Graphcard
Monday, April 26, 2010
THE EFFECTIVE YOU
Every person has his or her elastic limit but until then, you will always be able to do anything you venture to do that is within your capability. Have you ever seen some one that out of the blue is being called out to do something, just do it as if he had prepared for it? Most people refer to these people as “Genius”. The fact is you can also be a genius in your own chosen field of endeavour. Below are the few steps you can take to make you function at your very best thus maximizing your productivity and personality.
Never Try To Do Everything At Once
You must understand the very concept that you are built to do one thing at a time no matter how much time it is involved in getting it done. If you don’t complete a task before going to start up another task, there is a high tendency that you will also leave that very task undone to start up another one. However, there are some people that can manage multiple task at the same time but fact is that, they cannot give their energy equally to all the task they are handling as such, the task in completion does not really speak well of them. Also, handling more than one task takes a lot of energy from you and you cannot function properly in a state of mind that is constantly being stressed.
In the words of James Litter “One thought driven home is better than three left on base”
“One of the devil’s tricks is getting us to say yes to too many good things, then we end up being spread so thin that we are mediocre in everything and excellent in nothing”- J Mason.
Something that is good and something that is right is not always the same thing. We must learn to say no to too many good ideas because a good idea is not necessarily a God idea. Saying no to a good idea does not mean saying never, No may mean not right now. Saying no can free you from burdens that you don’t need to carry now and help you to devout the correct amount of attention and effort to God’s priorities in your life.
“Yes and No are the two most important words that you will ever say, these are the two words that determine your destiny in life. How and when you say them will determine how you spend your entire future”- J Mason.
Concentration is the key that opens the doors of accomplishments. Where you concentrate most is where your strength and momentum would be created. Wherever your attention goes, your thoughts, your feelings, your life goes also. Your attention is your life. The amount of attention you pay to something is a chief indicator of how important it is to you. When you pay attention to something, you are saying, “I value you and I consider you to be important”. You will always give your attention to the things you value most. You are reading this book because there is something about this book you value and want to keep it. You cannot hit a target you can’t see and you can’t see a target if you are not focused. Staying focused is from the mind.
Emphasize Strengths, Don’t fix Weaknesses
Most people are god at a handful of things and miserable at most. I am great at product creation but terrible at taking innovative action and marketing strategies. I am very good at sourcing for new ways doing things but not good at implementing them.
It is far more lucrative and fun to leverage your strengths instead of attempting to fix all the chinks in your armour. Since I am not good at implementing them, I find solutions then give it out to some people on my team, who are better off implementing any creative idea given to them than to try creating themselves. So, we complement each other and the company grows. The company does not grow because we are dividing the job we do but because we are all focusing on our strength and not our weakness. The choice is between multiplication of results using strengths or incremental improvements fixing weaknesses that will, at best become mediocre. Focus on better use of what you are best at, instead of constant repair.
“If the only tool you have is a hammer, you tend to treat everything like a nail”.
Working less is not Laziness
Doing less meaningless work, so that you can focus on things of greater personal importance, is not laziness. This is hard for most to accept because our culture tends to reward personal sacrifice instead of personal productivity. Few people choose to measure results of their actions and thus measure their contribution in time. More time equals more self worth and more reinforcement from those above and around them.
Let’s define laziness as, to endure a non-ideal existence to let circumstance or others decide life for you, or to amass a fortune while passing through life like a spectator from an office window. The size of your bank account does not change this, nor does the number of hours you log in handling unimportant e-mail. Focus on being productive instead of being busy.
Ask for Forgiveness and not Permission
If it isn’t going to devastate the people around you, try it and then justify it. People deny things on emotional basis that they can learn to accept after the fact. If the potential damage is moderate or in any way reversible, don’t give people the chance to say no. most people are fast to stop you before you even get started but hesitate to get in the way if you are moving. Get good at being a trouble maker and saying sorry when you have really messed up.
