Great Achievement Begins With a Dream By Kimberly Kennedy Bohannon

The greatest achievement begins with a single dream.

You see, it doesn't matter at what stage of your life you begin, what does matter is that you do begin. If you want to make your dream a reality, there is no better time like the present to get started.

You can reach your goals if you have a clear vision of your dream, are willing to put forth the effort, have a burning desire to make it happen, remain focused and persistent, and have a positive attitude.

You cannot be afraid of failing, and you cannot procrastinate. Successful people are never negative and never lazy.I have always known that someday I would accomplish my dream. What ever I do, I always try my best.

My parents taught me that I could be anything I wanted to be. But, guaranteed, it takes a lot of hard work to make it a reality.

At an early age I became interested in how and why certain people accomplish success. I was intrigued by the stars, from movies to sports. I thought it was a wonderful way to make a living... doing something you love.

When programs like A&E's Biography began, I was glued. I found it extremely interesting to learn how these people were able to reach their goals successfully.

What makes them so lucky?

Well, first I discovered that it was not luck. Luck is when you win the lottery. Success happens when you spend a lifetime of effort working toward the achievement of your dreams and you finally get the opportunity to make it a reality.

That is when you reach for the stars.

What seems to be an overnight success of some is actually a lifetime of preparation. And what most, if not all, these people have in common is they turned what they love doing into a successful career.

They are winners in the circle of accomplishments. They reach their goals doing something they love, and they spend their lives mastering their profession.

Successful people have a positive, winner's attitude. They believe in themselves which is why they reach their goals!

It takes a positive attitude and a great deal of effort to reach your goals... and it is well worth it. One of the greatest accomplishments in your life is having your your dream come to fruition.

Long term goals are reached by accomplishing short term goals. Each tiny step you take toward success is similar to walking up the steps to the top of a tower. As you plan and take each step the closer you get to identifying exactly what you want to achieve.

Knowing the end result of what you desire to accomplish will increase your chances of success. It is your passion that will drive you to reach your goals and turn your dream into reality.

And it is on that final step at the top when you are able to realize and appreciate all the little things you did which enabled you to reach your dream successfully.

Ending Procrastination by Jim Rohn

Perseverance is about as important to achievement as gasoline is to driving a car. Sure, there will be times when you feel like you're spinning your wheels, but you'll always get out of the rut with genuine perseverance. Without it, you won't even be able to start your engine.

The opposite of perseverance is procrastination. Perseverance means you never quit. Procrastination usually means you never get started, although the inability to finish something is also a form of procrastination.

Ask people why they procrastinate and you'll often hear something like this, I'm a perfectionist. Everything has to be just right before I can get down to work. No distractions, not too much noise, no telephone calls interrupting me, and of course I have to be feeling well physically, too. I can't work when I have a headache." The other end of procrastination - being unable to finish - also has a perfectionist explanation: "I'm just never satisfied. I'm my own harshest critic. If all the i's aren't dotted and all the t's aren't crossed, I just can't consider that I'm done. That's just the way I am, and I'll probably never change."

Do you see what's going on here? A fault is being turned into a virtue. The perfectionist is saying that his standards are just too high for this world. This fault-into-virtue syndrome is a common defense when people are called upon to discuss their weaknesses, but in the end it's just a very pious kind of excuse making. It certainly doesn't have anything to do with what's really behind procrastination.

Remember, the basis of procrastination could be fear of failure. That's what perfectionism really is, once you take a hard look at it. What's the difference whether you're afraid of being less than perfect or afraid of anything else? You're still paralyzed by fear. What's the difference whether you never start or never finish? You're still stuck. You're still going nowhere. You're still overwhelmed by whatever task is before you. You´re still allowing yourself to be dominated by a negative vision of the future in which you see yourself being criticized, laughed at, punished, or ridden out of town on a rail. Of course, this negative vision of the future is really a mechanism that allows you to do nothing. It's a very convenient mental tool.

I'm going to tell you how to overcome procrastination. I'm going to show you how to turn procrastination into perseverance, and if you do what I suggest, the process will be virtually painless. It involves using two very powerful principles that foster productivity and perseverance instead of passivity and procrastination.

The first principle is: break it down.

No matter what you're trying to accomplish, whether it's writing a book, climbing a mountain, or painting a house the key to achievement is your ability to break down the task into manageable pieces and knock them off one at one time. Focus on accomplishing what's right in front of you at this moment. Ignore what's off in the distance someplace. Substitute real-time positive thinking for negative future visualization. That's the first all- important technique for bringing an end to procrastination.

