Hi everyone,
Believe it or not, we are already in September; meaning that 9/12 = ¾ of the year 2008 has already passed.
This blog is just an encouragement to take the time to do a simple evaluation. Review your goals sheet and see which ones you haven’t accomplished yet.
I encourage each one of you to take the time to come up with a plan on how to make the most out of the remaining 3 months.
Remember persistence is key! It is not time to say “Oh well! The year is already over anyway. I might as well leave it for next year.” On the contrary, you should be saying to yourself “the year is almost over; I cannot start 2009 with the same goals. So I must push forward.”
Be persistent and determined.
All the blessings,
Jephtée E.
Sunday, September 14, 2008
Monday, August 18, 2008
Mentorship
Today, I want to talk about the importance of mentorship because I believe it is a crucial piece of the puzzle when it comes to achieving your goals.
None of us can claim to know it all or to have all the answers. In a past article about knowledge, I have highlighted the need to educate yourself about whatever it is you want to achieve. The man idea is that you need to learn as much as possible about what you want to accomplish for you to be able to achieve it.
The issue is, we are all very busy and juggling various activities… education seems to be the last thing on our priority list. It is so easy to go a year without reading one single book. It seems that whenever something needs to be “put to later”, it’s always things that have to do with education and studies.
This is a fatal mistake. This will cost you, without a doubt, the achievement of your goals.
Now you should be asking yourself, how can I get as much knowledge as possible to move my goals forward with the limited amount of time I have?
Brian Tracy has the perfect answer for that. He wrote “No one lives long enough to learn everything they need to learn starting from scratch. To be successful, we absolutely, positively have to find people who have already paid the price to learn the things that we need to learn to achieve our goals.”
Basically what he is saying is to find yourself people who can mentor you and teach you what they know. There are people who have hands on experience about what you are trying to achieve, find them and emulate them until you know how to do it yourself.
I can personally testify that this principle work.
One of my goals last year was to find myself a very good mentor. Since I am so picky, it took me a whole year to achieve this goal. Matter of fact, when I wrote my first article it was one of the goals that I had yet to achieve. I found him mid-December. After my 1st conversation with him, I gather the nerve to ask him to mentor me (expecting a big no)… guess what? He said yes.
I cannot tell you how amazing it is to have another brain to pick in. I cannot tell you how much time it saves me in research and readings.
You will not know how beneficial this is until you give it a try. My hope is you will add that to your list of goals for this year. It may be the most important goal you’ve ever set for yourself.
This one goes out to my marvelous mentor. Thanks for your patience and kindness.
Jephtée E.
None of us can claim to know it all or to have all the answers. In a past article about knowledge, I have highlighted the need to educate yourself about whatever it is you want to achieve. The man idea is that you need to learn as much as possible about what you want to accomplish for you to be able to achieve it.
The issue is, we are all very busy and juggling various activities… education seems to be the last thing on our priority list. It is so easy to go a year without reading one single book. It seems that whenever something needs to be “put to later”, it’s always things that have to do with education and studies.
This is a fatal mistake. This will cost you, without a doubt, the achievement of your goals.
Now you should be asking yourself, how can I get as much knowledge as possible to move my goals forward with the limited amount of time I have?
Brian Tracy has the perfect answer for that. He wrote “No one lives long enough to learn everything they need to learn starting from scratch. To be successful, we absolutely, positively have to find people who have already paid the price to learn the things that we need to learn to achieve our goals.”
Basically what he is saying is to find yourself people who can mentor you and teach you what they know. There are people who have hands on experience about what you are trying to achieve, find them and emulate them until you know how to do it yourself.
I can personally testify that this principle work.
One of my goals last year was to find myself a very good mentor. Since I am so picky, it took me a whole year to achieve this goal. Matter of fact, when I wrote my first article it was one of the goals that I had yet to achieve. I found him mid-December. After my 1st conversation with him, I gather the nerve to ask him to mentor me (expecting a big no)… guess what? He said yes.
