The 17 Principles of Personal Achievement

Jul 242010

: Image via Wikipedia

I came across this list from Dr Napoleon Hill and was amazed at the depth of the questions. It will take considerable mental strength to answer the question honestly…at least it did for me.

You can download the complete questions and guide here at 17 Principles of Personal Achievement or at the Napoleon Hill Foundation.

These 17 principles have been responsible for the success of the world’s outstanding leaders. Success is a science and you can learn its’ secretes regardless of your present occupation, environment and residence. You may be a highly regarded successful businessperson now, or you may be a poorly paid factory worker. You may live in a big city or you may live on a farm miles from the nearest town. It makes no difference. You can learn the secrets of success, and your honest answers to these questions are the first step for you to take.

Answer Yes or No to the following questions:

Definiteness of Purpose
- Have you decided upon a definite goal in life?
- Have you set a date for reaching that goal?
- Do you have a specific plan for achieving your goal in life?
- Have you determined what definite benefits your goal in life will bring you?
Mastermind Alliance
- Are other people helping you to attain your goal in life?
- Do you believe that a person can succeed in life without the aid of others?
- Do you believe you can readily succeed in your occupation if you are opposed by your spouse or other members of your family?
- Are there certain advantages when an employer and an employee work together in harmony?
- Do you know how the Mastermind principle makes the United States the richest country in the world?
Applied Faith
- Do you have faith in Infinite Intelligence?
- Do you have confidence in your ability to do anything you desire?
- Do you have confidence in the American form of government?
- Are you entirely free from all of these seven basic fears: Fear of POVERTY; Fear of CRITICISM; Fear of ILL HEALTH; Fear of LOSS OF LOVE; Fear of LOSS OF LIBERTY; Fear of OLD AGE; Fear of DEATH?
Going the Extra Mile
- Do you make a habit of rendering more service than you are paid to do?
- Do you believe there are times when an employee is entitled to ask for more pay?
- Do you know of anyone who has achieved success in any calling without doing more than they were paid to do?
- Do you believe anyone has a right to ask for an increase in salary if they are not doing more than they are paid for?
- If you were an employer, would you be satisfied with the sort of service you are now rendering as an employee?
Pleasing Personality
- Do you have habits which offend others?
- Are you liked by those with whom you work?
- Can you interest people when speaking in public?
- Are there times when you seem to bore others?
Personal Initiative
- Do you plan your own work each day?
- Do you have to have your work planned for you?
- Do you have certain outstanding qualities which are not possessed by others in your line of work?
- When your plans fail, do you “give up?”
- Do you ever create better plans for doing your work more efficiently?
Positive Mental Attitude
- Do you know what is meant by a positive mental attitude?
- Can you control your mental attitude at will?
- Do you know the only thing which you have the complete power of control over?
- Do you know how to detect a negative mental attitude in others?
- Do you have a method of developing the of a positive mental attitude?
Enthusiasm
- Are you known as a person of enthusiasm?
- Can you control your enthusiasm by applying it in carrying out your plans?
- Does your enthusiasm sometimes become the master of your judgment?
Self-Discipline
- Do you hold your tongue when angry?
- In a heated discussion, do you speak before you think?
- Do you lose your patience easily?
- Are you even-tempered at all times?
- Do you allow your affections to sway your judgment?
Accurate Thinking
- Do you make it your duty to learn what others know in connection with your occupation, which may be of value to you?
- Do you express opinions on subjects with which you are not familiar?
- Do you know how to acquire facts in connection with any subject in which you are interested?
Controlled Attention
- Do you concentrate all your thoughts on whatever you are doing?
- Are you easily influenced to change your plans or your decision?
- Are you inclined to abandon your aims and plans when you meet opposition?
- Do you become interested in other people and their plans as quickly as you do in connection with yourself and your own ideas?
Teamwork
- Do you get along harmoniously with others under all circumstances?
- Do you grant favors as freely as you ask for them?
- Do you have continual disagreements with others on certain subjects?
- Do you believe there are advantages in friendly cooperation with those with whom you work?
- Are you aware of the damage you can cause yourself and your fellow-employees by not cooperating with co-workers?
Learning from Adversity and Defeat
- Does defeat cause you to stop trying?
- If you fail in a given effort, do you begin again with a new plan?
- Do you believe that temporary defeat can become failure?
- Have you learned any lessons from defeat?
- Do you know how defeat can be converted into an asset that may lead to success?
Creative Vision
- Is your imagination keen and alert?
- Do you make your own decisions?
- Do you prefer to call on others for their opinions before you act?
- Have you ever invented anything?
- Do you create practical ideas readily in connection with your work?
- Do you believe that a person who creates ideas quickly is worth more than a person who follows only the ideas and plans created by others?
Maintain Sound Health
- Do you know the essential factors of sound health?
- Do you know what sound health begins with?
- Do you know what relation relaxation has to sound health?
- Do you know the four important factors necessary for the proper balancing of sound health?
- Can you explain hypochondria?
Budgeting Time and Money
- Do you save a definite amount of your income?
- Do you spend money without considering what would happen if your income were cut off?
- Do you get sufficient sleep each night?
- Do you spend all your spare time having fun?
Cosmic Habitforce
- Do you have habits which you feel you cannot control?
- Have you had undesirable habits which you have eliminated?
- In the past few months, have you developed any new, desirable habits?

