5 Ways to Start Winning

Getting up and getting things done on a daily basis—making your mark on this world—only happens when you commit to clearing the thousand hurdles that rise up to greet you from the time you roll out of bed in the morning until your head hits the pillow at night. Even the little things—no, especially the little things—conspire against our victories. So, how do we business owners improve our odds? What steps can we take to limit those stumbling blocks called losses that eat into our hard-won winnings?

Because we are winners.

Before getting into the what-to-do, it’s important for you to understand that, when it comes to winning, your brain has the home field advantage. What you feed it and how you treat it will directly affect your win-loss ratio.

“Your aim should be to work on yourself and your thinking until you reach the point where you absolutely, positively believe yourself to be a total winner in anything you sincerely want to accomplish,” writes Brian Tracy, who has been studying the success habits of successful people for over four decades.

Tracy adds: “When you feel unshakable confidence in yourself and your abilities, nothing will be able to stop you. This state of self-confidence comes from (1) understanding the functioning of your remarkable mind, and (2) practicing the techniques of mental fitness over and over, until you become a completely optimistic, cheerful, and positive person.”

You’ve seen this in action: the effect a rousing half-time speech can have on the outcome of a game; or, that top sales rep you know who enters every sales presentation assuming the close. Somehow she always exceeds her monthly quota, doesn’t she?

Other experts who study human performance agree that it’s the mental aspect that largely determines the quality of our performance, often coming down to a question of confidence, composure and focus.

According to an article in The Washington Post, which drew on the insights of Chris Carr, an Indianapolis sports psychologist who has worked with many Olympians and professional athletes over the past 20+ years, there are a few key strategies you can implement to boost your wins and perform your best:

1. Set Attainable Goal

By setting a reachable goal, you can quickly determine what must happen each day in order to achieve it. A sales rep, for example, might say, “I want to increase my sales 50% by the end of this quarter.” He would then break it down to the number of sales required on a daily basis to achieve that objective. From there, he would determine specifically what needs to be done in terms of generating leads, setting appointments, making presentations, asking for referrals, etc. to reach his goal. Sticking with a workable plan will make you more confident in the outcome.

2. See Your Success
To continue with the sales rep example, if your goal is to increase sales 50% by the end of the quarter, you should imagine yourself going through the various stages of the process: cheerfully increasing your canvassing efforts, successfully scheduling more appointments, giving stellar presentations, effortlessly attracting referral business, seeing your name at the top of sales rankings for the quarter, basking in the admiration of management and your fellow reps. Re-playing this movie over and over in your head will make it real in your mind, and success will seem within reach.

3. Create a Mental Checklist
Know what you need to do ahead of time in order to perform your best. Maybe before you start cold calling, you clear your desk of everything but the phone and your calendar. Or, maybe before you begin your presentation you say to yourself, “This is my best presentation. I will articulate my product’s value to my client, and I will upsell this account three times over the next year.” By repeating this statement to yourself prior to every sales presentation, you will internalize its message and it will automatically focus you in the moment.

4. Overcome Nervous Energy

The best way to relax on command is to practice relaxing. It may sound silly, but activities like meditation, deep breathing and listening to soothing music can help offset the rush of adrenaline we experience before an important event, such as a key sales presentation. If you learn to anticipate the surge—and have established techniques that enable you to relax on command—you can manage nervous energy to your advantage by channeling it into things like increased focus, more controlled pacing, etc.

5. Be the Voice inside Your Head

The idea here is to develop your own trigger words or phrases, things you can say to yourself during your performance that will instantly focus your mind on the task at hand. A sales rep, for example, might say, “Problem solver,” or “Consultative approach” to reinforce and focus her mindset in the moment. You don’t need to overthink it. Any word or short phrase that eliminates distractions will do the trick.

By implementing these strategies you can vastly improve your performance in any area of your life, converting losses into wins in the process.

Source

Why You Have To Own Your Swag To Be Successful

It’s a Tuesday night, and I’m at the bowling alley with a group of guys from a tech company that I deal with. I haven’t bowled for a while and secretly plan to focus on the conversation rather than my lackluster bowling performance.

