“Be More & Achieve More!”

Hi,

Every bit of planning, prioritizing, and organizing comes down to this simple concept.

Every great achievement of humankind has usually been preceded by a long period of hard, concentrated work until the job was complete.  Your ability to select your most important task, to begin it, and then to concentrate on it until it is finished is the key to high levels of performance and personal productivity.

By concentrating on your most important task, you can reduce the time required to complete it by 50% or more.

It has been estimated that the tendency to start and stop a task - to pick it up, put it down, and come back to it - can increase the time necessary to complete the task by as much as 500%.  This is not productive!

But when you prepare thoroughly and then begin, refusing to stop or turn aside until the job is done, you develop energy, enthusiasm, and motivation.  You get better and better and more productive.  You work faster and more effectively.

The starting point of great success and achievement has always been the same. It is for you to dream big dreams. There is nothing more important, and nothing that works faster than for you to cast off your own limitations than for you to begin dreaming and fantasizing about the wonderful things that you can become, have, and do.

As a wise man once said, “You must dream big dreams, for only big dreams have the power to move the minds of men.” When you begin to dream big dreams, your levels of self-esteem and self-confidence will go up immediately. You will feel more powerful about yourself and your ability to deal with what happens to you. The reason so many people accomplish so little is because they never allow themselves to lean back and imagine the kind of life that is possible for them.

Theory of Constraints

A powerful principle that you can use to dream big dreams and live without limits is contained in what Elihu Goldratt calls the “Theory of Constraints.” This is one of the greatest breakthroughs in modern thinking. What Goldratt has found is that in every process, in accomplishing any goal, there is a bottleneck or choke cord that serves as a constraint on the process. This constraint then sets the speed at which you achieve any particular goal.

What Goldratt found is that if you concentrate all of your creative energies and attention on alleviating the constraint, you can speed up the process faster than by doing any other single thing.

Let me give you an example. Let us say that you want to double your income. What is the critical constraint or the limiting factor that holds you back? Well, you know that your income is a direct reward for the quality and quantity of the services you render to your world. Whatever field you are in, if you want to double your income, you simply have to double the quality and quantity of what you do for that income. Or you have to change activities and occupations so that what you are doing is worth twice as much. But you must always ask yourself, “What is the critical constraint that holds me back or sets the speed on how fast I double my income?”

The 80/20 Rule in Action

A famous author and speaker tell me that: “A friend of mine is one of the highest-paid commission professionals in the United States. One of his goals was to double his income over the next three to five years. He applied the 80/20 rule to his client base. He found that 20 percent of his clients contributed 80 percent of his profits, and that the amount of time spent on a high-profit client was pretty much the same amount of time spent on a low-profit client. In other words, he was dividing his time equally over the number of tasks that he does while only 20 percent of those items contributes 80 percent of his results.

So he drew a line on his list of clients under those who represented the top 20 percent and then called in other professionals in his industry and very carefully, politely, and strategically handed off the 80 percent of his clients that only represented 20 percent of his business. He then put together a profile of his top clients and began looking in the marketplace exclusively for the type of client who fit the profile; in other words, one who could become a major profit contributor to his organization, and whom he in turn could serve with the level of excellence that his clients were accustomed to. And instead of doubling his income in three to five years, he doubled it in the first year!”

What Are Your Constraints?

So what is holding you back? Is it your level of education or skill? Is it your current occupation or job? Is it your current environment or level of health? Is it the situations that you are in today? What is setting the speed for you achieving your goal?

Remember, whatever you have learned, you can unlearn. Whatever situation you have gotten yourself into, you can probably get yourself out of. If your real goal is to dream big dreams and to live without limits, you can set this as your standard and compare everything that you do against it.

Three Keys

The three keys to living without limits have always been the same. They are clarity, competence, and concentration.

#1: Clarity

Clarity means that you are absolutely clear about who you are, what you want, and where you’re going. You write down your goals and you make plans to accomplish them. You set very careful priorities and you do something every day to move you toward your goals. And the more progress you make toward accomplishing things that are important to you, the greater self-confidence and self-belief you have, and the more convinced you become that there are no limits on what you can achieve.

# 2: Competence

Competence means that you begin to become very, very good in the key result areas of your chosen field. You apply the 80/20 rule to everything you do and you focus on becoming outstanding in the 20 percent of tasks that contribute to 80 percent of your results. You dedicate yourself to continuous learning. You never stop growing. You realize that excellence is a moving target. And you commit yourself to doing something every day that enables you to become better and better at doing the most important things in your field.

# 3: Concentration

Concentration is having the self-discipline to force yourself to concentrate in a single-minded way on one thing, the most important thing, and stay with it until it’s complete.

The two key words for success have always been focus and concentration.

Focus is knowing exactly what you want to be, have, and do. Concentration is persevering, without diversion or distraction, in a straight line toward accomplishing the things that can make a real difference in your life.

When you allow yourself to begin to dream big dreams, creatively abandon the activities that are taking up too much of your time, and focus your inward energies on alleviating your main constraints, you start to feel an incredible sense of power and confidence. As you focus on doing what you love to do and becoming excellent in those few areas that can make a real difference in your life, you begin to think in terms of possibilities rather than impossibilities, and you move ever closer toward the realisation of your full potential.

For Success & Contentment,
Asad Khan

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Hi,

& welcome back after the summer break. Hope you enjoyed it as much as I did - for me it was thrilling and a roller coaster ride all the way: spiritually, emotionally, socially and mentally.