Here’s how to rate your answers

All of the following questions should have been answered “NO”

2b, 2c, 4c, 4d, 5a, 5d, 6b, 6d, 8c, 9b, 9c, 9e, 10b, 11b, 11c, 12c, 13a, 13c, 14c, 16b, 16d, 17a

All other questions should have been answered “YES”

Your score would have been 75 if all of the questions have been answered “NO” or “YES”: as shown above. This is a perfect score and very few people have ever made such a score. Now let’s see what your score actually is.

“Yes” answers instead of “No” __________

“No” answers instead of “Yes”__________

Add the two totals together and subtract from 75. This will be your score.

Find your rating below:

75 points – Perfect (very rare)
66 to 74 points Ð Good (Above Average)
51 to 65 points Ð Fair (Average)
26 to 50 points Ð Poor (Below Average)
25 points and below Ð Unsatisfactory

What was your score?

If your score was average or even below average remember that most people answering this questionnaire made similar scores. The reason, of course, is that few individuals have been trained to grasp the secrets of success the secrets that have lifted thousands upon thousands of average men and women to business and social leadership. There are no mental, physical, educational or age barriers to these secrets of success. Success is a science and its secrets are available to you if you want them.

If you’d like to improve you score and increase your personal performance Contact Me so that put together a plan.

If you’d like share some thoughts, please do so in the comments below.

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And Now For Something Completely Different – Wear Sunscreen

Inner strength No Responses »

Jul 072010

Baz Luhrmann via last.fm

I was listening to the radio on my way back from NLP Training and a VERY old song came on.

It’s actually one of my favorite songs and is commonly referred to as “The Sunscreen Song“. It is what sounds like a commencement speech, set to music. In fact it is not a real commencement speech (though it should be!), but rather a column that appeared in the Chicago Tribune on June 1, 1997 entitled “ADVICE, LIKE YOUTH, PROBABLY JUST WASTED ON THE YOUNG” by staff writer Mary Schmich.

Sometime around Thursday, July 31, 1997, Mary’s article found it’s way onto the internet in the form of an email hoax, claiming to be the 1997 commencement address of Kurt Vonnegut to MIT grads. The real address that year was actually delivered by U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan on June 5. You can find it posted on MIT’s website.

A year later, the email re-circulated claiming to be Kurt’s commencement address to the Class of 1998!

The email caught the attention of Australian film director Baz Luhrmann, who is best known for two films — “Strictly Ballroom,” about competitive dancing, and a 1996 remake of “Romeo and Juliet,” starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Claire Danes.