Value people
Relationships help us to define who we are and what we can become. Most of us can trace our successes to pivotal relationships. People will always move towards people who value and increase them and away from people who devalue them
The purpose of life is not to win. The purpose of life is to grow and to share, when you come to look back on all that you have done in life, you will get more satisfaction from the pleasure you have brought to other people’s lives than you will from the times that you out did and defeated them. There is a simple rule about your personal relationship with people and that is, “do unto others what you will like others to do unto you”. It is what you give that you receive. In a sentence, what ever you expect from people, you first give it out for in giving you will receive.
Alternating periods of activity and rest is necessary to survive, let alone thrive. By working only when you are more effective, life is both more productive and more enjoyable. It is the perfect example of having your cake and eating it, too.
Never Try To Do Everything At Once
You must understand the very concept that you are built to do one thing at a time no matter how much time it is involved in getting it done. If you don’t complete a task before going to start up another task, there is a high tendency that you will also leave that very task undone to start up another one. However, there are some people that can manage multiple task at the same time but fact is that, they cannot give their energy equally to all the task they are handling as such, the task in completion does not really speak well of them. Also, handling more than one task takes a lot of energy from you and you cannot function properly in a state of mind that is constantly being stressed.
In the words of James Litter “One thought driven home is better than three left on base”
“One of the devil’s tricks is getting us to say yes to too many good things, then we end up being spread so thin that we are mediocre in everything and excellent in nothing”- J Mason.
Something that is good and something that is right is not always the same thing. We must learn to say no to too many good ideas because a good idea is not necessarily a God idea. Saying no to a good idea does not mean saying never, No may mean not right now. Saying no can free you from burdens that you don’t need to carry now and help you to devout the correct amount of attention and effort to God’s priorities in your life.
“Yes and No are the two most important words that you will ever say, these are the two words that determine your destiny in life. How and when you say them will determine how you spend your entire future”- J Mason.
Concentration is the key that opens the doors of accomplishments. Where you concentrate most is where your strength and momentum would be created. Wherever your attention goes, your thoughts, your feelings, your life goes also. Your attention is your life. The amount of attention you pay to something is a chief indicator of how important it is to you. When you pay attention to something, you are saying, “I value you and I consider you to be important”. You will always give your attention to the things you value most. You are reading this book because there is something about this book you value and want to keep it. You cannot hit a target you can’t see and you can’t see a target if you are not focused. Staying focused is from the mind.
Emphasize Strengths, Don’t fix Weaknesses
Most people are god at a handful of things and miserable at most. I am great at product creation but terrible at taking innovative action and marketing strategies. I am very good at sourcing for new ways doing things but not good at implementing them.
It is far more lucrative and fun to leverage your strengths instead of attempting to fix all the chinks in your armour. Since I am not good at implementing them, I find solutions then give it out to some people on my team, who are better off implementing any creative idea given to them than to try creating themselves. So, we complement each other and the company grows. The company does not grow because we are dividing the job we do but because we are all focusing on our strength and not our weakness. The choice is between multiplication of results using strengths or incremental improvements fixing weaknesses that will, at best become mediocre. Focus on better use of what you are best at, instead of constant repair.
“If the only tool you have is a hammer, you tend to treat everything like a nail”.
Working less is not Laziness
Doing less meaningless work, so that you can focus on things of greater personal importance, is not laziness. This is hard for most to accept because our culture tends to reward personal sacrifice instead of personal productivity. Few people choose to measure results of their actions and thus measure their contribution in time. More time equals more self worth and more reinforcement from those above and around them.
Let’s define laziness as, to endure a non-ideal existence to let circumstance or others decide life for you, or to amass a fortune while passing through life like a spectator from an office window. The size of your bank account does not change this, nor does the number of hours you log in handling unimportant e-mail. Focus on being productive instead of being busy.
Ask for Forgiveness and not Permission
If it isn’t going to devastate the people around you, try it and then justify it. People deny things on emotional basis that they can learn to accept after the fact. If the potential damage is moderate or in any way reversible, don’t give people the chance to say no. most people are fast to stop you before you even get started but hesitate to get in the way if you are moving. Get good at being a trouble maker and saying sorry when you have really messed up.
