It is human nature to want to be loved.  That is truly all we ever want in life, to love and be loved.  Why is it that what we want the most is perhaps the most difficult thing to attain?  Is it because we place so much pressure on finding the “perfect” love that we can’t find any love worthwhile?

No one is perfect.  Love isn’t perfect, but loving with all your heart for all the right reasons is the closest you can ever hope for and if you are lucky enough to receive that same love in return you are truly blessed.  Appreciate and validate that relationship every day.  It’s worth it!

Now, it is also human nature to avoid being hurt and that is where the defense mechanism comes in.  People put up barriers, boundaries and even sabotage relationships before they can ever have a chance to grow.  Why?  People are afraid of being hurt.  Get over it!  Hurt is a basic human emotion.  Without being hurt, you could never truly appreciate love.  That’s what it’s all about.  With any luck and a solid partner or companion that cares for your well being will love more than they will ever hurt you and when they hurt you it will be minor and mundane in comparison to the love that you share.

You see, people will say things you don’t want to hear.  They will do things you wished they hadn’t.  If they love you, and truly they love you more than you ever imagined, hold tight. Don’t let them go.    Love is special.  It is something to treasure and be cherished.  It is not something to take lightly or fend off.  Yes, it may hurt if you ever feel crossed, or abandoned by that person, but true love will never do that.  True love will remain forever and although true love is not promised to anyone, only someone willing to receive love and appreciate it in it’s entirety will ever have the chance at achieving it.

Don’t close the doors to the possibility to finding love.   It may feel like it is a world away, but opening your heart and mind to it will bring you closer to finding it than you ever imagined.  Chances are, it’s already there in front of you, you just have to open your eyes and your heart to receive it.

As I met new people and explored new relationships I started to realize how special my childhood was and how blessed I was to be raised with such a strong foundation, sense of self and confidence to achieve anything I set my mind to.

Over the years I have met people that on the surface appear to be confident and determined, but when the glitter fades they appear the most lonely and vulnerable of all.

I am sure you can relate to the type of person who drives a fancy car, a BMW or Mercedes perhaps, wears diamonds and talks about how “successful” they are and puts on a facade appearing to be such a hard valiant worker driven to “succeed.”  They spend their whole lives chasing what they believe will make them admired and complete, sacrificing quality time with people they love and passing by life’s most precious moments like watching the sunset with the one that they love.  Somehow the chase for the validating happiness continues day after day like a never-ending hamster wheel. No matter how hard they chase, it’s never enough.  The people closest to them feel pushed away and unimportant the chasers miss out on happiness all together.

If you spend your whole life searching for happiness in material things, money or admiration from others, you will always be at the mercy of the chase and you will always be dependent.  Happiness and contentment comes from within.  Be at peace with who you are.

The only thing we truly need in this world is to be loved, feel love and give love.  We want to love what we do, love someone and be loved by someone. That’s it.  It’s that simple.  I promise.  Yes there are things like fancy cars, traveling the world and diamonds and pearls, but if you don’t have anyone to share them with they are all meaningless.

You can’t take anything with you when you go, but the love and happiness that discover within and share with those you love will live on for generations to come.  Be proud of who you are.  Lay a solid foundation for the future generations remember tomorrow is promised to no one.  If you’re on the hamster wheel of life, get off!  Life is too precious and too short to cheat yourself out of true happiness.

Slow down, take note and live to the fullest, living, laughing and loving.

Sometimes when we share our dreams or desires with family, instead of supporting, they often say something like “well everyone has dreams” or even more negative, “dream on”. By saying “these are my goals” the mind doesn’t have that negative overtone and somehow the “dream” has now become a something that Is attainable, something that they can see on the horizon, something positive that they now believe they have the power to achieve.

The process of determining what your goals are is an achievement in itself.   Once you know where you’re going, the hardest part is done.  Now you just have to figure out how to get there and go!