I cannot tell you how amazing it is to have another brain to pick in. I cannot tell you how much time it saves me in research and readings.
You will not know how beneficial this is until you give it a try. My hope is you will add that to your list of goals for this year. It may be the most important goal you’ve ever set for yourself.
This one goes out to my marvelous mentor. Thanks for your patience and kindness.
Jephtée E.
Sunday, August 3, 2008
Live for the moment
Hi guys,
I read this 2-3 years ago and it stayed with me. Today I want to share it with you.
Have a great week.
Jephtée
---------
Inches by Rick Beneteau
It takes many inches to make a mile. We can only move by inches, one inch at a time.
It's when we look miles ahead and wonder "how are we going to get so far?" that we fail to move forward at all.
We can choose to live life fully focused on the moment at hand and live happily, making great progress, moving by inches.
Or, we can keep staring "in the rear view mirror", stuck with thoughts of what could have been, instead of what can now be.
Most important, we must always keep in mind that anytime we suffer a setback while moving forward, it will always be just a matter of inches, never miles..
I read this 2-3 years ago and it stayed with me. Today I want to share it with you.
Have a great week.
Jephtée
---------
Inches by Rick Beneteau
It takes many inches to make a mile. We can only move by inches, one inch at a time.
It's when we look miles ahead and wonder "how are we going to get so far?" that we fail to move forward at all.
We can choose to live life fully focused on the moment at hand and live happily, making great progress, moving by inches.
Or, we can keep staring "in the rear view mirror", stuck with thoughts of what could have been, instead of what can now be.
Most important, we must always keep in mind that anytime we suffer a setback while moving forward, it will always be just a matter of inches, never miles..
Monday, July 21, 2008
The best thing you could do for yourself
All individual you cross path with will fell into one of these 2 categories:
1) Doers
2) Observers
Wondering in which category you are? Here are a few characteristics:
Doers
- Knows what they want in life;
- Believe they are in charge of their life therefore have a plan;
- Knows that there is no such thing as luck;
- Knows that if they want something, they have to make it happen;
- Take risks;
- Always in action;
- Most important: held themselves 100% accountable for the results they get, for their success or lack of it.
Observers
- Will take whatever they can get out of life;
- Believe that they have no power over the course of their life so why bother;
- Waiting on the day luck will smile at them;
- Take no risk and no or very little action;
- Most regrettable: always blame others for their misfortunes. It is always someone else (parents, friends, neighbors, teachers, government, system, cat, dog) fault.
If you are reading this blog, I hope you are a Doer. If it is not the case, do yourself a favor and make that your number one goal.
Even for the doers, we sometimes fell in the trap of blaming others for our results or lack of it. Learn to hold yourself 100% accountable for your results… even in the extreme cases (when it seems obvious that it is not your fault).
For example, you start a business with an associate. He turns out to be (well fill out the blank). You loose thousands or million of dollars. Instead of blaming that person for your failure and complain about it to the whole world, look at yourself in the mirror and seriously ask yourself “how did I end up with this person as partner? How did I attract such individual in my life?” Yes it is your fault that you made a bad call and end up with the wrong partner. Acknowledge it and LEARN from it.
I could go all day on that subject, but let me wrap up by saying this: until you are willing to be 100% accountable for your results AT ALL TIME, you are not ready for success and you will not experience the amount of success you crave for.
Keep well,
Jephtée E.
Monday, June 23, 2008
Circle of influence
Growing up, I’ve often heard adults saying “Birds of a feather flock together.”
Usually they use that in your teenage years when they have a problem with your friends and people you are hanging out with.
As a teenager, we don’t believe them and reply that “mom or dad, I am my own person… I don’t just follow my friends, I can make my own choices; or I am not that easily influenced”. As adults, we soon realized how true they were.
One thing that I wish I have heard from my parents or any adults when it comes to circle of friends is how they have a direct impact on your income and net worth. YES you read right.
I only found out about this mind boggling truth last year. I was reading a book and there was a chapter about circle of influence. Studies have shown that your net income is the average income of your 5 closest friends. When I read that, I literally screamed “HELL NO”.
