#1 Set a major goal, but follow a path. The path has mini goals that go in many directions. When you learn to succeed at mini goals, you will be motivated to challenge grand goals. 
 #2 Finish what you start. A half finished project is of no use to anyone. Quitting is a habit. Develop the habit of finishing self-motivated projects.
#3 Socialize with others of similar interest. Mutual support is motivating. We will develop the attitudes of our five best friends. If they are losers, we will be a looser. If they are winners, we will be a winner. To be a cowboy we must associate with cowboys. 
 #4 Learn how to learn. Dependency on others for knowledge is a slow, time consuming processes. Man has the ability to learn without instructors. In fact, when we learn the art of self-education we will find, if not create, opportunity to find success beyond our wildest dreams.
#5 Harmonize natural talent with interest that motivates. Natural talent creates motivation, motivation creates persistence and persistence gets the job done. 
 #6 Increase knowledge of subjects that inspires. The more we know about a subject, the more we want to learn about it. A self-propelled upward spiral develops.
#7 Take risk. Failure and bouncing back are elements of motivation. Failure is a learning tool. No one has ever succeeded at anything worthwhile without a string of failures. 
 

For more informations about that really important topic, visit http://www.motivation-tools.com. There you will find really good self development stuff!

When you live on purpose, your relationship with time changes dramatically.  You’ll no longer be looking for happiness somewhere in the future.  You’ll stop saying to yourself, “Once X happens then I’ll be where I want to be.  Then I’ll be happy.”  Instead you will look to your present and say, “This is exactly where I want to be right now… and nowhere else.  Nothing could be more perfect than this precise moment.”

The emotion that accompanies this state is joy.  Joy results from total acceptance of your present moment.  Whenever you project your consciousness away from the present moment and seek happiness in another time or place, you leave joy behind.  When all parts of your being fully embrace where you are right now, you can’t help but feel joyful.

complete link

After writing the time management article “Do It Now,” which was based on my experience of graduating college in three semesters with two degrees, I received many follow-up questions from students asking for more advice.  Here are 10 tips to help you create a productive and memorable college experience… and most of all, to deeply enjoy this time in your life.

1. Answer the question, “Why am I going to college?”

Many college students really don’t have a clear reason for being there other than the fact that they don’t know what else to do yet.  They inherit goals from family and peers which aren’t truly their own.  That was how I started college.  Is this you as well?

As I’ve stated previously on this blog, the three-semester deal wasn’t my first time at college.  I had previously gone to college when I wasn’t in the right frame of mind to be there.  In high school I was a straight-A honors student, President of the math club, and captain of the Academic Decathlon team.  That momentum carried me forward, and without really ever deciding if it was what I wanted, I found myself with four more years of school ahead of me.  It seemed like a good idea at the time, but I my heart just wasn’t in it.  Consequently, I sabotaged myself in a big way.  I blew off my classes and got an education in parties and alcohol.  Apparently some administrator had was biased against students whose GPA starts with a decimal point, so I was soon expelled.

That experience sent me into a bit of a tailspin.  I was in a funk for about six months, mostly just playing video games.  Finally in an attempt to re-ground myself, I got a retail sales job and tried to stay under the radar while taking some time to “find myself.”  That was the time I began developing an interest in personal development, and boy did it pay off.  A year later I was ready to go back to college, and I started over as a freshman.  But this time I knew why I was there.  I wanted to be a programmer, and I wanted to earn my Computer Science degree (I later added the Math degree).  But it was more than that.  I knew I was capable of a lot more, and I wanted to push myself.  I wanted to create the richest experience I could.  For me that meant a really dense schedule.

Your goals for college will likely be different than mine.  What are they?  Why are you there?  If you don’t know — and I mean really know it in your gut — then you have no focal point for your experience.  You may as well not even be there.  What is it about your experience that resonates as true for you?  What are you there to learn?  What do you want to experience?

view complete article

Five years is a period of time that’s long enough to be able to imagine great change in yourself, but also a period of time where you can imagine yourself looking similar, having the same personality, and general keep you from trying to wait for time travel and flying cars in order to acheive your goal. If you want big change to happen in five years, it might help to start working on it now.

complete article

Today I found a really good article about time management. This kind of time map is one of the most effective methods of managing your time: 

A time map is a powerful tool for becoming proactive amid the swirl of demands that come your way. Simply put, a Time Map is a budget of your day, week, or month that carves out distinct times for each of the key departments of your life. Instead of feeling that you have to act on every request the minute it crosses your path, your Time Map guides you, helping you determine whether you have time to handle an unexpected task, how much time you will devote to it and when you will do it. When you don’t have a Time Map, you have no idea what to do when. Every day is a total free-for-all. You just say yes to whatever screams loudest, with no perspective on how to prioritize incoming requests, and when you should be doing things. Of course, this is what leads to multi-tasking…just doing things as they come at you.

Let’s look at a few sample Time Maps so you see what I mean.

complete article

view article

Are morning people born or made? In my case it was definitely made. In my early 20s, I rarely went to bed before midnight, and I’d almost always sleep in late. I usually didn’t start hitting my stride each day until late afternoon.