Luhrmann eventually tracked the source of the speech to Schmich, and contacted Chicago Tribune management to buy the rights to the words to turn it into a song. He took Quindon Tarver’s “Everybody’s Free (to Feel Good)” song, remixed it, and hired Sydney actor Lee Perry to read Schmich’s “speech”. The end result became the seven-minute long “Sunscreen Song”.

The song received heavy airplay from American radio stations nationwide after KNRK in Portland aired an edited (about 4 1/2 minute) version in the spring of 1999 — about the time of graduation that year. According to Luhrmann’s label, Capitol Records, it became the most requested song on radio morning shows in Atlanta and Philadelphia.

The lyrics to Everybody’s Free to Wear Sunscreen, by Mary Schmich:

Wear sunscreen.

If I could offer you only one tip for the future, sunscreen would be it. The long-term benefits of sunscreen have been proved by scientists, whereas the rest of my advice has no basis more reliable than my own meandering experience. I will dispense this advice now.

Enjoy the power and beauty of your youth. Oh, never mind. You will not understand the power and beauty of your youth until they’ve faded. But trust me, in 20 years, you’ll look back at photos of yourself and recall in a way you can’t grasp now how much possibility lay before you and how fabulous you really looked. You are not as fat as you imagine.

Don’t worry about the future. Or worry, but know that worrying is as effective as trying to solve an algebra equation by chewing bubble gum. The real troubles in your life are apt to be things that never crossed your worried mind, the kind that blindside you at 4 p.m. on some idle Tuesday.

Do one thing every day that scares you.

Sing.

Don’t be reckless with other people’s hearts. Don’t put up with people who are reckless with yours.

Floss.

Don’t waste your time on jealousy. Sometimes you’re ahead, sometimes you’re behind. The race is long and, in the end, it’s only with yourself.

Remember compliments you receive. Forget the insults. If you succeed in doing this, tell me how.

Keep your old love letters. Throw away your old bank statements.

Stretch.

Don’t feel guilty if you don’t know what you want to do with your life. The most interesting people I know didn’t know at 22 what they wanted to do with their lives. Some of the most interesting 40-year-olds I know still don’t.

Get plenty of calcium. Be kind to your knees. You’ll miss them when they’re gone.

Maybe you’ll marry, maybe you won’t. Maybe you’ll have children, maybe you won’t. Maybe you’ll divorce at 40, maybe you’ll dance the funky chicken on your 75th wedding anniversary. Whatever you do, don’t congratulate yourself too much, or berate yourself either. Your choices are half chance. So are everybody else’s.

Enjoy your body. Use it every way you can. Don’t be afraid of it or of what other people think of it. It’s the greatest instrument you’ll ever own.

Dance, even if you have nowhere to do it but your living room.

Read the directions, even if you don’t follow them.

Do not read beauty magazines. They will only make you feel ugly.

Get to know your parents. You never know when they’ll be gone for good. Be nice to your siblings. They’re your best link to your past and the people most likely to stick with you in the future.

Understand that friends come and go, but with a precious few you should hold on. Work hard to bridge the gaps in geography and lifestyle, because the older you get, the more you need the people who knew you when you were young.

Live in New York City once, but leave before it makes you hard. Live in Northern California once, but leave before it makes you soft.

Travel.

Accept certain inalienable truths: Prices will rise. Politicians will philander. You, too, will get old. And when you do, you’ll fantasize that when you were young, prices were reasonable, politicians were noble and children respected their elders.

Respect your elders.

Don’t expect anyone else to support you. Maybe you have a trust fund. Maybe you’ll have a wealthy spouse. But you never know when either one might run out.

Don’t mess too much with your hair or by the time you’re 40 it will look 85.

Be careful whose advice you buy, but be patient with those who supply it. Advice is a form of nostalgia. Dispensing it is a way of fishing the past from the disposal, wiping it off, painting over the ugly parts and recycling it for more than it’s worth.

But trust me on the sunscreen.