Many people waste too much time envying other people and their lives and don’t spend enough time focusing their own goals.  Some people give the excuse “well they are successful and I want to follow them and what they do so I will be as successful.”  First of all success comes in many different packages.  Secondly, it is not uncommon to waste extraordinary amounts of time idolizing someone else’s life only to realize they don’t have things as good as we thought.   Frankly, by focusing on others we take the focus off ourselves.  We neglect ourselves and become our biggest road blocks.

Focusing is the process of combining resources to achieve a goal. Once you determine your goal you must map out your strategy or plan of how to get there.  Once you know where and how the next step is simple. Go!

Sounds easy and too logical? Logical yes.  Easy no. The road to success may not be an easy one.  Chances are there will be many road blocks and extreme difficulties along the way.  You may often feel close to giving up.  DON’T!  As long as you keep you goals in sight and map beside you, you won’t get lost. Stay the course!

Fundamentals

• Every day you must invest everything within your power to achieve that goal

• Avoid distractions and excess activities that take your time and focus away.

• Keep a journal.

-Record your thoughts and mini accomplishments that occur along the path to your goal.

-Record your setbacks and analyze why they occur and what you learn from them.

• Learn to create opportunity. Get out there, Meet people. Open up.

• Learn to recognize and seize opportunity. Often opportunity comes down to luck and it is simply being in the right place at the right time.

• Become involved in activities that support and nurture your inner self and desire to achieve that goal. By becoming involved in supportive related activities you take distraction and wasted time away from the wrong activities.

• Develop a mentorship or support system with someone who has chosen a similar path.

How Personality Affects Focus

Some people have trouble focusing because of the type of personality traits they have.  If you can identify your personality type you will be better prepared to recognize the self-inflicting obstacles that deter your focus.  By recognizing them you can begin to prevent them and maintain course.

If you are an emotional person, you need to understand your emotions and where they come and what they truly mean before acting.  Often times people react according to their emotions without understanding the base of the emotion.  When you act strictly on how you feel and are not aware of the deriving source of the emotion you often act on a situation and make it worse or gloss over the true situation without addressing the true issue.  Although feelings are important, make sure they are relative to the bigger picture.

If you are an anxious person you may feel easily distracted and deterred from you path.  You may feel you are not getting to your goal fast enough and wasting too much time.  Be patient.  Anything difficult is worth it! Try not to distract yourself by finding other things to do such as cleaning, reading, phone-calling.  All these activities take time away from you and your goal.  Don’t let them.

Disillusioned people are often against competition.  They sometimes even deny the entire goal-setting process. This is a self-limiting way of thinking.  These people are often unhappy with themselves or lives and would like more, but are afraid or in such a regulated state of mind that they never step outside of their box to see what the world can really offer you.  To set goals or compete does not mean that someone has to be better or more prominent than another. The process is simply envisioning what you want and believing in ability to achieve it. The power is within you.

If you are introverted person or underachiever who has constantly sat on the sidelines you may have trouble focusing because you fear you will be rejected or you will be looked at as different.  You may fear failure or even success.  This is not about living up to anyone else’s expectations.  This is about you.  This is for you. Your only concern should be you.

Someone who is an overachiever can  become fixated on the focusing process because it appears to reinforce success.  Success, however is different to different people and when someone is so intent on accomplishing quantity rather than quality they are often unable to  to achieve the most important goal of inner peace and contentment.  Having goals and achieving them is great, but losing track of the actual journey and the true achievements along the way is a disservice to yourself.

Regardless of what type of personality traits you have, take time to understand who you truly are as a person. If you know who you are and what you want the rest is simple.

Finding your passion and having the courage to follow it can give your life new meaning. Many people struggle all their lives and never really discover or have the courage to follow their passion. Often, they are lead to believe by others around them that their passion is insignificant or without merit. It is important to remember that if there is something in your life that brings extreme joy and excitement it will always be significant and will always hold merit. Just because someone may not enjoy a good cup of coffee does not make coffee worthless. Coffee is a billion dollar industry. Millions of people are employed by coffee. Many people are millionaires because of coffee. People complete business deals over coffee.