But after a while I couldn’t ignore the high correlation between success and rising early, even in my own life. On those rare occasions where I did get up early, I noticed that my productivity was almost always higher, not just in the morning but all throughout the day. And I also noticed a significant feeling of well-being. So being the proactive goal-achiever I was, I set out to become a habitual early riser. I promptly set my alarm clock for 5AM…

… and the next morning, I got up just before noon.

Hmmm…

I tried again many more times, each time not getting very far with it. I figured I must have been born without the early riser gene. Whenever my alarm went off, my first thought was always to stop that blasted noise and go back to sleep. I tabled this habit for a number of years, but eventually I came across some sleep research that showed me that I was going about this problem the wrong way. Once I applied those ideas, I was able to become an early riser consistently.

It’s hard to become an early riser using the wrong strategy. But with the right strategy, it’s relatively easy.

view complete article

• On average, children in the US will spend more time in front of the television (1,023 hours) than in school this year (900 hours).
• Forty percent of Americans frequently or always watch television during dinner.
• As US Surgeon General Dr. David Satcher said at the Kick Off of TV-Turnoff Week 2001, "We are raising the most overweight generation of youngsters in American history…This week is about saving lives."

This website will help you: click

When your alarm wakes you up in the morning, is it hard for you to get up right away?  Do you find yourself hitting the snooze button and going right back to sleep?

That used to be part of my daily awakening ritual too.  When my alarm would blare its infernal noise, I’d turn the damned thing off right away.  Then under the cloak of that early morning brain fog, I’d slowly ponder whether or not I should actually get up:

It’s nice and warm under the covers.  If I get up, it’s going to be cold.  That won’t be too pleasant.

Oh, I really should get up now.  C’mon legs… move.  Go, legs, go.  Hmmm… that isn’t how I move my legs, is it?  They don’t seem to be listening to me.

I should go to the gym.  Yeah.  Hmmm… I don’t really feel like working out right now though.  I haven’t even had breakfast.  Maybe I should have a muffin first.  Banana nut.  Now that’s a good muffin.

Maybe I’m trying to get myself up too early.  I’m still sleepy, aren’t I?  Maybe getting up with an alarm is unnatural.  Won’t I function better with more sleep?

I don’t have it get up right this minute, do I?  Surely I can relax another five minutes or so.  The world isn’t going to end if I don’t get up right now.

Hmmmm… I’ll bet my wife is toasty warm right now.  She told me she hates it when I try to snuggle her at 6am, but so what…  she loves me enough to forgive me, right?  I know… I’ll start massaging her back and shoulders first.  She can’t resist a good massage, even so early in the morning.  Then I’ll transition to a head scratching.  Yeah, that’ll do it.  And then slide right into the spoon position.  Won’t that be a pleasant way to start the day?

[ Scootch… scootch… Zzzzzzzz ]

Two hours later…

Me:  What time is it?  I don’t even remember the alarm going off.  That was a good snuggle though.  Oh well, guess I’ll have to skip exercise today.

Wife:  Why do you keep setting your alarm if you aren’t going to get up when it goes off?

Me:  Oh, did you think that was my wake up alarm?  It’s actually my snuggle alarm.

OK, so I wasn’t really intending for it to be a snuggle alarm.  I had intended to get up when it went off, but my foggy brain kept negotiating me right back to sleep.

Fast forward to present day…

My alarm goes off sometime between 4:00 and 5:00am… never later than 5:00am, even on weekends and holidays.  I turn off the alarm within a few seconds.  My lungs inflate with a deep breath of air, and I stretch my out in all directions for about two seconds.  Soon my feet hit the floor, and I find myself getting dressed while my wife snoozes on.  I go downstairs to grab a piece of fruit, pop into my home office to catch up on some emails, and then it’s off to the gym at 5:15.

But this time there’s no voice inside my head debating what I should do.  It’s not even a positive voice this time — it’s just not there.  The whole thing happens on autopilot, even before I feel fully awake mentally.  I can’t say it requires any self-discipline to do this every morning because it’s a totally conditioned response.  It’s like my conscious mind is just along for the ride while my subconscious controls my body.  When my alarm goes off each morning, I respond just like Pavlov’s dogs.  It would actually be harder for me not to get up when my alarm goes off.

So how do you go from scenario one to scenario two?

First, let’s consider the way most people tackle this problem — what I consider the wrong way.

complete article

Many of us face this decision for the first time in our late teens and early 20s.  Some never face it at all and shrink from the magnitude of it, allowing chance to decide.  But this is a decision that can be made consciously — you just have to know how to approach it.

If you’re a typical reader of this site, then you have a number of long-term career possibilities.  You could succeed at many different things if you put your mind to them.  The problem isn’t that you don’t have a choice — it’s that you have too many choices.  And because of the overload of choices, it’s difficult for you to commit to any of them.  Perhaps you’ve made certain commitments in the past, only to change your mind a short way down the path.

view complete article