There are so many messages in this song; I’d love to hear from you on what you got out of it in the comments below.

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What Good is Optimism?

Mental Strength, Personal Success No Responses »

May 202010

: Image by alancleaver_2000 via Flickr

“Two men look out through the same bars: One sees the mud, and one sees the stars.”- Frederick Langbridge, A Cluster of Quiet Thoughts

If you place second in a contest, would you jump for joy and push for better results the next time or would you be discouraged and find an excuse not to compete again?

In life, you are always filled with choices.

You can choose a pessimist’s view and live a victim, self-defeatists, poor me point of view.

Or you can decide to take the optimist’s route and look at life as challenging, fulfilling and exciting.

The choice is yours.

I suggest you now concisely choose an optimist’s point of view.

Why?

Well, optimism has been linked to positive mood and good morale; to academic, athletic, military, occupational and political success; to popularity; to good health, confidence and even to long life and freedom from trauma.

The rates of depression and pessimism have never been higher. It affects middle-aged adults the same way it hits younger people. The mean age of onset has gone from 30 to 15. It is no longer only affects middle-aged housewives or men in midlife crisis, but also is seen in teen-ager’s, college students and just about everybody…it’s time to break away from the crowd!

Here are a few reasons to decide to be an optimist:

* Optimists Expect The Best

Notice the word “expect”. This is powerful in that an optimist doesn’t sit around and wait for the best…they expect the best. This is part of their mental strength. They expect the best the same way you expect a package from Amazon after you’ve ordered a book.

You KNOW it’s coming…you expect it to show up, and it does.

By expecting the best….you’ve subconsciously placed your order and now you KNOW it’s going to show up, and it does.

The defining characteristic of pessimists is that they tend to believe AND expect bad events, which will last a long time and undermine everything they do. The pessimist’s thoughts are self-fulfilling. It’s a vicious cycle and frustrating, the pessimist doesn’t have a clue that they are the cause of their results.

The truth is optimists are confronted with the same hard knocks of this world. What differs is the way they perceive their results. They tend to believe defeat is just a temporary setback, that its causes are confined to this one case. To them, there is no failure, only feedback.

Optimists tend to focus on and plan for the ‘problem’ at hand. They use ‘positive reinterpretation.’ In other words, they most likely reinterpret a negative experience in a way that helps them learn and grow. Such people are unfazed by bad situation, they perceive it is a challenge and try harder and excel at their personal performance.

They don’t disempower themselves by say “things will never get better,” “If I failed once, it will happen again” and “If I experience misfortune in one part of my life, then it will happen in my whole life.”

Positive expectancies of optimists also predict better reactions during transitions to new environments, sudden tragedies and unlikely turn of events. If they fall, they will stand up. They see opportunities instead of obstacles.

* People Respond Positively to Optimists

Optimists are proactive and less dependent on others for their happiness. They find no need to control or manipulate people. They usually draw people towards them. Their optimistic view of the world can be contagious and influence those they are with.

Optimism seems a socially desirable trait in all communities. Those who share optimism are generally accepted while those who spread gloom, panic and hysteria are treated unfavorably.

In life, these people often win elections; get voted most congenial, sought for advice and are “in the right place at the right time.”

When the going gets tough, optimists get mentally stronger….they develop a warrior mindset!

Optimists typically maintain higher levels of subjective well-being during times of stress than do people who are less optimistic. In contrast, pessimists are likely to react to stressful events by denying that the event exists or by avoiding dealing with problems. Pessimists are more likely to quit trying when difficulties arise.

* Optimists Persevere

They just don’t give up easily, they are also known for their patience…inching their way closer to their goal and dream.

* Optimists Are Healthier And Live Longer

Medical research has justified that simple pleasures and a positive outlook can cause a measurable increase in the body’s ability to fight disease.

Here’s a great article from ScienceDaily – People Who Wear Rose-colored Glasses See More.

Optimists’ health is unusually good. They age well, much freer than most people from the usual physical ills of middle age. And they get to outlive those prone to negative thoughts.