Suppose I were to ask you if you could write a four hundred-page novel. If you're like most people, that would sound like an impossible task. But suppose I ask you a different question. Suppose I ask if you can write a page and a quarter a day for one year. Do you think you could do it? Now the task is starting to seem more manageable. We're breaking down the four-hundred-page book into bite-size pieces. Even so, I suspect many people would still find the prospect intimidating. Do you know why? Writing a page and a quarter may not seem so bad, but you're being asked to look ahead one whole year. When people start to do look that far ahead, many of them automatically go into a negative mode. So let me formulate the idea of writing a book in yet another way. Let me break it down even more.

Suppose I was to ask you: can you fill up a page and a quarter with words-not for a year, not for a month, not even for a week, but just today? Don't look any further ahead than that. I believe most people would confidently declare that they could accomplish that. Of course, these would be the same people who feel totally incapable of writing a whole book.

If I said the same thing to those people tomorrow - if I told them, I don't want you to look back, and I don't want you to look ahead, I just want you to fill up a page and a quarter this very day - do you think they could do it?

One day at a time. We've all heard that phrase. That's what we're doing here. We're breaking down the time required for a major task into one-day segments, and we're breaking down the work involved in writing a four hundred-page book into page-and-a-quarter increments.

Keep this up for one year, and you'll write the book. Discipline yourself to look neither forward nor backward, and you can accomplish things you never thought you could possibly do. And it all begins with those three words: break it down.

My second technique for defeating procrastination is also only three words long. The three words are: write it down. We know how important writing is to goal setting. The writing you'll do for beating procrastination is very similar. Instead of focusing on the future, however, you're now going to be writing about the present just as you experience it every day. Instead of describing the things you want to do or the places you want to go, you're going to describe what you actually do with your time, and you're going to keep a written record of the places you actually go.

In other words, you're going to keep a diary of your activities. And you're going to be surprised by the distractions, detours, and downright wastes of time you engage in during the course of a day. All of these get in the way of achieving your goals. For many people, it's almost like they planned it that way, and maybe at some unconscious level they did. The great thing about keeping a time diary is that it brings all this out in the open. It forces you to see what you're actually doing... and what you're not doing.

The time diary doesn't have to be anything elaborate. Just buy a little spiral notebook that you can easily carry in your pocket. When you go to lunch, when you drive across town, when you go to the dry cleaners, when you spend some time shooting the breeze at the copying machine, make a quick note of the time you began the activity and the time it ends. Try to make this notation as soon as possible; if it's inconvenient to do it immediately, you can do it later. But you should make an entry in your time diary at least once every thirty minutes, and you should keep this up for at least a week.

Break it down. Write it down. These two techniques are very straightforward. But don't let that fool you: these are powerful and effective productivity techniques that allow you put an end to procrastination and help you get started to achieving your goals.

Commit to Constant and Never-Ending Improvement by Jack Canfield

The Success Principles are more than a collection of good ideas. They are timeless principles used by successful men and women throughout history. I have studied these success principles for more than 30 years and have applied them to my own life. The phenomenal success that I now enjoy is the result of applying these principles day in and day out since I began to learn them in 1968. Today I’d like to share with you one of them in particular—one that will help you along your own personal road to success: making a commitment to constant and never-ending improvement.

In Japan, the word for constant and never-ending improvement is kaizen. Not only is this an operating philosophy for modern Japanese businesses, it is also the age-old philosophy of warriors, too—and it’s becoming the personal mantra of millions of successful people. Achievers—whether in business, sports or the arts—are committed to continual improvement. If you want to be more successful, you need to learn to ask yourself, “How can I make this better? How can I do it more effi ciently? How can I do this more profi tably? How can we do this with greater love?”

The Mind-Numbing Pace of Change

In today’s world, a certain amount of improvement is necessary just to keep up with the rapid pace of change. New technologies are announced nearly every month. New manufacturing techniques are discovered even more often. New words come into use anytime a trend or fad catches on. And what we learn about ourselves, about our health and about our capacity for human thought, continues unabated.

Improving is therefore necessary simply to survive. But to thrive, as successful people do, a more dedicated approach to improvement in small increments. Whenever you set out to improve your skills, change your behavior, or better your family life or business, beginning in small, manageable steps gives you a greater chance of long-term success.

Doing too much too fast not only overwhelms you (or anyone else involved in the improvement), it can doom the effort to failure—thereby reinforcing the belief that it’s difficult, if not impossible, to succeed. When you start with small, achievable steps you can easily master, it reinforces your belief that you can easily improve.