Value people
Relationships help us to define who we are and what we can become. Most of us can trace our successes to pivotal relationships. People will always move towards people who value and increase them and away from people who devalue them
The purpose of life is not to win. The purpose of life is to grow and to share, when you come to look back on all that you have done in life, you will get more satisfaction from the pleasure you have brought to other people’s lives than you will from the times that you out did and defeated them. There is a simple rule about your personal relationship with people and that is, “do unto others what you will like others to do unto you”. It is what you give that you receive. In a sentence, what ever you expect from people, you first give it out for in giving you will receive.
Alternating periods of activity and rest is necessary to survive, let alone thrive. By working only when you are more effective, life is both more productive and more enjoyable. It is the perfect example of having your cake and eating it, too.
HOW TO ASSESS YOUR RELATIONSHIP
Hello readers, I’m here again with another insight on how you can make the best out of your relationship. You know, that your personal relationship with people be it your friends, family or your spouse to some extent affect how far you can go in life, especially the kind of relationship with your spouse. So, if you are always receiving support from these people you love, it boost your confidence, balances your psychology and gives you a calm but positive mental attitude. This positive mental attitude of calmness and confidence helps to give you the belief that there is a power greater you that can make you achieve anything.
In the words of John Maxwell, “relationships help make us to define who we are and what we can become. Also, most of us can trace our success in life to pivotal relationship”. Thus, the kind of relationship you are into can either make you or destroy you. The choice of relationship you go into is yours.
Now, my question is, what kind of relationship are you into right now? Does it promote you and your values/beliefs or does it demote them? Does it make you feel like you have arrived in life or does it makes you think of when you will actually start up your life? I can go on and on, but the essence of these questions is to help you assess your love life. Furthermore, questions like, how far will I go in life if I continue in this relationship? Should paint a clearer picture of what your relationship is like or what exactly do I want from it and I’m I getting them?
After you have answered these questions, here are the few simple steps you can use to assess your relationship.
1. Take a pen and a clean sheet of paper, write down the things you value most and believe in,
2. Put down your goals and dreams that you want to achieve. Here you can also break them down into long term and short term goals and give specific periods of time you want to achieve these goals and dreams. ( to read more on goal settings visit www.ndantiobong.blogspot.com)
3. Pick another clean sheet of paper, write down the things you have achieved so far in your relationship. Here, you must be very sincere with yourself and not allow sentiment cloud your sense of judgement after all, its your life you are trying to define and not some other person’s own.
4. Compare your achievements so far with your goals and dreams then score yourself. If it is below average, then you’ve got a problem that needs to be fixed. This problem could either be you or your spouse.
5. To know where the problem is from, ask yourself this question, what have I really contributed to this relationship? How much time have I committed to the success of this relationship? What have I done to improve my relationship? If you are not satisfied with the answers you get, you know you have not done enough that is expected of you to do to make your relationship better, you can then ask, how can I improve my relationship?
Note: you will be tempted to shift of the all blame to your spouse and pretend to have done everything possible to make it work and that your spouse always end up spoiling things. The fact remains that, until you accept mistakes, you can never make corrections. Accepting your mistakes is the first step to correcting relationship. This piece of information is not to make you feel bad about the mistakes you have made already but to help you correct those mistakes. You must understand that life is a ladder of progression, a sequence or errors and corrections. Sometimes, we don’t get it right on the first trial, so don’t give up because here is an opportunity to get things back to normal.
Below, I will be sharing with you few tips you can use to make your relationship better that what it is now.
1. Be honest with yourself first before others. Like our famous English quote, that “honesty is the best policy”. Indeed it is still the best policy. Most people go into relationship with dishonesty and thus building their relationship on lies. Even the scripture warns, that “when the foundation is faulty, there is nothing a righteous man can do”.
There is only one thing I know about telling lies and that is, if you tell a lie, you will always try to cover it up so that the person you told will never know and the only way to cover it up is by telling more lies. But, if you are always telling the truth, you will not need to remember what you said three months ago because that was the truth.
