Getting Productive & Living Without Limits

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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

Men are like rubber bands

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Hi there,

The Magic of Relationships seminar is coming up on the 18th December. To get us started, allow me to share with you some ideas that will help foster better understandings towards one another.

Men are Like Rubber Bands:

Which means they like to pull away, they like to stretch out to create distance, but then they have to return - often springing back. Its the male intimacy cycle that involves getting close, pulling away, and then getting close again. Women don’t tend to realise this rhythm and feel distressed when the deep romance surrounding a relationship abruptly ends and when the man wishes to focus on something else. It’s a common misinterpretation because women tend to pull away for different reasons: when she doesn’t trust him to understand her feelings, when she has been hurt and fears being hurt again, or when he has done something wrong and disappointed her.

Of course a man can pull away for the same reasons, but he will also pull away even if the lady has done nothing wrong. It could purely be a male thing - the need to have space - even though he loves and trusts her. But like the stretched rubber band, he’ll come back. This need for space is like the man going into his cave: its a place of solitude, independence and autonomy. He’ll soon feel the need to spring back and automatically pick up the intimacy at whatever levels required, even just before he pulled away, without the having to go through a period of getting reacquainted again.

If properly understood, this male intimacy cycle enriches a relationship, but can cause havoc when misread and misjudged, or even mis-timed. Usually, the man can give and take less readily than the woman, so the women thinks that her man is not reciprocating her love. Women naturally give and take more readily and can easily express their sentiments. But when they don’t see this happening with the man, they misjudge him and think that there’s something wrong with him. Anxiety builds up when she tries to ‘fix’ him - that’s not what he needs…rather he wants to simply pull away to have his own breathing space: whether its in the shed, out with friends, strolling, watching a movie or reading. She continues to get frustrated when he wants to ignore her and she develops ideas that he doesn’t love her, or worse still, think that he has got someone else! A confused state of affairs soon arises.

Women should understand the need for a man to pull away. Its good for him and her (and any children). He’ll spring back with power and enthusiasm. Men however need to remember that it may be easy for them to get to intense levels of intimacy as he was before pulling back, but the woman may need to time to catch-up and re-familiarise - particularly if she’s been through a state of confusion or panic (she doesn’t know what she did to switch you off)!

It is very confusing for a woman when a man pulls away because something she says or does often triggers his departure - usually when she begins to talk about feelings. The talk of feelings creates intimacy and the man can be defensive and not open-up, hence begin to pull away. It’s not that he doesn’t care about her feelings as at another point in the intimacy cycle those same feelings will draw him closer. So its not just what she says but rather when.

When a man gets too close and doesn’t pull away, common symptoms are increased passiveness, moodiness, irritability and defensiveness. And the women builds a huge amount of dependency on the man that can lead to a high degree of unwarranted trust, such that if he does pull away, she feels totally dejected for ‘doing something wrong’ or misappropriating the trust. She may begin to resent him and hold bitter feelings towards him unjustifiably. When women don’t understand the male intimacy cycle, they can unknowingly obstruct it in two ways: they are (1) chasing him when he pulls away; (2) punishing him for pulling away.

Men must be sensitive to the needs of women (I’ll come on to that later) but also understand the requirement of pulling away. If timed, done well and worked with, a high degree of satisfaction can be engendered in the relationship such that the natural rhythms of both the man and woman are held to a better standard. There’s no need for guilt or blame on either side. The man needs to go to the cave every now and again, grow and become wiser….he’ll return to with a freshness that the women has longed for and will be better prepared to hear her share her feelings. The patient woman who understands this will love and trust her man, share with him as needed, and allow him to open-up in his own time without demanding it to be so.

This single insight into the male cycle that has been represented as mimicking a rubber band can replace so much confusion and unnecessary pain with that of care and understanding.

Soon we’ll take a look at how women act as waves….

For Success and Contentment,

Asad Khan

The 10-day Health Challenge

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Hi folks,

Just a quick one for you, as it’s almost the end of the day on a Friday evening, and I’ve got my nieces wedding to attend in 1-1/2 hours time…

One of the key area’s of concern and challenge for most of us is our health & wellbeing, so rather than go into info-overflow, which I’d rather save for the 1-day Health Seminar on the 20th November in any case, here’s a brief run-down of somethings that you can begin impelementing right away (for general diets).

  1. Have a hearty breakfast - porridge-based & wholegrain cereals is generally good
  2. Eat wholemeal and cut-out the processed carb’s - sweets, biscuits, cakes, white sugar/flour, polished rice etc.
  3. Eat some fresh fruit regularly (not processed or tinned)
  4. Drink water - filtered is better - and a 1/3 of your meal should be water (the other 1/3 food; and last 1/3 air - you have to have air for combustion! No combustion, no easy digestion/metabolism)
  5. Snack on pulses, nuts, seeds, been sprouts (cooked/uncooked depending on type)
  6. Don’t consume drink with your meal - take 1/2 prior / after for effective metabolism
  7. Take a brisk walk and..
  8. Breathe deeply and deliberately - whilst you think of the air circulating around your body
  9. Remember to give time to eating your meals - with good, full intention and an attitude of gratitude for the opportunity of intaking goodness to nourish your body
  10. Don’t eat late - especially fatty stuff (pizza’s with coke..!); Give your digestive system a break - and then have beak-fast!

Hope this help along the way and take note that we’ll have Abdul Kareem, Former Practioner in Tradional Herbal Medicine turned Health Coach (thanks to Ark2Ark ;-) who’ll be presenting on the day.

But stick to some of the key principles outlined above and I can assure you’ll be on the way to feeling energised, focussed and in control. Do it for 10 days so you can challenge the urges…

For Success, Contenement & Good Health,

Asad Khan