So What‘s With The Values?

First of all let‘s get clear what values are. Values are basically what‘s important to you in our life. As the title might suggest you, values act as an inner compass that guides you through the maze of endless choices that life throws at us. Wouldn‘t that alone make your life easier?

But hey, this is not all. Let me explain one common problem that a lot of people does. The biggest and most frustrating thing for most of us (it was even for me) is when we set ambitious or realistic goals. Most of the time we end up abandoning them, or in the worst case scenario, achieving but not getting any satisfaction of it. How come does this happen? Well it‘s painfully simple answer. Yours goals are not in alignment with your VALUES.

You see, it‘s much easier to build your life on what you know that‘s VALUABLE and WORTHWHILE for you. Values are smart; when you know them you make smart choices. And most of all you know yourself more than any other person about themselves.  This is your personal advantage over endless distractions that this world has to „offer“ – look at the media… there are so MANY stuff you would like to get…but are they really important to you?

Personal Values in a Nutshell

Let me summarize and encompass what are values to make it clearer. So values are:

• Inner Compass  - your personal compass that guides you to true happiness
• Highest Priorities – deeply held driving forces that lets you to prioritize your actions and goals
• Personal Filters – it filters the unimportant stuff out of your life so you save A LOT of time

Living A Valuable Life

Now you know or have a basic understanding of WHAT & WHY about values, let‘s explore HOW can you identify your values and live by them. For this reason I have made a visual mindmap, which you can download at the end of this post as image, pdf or mmap (if you have Mindmap software).

Step 1 – Evaluation

1. Within each category (e.g. Spiritual) you will have 12 values, which you have to rate from 0 to 10 (10 being the most important)
2. Prioritize your rated values and narrow down to TOP3
3. Do the same with the rest of categories

Step 2 – Elimination

1. Now you have 21 values, from which you must narrow down to your TOP 10.
2. Now imagine that you are only permitted to have five values.  Which one you would give up? Cross them out of your list
3. By this point you should have your TOP5 values, if you want, you can narrow further down to TOP3

If you have trouble rating, narrowing down or eliminating your values, you can use very simple approach – hierarchy, or in other words, a tournament graph.

Conclusion

When you have your TOP5 or TOP3 values you should consistently reference to them. So the best way to do so is to put them where you could always see them. Write them down on the peace of card and carry them in your wallet. Write them on sticky notes and stick them in your bathroom, on your mirror and on or next to your pc.

Also be aware that values are CHANGING, because you and your circumstances changes. As François de la Rochefoucauld said „The only constant thing is change“.

So keep monitoring changes in your life and from time to time keep referring to your personal value system. The best way to do is to print it and file it. Set a date to re-evaluate your values and see what changed since the last time. I would suggest you to do this every single year.

Hope you enjoy this post and wish you all the best in your search of true values.

DOWNLOADS:

Full Content Image > click here

Printable & Workable PDF > click here

MindManager software file mmap> click here

For life is a just employer
And will give you what you ask
But once you have set the wages
You must bear the task.

I worked for a menials hire
Only to learn dismayed
That any wage I would have asked of life
Life would have willingly paid.

~ Think and Grow Rich

Let us get it straight. Failure is far from being failure. Being failure means doing nothing and changing nothing. But how far would you go with that kind of mindset? Do you expect good things to happen from not doing anything?

For most of us, even though we understand that failure is not that bad thing, but the feeling of anxiety and stress it creates is not pleasing at all. But this is a very short-term thinking. We think about how would it make us feel now, but we fail to think how it would make us grow in the future.

It’s natural for humans to seek for instant gratifications and avoid unpleasantness. In short-term you will gain some pleasure, but in long-term you will be left unhappy. It’s like a hole in yourself that get bigger each time you go for instant gratifications and as it becomes bigger it requires more of pleasures and avoidance of unpleasant feelings.

The trade-off is obvious. For instant pleasures you trade your success of the future. This gratification can become a very hard to break habit. To break it you must first understand the idea and principles of growth.

To change the way we feel about failure we must change the way we understand it. Let’s take for example the bodybuilding or exercising. The only way we can grow the muscle is to break them. We must push them until muscles FAIL to lift the weight. And that’s when the growth occurs. Your body will repair the braked muscles tissues so that the next time you will be able to lift the same weight without failing. In order to grow you must fail.

