We’ve all said it. I’m willing to bet you’ve said it more than once. “All I need is a few more hours in a day.” Or maybe it’s, “If only there were 8 days in a week.” There just never seems to be enough time. But the truth is there’s plenty of time in each and every day to accomplish your most important tasks and it only takes about half an hour a day to set yourself up for success. How can this miracle occur? You just need to weaponize your day.
What do I mean by weaponizing your day exactly? Too many of us go into our days without a plan. We simply take whatever task presents itself, complete it, then move on to the next task. What you need to do is determine ahead of time what tasks are important? What tasks are going to be the most productive for you? Think about that for a minute. What tasks are hanging over your head right now? What tasks would advance you most financially, professionally, or personally if they were completed tomorrow? Now write those tasks down! Take a page from David Letterman’s playbook and make a top ten list. This list will be the backbone of your day. Come rain or shine, if nothing else gets accomplished, these 10 items will be done! Do this each and every day. I find that it works best if I make it part of my nightly routine. Before I brush my teeth for bed, I write my top 10 list down in my trusty notebook.
So what’s making a top ten list going to do for you? Well, first of all it will help you prioritize your day. You’ll no longer be a slave to those little projects that seem to pop up out of nowhere. When you prioritize your most important tasks it makes it infinitely easier to say no to the little things that crawl out of the woodworks to drain suck up your precious time. Every time someone asks you to do something you’ll immediately think, “Is this task really important enough to take time away from my top ten? Should I delegate this task or just say no all together?” By setting a goal for yourself ahead of time you’ve ensured that you don’t wander through your life just trying to keep up. You have a plan, a purpose, a direction; and nothing will derail you from that unless it’s of the utmost importance.
I was watching a computer animated film the other day where the main character tried to fix this strange invention that was supposed to make the perfect peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Well the repairs didn’t go so well and the device sprayed PB & J all over everyone in the room. Instead of getting angry everyone congratulated the young lad for his spectacular failure! If only real life was like this. In the real world we’re bombarded with slogans like, “Failure is not an option!” The fact is failure is an option. Any time you take on a new endeavor, you’re more likely to fail than to succeed. Should this deter you? No way!
Failure is a tool to build success. Success is the good stuff. It’s the goal. But failure is what will lead you there. Failure is a learning experience. From success you get nothing in terms of development. When you fail you haven’t really made a mistake, you’ve simply found the wrong path to success. After a while you’ll get on the right track and success will be yours as long as you have the guts to keep on going.
Persistence is what separates the achievers from the naysayers. Too may people have it in their heads that you should never fail. If you’re one of those people then I can say with absolute certainty that true success will never be yours. You’ll have a lot more success and a lot more fun in life if you not only accept failure but seek it out! Why not? Make it one of your goals this year to have a spectacular failure. I mean a real bomb!
Why the heck would anyone tell you to fail? To get you to try! What is it that you’ve always wanted to do but have been too afraid to take on? Go ahead and do it! The fear of failure has prevented more people from achieving their dreams than any other force on this planet. A failure is not someone who fails; it’s someone who gives up trying before their goal is reached. Give yourself permission to fail and see what happens. At the worst you’ll get a great learning experience and who knows, you might just make your dreams come true.
If you’ve ever heard of Tony Robbins, author of Awaken the Giant Within and Unlimited Power, then chances are you’ve heard of the acronym NLP. But did you ever wonder what NLP really is? I mean, are we talking about a scientific process here or just some fancy term that Robbins made up to sell books? What the heck is NLP?
NLP stands for Neuro-Linguistic Programming. In essence you’re using the nuances of language to change the way you think about things. This way of behavior modification was originally the brainchild of a personal development author (Richard Bandler) and a linguist (John Grinder) and it gets its base in Gestalt therapy.
In order to understand NLP, you really need to have a basic grasp of the theory behind Gestalt therapy. Gestalt works on the assumption that people fill in information gaps. For example, have a look at this:
Do you see three random dots, or do you see a triangle? The vast majority of people would say that these dots aren’t random and form a triangle even though the lines and angles necessary for a triangle to exist aren’t really there. Your personal beliefs can form in the same way. You get a couple of small pieces of information and your mind develops a complex belief system around them. NLP tries to change this belief system by challenging these conclusions.
NLP supposes that there isn’t any evidence for the negative beliefs that you hold. You just hold these beliefs because your mind is filling in the gaps and forming a reality that isn’t really there. For example, a commonly held belief is that you need to excel in academics if you want to succeed in life. If you were a student of Neuro-Linguistic Programming, you’d look for examples to prove this belief wrong. In this case you could read about Richard Branson, the multi-billionaire behind the Virgin Empire. Branson suffers from dyslexia and as a result, he preformed poorly in his academic career. He’s also worth $7.8 billion dollars! Obviously not everyone who does poorly in school fails in life.
Neuro-Linguistic Programming is about challenging your perception of the world. All you have to do is make a list of all the beliefs you have that are holding you back and find evidence that those beliefs aren’t really the triangle they appear to be. If you need some help along the way, pick up a copy of Awaken the Giant Within by Anthony Robbins. You’ll learn a lot more about NLP and you might just drastically improve your life.