Decide What to Improve On

At work, your goal might be for your company to improve the quality of your product or service, your customer service program or your advertising. Professionally, you might want to improve your computer skills, your typing speed, your sales skills or your negotiating skills. At home, you might want to improve your parenting skills, communication skills or cooking skills. You could also focus on improving your health and fitness, your knowledge of investing and money management or your piano playing. Or perhaps you want to develop greater inner peace through meditation, yoga and prayer.

Whatever your goal, decide where you want to improve and what steps you’ll need to take to achieve that improvement. Is it learning a new skill? Perhaps you can find that in a night class at the local community college. If it’s improving your service to the community, perhaps you can find a way to spend an extra hour per week volunteering. To keep yourself focused on constant and never-ending improvement, ask yourself every day, “How can I improve today? What can I do better than before? Where can I learn a new skill or develop a new competency?” If you do, you’ll embark on a lifelong journey of improvement that will ensure

your success.

You Can’t Skip Steps

One of life’s realities is that major improvements take time. They don’t happen overnight. But because so many of today’s products and services promise overnight perfection, we’ve come to expect instant gratification—and we become discouraged when it doesn’t happen. However, if you make a commitment to learn something new every day, getting just a little bit better every day, then eventually—over time—you will reach your goals.

Becoming a master takes time. You have to practice, practice, practice! You have to hone your skills through constant use and refinement. It takes years to have the depth and breadth of experience that produces expertise, insight and wisdom. Every book you read, every class you take, every experience you have is another building block in your career and your life. on’t shortchange yourself by not being ready when your big break appears.

Make sure you have done your homework and honed your craft. Actors usually have to do a lot of preparation—acting classes, community theater, off-Broadway plays, bit parts in movies and television, more acting classes, voice lessons, accent training, dancing lessons, martial arts training, learning to ride a horse, more bit parts—until one day they are ready for the dream part that is ready for them. Successful basketball players learn to shoot with their opposite hand, improve their freethrow shooting, and work on their three-point shots. Artists experiment with different media. Airline pilots train for every kind of emergency in a flight simulator. Doctors go back to school to learn more procedures and obtain advanced certifications. They are all engaged in a process of constant and never-ending improvement.

Make a commitment to keep getting better and better every day in every way. If you do, you’ll enjoy the feelings of increased self-esteem and self-confidence that come with self-improvement, as well as the ultimate success that will inevitably follow.

The Ebook-Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill

Think and Grow Rich is a motivational personal development and self-help book written by Napoleon Hill and inspired by a suggestion by Scottish-American businessman Andrew Carnegie. It was published in 1937 during the . It remains the biggest seller of Napoleon Hill's books, selling a claimed 30 million copies over the next 70 years .The text of Think and Grow Rich is founded on Hill's earlier work The Law of Success, the result of more than twenty years of research based on Hill's close association with a large number of individuals who achieved great wealth during their lifetimes. At Andrew Carnegie's bidding, Hill studied the characteristics of these achievers and developed 15 "laws" of success intended to be applied by anybody to achieve success. Think and Grow Rich condenses these laws further and provides the reader with 13 principles in the form of a philosophy of personal achievement.



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The Discipline of Reading

Some things in life are optional, and some things in life are mandatory. Taking your next vacation to the Caribbean is optional. Building a personal library and becoming an excellent reader is mandatory. It is no longer something you can choose to do or not do. It is absolutely essential and indispensable for your success.

A great many people do not read very much. Fifty-eight percent of adult Americans never read a nonfiction book from cover to cover after they finish school. The average American reads less than one book per year. In fact, according to a Gallup study of the most successful men and women in America, reading one nonfiction book per month will put you into the top 1 percent of living Americans.

It takes regular, persistent reading and studying for you to improve, to move to the front of your field. It is not optional.

There are a variety of reasons why people don't read as much as they should. One is that probably 50 million Americans have been graduated from high school with poor reading skills.

Another reason why people don't read is because they have not been told how important reading is. Lifelong learning, lifelong reading is the minimum requirement for success in any field today. If you are in sales, management, service, administration or any other field that relies on the written word to convey information and data, your ability to read well is absolutely critical to your success.

Some people don't read because they are simply lazy. They are surrounded by so many distractions, especially television, radio, socializing and other activities, that they just never get around to doing any serious reading. They are so busy and caught up in day-to-day activities and amusements that they put off reading and then never get around to it. If continued, this pattern could have devastating consequences.