Think of failure, pain, anxiety or stress as a positive sign of progress. Whenever it occurs it mean you are actually growing. Failure is like a resource that lets you to identify the edge of your capabilities.

If you don’t fail it means you aim way to low and below your fraction of potential. Don’t settle for less. Go where the stakes are high. Don’t fear the failure. It is said if you do the thing you fear, death of fear is certain.

Have courage to do what you can. Courage is not the absence of fear or and anxiety, it’s the proceeding in spite of those feelings.

Even though quotes are simple words putted together, but if taken into the heart and mind, can fuel you with the actions you must take in order to get where you want to be. So here I present my quotes:

1. Work joyfully and peacefully, knowing that right thoughts and right efforts inevitably brings you about right results. – James Allen

2. The strength of efforts is the measure of the results – James Allen

3. Success is neither magical nor mysterious. Success is the natural consequence of consistently applying the basic fundamentals – Jim Rohn

4. Discipline is a constant human awareness of the need for an action and a conscious act by us to implement that action – Jim Rohn

5. A goal is not always meant to be reached. It often serves simply as something to aim at – Bruce Lee

6. Knowing is not enough; we must apply. Willing is not enough: we must do – Bruce Lee

7. We make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give – Norman MacEwan

8. Be who you are and say what you feel because those who mind don’t matter and those who matter don’t mind – Dr Seuss

9. When I do good, I feel good; when I do bad, I feel bad, and that is my religion —Abraham Lincoln

10. Don‘t be afraid to give your best to what seemingly are small jobs. Every time you conquer one it makes you that much stronger. If you do the little jobs well the big ones tend to take care of themselves. – Dale Carnegie

1. Life
2. Family
3. Love
4. Friends
5. Freedom
6. Mind
7. Soul
8. Emotions
9. Happiness
10. Passion
11. Sex
12. Fantasy
13. Touch
14. Kiss
15. Nature
16. Body
17. Eyes
18. Ears
19. Mouth
20. Language
21. Legs
22. Arms
23. Earth
24. Fire
25. Air
26. Water
27. Grass
28. Dune
29. Trees
30. Sun
31. Light
32. Sky
33. Stars
34. Moon
35. Day
36. Night
37. Lake
38. Sea
39. Rain
40. Spring
41. Summer
42. Flowers
43. Colours
44. Smells
45. Technology
46. Communication
47. Computer
48. Internet
49. Google
50. Facebook
51. Torrents
52. YouTube
53. Drinks
54. Green tea
55. Wine
56. Food
57. Sushi
58. Cepelinai
59. Chicken
60. Balandeliai
61. Fashion
62. Zara
63. Perfume
64. Music
65. Ideas
66. Education
67. Books
68. Philosophy
69. Psychology
70. History
71. Culture
72. Beauty
73. Arts
74. Photography
75. Pictures
76. Movies
77. Theatre
78. Dance
79. Basketball
80. Tennis
81. Bowling
82. Pool
83. Democracy
84. Opportunities
85. Failures
86. Known
87. Unknown
88. Challenges
89. Changes
90. Experience
91. Improvement
92. Honesty
93. Integrity
94. Creativity
95. Humour
96. Humility
97. Organic
98. Crystallization
99. Panorama
100. Believing

After writing down all of these things that I’m grateful for I realized few things… First of all in this list I saw my true values, even though they are not priorized yet, but it gave me a good understanding of what I value the most in my life. Values are like compass or invisible guide by which we go through our life, so it’s good idea to crystallize them and to know them. The second thing that I realized is that all of these things I have or experienced already made me to be aware how really happy I am.

This little exercise is very powerful and can help you to identify things that you are grateful for which you tend to ignore on daily basis because they are always there. But the simpliest things in life are the most valuable and I hope that all of us will recognize and embrace that.

Indian Immigrant Who Became IT Millionaire

When Gurbaksh came to America with his parents, who made the beginning with $25 in their pockets, he was only 4 years old. His parents worked hard to support family and they were happy with what they had. Gubaksh or G, like many people calls him, grew up without any friends because he was different from other children in his class. His only friends and support was his family, but that was enough for him to go on and live through.