The truth is the last person we should ever lie to, is our spouse but the fact remains that most of us tell more lies to our spouse than to any other person. When you tell a lie to someone you love, when the person happens to find out the truth, what do you expect? More love from him/her? The question is, how would you feel if your spouse betrays you by lying to you? I don’t want you to answer that, but just try to be asking yourself this question, it each time you want to tell a lie to your spouse.
However, if you started or built your relationship based on stories that were not true, why not sit your spouse down and tell him/her the truth. If he or she truly loves you, will respect you more for the courage and may even share his/her own untrue stories with you. This will go a long way to foster trust among each other.
2. You must understand that the success of your relationship depends more on you than it is to your spouse. How true is this? If you and your spouse understand this very step, both of you will always treat your relationship as a very important commodity that is of high value.
In the words of John Maxwell that, “people will always move towards people who increases and values them and away from people who devalue them”.
3. In your relationship, you look for potentials and not perfection. The way our creator made us was to complete one another. So, your weakness may be my strength and your strength my weakness. If you are always looking at your spouse’s weakness, your relationship will not thrive but if both of you are always looking at your strengths, nothing can stop you two from achieving what you want. Remember, love is not about two similar people looking at different directions but two different people looking in the same direction.
Finally, after you have apply these few tips, watch out for your relationship. Your relationship can even improve faster if you place this information where your spouse can see and read it. Better still, if you make it look like he/she found out this information on his/her own.
In the words of John Maxwell, “relationships help make us to define who we are and what we can become. Also, most of us can trace our success in life to pivotal relationship”. Thus, the kind of relationship you are into can either make you or destroy you. The choice of relationship you go into is yours.
Now, my question is, what kind of relationship are you into right now? Does it promote you and your values/beliefs or does it demote them? Does it make you feel like you have arrived in life or does it makes you think of when you will actually start up your life? I can go on and on, but the essence of these questions is to help you assess your love life. Furthermore, questions like, how far will I go in life if I continue in this relationship? Should paint a clearer picture of what your relationship is like or what exactly do I want from it and I’m I getting them?
After you have answered these questions, here are the few simple steps you can use to assess your relationship.
1. Take a pen and a clean sheet of paper, write down the things you value most and believe in,
2. Put down your goals and dreams that you want to achieve. Here you can also break them down into long term and short term goals and give specific periods of time you want to achieve these goals and dreams. ( to read more on goal settings visit www.ndantiobong.blogspot.com)
3. Pick another clean sheet of paper, write down the things you have achieved so far in your relationship. Here, you must be very sincere with yourself and not allow sentiment cloud your sense of judgement after all, its your life you are trying to define and not some other person’s own.
4. Compare your achievements so far with your goals and dreams then score yourself. If it is below average, then you’ve got a problem that needs to be fixed. This problem could either be you or your spouse.
5. To know where the problem is from, ask yourself this question, what have I really contributed to this relationship? How much time have I committed to the success of this relationship? What have I done to improve my relationship? If you are not satisfied with the answers you get, you know you have not done enough that is expected of you to do to make your relationship better, you can then ask, how can I improve my relationship?
Note: you will be tempted to shift of the all blame to your spouse and pretend to have done everything possible to make it work and that your spouse always end up spoiling things. The fact remains that, until you accept mistakes, you can never make corrections. Accepting your mistakes is the first step to correcting relationship. This piece of information is not to make you feel bad about the mistakes you have made already but to help you correct those mistakes. You must understand that life is a ladder of progression, a sequence or errors and corrections. Sometimes, we don’t get it right on the first trial, so don’t give up because here is an opportunity to get things back to normal.
Below, I will be sharing with you few tips you can use to make your relationship better that what it is now.
1. Be honest with yourself first before others. Like our famous English quote, that “honesty is the best policy”. Indeed it is still the best policy. Most people go into relationship with dishonesty and thus building their relationship on lies. Even the scripture warns, that “when the foundation is faulty, there is nothing a righteous man can do”.