Another reason why people don't read is that they probably are not working in the right field. One of the best tests for compatibility with your work is your desire to read and learn more about it. If you are doing the job that is right for you, you will naturally be eager to read everything that you can possibly find about your field. You will want to get better and better. You will be hungry for new knowledge. You will be determined to become excellent. And every single bit of new information motivates and stimulates you and makes you excited about learning even more.

However, if you are in the wrong field, you will look upon reading about it as drudgery. If the reading and studying is a required condition of your job or profession, you will do it, but only under duress. You will want to get it over with, like a visit to the dentist. If, for any reason, you are not eager to learn more about what you are doing, it could very well be that you are wasting your time and your life in the wrong field.

The last great obstacle to regular reading and continuous learning is that most people have been brought up with what we might call the old paradigm, the outdated way of viewing education. It's likely that as you grew up, education was looked upon as something that was done to you by other people. For the first 18 years of your life, you went off to school and education was done to you as though you were a passive object. Even when you went to college, you signed up for the courses that were recommended, you learned the subjects that were required, and you took the exams that were given. When you came out, you were the product of an education. It was almost as though the education had just happened to you, while you merely went along and did your share at the right time.

However, after you finish school, you are responsible for your education. From that moment onward, you are responsible for buying your books, planning your courses of study, learning your subjects and continually upgrading your skills. It's not the responsibility of anyone else. You are in charge. It's all up to you.

Many people think that it's up to their company to educate them if they need additional training. Well, if your company provides training, you should take every minute of it that you can get. But if it doesn't, and most companies don't, you are still solely responsible for maintaining and increasing your value through continuous reading. There is no other way.

 It may take a week, a month or a year to become a better reader. It may take even longer. But it doesn't matter. Your becoming an excellent reader will kick open doors of opportunity for you that you cannot now imagine.

Second, if you are already a good reader, or when you become a good reader, learn to speed-read. The Evelyn Wood Reading Dynamics program is probably the best that has ever been developed. Also, many communities throughout America offer speed-reading classes. Speed-reading is like touch-typing. In typing, you can use the hunt-and-peck method all your life, or you can learn how to do it right and increase your speed to 50 or 60 words per minute. In reading, you can take your speed from 50 or 60 words per minute up to 300, 400, 500 or even 1,000 words per minute, with no loss of comprehension. Speed-reading courses are absolutely essential to the success of really ambitious men and women today.

Third, build a personal library. Although public libraries are extremely helpful for research, you should buy your own books. People often ask me what books they should buy. To decide this, you can use the Law of Relative Importance. Buy the books that are most important to your life at this moment. The key word here is relevant. Adults learn best when what they are studying is extremely relevant to their needs, their work, their life, and their present situation. If you read material that is not relevant to what you are doing, you will find it difficult. You will not be drawn to the material, and you will forget most of it as you go along. But when you read material that is both relevant and applicable to your work, your mind sparkles with all kinds of ideas on how you can use this new information to be more effective. The prospect of learning new methods and techniques that you know will improve your life is both exciting and highly motivating.

Next, in building your own library, ask the most successful people in your field what books they would recommend. Then, go straight to the bookstore and buy them.

One of the marks of the professional, and professionalism is a state of mind, is that he has a library in his field. If you are in sales, you should have a library of sales books. You should be reading at least one hour per day in sales, one book per week, 50 books per year. You should be a consistent, persistent student of your craft. You should know more about the field of selling than anybody within 500 miles does. You should set a goal to become so knowledgeable about your field that you would be able to give advanced classes in your profession within a few years. With this idea as your guiding star, you will find yourself learning and remembering far more than you would if you were just browsing through the material.

Should you buy hardcover books or softcover books? I recommend that you purchase any book, of either kind, that can help you. Some books cost $20 to $30. The average person complains that he can't afford such a book. The superior person recognizes that the information contained in that book can save him a year or two of hard work. Remember, it may take an author 10 to 20 years to learn his subject. It may take him two to three years to write a book on it. It then may take one to two years to get the book published. By paying a few dollars for a book, you probably are getting the results of 20 or 25 years of effort by one of the smartest people in your field.

Never scrimp on your education. It is one of the most damaging things you could ever do.

Get some good bookshelves, and begin categorizing your books by subject. Have a section on sales. Have a section on management. Have a section on family and child raising. Have a section on personal motivation and success. If you like novels, have a section on fiction, or on history.