Gubaksh was only 16 when he launched his first venture „Click Agents“, which was an internet advertising company that helped other companies get traffic into their websites. It was so successful that by age 18 he sold this company for $30 million.  Was he lucky? At some point, maybe he was, because he found what he loves to do and that‘s entrepreneurship.

After his first successful venture, Gubaksh didn‘t sit around waiting money. He had healthy attitude about money and didn‘t spent money wherever he wanted, because he learned from his parents that he should save it for „rainy days“. After sometime, bored without doing nothing, he launched another venture „BlueLithium“, which was an advanced version of „ClickAgents“ with far better software and business model. All that he learned from previous venture he brought together to this new company that he was making.

His new company has changed the face of internet advertising, which was at that time $40 billion market. In 2007, by age of 25, he sold his company „BlueLithium“to Yahoo for dashing $300millions. „Not bad“for such a young person.  But nevertheless, this is really impressive. Actually it‘s more than that – it‘s inspiring.

Without thinking much he even launched his 3rd venture, gWallet. And recently he released his own book called „The Dream: How I Learned the Risks and Rewards of Entrepreneurship and Made Millions“. I just finished this book and I must say I have been moved by this guy.

What Can We Learn From Gurbaksh?

I read his book in 4 sittings. Even though it‘s 236 pages it was fairly a quick read. His writing style was really down to earth and easy to follow. He wasn‘t a technological guy, in fact, he was a guy who could sell him and his service. Actually, he was a great salesman and that what made him so good.

But do you think it was easy to him to reach it? Well think again. He scarified almost all his teen years to business. He didn‘t have any friends until year 20 and to speak, he didn‘t even had girlfriend until late 21. This was the price he was paying for his success. He was very determined and I think his ethnic and religious background helped him to be strong. Even his father was always strick on him and didn‘t let him to become a wimp.

So what can we actually learn from him?

Here are some lessons from him:

• Always surround yourself with people who want you to succeed. – That seems simple on the surface, but when you get out there, in the real world, you will discover that most people are rooting for you to fail. Stay away from them

• Biggest lessons came from my biggest mistakes

• Happiness is elusive without balance

• If you genuinely want something, don’t wait for it—teach yourself to be impatient

• Be generous; it works

• Start slow and steady, get to parity, then innovate

• Don’t tell people what they ask you, tell them what they need to hear to fall in love with you

• Don’t chase the money. Chase substance. If you have substance, the money will follow

• Every success has its failures.’ You’re not going to get anywhere without trying

• Remember: Perception is reality. What they see is more important than what is, so show them what they want to see and tell them what they want to hear

• Success is really about making it happen. It’s about dreaming. It’s about finding that one thing you love above all others and then figuring out how to do it better than anyone else

And few quotes that complimented what he just wrote:

“Be nice to people on the way up because you will probably meet them on the way down.” Jimmy Durante

“He who knows when he can fight, and when he cannot, will be victorious.” Sin Tru‘s Art of War

At the end I just want the mention one question that Gurbaksh asked in his book, that strucked me the most:

How do I make today an even better day than yesterday?

]]> http://zygman.wordpress.com/2010/03/07/dreams-are-foundation-of-entrepreneurship/feed/ 0 Zygman thedream http://zygman.wordpress.com/2010/01/25/how-to-become-your-own-personal-god/ http://zygman.wordpress.com/2010/01/25/how-to-become-your-own-personal-god/#comments Mon, 25 Jan 2010 09:52:26 +0000 Zygman http://zygman.wordpress.com/?p=140 ]]> This is going to be two-part post, where I‘m going to share my insights about beliefs, what they are and how do they affects us. In second part I‘ll share with you a method how to identify limiting beliefs, unlearn them or change them with empowering beliefs. So if you are interested to find out what‘s so special about those beliefs and how to become your own personal god, read on.

When we came to this world, we didn‘t have any beliefs, only the ones, which was driven by our human nature…that the world is interesting, everything is learnable, there are plenty of various possibilities and we just playing the game of life. But when we grow other people starts to tell us things, which are true or not true to us at all.  And the more they say things to us, the more we start to believe them and what they say about us. This way we develop beliefs.

In general, there are 2 types of beliefs:

• Empowering
• Limiting

For example, when we perform at something not really that well, then we get a negative feedback, like we are lazy or even stupid and we should improve. But if we keep on performing the same way in the future, we get the same feedback over and over, which in turn manifest into negative beliefs about ourselves. We start to believe others, that they might be right. Those kinds of beliefs are self-limiting. When we grow up, we tend to believe, that we can‘t do something because we are not able or not even worth it.