There is only one thing I know about telling lies and that is, if you tell a lie, you will always try to cover it up so that the person you told will never know and the only way to cover it up is by telling more lies. But, if you are always telling the truth, you will not need to remember what you said three months ago because that was the truth.
The truth is the last person we should ever lie to, is our spouse but the fact remains that most of us tell more lies to our spouse than to any other person. When you tell a lie to someone you love, when the person happens to find out the truth, what do you expect? More love from him/her? The question is, how would you feel if your spouse betrays you by lying to you? I don’t want you to answer that, but just try to be asking yourself this question, it each time you want to tell a lie to your spouse.
However, if you started or built your relationship based on stories that were not true, why not sit your spouse down and tell him/her the truth. If he or she truly loves you, will respect you more for the courage and may even share his/her own untrue stories with you. This will go a long way to foster trust among each other.
2. You must understand that the success of your relationship depends more on you than it is to your spouse. How true is this? If you and your spouse understand this very step, both of you will always treat your relationship as a very important commodity that is of high value.
In the words of John Maxwell that, “people will always move towards people who increases and values them and away from people who devalue them”.
3. In your relationship, you look for potentials and not perfection. The way our creator made us was to complete one another. So, your weakness may be my strength and your strength my weakness. If you are always looking at your spouse’s weakness, your relationship will not thrive but if both of you are always looking at your strengths, nothing can stop you two from achieving what you want. Remember, love is not about two similar people looking at different directions but two different people looking in the same direction.
Finally, after you have apply these few tips, watch out for your relationship. Your relationship can even improve faster if you place this information where your spouse can see and read it. Better still, if you make it look like he/she found out this information on his/her own.
Sammy's Big Catch
Sammy was a good-looking young boy who lived in the deep south. His summer days were filled with times of walking through the woods, playing with friends, and fishing in the pond down the dirt road Fishing was by far his favorite thing to do. Just about every day during his summer vacation, he would dig up some worms and head off, pole in hand, for a day of fishing.
This steamy hot day was like most others during Sammy's summer break. Waking early, he could hear the pond calling him to come fish. Sammy quietly walked out the front door, grabbed his pitchfork and worm pail from the porch, and walked into the woods to search for bait. He turned over old stumps and dug under leaves hoping to find worms. Under one old stump he hit the jackpot. The ground was writhing. In two minutes he had all the bait he needed, and in 15 minutes he was at the pond.
Reaching into his bait bucket, Sammy pulled out a big worm. He double hooked it and tossed it into the water. He noticed a stinging in his hand, but filled with the excitement of the moment, he paid no attention to it.
Within 30 seconds, Sammy had a strike and pulled in a nice catfish.
Wow, he thought, a fish in the first minute. This is unbelievable!
He put the catch on his stringer, hurried to re-bait his hook, and tried his luck again. Once again he felt a stinging sensation in his hand as he threw his hook into the pond. He didn't have time to worry about it.
Within just a few seconds, he had another huge fish. He fumbled the next time he baited his hook--his hand felt numb and stiff. But Sammy was too excited about catching another fish to give it much thought.
At the end of only an hour of fishing, Sammy had caught eight large fish.
This was definitely his best fishing day ever. He was so proud of his accomplishment that, even though there was plenty of day left to fish, he threw the heavy stringer of fish over his shoulder and dashed down the dirt road toward home to show off his catch to his mom and dad.
The local sheriff happened to drive up alongside Sammy and started to congratulate him on his catch of fish. With a smile and a victory whoop, Sammy held up the stringer. The sheriff gasped, parked his car and strode over to Sammy.
His eyes hadn't deceived him--Sammy's arms really were red and swollen to about twice their normal size. Exactly where have you been and what bait did you use to catch all those fish?" the sheriff asked Sammy, already guessing the answer.
I found some special bait under an old stump," Sammy boasted.
"These worms really wiggle good," he commented, handing up the bait bucket for inspection. After a close look at the worms, the sheriff went into fast-forward. Securing the bucket in his truck, he then scooped Sammy and his stringer of fish into the back seat of his patrol car. Spinning a U-turn on the gravel road, he sped off to the hospital, but Sammy was already dead.