Organize your sections in alphabetical order, either by the title of the book or by the author. You don't have to make it too formal or structured. The point is to set up your library in such a way that you pretty well know where each book is, you know whether or not you have a book, and you know where to go to get a piece of information when you need it.

Once you've bought a book, read it with a red pen in hand, underlining and making notes at every key point you find. If you read a book twice, use a different-color pen to underline points you may have missed the first time.

I have books that I have read 10 or 20 times and that look like rainbows from page to page. They are literally covered with all kinds of colors and marks. Needless to say, the information and ideas in those books has soaked so deeply into my psyche that I can recite much of the material in my dreams.

You need to read an hour or two each day just to keep current with your field. You need to read newspapers, magazines, newsletters, correspondence and other materials. But you don't get ahead with regular reading. You must invest in the future while you keep current with the present. If you want to get ahead, you must read things that give you new ideas and insights, not merely things that confirm what you already know.

Becoming a proficient and persistent reader may not be easy to do so, but it's certainly possible. The future does belong to the competent. Those who know more will always win out over those who know less. The more you read, the better you get. The more you learn, the easier it is for you to learn. And the more you challenge your mind, the smarter you get.

Accepting Responsibility—a Story of Bill Russell by Jim Rohn

Most people dread accepting responsibility. That’s just a fact of life, and we can see it in operation every day. Yes, we can see avoidance of responsibility all the time in both our personal and professional lives. And here’s something else we can see just as often: we can see that most people aren’t as successful as they wish they were. Do you see there is a connection between these two very common phenomena?

It’s in your best interest to take responsibility for everything you do. But that’s only the beginning. Many times it’s even best to take responsibility for the mistakes of others, especially when you’re in a managerial or leadership role.

During the years when professional basketball was just beginning to become really popular, Bill Russell, who played center for the Boston Celtics, was one of the greatest players in the pro league. He was especially known for his rebounding and his defensive skills.

But like a lot of very tall centers, Russell was never much of a free throw shooter. His free throw percentage was quite a bit below average in fact. But this low percentage didn’t really give a clear picture of Russell’s ability as an athlete. And in one game he gave a very convincing demonstration of this.

It was the final game of a championship series between Boston and the Los Angeles Lakers. With about 12 seconds left to play, the Lakers were behind by one point and Boston had the ball. It was obvious that the Lakers would have to foul one of Boston’s players in order to get the ball back, and they chose to foul Bill Russell.

This was a perfectly logical choice since statistically Russell was the worst free throw shooter on the court at that moment. If he missed the shot, the Lakers would probably get the ball back and they’d still have enough time to try to win the game. But if Russell made his first free throw, the Lakers’ chances would be seriously diminished. And if he made both shots, the game would essentially be over.

Bill Russell had a very peculiar style of shooting free throws. Today, no self-respecting basketball player anywhere in America would attempt it. Aside from the question of whether it’s an effective way to shoot a basket, it just looked too ridiculous. Whenever he had to shoot a free throw, the six-foot-eleven Russell would start off holding the ball in both hands about waist high, then he’d squat down and as he straightened up he’d let go of the ball. It looked like he was trying to throw a bucket of dirt over a wall.

But regardless of how he looked, as soon as Bill Russell was fouled, he knew the Celtics were going to win the game. He was absolutely certain of it because, in a situation like this, statistics and percentages mean nothing. There was a much more important factor at work, something that no one has found a way to express in numbers and decimal points.

Simply put, Bill Russell was a player who wanted to take responsibility for the success or failure of his team. He wanted the weight on his shoulders in a situation like this. No possibility for excuses. No possibility of blaming anyone else if the game was lost. No second guessing. Bill Russell wanted the ball in his own hands and nobody else’s. And, like magic, even if he’d missed every free throw he’d ever shot in his life before this, he knew he was going to make this one. And that is exactly what happened.

That is what virtually always happens when a man or woman accepts responsibility eagerly and with confidence. I’ve always felt that accepting responsibility is one of the highest forms of human maturity. A willingness to be accountable, to put yourself on the line, is really the defining characteristic of adulthood.

The video check-Brain Tracy Live

Brian Tracy (born in Vancouver, Canada in 1944) is a self-help author who has recorded many of his works as audio books. His presentations and seminar topics include leadership, sales, managerial effectiveness, and business strategy. He is now a much-sought-after speaker. He is now the Chairman of Brian Tracy International, a human resource company based in Solana Beach, California, with affiliates throughout the United States and thirty-one other countries.


 



Brain tracy audio books are very uplifiting ,whenever I listen to his audios I will have  new thought process and energy.