Before I start, the man that invited me gives me some bowling tips. He has real swag and looks like he’s going to be awesome at bowling. He’s got the walk, the way of holding the ball, and he’s psyching me out with the way he stares.

After the first game where I hit a gutter ball, he gives me a tip and says that I need to the hold the ball with different fingers. I figure I have nothing to lose and take his advice. Then, for the next six odd games, I hit mostly gutter balls.

The decision from this point onwards is easy; it’s time to use my own swag and do what feels right. I change the ball to a slightly heavier one and go back to my old grip. Even though I am going against the rules of the sport, I bowl three strikes in a row and another shot where all the balls except one fall over.

Had I have kept trying to follow my colleagues swag and not embraced my own, I would have failed miserably. As it turns out, I nearly won even with all the gutter balls at the start. Now I’m described as being some bowling genius, and they think I have some secret skill.
My secret skill is my swag and having a go – nothing more. Here are the 4 ways to embrace your own swag:

1. Trust your instincts

Everyone has an opinion about how you should do a particular task; that doesn’t mean you should listen. Your instincts come from your animal ancestors from thousands of years ago, and you have them for a reason. Deep down, you know when you should listen to someone and when you should embrace your swag.

Learning to trust your decision-making ability based on feelings is a hard thing to master. Feeling your way through life without utilising logic goes against what we are taught in school and college. Every problem is supposed to have an answer, isn’t it?

Wrong. Predicting your future is never going to happen. There are a ton of studies that show how your gut instinct is worth acknowledging and is generally right for you. When something feels right, like the way you bowl, embrace it and love that you have your own style.


2. Your swag is you

I’m not sure why, but we humans seem always to want to be everyone else but ourselves. What’s so horrible about the way we are?


“There’s nothing wrong with you and the things that make you different are where the coolness lies”

Part of the challenge is that we think we have to follow a path that has previously been traveled. We don’t. The path we choose in life comes down to what is right for us individually. There are millions of ways to do almost anything so don’t feel like you have to do it like everyone before you.

There are times when it’s good to mirror other people’s success and then there are times to just make up the story as you go along. I prefer to make my own future and then change the world through what I believe that can be somewhat extreme.

Whether it’s a sport like bowling or the way you make money, do it using your own swag. Love your swag and how out of control it can be at times. Swag it out and be proud of who you are right now, and who you’re becoming thanks to all of the growth and personal development you are engaging in.


3. Know it’s okay to look silly

How you look might seem undesirable, but nine times out of ten, no one even notices. My bowling style probably looked stupid to most. It didn’t have the beautiful lines and the fancy footwork. The ball would hit the wooden floor with a sudden thump each time.

To make matters more challenging, all the people present were consuming a fair amount of beer. Strange old me went to the bar and ordered a bottle of water. Did I care if people thought that was weird? No. In fact, people became intrigued and started asking questions.

After these mini-conversations some of the guys looked at their beer with a different view. While they didn’t say it, they wondered what benefit they were getting and if there was a different perspective that might change their future success.

Everyone that was present that night is not going to forget my bowling swag and water drinking antics. In a business context, this makes me stand out from my competitors. Remember, people do life with people and people also do business with people.


“Having the same style as everyone else makes you forgettable and unsuccessful in the long run”

Your swag is cool because “cool” nowadays is about not being afraid to look silly and forgetting about how people might judge you. Every unknown sport is weird until someone achieves success at it and then it becomes mainstream and popular like kite surfing.


4. Not having an experience is worse

I could have just said I can’t bowl so I won’t go and hang out with these tech guys. I won’t embrace building new relationships and expanding my horizons. It would have been very easy on that rainy, windy, cold Melbourne day to curl up in bed with my favorite lemongrass and ginger tea, and consume endless social media content.

I could have admitted I was no good from day one and never stepped out of my comfort zone. The problem with the way of thinking I have just outlined (that was very tempting by the way) is that I would have missed out on life.