What the sheriff had discovered was that Sammy had been fishing with baby rattlesnakes. Sammy's deadly bait brought him a good morning's fishing but cost him his life. Had Sammy stopped fishing after that first sting, he could have been saved. One bite from a baby rattler won't kill a person who gets treatment in time. But Sammy was having fun and didn't bother himself with the small voice of pain in his hand. Then, as his hand grew numb, even that small voice was silenced.
Playing around with sin is like using baby rattlesnakes for bait.
Sinning seems harmless to young people who don't recognize sin and are unaware of its deadly consequences. The more sin you get into, however, the more numb you become to its sting. In the excitement of the moment, you ignore the still small voice of God warning you of danger and encouraging you to choose life instead of death.
“If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.” -1 John 1:8
Sammy was a good-looking young boy who lived in the deep south. His summer days were filled with times of walking through the woods, playing with friends, and fishing in the pond down the dirt road Fishing was by far his favorite thing to do. Just about every day during his summer vacation, he would dig up some worms and head off, pole in hand, for a day of fishing.
This steamy hot day was like most others during Sammy's summer break. Waking early, he could hear the pond calling him to come fish. Sammy quietly walked out the front door, grabbed his pitchfork and worm pail from the porch, and walked into the woods to search for bait. He turned over old stumps and dug under leaves hoping to find worms. Under one old stump he hit the jackpot. The ground was writhing. In two minutes he had all the bait he needed, and in 15 minutes he was at the pond.
Reaching into his bait bucket, Sammy pulled out a big worm. He double hooked it and tossed it into the water. He noticed a stinging in his hand, but filled with the excitement of the moment, he paid no attention to it.
Within 30 seconds, Sammy had a strike and pulled in a nice catfish.
Wow, he thought, a fish in the first minute. This is unbelievable!
He put the catch on his stringer, hurried to re-bait his hook, and tried his luck again. Once again he felt a stinging sensation in his hand as he threw his hook into the pond. He didn't have time to worry about it.
Within just a few seconds, he had another huge fish. He fumbled the next time he baited his hook--his hand felt numb and stiff. But Sammy was too excited about catching another fish to give it much thought.
At the end of only an hour of fishing, Sammy had caught eight large fish.
This was definitely his best fishing day ever. He was so proud of his accomplishment that, even though there was plenty of day left to fish, he threw the heavy stringer of fish over his shoulder and dashed down the dirt road toward home to show off his catch to his mom and dad.
The local sheriff happened to drive up alongside Sammy and started to congratulate him on his catch of fish. With a smile and a victory whoop, Sammy held up the stringer. The sheriff gasped, parked his car and strode over to Sammy.
His eyes hadn't deceived him--Sammy's arms really were red and swollen to about twice their normal size. Exactly where have you been and what bait did you use to catch all those fish?" the sheriff asked Sammy, already guessing the answer.
I found some special bait under an old stump," Sammy boasted.
"These worms really wiggle good," he commented, handing up the bait bucket for inspection. After a close look at the worms, the sheriff went into fast-forward. Securing the bucket in his truck, he then scooped Sammy and his stringer of fish into the back seat of his patrol car. Spinning a U-turn on the gravel road, he sped off to the hospital, but Sammy was already dead.
What the sheriff had discovered was that Sammy had been fishing with baby rattlesnakes. Sammy's deadly bait brought him a good morning's fishing but cost him his life. Had Sammy stopped fishing after that first sting, he could have been saved. One bite from a baby rattler won't kill a person who gets treatment in time. But Sammy was having fun and didn't bother himself with the small voice of pain in his hand. Then, as his hand grew numb, even that small voice was silenced.
Playing around with sin is like using baby rattlesnakes for bait.
Sinning seems harmless to young people who don't recognize sin and are unaware of its deadly consequences. The more sin you get into, however, the more numb you become to its sting. In the excitement of the moment, you ignore the still small voice of God warning you of danger and encouraging you to choose life instead of death.
“If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.” -1 John 1:8
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)