. And if I choose my own belief, aren’t I then empowered to use that to steer my actions in a way that’s pleasing to me?

Whether you say you can, or you say you can’t, your right. Anthony Robbins

I love that quote from Anthony Robbins. It’s an argument he uses where people look at making an excuse as justification for not being able to do something. If you don’t believe that you can do something, then you can’t, so it’s not really needing an outside excuse, since your own belief is what prevented you from being able in the first place! Associating your beliefs with your thoughts, your mind set and what you say are all critical elements that all affect each other. You can easily see this with individuals with low self esteem for example, they will constantly say they can’t do something and they actually believe that themselves which just feeds a vicious circle as they think it over and over.

You can certainly learn to change that thinking for yourself to avoid being in that circle of thought you don’t want to be in. I recently wrote about how to do that by mastering your state of mind , which will definitely help you in controlling your beliefs so I recommend reading that article if you haven’t before.

Creating Your Beliefs

Beliefs are not usually something people hunt down and look for in life. They are often just felt or learned through experience over the course of time. What I find very interesting though is that its possible to deliberately create your beliefs instead of just waiting for them to show up. There is a lot of value in this and it helps you focus your attention in many areas on your beliefs. Doing this in goal setting for example, helps you focus on goals that are based by your beliefs, which are much easier to achieve and more valuable in your life as these are also the areas that lead to passions. I’ve written in detail about using your beliefs to find your passions , but I believe it works both ways. You an also use your passions to create new beliefs.

Looking at ways to create new beliefs before there is an experiential basis for them can be done with a number of simple steps.

• State new opinions – This helps you to begin agreeing with your own opinion.
• Research areas of interest – Doing this will often give you strong evidence and expert opinion to help you firm up a new belief.
• Question everything – Questioning things leads to a deeper understanding. Deep understanding is a strong foundation for a belief as it is harder to sway a belief that is well known.
• Continuously Learn – Learning new information, improving oneself and exploring new topics can often trigger new beliefs and is wonderful way to create them.
• Share your beliefs with others – Relationships are an invaluable source of new experiences, discussions and great emotions. These are great ways to discover new beliefs about yourself and others.

Reinforcing Your Beliefs

The Placebo Effect is a when the outcome of an action or event changes due to the individual expecting or believing a particular outcome. This is often discussed in relation to health and drug use, where a patient reacts positively from taking a drug that they think will help, even if it is a fake drug like a sugar pill. The Placebo Effect is real and there is much evidence to support its impact. It is also something to take advantage of. Having a belief will inevitably make that outcome more likely, so you should also look to reinforce the beliefs you want and focus on the positive beliefs you have so that they help drive positive outcomes. If you have a lot of negative beliefs, those are just as likely to cause the Placebo Effect but unfortunately, with a more negative outcome.

Look to reinforce the beliefs you want to have and change your beliefs around the ones you don’t want. This is really a case of the classic "Glass Half Full, or Glass Half Empty" mindset. There are many techniques to changing your beliefs and here are just a few you might want to use if your beliefs are not positive or particularly strong.

• Write down your beliefs you want and review them regularly.
• Before bed, review your day and think about each time a positive belief came to mind.
• Share your beliefs with others – This helps discover new beliefs like I mentioned above but its also very useful to identify similar beliefs with others as shared beliefs will definitely help you strengthen them.
• Affirmations work for many people and can help you reinforce existing and new beliefs.
• Turn your negative beliefs into a positive by looking for something you can learn from it, or a new opportunity from a negative event.

Using Your Beliefs

I’ve mentioned a few areas that beliefs relate to and its great to be able to use your beliefs with those. This includes many areas about passions , identifying and setting meaningful belief based goals , and in sharing your beliefs and opinions with others to build relationships. One additional area that I believe is significantly affected by your beliefs is achievement . The more I learn and read about great authors, experts in their fields, leaders and great teachers, the more I have realized that they all share similar attitudes and beliefs about achievement which has made everything possible for them. They belief in the capability of themselves and others and know that change is possible and that they will have an impact on others. These beliefs are exactly what enables them to do what they do best and it inspires others to develop similar beliefs and make their own achievement and success possible as well.

On the other side of this, humans have created limiting beliefs that hold people back in many areas as well. For centuries no one believed that the earth was round and it limited people from daring to explore past known areas from the fear of falling off the earth! People believed it was impossible to fly something heavier than air and this limited progress for decades. Often the unknown or fear of it creates a strong negative belief which not only limits you, but others around you from achieving what is thought to be impossible. There are great examples of this in sports and the human physical capabilities. It is constantly changing nowadays with records and speeds being broken every year by great athletes and competitors using nothing but the human body. It has not always been like that however, as beliefs have changed drastically. For decades and decades, no one thought it was possible for a human to run a 4 minute mile. Hundreds tried and they continually failed for years! Finally, after many attempts, one person eventually beat the 4 minutes mile and it immediately change everyone’s beliefs about the human capability. Over the next month, 30 additional runners broke the four minute mile! This was changed entirely because of the beliefs.

So, knowing what beliefs can do for you and how they affect you, I definitely encourage you to work on your beliefs, change the ones you don’t like, refocus them in a positive way, look to develop new ones in areas you want to achieve and share your beliefs with others to reinforce theirs and your own. I’m sure there are other ways to develop your beliefs and I’d love to hear any suggestions!

Posted by Mike King under Life | 8 Comments »

Category: Books
Genre: Business & Investing
Author: Napoleon Hill

A Timeless classic that sets you for a continuous mindset and obsession towards your deepest desires with a rich set of principles that are still in use by great leaders as well as nearly all recent motivational authors and speakers (I see references from many other things I’ve read that is more recent.

The premise of the book is that your thoughts and actions are driven by what you control in your mind and choose to make of life. Its a must read, if you are looking for something to help you attain more, whatever that is! It is a fantastic motivational book and teaches many areas of goals and achievement towards them.

I loved all the references and background info to Carnegie (the root of thoughts for this book) and how he struck the inspiration to make attainable wealth and a mind philosophy towards achievement of any goal in life.

Posted by Mike King under Book Reviews | 2 Comments »

Category : Books
Genre : Business & Investing
Author : Marshall Goldsmith

What an amazing book. Goldsmith outlines an incredible set of minor habits and traits of a person who has led a successful life and pinpoints how each person has some of these that really hold them back from going farther in there lives. The main theme is that successful people generally believe that their bad habits are what got them there to there current place so they seem like good things. This is not necessarily true and these beliefs are typically limiting success from going further. Goldsmith explores a process to identify these habits and the impact they have on others, to then plan and change those by minor adjustments and feedback over 12-18 months and to specifically focus and measure these parameters to ensure the changes stick. All this leads you and will set you up to be even MORE successful.

Overall, the book is simply excellent! The habits listed and the way the impact to others is described is deadly accurate. Goldsmith also clearly describes these habits and makes it very easy to identify with each of them as he describes areas to improve on. I never saw how my own attitudes of some of these concepts is something that feeds who I am and that some of those need to change in order to improve myself even farther. I’d definitely recommend this book, but only to someone who really is looking forward to improving their relations and is willing to make some commitments to change. Otherwise, the book would probably be useless. Goldsmith himself talks about those he coaches and only works for those who truly are committed to changing so reading this book and really making it useful requires the same type of person.

Posted by Mike King under Book Reviews | 2 Comments »