Relationships are started and strengthened over coffee. The point? Everyone has their own cup of coffee, or their own individual passion. It may not mean to someone else what it means to you, but it is yours. Don’t ever let anyone lead you to believe otherwise. You hold the key to your happiness. You just have to be willing to unlock the door.

So now, you may be wondering what to do if you don’t know what your passion is. You may remember career day in school where teachers handed out questionnaires about your interests, what things you enjoy, etc. Once your answers were totaled, it was supposed to give you ideas of jobs that may make you happy in life. Although those questionnaires may have some validity, they were always limited to the typical 9-5, corporate, or generic artistic type jobs. They never ventured outside of a blanket title and they never discussed the difference of a job versus life passion.

For instance, you may have answered that you like the outdoors, to work independently, to be trusted with responsibility, and are interested in the environment. The conclusion would suggest you could probably find true happiness and fulfill your life’s passion in waste disposal because it met those characteristics. Not to degrade anyone in the waste disposal business, because it is a honest, highly important job in our society, but I don’t believe many people truly have a life passion for emptying garbage bins. These questionnaires tend to gather information and suggest a blanket occupational passion, but passion is not necessarily something popular or typical in society. A passion is individual and sometimes following it has nothing to do with making a living, but everything to do with making a life.

Many people live their lives day to day content with the things they do and the habits they form, but many still have a nagging feeling like something is missing. Some people tend to chase money or attention or become overachievers because they believe if they just get that big payoff they will be happy, but often the payoff is not external. It is internal and until you find that inner happiness within, you will never be content and always be searching for more.
 
Everyone has a passion. They may not be fully aware of it, or how to find it and live it, but they dream, they believe, and somewhere deep down inside it is there.

So How do you find your passion?

Passion is what drives you. It may make provoke happiness, anger or inspiration or compassion, whichever it is for you it moves you. It comes from the soul.

You have to get in touch with your heart and head. Here are some tips to help you get in touch with your passion.

To get in touch with your heart and head you need to concentrate on you. Take care of yourself. Sometimes we spend so much time on other people that we neglect ourselves. Mothers are especially guilty of this. Start by spending time with yourself, nurture your inner spirit, read a good uplifting book, exercise, eat right, do simple creative projects like work on a family album, put together a scrapbook of your life and what it means to you. By doing these type of things you start engaging your heart and your true inner spirit with your everyday life. Often our hectic lives become so busy and chaotic that we can become disengaged from our feelings and we often put off what we really want or need. It is important not to lose track of what we really desire and the true importance of life.

As you start to recognize or reconnect with important things in your life and the feelings associated with them, take it a step further. Start to closely evaluate what evokes those feelings. What makes you happy? What makes you sad or feeds you negative energy? What makes you excited? Evaluate everything. When you watch the news how do you feel? When you are at work evaluate what happens throughout your day. How does it affect you and how do you respond? When you talk with friends or family what do you talk about? Why? How does it make you feel? The idea is to become aware of yourself and what moves and motivates you.

What interest, passion or desire do you have but are afraid to share with others?

If failure was not an option, would you be willing to try something that you are too afraid to try now?

-If you had an unlimited supply of money, is there something particular you would do?

-What do you dream about doing?

-When people ask you what you do or what your interests are, do you shy away from telling them your true interests or secret hobbies? Do you only tell them what you do to make a living rather that what makes you want to live?

-What are you not pursuing your true passion now?

-List five things that you want. List five things that you’re good at. Do you know the difference between them?

-When you were young, before you had any environmental influences what did you want to be when you grew up?

-How would you like the world to be?

-What would you regret not having done if your life was ending?

Once you define your passion and know what you want to do the only thing left to do is do it. Stop analyzing and over analyzing your plan of action start doing something! So you have to start trying new things and you are afraid, so what? You could either sit and do nothing or start and do something. By doing something you open doors for something more. Challenge your fears with action, you’ll not only raise your self-esteem, self-awareness and gain experience and learn valuable lessons for future use.