Few people are capable of expressing with equanimity opinions which differ from the prejudices of their social environment. Most people are even incapable of forming such opinions.
Albert Einstein

The truth is, we can do anything we want to do. Only the sky is the limit. But over years we have been „sold“on the idea that we can‘t do something. You heard it so many times, that it actually stuck into your subconscious mind. Even though you are not aware of that limiting beliefs, but they are actually there, in your subconscious mind who controls the way we behave and act.

Also you can develop a self-limiting belief when you try to do something but you fail at it few times, you tend to let your hands down and think „it‘s not for me“or „I’m not worth it“. Those are limiting beliefs. Failure is just there to teach us. When we learn, we grow, and when we grow, we can do things we couldn‘t do before.

For us to grow as humans, we need to develop empowering beliefs. With those beliefs we can achieve anything what we really desire and want. Here are some empowering and positive beliefs:

• Everything that happens to us happens for a reason and it is useful for us.
• There are no failures, only results and causes.
• Work is a play
• If I will want it for long enough I will get it

These are just examples of beliefs that drive us, but not hold us. The thing is that we acquire those beliefs from various sources like:

Past – whether something small or big happens to our life, we tend to remember it in the future and form beliefs according to causes.

Knowing – we can develop beliefs from doing something in the real world and from learning from sources like books, movies and other people.

But the good news is that we can change our beliefs. We as humans have a gift of self-awareness. We can look into our life and make those adjustments that‘s necessary for us to move ahead. Belief can be a mental tool that helps us on the way or a mental block that stand in our way.

If you think you can do a thing or think you can’t do a thing, you’re right.
Henry Ford

To understand you better how does belief works I mapped out a „belief system“where you can see the relationship between beliefs and behavior.

As you can see from this graph, what you believe is what you become. We all have the power to be what we want to be. We can invent ourselves the way we want us to be. We can become our personal god by simply believing in ourselves.

On the next part I will share a practical guide on how to identify your limiting beliefs and how to change them with positive and empowering beliefs.

One of the most important books in my life, which made an impact on my thinking, was written by one of the greatest entrepreneur, author and motivational speaker – Jim Rohn. In 2009 December, he passed away (rest in peace Jim) leaving behind great wealth of his works and one of it is „The Five Major Pieces of the Life Puzzle“. His philosophy was very simple, yet very effective and powerful.

Jim believed that to achieve wealth and happiness in our life, we have to work harder on ourselves then our work. In his early years, while Jim was a 25 years old, broke and were in debt, he met his first mentor John Earl Shoaff. John told Jim, that where he is now is all because of his small errors in judgement, repeated everyday.

In his book, Jim shares what he believes are fundamental pieces of our own life puzzles:

• Philosophy
• Attitude
• Activity
• Results
• Lifestyle

Each of these pieces of puzzle determines how we would live our lives. Even though he admits that those things are most obivious and easy, majority of people just ignores it. He believed that those things that are easy to do, is also easy not to do. We neglect this fact by trying to do „worthy“things instead of „small, easy and unworthy“. What a mistake.

Jim says that all that we have is the result of who we are. Therefore the answer to a good life lies in becoming more then we currently are so that we can attract more then we currently have. What a philosophy! It is so simple to understand and it makes so much sense. It‘s more of common sense, that’s why we neglect and don’t pay attention to it.

For what we are, what we have and how we feel about it, we tend to blame other people and circumstances like economy, government, family, friends, TV, internet, horoscopes, bad weather, bad dreams, black cat running through street or even the way planets are positioned in the sky…we tend to think of ridicules excuses of not being responsible of what happened to us and blame everything else, but not ourselves. Sad but true.

So my peace of advice here is to really start taking responsibility for your own life. I you want really to touch your life and paint it in different colours, I really, REALLY recommend you to give a try to this book, because it‘s full of inValuable ideas. And single ideas, as Jim told, can bring upon dramatic changes in our life.

Trust me, there won’t be any better time to change then now. Economy, as all the other issues and peoples, goes through ups and downs and you can’t do anything about it but to look after yourself and make those changes that you was desiring all the time, but never actually got a chance to make them happen. I’m positive that in this book you can find life changing ideas that can influence you to make those changes happen.