I’ll ask…isn’t NOW a good time to choose to be an optimist?

Think positively towards your more fulfilled life.

Look forward to success in all your endeavors.

Be resilient.

Like everybody else you are bound to hit lows sometimes but decide you are not going to stay there. Carry yourself out of the mud and improve your chances of getting back on the right track.

Inspire others to remove their dark-colored glasses and see life in the bright side!

Let me know your reasons why you’ve chosen to be an optimist in the comments below.

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Do You Have G.A.S?

Mental Strength No Responses »

May 032010

: Image via Wikipedia

No…not that kind of gas…this kind of G.A.S. (General adaptation syndrome).

When we’re exposed to a “stress” most of us react in a specific way or stages.

Stress is how our and mind and body reacts to a stressor. This could real like getting chased by a lion, or imagined – like worrying about something- to the mind it’s all the same.

Short term stress can actually be healthy while chronic long term stress can lead to unhealthy situations.

Here are the stages of stress during that we experience.

Alarm is the first stage. When the threat or stressor is recognized the body’s stress response is a state of alarm. During this stage adrenaline will be produced in order to bring about the fight-or-flight response.
Resistance is the second stage. If the stressor persists the body begins to try to adapt to the strains or demands of the environment, the body cannot keep this up indefinitely, so its resources are gradually depleted.
Exhaustion is the third and final stage in the GAS model. At this point, all of the body’s resources are eventually depleted and the body is unable to maintain normal function.

“So what…how does this affect me?” You ask.

Let’s presume that most of us are in the second stage most of the time. Yea, most of don’t have to run away from lions, but think about your daily activities:

Commuting to work (traffic)
Meeting deadlines
Business meetings
Putting out “fires” at work
The commute back home
Family matters

These are all stressors. Get the picture?

Most of us have been in Stage Two for so long that it feels normal. The only reason many of us don’t slip into Stage Three – Exhaustion – is the weekend!

S.A.I.D What!

This brings us to S.A.I.D or Specific Adaptation to Imposed Demand

In physical fitness there is a principle – the SAID principle. It states that the human body adapts specifically to imposed demands. That is, certain stressors on the human system, whether biomechanical or neurological will create a Specific Adaptation to Imposed Demands (SAID).

SAID is a training principle that explains that a certain exercise or type of training produces adaptations specific to the activity performed and only in the muscles (and energy systems) that are stressed by the activity.

The more the stress the efficient the muscles become at performing the task. This is one reason to mix-up any fitness routine. The benefits start to diminish as the body becomes more efficient.

You Largest Under Utilized Muscle

You brain is a muscle as well. Sure, in most cases it doesn’t grow like a skeletal muscle, but it does grow by making more neural connection. The connection, the more it grows.

If we don’t give the mind a variety of actives to cope with, the brain cannot make more connections. This is the foundation of mental strength development, to face an imposed “stressful” situation head-on and succeed at the task.

Let’s say that you’ve wanted to start a business for sometime now but have been afraid to move forward. You’ve decided not taking action, in others words you’ve adapted to the stress (Stage Two in G.A.S). And because you haven’t taken any action your body has adapted to the imposed demand (S.A.I.D) of doing nothing VERY efficiently.

To overcome this you MUST impose MORE stress, but just for a short period of time. This could as simple as calling City Hall and asking what’s required to start a business. You don’t even have to give them your name, just make the call.

Before the call you’ll feel a spike of adrenaline due to the perceived stress. The when the call is over you’ll feel great about what you just accomplished. You “spiked” your stress and were in Stage One of G.A.S. for a short period time and then moved back to “recovery.” And look…it wasn’t even the weekend yet

When you keep building on this everyday and add short bursts of “stress” you’ll soon condition your mind to “fight” instead of “flight.” Then when S.A.I.D. kicks in you’ll become so comfortable with moving out of your comfort zone that you will see all the possibilities that are in front of you.