Not allowing yourself to follow your dreams, means you’re not addressing a part of who you are.  If there is something you aspire to, something you want badly, if you don’t make an attempt to go after it, it can eat away at you. You can become very negative about life in general or others that have gone after their dreams or even yourself and become self-loathing. It is imperative that you use any energy positively instead of negatively. If you even make an attempt to follow your dreams, even when it’s hard or scary it will give you such a sense of fulfillment. Even if it’s baby steps, it will make you feel alive.

How to get there

• First ask yourself why you are not trying to go after your dream.  Are you afraid to fail?  Are you afraid to succeed? Are you afraid of what others will think?  Do you really think you don’t deserve to follow your heart and go after your dreams?   Determine what is stopping you. Get past the excuses and really analyze why you have not tried to follow your dreams. It’s not because you have kids. It’s not because you don’t have the time. Once you determine the real reason,  ask yourself if that reason warrants compromising your happiness and fulfillment by following your heart and your dreams.

• Think about what you need to do to get to your dream. Write out the steps towards it.

• Then break down the steps you need to take to accomplish your dream into steps as small and as manageable as tiny baby steps. Even if you just do something as small as write down one thing on a list to do, or write down a phone number of who you’re going to call, you’re making steps towards your dream.SARK calls this micro-movements.

• Is anything still holding you back? Figure out what would help you take a small step towards your dream. Do you need to tell someone your dream to make it real? Do you need to allow yourself to feel something? Do you need to write it out in a book, or draw it so you can see it?

• Then hold onto that dream, and keep trying to take mini steps towards it coming true. Try to always be gentle and kind with yourself, always. And when you do do something, even something you’d consider miniscule, celebrate it. Notice it. Know you’re coming closer to your dream. Feel the joy and wonder of that.

So reach for your dreams. Follow them. Believe in them. And they can come true.

Relationships are started and strengthened over coffee. The point?   Everyone has their own cup of coffee, or their own individual passion.  It may not mean to someone else what it means to you, but it is yours. Don’t ever let anyone lead you to believe otherwise. You hold the key to your happiness.  You just have to be willing to unlock the door.

So now, you may be wondering what to do if you don’t know what your passion is.  You may remember career day in school where teachers handed out questionnaires about your interests, what things you enjoy, etc.  Once your answers were totaled, it was supposed to give you ideas of jobs that may make you happy in life.  Although those questionnaires may have some validity, they were always limited to the typical 9-5, corporate, or generic artistic type jobs.  They never ventured outside of a blanket title and they never discussed the difference of a job versus life passion.

For instance, you may have answered that you like the outdoors, to work independently, to be trusted with responsibility, and are interested in the environment. The conclusion would suggest you could probably find true happiness and fulfill your life’s passion in waste disposal because it met those characteristics.  Not to degrade anyone in the waste disposal business, because it is a honest, highly important job in our society, but I don’t believe many people truly have a life passion for emptying garbage bins.  These questionnaires tend to gather information and suggest a blanket occupational passion, but passion is not necessarily something popular or typical in society.  A passion is individual and sometimes following it has nothing to do with making a living, but everything to do with making a life.

Many people live their lives day to day content with the things they do and the habits they form, but many still have a nagging feeling like something is missing. Some people tend to chase money or attention or become overachievers because they believe if they just get that big payoff they will be happy, but often the payoff is not external. It is internal and until you find that inner happiness within, you will never be content and always be searching for more.

Everyone has a passion. They may not be fully aware of it, or how to find it and live it, but they dream, they believe, and somewhere deep down inside it is there.

So How do you find your passion?

Passion is what drives you.  It may make provoke happiness, anger or inspiration or compassion, whichever it is for you it moves you.  It comes from the soul.

You have to get in touch with your heart and head.  Here are some tips to help you get in touch with your passion.