I thought about my 5 closest friends at the time and as far as I know, only one or two has a higher income then I am making. So being really good with numbers, I quickly did the math and believe it or not my income was an average of the 5 people closest around me. I’ve never felt sooooo miserable about my income. Even for those who are not too good with math, you most know that the lower the numbers are in an average, the lower the average will be.
So a quick example, your income = (20 000 + 25 000 + 35 000 + 40 000 + 50 000)/5
= 170 000 / 5 = 34 000$
OR
= (40 000 + 50 000 + 70 000 + 75 000 + 80 000)/5
= 315 000 / 5 = 63 000$
As if that was not shocking enough, what follow was even more shocking… the author went on by saying “the only way to increase in your income is by changing your circle of influence”. Simply put: “If you want to make more money, you have to hang out with people that are making more.”
For those who know me well, you can guess what I said when I read that. Yep I said “ARE YOU KIDDING ME!!!”
The author proved without a doubt the concept (I will spare you the details). That really got me thinking. So here I was, I had a goal of increasing my income by x% this year and I just learned that if my circle of influence remains the same… it is almost 100% guarantee that my income will remain the same (unless all of their income goes up… which is not very likely). I felt bad because I didn’t want to ditch my friends.
After thinking and reading a lot about the subject, I came to this conclusion and this is what I want to share with you: your circle of influence doesn’t necessarily have to be the same as your friends. It is up to you to decide who will influence which area of your life. Since I understood that, I decided to keep my friends as great friends (social). When it comes to career, business and money to seek people who are successful and have them mentor me and shadow them. Guess what? It works like magic!
Who are the people influencing your goals?
Keep well,
Jephtée E.
Usually they use that in your teenage years when they have a problem with your friends and people you are hanging out with.
As a teenager, we don’t believe them and reply that “mom or dad, I am my own person… I don’t just follow my friends, I can make my own choices; or I am not that easily influenced”. As adults, we soon realized how true they were.
One thing that I wish I have heard from my parents or any adults when it comes to circle of friends is how they have a direct impact on your income and net worth. YES you read right.
I only found out about this mind boggling truth last year. I was reading a book and there was a chapter about circle of influence. Studies have shown that your net income is the average income of your 5 closest friends. When I read that, I literally screamed “HELL NO”.
I thought about my 5 closest friends at the time and as far as I know, only one or two has a higher income then I am making. So being really good with numbers, I quickly did the math and believe it or not my income was an average of the 5 people closest around me. I’ve never felt sooooo miserable about my income. Even for those who are not too good with math, you most know that the lower the numbers are in an average, the lower the average will be.
So a quick example, your income = (20 000 + 25 000 + 35 000 + 40 000 + 50 000)/5
= 170 000 / 5 = 34 000$
OR
= (40 000 + 50 000 + 70 000 + 75 000 + 80 000)/5
= 315 000 / 5 = 63 000$
As if that was not shocking enough, what follow was even more shocking… the author went on by saying “the only way to increase in your income is by changing your circle of influence”. Simply put: “If you want to make more money, you have to hang out with people that are making more.”
For those who know me well, you can guess what I said when I read that. Yep I said “ARE YOU KIDDING ME!!!”
The author proved without a doubt the concept (I will spare you the details). That really got me thinking. So here I was, I had a goal of increasing my income by x% this year and I just learned that if my circle of influence remains the same… it is almost 100% guarantee that my income will remain the same (unless all of their income goes up… which is not very likely). I felt bad because I didn’t want to ditch my friends.
After thinking and reading a lot about the subject, I came to this conclusion and this is what I want to share with you: your circle of influence doesn’t necessarily have to be the same as your friends. It is up to you to decide who will influence which area of your life. Since I understood that, I decided to keep my friends as great friends (social). When it comes to career, business and money to seek people who are successful and have them mentor me and shadow them. Guess what? It works like magic!
Who are the people influencing your goals?
Keep well,
Jephtée E.
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