My last post in August 2009 spoke about a crucial element on the road to self-mastery, success and contentment: the element of adapting. So I thought who better to talk about the Art of Adapting than the masterful, powerful, entertaining and wise Bruce Lee. Check out this video and enjoy -

2:41 “Its different depending on what you see in it”

Interviewer: Philosophy, Art & Sport: facets of the same thing =

3:10 “Honestly expressing yourself - not lying to oneself: very difficult to do. You have to train, you have to keep your reflexes, so when you want it - IT IS THERE - when you want to move, your moving & when you move you, you are determined to move…..nothing less than that.”

Interviewer: Very un-Western Attitude =

4:00 “Become one with yourself”

5:10 “Can learn the language, what’s difficult is understanding the feelings + meanings behind the words”

5:30 “Different ways of reacting”

7:00 “Empty your mind, be formless, shapeless, like water. You put water in a cup, it becomes the cup. You put water in bottle, it becomes the bottle, you put it in a teapot it becomes the teapot. Now water can flow or it can crash. Be water my friend.”

Interviewer: “I feel the power behind it.”

So dear reader, LIFE IS NON-LINEAR so adapt, be flexible, be like water & learn to HONESTLY EXPRESS YOURSELF, and you may find yourself reaching your goals in any case!

As ever, For Success & Contentment,

Asad Khan

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Hi,

Most times we think that everything in life simply has to follow a particular order of progression, development and as a natural consequence, an upward and onward ascent. Well what happens when this is not the case? Are you put off by the lack of results or do you stick to your plan? Do you even have a plan in the first instance? Let me tell you that sometimes, for some people in some places, things can go so tremendously well that you think that astronomic results have materialised out of thin air. I mean exponential growth occurs almost in the figurative ‘blink of an eye’: look at Trump, Branson, Gates, Slim, Mittel et al. They may not have necessarily had it all to begin with, yet within in the span of a few decades they have amassed a net-worth eclipsing many lives over.

So many self-help books will cite their triumphs in attempt to make you feel inadequately small and raise your inquisitiveness until you ask yourself “why don’t I do what they do in order to reap the same type of rewards as they?” I know that the natural tendency of humans is to see what others are doing and if it resonates with oneself then a pursuit to mimick, or ‘model’, them is taken on. Now 1 of 3 things can happen:-

1. You achieve it (not likely)
2. You give up (likely)
3. You adapt

We can talk all day about qualities such as Perseverance, Faith, Sense of Certainty, Resilience, Resourcefulness, and the like, which are key to the success of most endeavours, but one crucial oversight not referred to so much is the aspect of Divine Intervention.

Too many people agonise over the triumphs of others and forget the many small favours in their own lives. The seemingly more successful ones will tease you to have what they have and belittle you for not being like them. The levels, or leagues, of competition and achievement may differ as time progresses but the sentiments often remain the same. So then what happens? One builds feelings of resentment, jealousy, stiffness and rigidity towards greed that only fuels the drive towards mimicking those role-models even more.

Now I’m not saying that modeling is a bad idea per se, I’m saying its a disease when one loses their bearings of reality. When it gets to a point where a person cannot see anything else but the what others have achieved then alarm bells should ring because that is not a healthy state of being to function in.

Try to remember the following:

Its not in the arriving, its in the journeying

You will deepen your sense of self-satisfaction if you let-go of delusional ideas and focus on the little things that are more readily accessible, do-able and manageable. When you do this, things will gradually unfold before you in  a way that is right for you, at that particular time in your life. So, some of the other key ingredients towards leading a prosperous and fulfilling life is to ensure that you are flexible in both thought and action. Do what is necessary to make the ascent natural, for rewards are around you already, if you were keen to notice them…The Hand of the Divine is operating at all times to keep you safe, grant you the faculties of mind, intelligence sight and hearing, given you loving relationships, and most importantly given you time and health to continue. The blessings really are in the doing and you don’t want to mess-up your chances by chasing a negative dream.

Relax, focus and work in a step-wise fashion on your pet-project/s and let the flexibility open the door to creativity and ingenuity. Many successful people have probably done the same anyway: amonst other things they may have also mastered the art of patience as this entails flexibility. Be patient and realise that the ultimate success factor is Divine Intervention, for He determines when, how, where and how much:

Man proposes and God disposes.

And by the way, those others who you look-up to may also have done things which may be less than desirable: cheat, lie, steal, fraud, etc. so why not look at your own beauty and see the magic that is within. To have a patience is great treasure and it needs to be exercised in every department of life: career, business, relationships, finances, health, overall living conditions, and even against those who have wronged you. Letting it go and letting the matter rest with the ALMIGHTY above is the surest way of bringing relief to your heart and mind. Acting with patience is to act in the reflection of the Merciful One, to act in haste, or anger, is to act in the reflection of the accursed one. We want to win on all fronts, so why not be savvy and work the inner world in a way that is authentic, balanced and to higher purpose? This is self-leadership as stated in the last testament:

“And for those who fear God, He will make their path easy” (65:4)

So dear reader you don’t have to give-up, you don’t have to agonise over those you are attempting to model, you don’t have to feel inadequate at any stage as long as you keep to you true self, work hard, hold onto the rope of the Divine and thank Him for your blessings as you go along, because now you understand that Life really is non-linear.

For continued Success and Contentment,

Asad Khan

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