To get in touch with your heart and head you need to concentrate on you.  Take care of yourself.  Sometimes we spend so much time on other people that we neglect ourselves.  Mothers are especially guilty of this.  Start by spending time with yourself, nurture your inner spirit, read a good  uplifting book, exercise, eat right, do simple creative projects like work on a family album, put together a scrapbook of your life and what it means to you. By doing these type of things you start engaging your heart and your true inner spirit with your everyday life. Often our hectic lives become so busy and chaotic that we  can become disengaged from our feelings and we often put off what we really want or need.   It is important not to lose track of what we really desire and the true importance of life.

As you start to recognize or reconnect with important things in your life and the feelings associated with them, take it a step further. Start to closely evaluate what evokes those feelings.  What makes you happy? What makes you sad or feeds you negative energy?  What makes you excited? Evaluate everything. When you watch the news how do you feel? When you are at work evaluate what happens throughout your day.  How does it affect you and how do you respond?  When you talk with friends or family what do you talk about? Why? How does it make you feel?   The idea is to become aware of yourself and what moves and motivates you.

-What interest, passion or desire do you have but are afraid to share with others?

-If failure was not an option, would you be willing to try something that you are too afraid to try now?

-If you had an unlimited supply of money, is there something particular you would do?

-What do you dream about doing?

-When people ask you what you do or what your interests are, do you shy away from telling them your true interests or secret hobbies? Do you only  tell them what you do to make a living rather that what makes you want to live?

-What are you not pursuing your true passion now?

-List five things that you want. List five things that you’re good at. Do you know the difference between them?

-When you were young,  before you had any environmental influences what did you want to be when you grew up?

-How would you like the world to be?

-What would you regret not having done if your life was ending?

Once you define your passion and know what you want to do the only thing left to do is do it.  Stop analyzing and over analyzing your plan of action start doing something!  So you have to start trying new things and you are afraid, so what? You could either sit and do nothing or start and do something. By doing something you open doors for something more.   Challenge your fears with action, you’ll not only raise your self-esteem, self-awareness and gain experience and learn valuable lessons for future use.

I remember love following me when I didn’t expect it, yet openly accepted it because it felt right. Somehow, along the way, I have lost that natural instinct and started to second guess everything and everyone. I have let my experiences impact any potential opportunity to love in, what appears, a bizarre type of self-defense mechanism to avoid any further negative experiences. It’s a shame really, by letting myself drown in the prevention of pain, I am avoiding any pleasure. I am guarding my emotions and over-analyzing every situation, and am becoming a hinderance to my own human spirit.

People are emotional creatures that merely need to love and feel love in life, everything else just adds to the beautiful journey.

When the sun starts to set tonight and you start to unwind for the night, take a moment to reflect on your life. Think about you emotions and how you allow them to guide you in your decisions. Maybe, just maybe, you are preventing yourself from progress like so many people do. Try to let go of the past and live for the present, even if just for one day. Remember what it is like to be a child, fearless, loving, caring, aspiring and hopeful. Embrace those feelings and who you are and remember regardless of what age you are or what your current situation in life is, you are worth feeling the joys of life. Embrace your emotions and who you are and live for the moment. That’s what life is all about.

It is important to recognize all your experiences in life for what they are.  Try to distance yourself from situations and analyze them, the cause, effect, and purpose. By understanding situations we can learn from them and apply them to our future situations in a positive way.

Too often events happen in peoples lives that have long term negative effects on peoples self-esteem. Sometimes it can be as simple as losing a basketball game when you were 8 and the way you felt your someone ridiculed you for doing so.  How you feel as a result of something someone said is, however, exactly that how you feel.  You own your feelings. Only you have the power to allow or stop the way you react or feel as a result of something that is said.

People often insult someone else in an attempt to make themselves feel better.  They so desperately want to feel good about themselves that they are willing to put down someone else to do so.  This never works for them and only distances themselves from others. It is important that you recognize when someone approaches you and says something negative an immediate red flag should shoot up.  If you have done nothing to deserve a confrontation or insulting remark, most likely they are attempting to find some way to feel better about themselves.  This is not your problem. Do not internalize it.  You know who you are. Don’t let them tell you otherwise.