Maybe I would have met my future business partner at the bowling alley. Maybe I would have got a new idea for a business and gone on to be a high achieving entrepreneur of a tech startup because of a chance meeting that happened on this day.

You just never know what you are missing out on by being afraid of your swag and not using it to your advantage. By having very few experiences, you are doing more damage than using grit and pushing through any potential embarrassment or struggle. It’s only a struggle if you think it is.

Source

5 Tips from Billionaires to Help Achieve High Productivity

There are a ton of viral articles out there that are about “habits of millionaires” or“habits of successful people.”

Quite frankly, they are a bit plain and overdone.


5 Billionaire’s Tips to Achieve High Productivity

This advice comes directly from dozens of interviews and books by billionaires I have consumed. I decided to get advice from only the best of the best.

Here are 5 tips from billionaires on how to achieve high productivity:

1. Keep Your Calendar Simple

Keep your calendar clear and organized. Rather than having hundreds of complicated tasks on there, simplify it to the most important. Drop the rest.

The average person has many low-priority tasks that distract them on their calendar. It’s not a good idea to stuff your calendar with a thousand, small random tasks.

Warren Buffett has mentioned this many times in interviews.

Bill Gates has remarked about how amazing this is after learning it from Warren. Bill has used it himself since then.


2. Do What’s Most Important First

Your most important task should be done first when you start the day.

Average people fill their day with unimportant tasks. The start of their day is filled with tasks that could have gone undone and had minimal impact.

By the end of the day, their most important tasks are still incomplete and often pushed off until tomorrow. This leads to further procrastination and small results.

They were busy but not effective or impactful. You don’t want to be the person who does busywork to look busy rather than strategic, smart work.

Warren Buffett’s pilot, Mike Flint, learned this lesson after talking to Buffett.


Mike learned that the biggest threat to finishing the #1 most important task on your list is #2, #3, #4, #5, and so on. Throw out the other tasks until you finish #1.


3. Delegate Lower Priority Tasks

If your time is worth $50 an hour, every hour you waste doing tasks that can be outsourced for much less is a waste of time.

Do you know why billionaires don’t shop for groceries or cook themselves?

Part of the reason is because they can afford to. But according to billionaires like Richard Branson, part of the reason is because it’s an inefficient use of their time.

According to the book 15 Secrets Successful People Know About Time Management: The Productivity Habits of 7 Billionaires, failing to delegate low cost tasks can cost you tons of money.

If your time is worth $1000 an hour, you shouldn’t spend an hour a week buying groceries because you can get the same result in less time and earn more money.

Pay someone $20 an hour to do it for you and spend that time you bought back working. You have now earned $980 after expenses rather than losing an hour doing it yourself without earning anything.

OK, so you might not be making as much as $1000 an hour. But the same thought process can apply to how you spend your time. If your time is worth $25 an hour, how much time are you wasting at work and at home goofing off? 

4. Find Your Peak Performance Environment

People are different. Your most productive environment may be different from someone else’s.

Look for what time of day and what type of surroundings are you most productive in.
For example, some people find that they do the most creative work in loud, crowded coffee shops. Others prefer complete, isolated silence. Some people are most alert and focused in the mornings, while others do better late at night.

Build your environment and schedule to fit your optimal levels of performance.


5. Plan Out What You Will Do

According to the book, top performing billionaires plan out what they will do next ahead of time.

Plan out what you will do tomorrow and the next week. You can save hours of time by working more efficiently from the plans you made.

Without proper planning, your disorganization will cost you efficient moments of optimal workflow.

You’ll be confused and unsure of what to do. You’ll spend extra time trying to figure out what’s more important. You will be dazzled if you get interrupted and unsure where to resume.


Conclusion

There should be no excuses. Anyone is capable of turning these productivity tips into habits. I think the reasons people don’t are the lack of awareness and laziness.

Remember to keep your calendar simple, do what’s most important first, delegate lower priority tasks, find your best environment, and plan out what you will do next.
Are you as productive as a billionaire? Leave a comment below.

Source