Companies thrive on new efficiencies to drive productivity, especially if they come up with a new method or process that can compress the amount of time in generating higher results. So should we if we’re gonna create massive success for ourselves– wouldn’t you love to start living the life of your dreams as quickly as possible?. In the fourth part of this blog post series, I focus on 2 key areas around your biggest asset in Life Leadership Principle#3: Use Your Time Wisely, by leveraging it in investing in yourself. We all have the same amount of this asset per day, but we each choose to use it differently. How we leverage this asset is what separates success from mediocrity. And it is a limited resource.
In case you missed the earlier series, you can use the navigation bar at the bottom or the quick links below:
4 New Life Leadership Principles for Living Big
Life Leadership Principle #1: Know Where You Are
Life Leadership Principle #2: Create Your Personal Vision
TIME: YOUR BIGGEST ASSET
This is the single most important asset you have (outside of yourself of course), because you can use it as leverage to get you to the next level. But be very careful how you use it, because it is limited. Skills and know-how you can always learn, but it takes time. Practicing skills to become proficient or an expert takes time. Experience takes time. Wisdom comes with time. On one of his webinars ‘7 Strategies to Become a Top Earner’, Ray Higdon, online social media and home business guru, said this about use of your time in your entrepreneurial venture: ‘Your time management will determine the velocity of your success’. It’s so true. So here are 2 areas you need to know in order to leverage the most of your time.
1. HOW IMPORTANT IS YOUR TIME?
This is all about your attitude to time. Time is an opportunity to use for the purpose of advancing towards your purpose. You cannot extend time, but you can be smart about how you use it. In modern hectic life, we all complain about and ‘feel’ like not having enough time to do the things we know we need to do. But if you are clear and serious about your future and the life you want, you will MAKE time.
I’m assuming you’ve come this far and created a vision and purpose for yourself. If you’d like to receive a free guide on 10 Questions to Creating Your Purpose, just enter your name and contact form at the end of my last blog post at ‘Create Your Personal Vision’.
Let’s use a couple of examples. Having a great physique and healthy-looking body you dream off will involve regular routine, exercise and frequency in a week. And a regimented diet to go along with it, plus time where to shop for your meals. If you don’t dedicate the time to do this, and be disciplined you’re gonna stay where you are. If you want to invest but you know little, you’re gonna require taking a course, or reading study materials, and MAKE time, regularly. The amount of time and frequency a week, will be directly linked to the life you want to lead. We all have busy lives that sap our precious time– you know all this. Isn’t it about time you allocated time for your future? Just keep in mind, your attitude to time will determine the importance of making time to work on your future.
2. Time can be created
Here’s a really cool truth about time. You can create more of it!—but it requires sacrifice, an act few people are prepared to do. But for the person who’s future is important to them, has a plan mapped out on what to do, he or she can create MORE time for themselves. This is particularly important and requires discipline with folks working tiresome long work hours. But the truth is…there are weekends, there are lunch hours, there are evenings. We complain of a lack of time, yet we do have time for Facebook, whatsapp, watching youtube (while watching TV), and socializing, things that may not be contributing directly to your future. Everyone needs relaxation, down-time, catch-up time—don’t get me wrong, I’m not advocating to eliminate. What I am saying, is that you should never use a lack of time as an excuse for not doing what you know needs to be done. If you think about it, we actually have a lot of time. It’s a matter of importance, and prioritization. The insight is this: sacrifice is an ‘ego’-thing. If we lack sacrifice for ourselves, you may ask if the value in return for what we are sacrificing is ‘good enough’. We are not prepared to sacrifice in creating more time if we cannot see the return value of doing it– at the end of the day, we ourselves GAIN!. I’m a low handicap golfer, after years of obsession with the sport. I stopped playing golf 1 year ago because it took just too much time; time I’d rather and needed to be spending building my business, investing in learning and time with my family as I was creating a future for us. The nice part is, I can look forward to playing golf as much as I want in a few years time. Remember: Sacrifice is only a temporary trade-off for the benefit of the long term good in our lives.
PRODUCTIVITY
Time importance and using it efficiently is a powerful combination. Whatever you have decided to plan and do in your life plan, list out the few key things that with regular, scheduled time discipline you will commit yourself each week into doing. This is important given work, family and other life and social balancing acts we need to do each day. Set aside time each week, schedule it in your calendar, create alerts and get into the habit. Losing weight is not going to happen if you don’t schedule and commit to a time slot. Learning about investing in a book, is not going to happen unless you set aside time. And if you’re in a part time business, outside of your normal day job, you’re not going to create success without disciplined time scheduling on the activity plan that you have created in your new direction. Let your schedule book be your ‘boss’ in driving you to your personal success. Takes effort and motivation initially, but with habit, it’ll become automatic. I recently came across an interesting piece and wrote a post about how mindset and repeated action has been scientifically proven to create success. With positive thinking, affirmations of your future success combined with a productive habit and work schedule, you can actually manifest success. You can literally think and become successful (read ‘Think and Grow Rich’ by Napolean Hill). It takes repeated action, discipline and mindset programming to gradually put you on that path (or a new one) in transforming yourself into who you’ll need to become to achieve greatness. And you can do that through thoughts, as thoughts lead to actions, actions lead to habits, habits become your character, and character determines your destiny.
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‘Climb your mountain…and see what’s on the other side’!