Sometimes  parents are guilty of pushing their children  too hard or even ridiculing them privately or publicly. You may have even heard them rationalize their actions by saying they just want them to do better and go father than they did.  There is no excuse to ridicule a child or push them excessively into any sport, competition or other activity.   If a parent is trying to make up for something they regret they will never find it within another person.  The problem lies within themselves.  So, if you are a child of such a parent and feel like maybe you weren’t good enough, all you can be is you.  Anything more your parent was expecting or hoping for is their problem.

I know it is easier said than believed, but so often we want to please other people, bosses, spouses, parents, that we forget about pleasing ourselves. You are the only one that can please you.  A spouse, a boss, a parent, whoever is just gravy.  You have to start with yourself, because if you are not happy it is going to show and you are eventually going to let it affect your life, possibly blame others or push your child too hard in an attempt to find your happiness within them.  It won’t work.  It comes from you and only you.

Exercise:

Do you have a burden or a negative feeling about yourself? Did something happen in your life that affected your self-esteem? If you have events in your past that have affected you negatively in life, it is imperative that you deal with those feelings. Understand that you specifically are not responsible for the situation.  The situation and things that were done or said created those feelings and emotions not you.

Pull out some paper and a pen.  Think back to what exactly happened. Write it down in detail.

How did the situation start?

Who started it?

What was said?

What was done?

At what point did the situation turn negative?

Did you feel angry, hurt, deceived, put down?

Why?

Do You believe you were at fault?

Why?

Analyze the situation entirely. Remember, words are only that, words.  They can be spoken by anyone at anytime for no reason. I could say the sky is yellow, but we all know it is blue (generally). Just because something is said does not make it truth.

Most of the time people carry negative thoughts with them. Often the thoughts are entirely based on their perception of the intended meaning.  A person with a love and passion for painting can actually go through life for years believing they are a terrible painter and worthless because someone said one of their paintings wasn’t ready to be showcased with the others. Maybe the person merely meant it didn’t meet the standards for the showcase, maybe they meant it’s not in the exact style of the others showcased, maybe they meant it wasn’t aesthetically the best in their opinion.  Regardless of what the person said that is merely their opinion.

The Bottom Line

Learn the difference between truth and fact. You can believe and know you truly are a good mother, but understand you are human, you are not perfect and there will be days were you may forget your child’s doctors appointment or to make their lunch for school.  It is ok. That is part of life. That is nothing in the grand scheme of things.

Believe in yourself. Only you have the power to do so. Other people can believe in you, but unless you believe in yourself you will never truly find happiness.

1. Believe In Yourself

2. You Have Rights

3. You Have Passions

4. You Have Desires

5. You Are Strong

6. You Are In Control

5. You Have the Power to attain whatever you want.

Today, however, the rate of change is not only faster than ever before, but it is discontinuous. It is taking place in a variety of unconnected areas and affecting each of us in a variety of unexpected ways. Changes in information processing technologies are happening separately from changes in medicine, changes in transportation, changes in education, changes in politics and changes in global competition. Changes in family formation and relationships are happening separately from the rise and fall of new businesses and industries in different parts of the country. And if anything, this rate of accelerated, discontinuous change is increasing. As a result, most of us are already suffering from what Alvin Toffler once called, “future shock.”

You can’t do very much about the enormity of these changes, but the one thing that you can do is to think seriously about yourself and your basic need for security and stability. In no area is this more important than in the areas of job security and financial security. You must give special attention to your ability to make a good living and provide for yourself in the months and years ahead.

Above all, to position yourself for tomorrow, you must think continuously and seriously about your work today, your earning ability , and the work that you will be doing one, three, and five years from today. You must plan to achieve your own financial security, no matter what happens.

Charles Kettering said that you should give a lot of thought to the future because that is where you are going to spend the rest of your life. One of the greatest mistakes that people can make, and the one with the worst long-term consequences, is to think only about the present and give very little thought to what might happen in the months and years ahead.