I have summarized the whole book in one single mindmap that you can download as *.bmp and *.mmap (only if you have MindManager software).

To download *.mmap click here

To download image file *.bmp click here

Every person has its own two sides. I‘m not talking about multi-personality or other stuff. I‘m talking about two of our sides – disciplined and lazy side. If you are aware, most of our times we are lazy and even when we want to be disciplined, we find some other activities to keep us busy from doing what we have to. That‘s the lazy side effect. It talks with you subconsciously. You are simply not aware of this. The lazy side has its own tactics against your disciplined side. I don‘t want to get down with lazy side, just want to let you be aware of this side and that it influence your actions subconsciously.

There is one way you can overcome your lazy side and it‘s called Self-Talk. I bet you heard that before, but you may think it‘s a fluff or it‘s not effective at all. Self-talk is what you say to yourself that effects your decisions, behaviors and actions. There are broader self-talk uses but for now we are going to focus on how to overcome laziness.

For self-talk to be effective it must be action-orientated and:

·         Positive

·         Specific

·         Present tense

For example imagine yourself sitting on your computer and surfing facebook and you know that you must write an essay for your homework. You are aware of what you have to do but you just can‘t start with it…you just want to check another picture of your friend or write another comment. So in order to start to write your essay simply say tioyourself „I am writing now an essey“.

You would immediately notice how your whole body starts to react to what you say. Whatever you are doing at the moment (looking in facebook) would become irritating. You would feel urge to start writing your essay. Your whole body reacts to your message. Your feets will face the table where you keep your sheets and pencils. The more you repeat the same positive, specific and present message, the more you will be tempted to complete your task.

You may wonder how is it possbile. Basiclly, whatever you say to yourself effects your subconscious mind. Whenever you say in present time, you convince your mind that you are actually doing that task and that‘s why your whole body reacts to self-talk.

I have putted together a scheme of how does self-talk works:

As you can see most expression are self-limiting. For example when you have to do something you might say „I must do it“, but what you are actually saying to yourself is that you are being forced to do something against your own will and that‘s why you resist such task. Forcing yourself to do something only increases resistance.

But when you say „I choose to…“ then you give options to yourself and reduce the resistance. You would feel much happier to start with that kind of task.

So everytime you will hear speaking to yourself negatively about some sort of work, change it with positive, specific and present self-talk.

TIP To make it even more effective say it aloud. This way your speaking and hearing will involve which in turn will give you more power over completing the task. The more of senses involves in doing something, the more likely you will actually doing it. The key here is repetition. Say it as much as possible until your mind doesn’t have any other choice but to believe and do it.

Hope this new knowledge will be a good helper while dealing with your lazy side.

What does it take to get to the top of your chosen field, industry or job? You would never know that if you haven’t written anything down. If you are really serious about becoming a wealthy, happy and successful person, than you have to keep a journal. But why do you need a personal journal? Well it’s simple. You can’t trust your memory. Keep a track of your progress. It’s an essential tool for success.

When you listen to something valuable, write it down. When you came across something very important, write it down. This is important to keep such information at one place. It gives you a better understanding of yourself and your dominant thoughts. Whenever you think in your mind, you are not aware of how does your thoughts alter and change. Your mind always drifts from one thought to another.

Carefully observing and capturing important thoughts, we create a mental clue. Now we are fully aware of what goes in our mind, because only then we see things as they are, not the way we think they are.  It gives us a better view of our mental process so we could analyze how and why we think that way. We create opportunity to alter our thoughts, change the way we think and the way we act upon what we think.

If you want to become successful, you have to study success. You have to become a serious student and keeping journal is the best indicator of how serious you are. The discipline of keeping a personal journal makes up a valuable part to learning process. Learning is a natural way of growing. We learn from the begging of our life. Taking our first steps, learning first words, skills and many other things. Keeping a personal journal is a advanced and serious learning, which would skyrocket your chances of success.

How To Keep A Journal

First you have to own a journal. I would recommend getting a blank book without anything written in it. Also I would suggest you buy it more expensive one, so it would make sense to write down only valuable ideas and thoughts.

Now you have to decide what you want to write down and organize it into sections. Let’s look at what we want to capture into our personal journals.

