Create value to create success

“Strive not to be a success, but rather to be of value.”  Albert Einstein

Are you seeking success or seeking to create value?

Of course there is a context for success and value,  in a classroom perhaps, you are creating success for yourself.    The value is in the learning.

The most successful people are continually learning, continually adding value to themselves and to others.   It is the continual learning that creates value that leads to success.   The most successful people spend much more than the average person on developing their skills.    The less successful, or even unsucessful, spend more time entertaining themselves than they do actively engaging in learning something new.

In a world that is only getting more and more competitive the entertainment lifestyle will have to give way to continuous learning and the result of continually being able to add value to the organization, community, and others in the world around you.

Now, if the most successful people spend 10% on reinventing themselves by learning something new each day, what are you doing to increase your success and value?

Energy thief

“Don’t become a victim of yourself. Forget about the thief waiting in the alley; what about the thief in your mind?” Jim Rohn

Everyday a thief runs through your mind and robs you of your potential.   You know the thief is there and you can hear him as tells you stories, stories that suggest that you are wrong, broken or incapable of doing what you want to do.

What is the thief taking from you?   The thief is taking your life, your dreams and desires and telling you that it can’t be done and you believe the thief.    When worry enters your mind it is the voice of the thief and the thief is taking that energy that would have been productive and creative and removing it from you.    It means that the time you spent worrying about something that you lost the opportunity to do something, to make something, to be something, to feel something good and instead you felt drained.

Now you could tell the thief to take a hike but it is likely the thief is in control of those negative thoughts.    What is stealing your dreams?

What thoughts do you have that are robbing you of the energy you need to do the things you really want to do?

Some people are so taken up with the thief they don’t even question the voice in the mind that is telling them to “be quiet”, “to take it easy”, “ go the easy way”, or “you can’t do that, be serious”.   If you’ve heard those voices and just let it slide you might be too close to the thief.

Listen to the words of the thief and see if the words are true.    Even if they are, are they your words or the thief’s words?

What do you want to do to get your life back?

little by little

Enjoy the little things, for one day you may look back and realize they were the big things.  ~Robert Brault

The little things add up to be a big thing.   Just think about all the learning you did, little by little, day by day until you became an expert in one thing.   Living in a world where things change constantly the idea that what you learned years ago is enough has long passed being true.  Today, learning has to be constant.    Learn a little each day.   Read for an hour, listen to audio books, and learn something new daily.

The key to success is to do little things each day – little by little – it adds up to something, something you can build a future upon.

What are you reading?

What are you learning?

How are you growing?

How are you becoming better in all aspects of your life?

Invest in yourself.  The top achievers invest 10% of their income in personal growth.   They desire to get better every day in every way.    Their personal success is based on learning more and more until you reach personal mastery and even then there is more to learn.

Think about the biggest success stories, people who have achieved great personal success, what was it that they did to get there?   They developed their strengths, increased their knowledge and invested in themselves.

How much are you investing in yourself?   Are you investing 10% per year in your personal growth?

Little by little that is what it takes to become a success and stay a success.

Live energetically

“Love the moment and the energy of the moment will spread beyond all boundaries.”

Sister Corita Kent

Energy is the source of our life and the more engaging positive energy we have inside us the better our life will be.    When you have great thoughts your life improves.   When you have thoughts that everything is going to go wrong it usually does.   We focus on what we want to see rather than focusing on what is really there.

Think about the car you drive, you probably see all kinds of those cars when you are driving because you are aware of that type of car.   So much of what happen around us is based on our view of the world, and what we are paying attention to.   Pink elephants.

If it is your thoughts that make you “feel” a certain way then what would it take to change those thoughts.   Why are you thinking what you are thinking right now?

What are you worried about?

What do you fear?

What is causing you anxiety or pain?

What pushes your buttons?

What makes you angry?

What makes you happy?

Now, these questions aren’t causing anything to happen, but your reaction to the questions might.   For example your buttons might get pushed by the way someone drives, maybe they drive too slow, or they don’t signal their intentions, or they pull right in front of you even though there is an open road ahead.   Maybe it is the incessant whine of a child who isn’t getting what they want.  For some people who don’t have children a child who is crying or whining gets on their nerves.

So, things that push your buttons rob you of your energy.  You start to feel stress and that negative energy wants to be released.    Likewise when you are filled with positive energy (laughter, joy,  happi ness) you want to release that energy as well.   Which would you rather share, your positive energy or your negative energy?   Which energy do you think brings people towards you and engages them?    Someone laughing hysterically usually draws on-lookers as they want to have whatever that happiness is.   Someone yelling angrily will cause people to walk as far away as possible from that situation.

Your energetic view of life is a choice that you make.  If your thoughts are generally negative and disempowering then you’d feel a lot better if you could shift those thoughts to positive ones.   Those who have a positive outlook on life would feel even better when they are able to increase their positive thinking.

What kind of thoughts do you most frequently have?

What kind of thoughts do you want?

What is stopping you from having more positive thoughts?

live energetically

Where is your energy?

If your energy is catabolic (lethargy, defiance) then a little bit of that energy is very powerfully negative.  In other words a little bit of those types of energy robs you of the energy you need to be innovative, creative, …

Small amounts of negative energy drains you of the energy you need to really to be as successful as you’d like to be.   Negative energy slows you down – you worry, you fret, you get anxious, you doubt your abilities, you think rather than act, you can’t decide, you wallow and procrastinate.    Knowing what level of negative energy you have can be the knowledge that you have been looking for, the knowledge that will set you free.

“Every human has four endowments- self awareness, conscience, independent will and creative imagination. These give us the ultimate human freedom… The power to choose, to respond, to change.”

Stephen R. Covey

energy leadership

Nothing can stop the man with the right mental attitude from achieving his goal; nothing on earth can help the man with the wrong mental attitude.
Thomas Jefferson

Energy, what is it?    Energy can be considered the ability to lead others or a quantity of a force that can be exerted to create a change.    Our thoughts could be considered energy, energy that is either creative or destructive.   The mental energy to create positive thoughts releases chemicals into the body that are building.  Thoughts that are negative release hormones into the body that are destructive.

Positive energy is considered anabolic energy or building energy that increases joy, happiness and success in life.   Anabolic energy shows up as a force for helping others, having compassion and wanting to serve in some capacity.    This building energy is the kind of energy that enables positive change to take place and the ability to take advantage of and create opportunities.

At the highest levels this anabolic energy allows one to synthesize information from multiple sources and create a unified view.   At high levels anabolic energy shows up  as confidence with a desire to create “everyone wins”  outcomes.    People who operate with a high level of anabolic energy are seen as mostly non-judgmental and willingly acknowledge others contributions.

People with high levels of what is called Level 4 (Compassion) and Level 5 (Opportunity) energy are strong leaders who are driven in a compassionate manner.     Considering that all people are leaders in some form or another it would seem that developing the capacity to increase anabolic energy would be a great benefit for improving leadership ability.

What level of energy are you operating at?

Consider getting an energy leadership assessment and find out what your leadership potential is.