When our grandfathers started work, it was quite common for them to get a basic education and then go to work for a company and stay with that same company for the rest of their working lives. When our parents went to work, it was more common for them to change jobs three or four times during their lifetime, although it was difficult and disruptive.

Today, with increased turbulence and change in the national and global economy, a person starting work can expect to have five full-time careers between the ages of 21 and 65, and 14 full-time jobs lasting two years or more. According to Fortune Magazine, fully 40 percent of American employees in the 21st Century will be “contingency” workers. This means that they will never work permanently for another company. They will continue to move as needed, from company to company, from job to job, earning less money than full-time employees and accruing very few, if any, benefits in terms of health care and pension plans.

Imagine what your job will look like five years from today. Since knowledge in your field is probably doubling every five years, this means that fully twenty percent of your knowledge and your ability in your field is becoming obsolete each year. In five years, you will be doing a brand new job with brand new skills and abilities. Ask yourself, “What parts of my knowledge, skills and work are becoming obsolete? What am I doing today that is different than what I was doing one year ago and two years ago?” What are you likely to be doing one year, two years, three years, four years and five years from today? What knowledge and skills will you need and how will you acquire them? What is your plan for your economic and financial future?

We are now in the knowledge age. Today, the chief factors of production are knowledge and the ability to apply that knowledge to achieving results for other people. Your earning ability today is largely dependent upon your knowledge, skill and your ability to combine that knowledge and skill in such a way that you contribute value for which customers are going to pay.

The Law of Three says that you must contribute three dollars of profit for every dollar that you wish to earn in salary. It costs a company approximately double your salary to employ you in terms of space, benefits, supervision, and investment in furniture, fixtures, and other resources. For a company to hire you, they have to make a profit on what they pay you. Therefore, you must contribute value greatly in excess of the amount you earn in order to stay employed. To put it another way, your earning ability must be considerably greater than the amount you are receiving, or you will find yourself looking for another job.

To position yourself for tomorrow, here is one of the most important rules you will ever learn: “The future belongs to the competent.” The future belongs to those men and women who are very good at what they do. Pat Riley, in his book The Winner Within, wrote that, “If you are not committed to getting better at what you are doing, you are bound to get worse.” To phrase it another way, anything less than a commitment to excellent performance on your part is an unconscious acceptance of mediocrity. It used to be that you needed to be excellent to rise above the competition in your industry. Today, you must be excellent even to keep your job in your industry.

The marketplace is a stern task master. Today, excellence, quality, and value are absolutely essential elements of any product or service, and of the work of any person. Your earning ability is largely determined by the perception of excellence, quality, and value that others have of you and what you do. The market only pays excellent rewards for excellent performance. It pays average rewards for average performance, and it pays below average rewards or unemployment for below average performance. Customers today want the very most and the very best for the very least amount of money, and on the best terms. Only the individuals and companies that provide absolutely excellent products and services at absolutely excellent prices will survive. It’s not personal. It’s just the way our economy works.

To earn more, you must learn more. You are maxed out today at your current level of knowledge and skill. However much you are earning at this moment is the maximum you can earn without learning and practicing something new and different.

And here’s the rub. Your accumulated knowledge and experience is becoming obsolete bit by bit, day by day. The knowledge in your field is doubling every three to five years. That means that your knowledge must double every three to five years just for you to stay even.

The solution to the dilemma of unavoidable change and restructuring is continuous self-development. Your personal knowledge and your ability to apply that knowledge are your most valuable assets. To stay on top of your world, you must continually add to your knowledge and your ability. You must continually build up your mental assets if you want to enjoy a continuous return on your investment. And only by building on your current assets do you stop them from deteriorating.

By engaging in continuous self-improvement, you can put yourself behind the wheel of your own life. By dedicating yourself to enhancing your earning ability, you will automatically be engaging in the continuous process of personal development. By learning more, you prepare yourself to earn more. You position yourself for tomorrow by developing the knowledge and skills that you need to be a valuable and productive part of our economy, no matter which direction it goes.

-Brian Tracy, Motivational Speaker, Businessman & Self Help Author