Goals

Setting and achieving goals is a core of your success. Knowing where you want to go is the first step towards your realization. Keeping goals in your personal journey will not only be at your hand for future reference but also for motivation. Whenever you feel out of hand, just by looking at what you have set to achieve my energize you.

One of the simple ways of keeping your goals is to write about your ideal life. What is your ideal job, income, home, lifestyle, character, spouse, relationship, family life and so on? Create an ideal life of yours and write in clear, vivid manner, so you could visualize as you have already achieved it.

Great Ideas

Many great ideas fade as quickly as they arise. So keeping a journal gives an advantage over your memory. But how can you define, great ideas? Well it depends from what is important to you and how that particular idea can contribute to your purpose or goals. It could personal ideas about improving your personal life. Maybe it would be financial ideas, about how to deal with money, or how to make money work for you. O maybe you have thought of a great business idea, which would shake the marketplace.

Whenever you came up with a great idea, write it down and think of it for a moment. You will be surprised how one idea can lead to another, even better one. But the most important thing is to identify only best ideas, which can be integrated into our daily lives.

Observations

Looking around and seeing things that matter the most to us and writing it down, clears our thoughts. Observing everyone and everything on daily basis makes us aware of what happens around. We become human beings. We observe what is beautiful to us and we live in this moment, in the present time, not wondering with our mind where we could be or what we could be doing.

Observing our emotions is important aspect of daily observations. Emotions are like reflections of your identity. Negative emotions reveal your weakness. You can work them out by finding the roots of it and solving it in a creative manner. Positive emotions reveal what makes us happy. Imagine your mind as a garden and emotions as its seeds. If you would let weeds to grow, would it make you garden look better and make you feel better? I don’t think so. So write it down and work it out.

When we see something amazing, we usually take it as a picture in camera or mind. Taking mental pictures and rewriting them in personal journey gives us a long lasting feeling, which you can rewind and re-experience once again and use it for future. Whenever you would feel bad, all you need to do is to look at your personal journal and re-experience an event when you felt happy. It makes a life much easier, doesn’t?

Observing people who makes impacts on us gives us advantage over ourselves and them. We can become aware of who influence us and how we go about it. When people inspire us, we want to know how they do this. Learn from others and study their behavior, character, attitude and everything else that you can find useful about them.

Experiences

Our thought has brought us here where we are at the moment. Looking back into past is painful and everyone usually suggest that you forget it. I say don’t. Let past become your school, your teacher. Learn from past experience so you could become a wiser and stronger person.

Be true to yourself and don’t hide from your past. Remember your failures and learn from them, why have you failed, how would go about it now and what have you learned from this experience. Also list your biggest achievements and workout how have you achieved it, who helped you and what was the recipe for your achievement.

Books

Highlighting books is essential if you want to learn something from them. Whenever you are reading a book, make an effort to highlight the ideas that you found useful and appealing to yourself and write it down. In this way you will discipline yourself to become a better student and your learning process will become more fruitful and rewarding.

Quotes

These little phrases are very helpful in your daily life. Quotes can bring meaning, motivation and inspiration in your life. They can even become your life motto. So writing them down makes sense. Collecting quotes is like collecting little puzzle of your personal philosophy. Write only those quotes which makes sense, makes you feel good and can be integrated in your daily life.

Seminars/Video Trainings

It makes sense to take notes into personal journey as it can play a similar role as quotes and books. Highlight the idea which have touched you in some way and analyze it. Make that idea work for you. Integrate it and keep it safe in your personal journal and deep inside your mind.

Personal Journaling Habit

Having said so much it would seem like an easy way to start, but actually, to keep a personal journal takes self-discipline. If you only jot down once a week it’s not going to help you to benefit from this powerful tool. Think of it as a daily tool to track your daily life and progress. Like any tool, it takes some time to master it so you have to develop a habit for writing a personal journal.

To make the most of this technique I suggest you to read my article about how to change a habit in 4 easy steps

Conclusion

Now imagine yourself if you are fully aware of your thoughts. Think of how enormously you would benefit if you would employ this simple and yet very powerful tool. It has a great potential to turn your life around and bring you back on the track. This tool alone can bring amazing results if you will use it to measure your effort, keep track of personal development and integrate ideas into your daily life.