Nicholas Bate: Being the Best: The AZ of Personal Success: The A-Z of Personal Success
Nicholas Bate: JFDI: The Definitive Guide To Realising Your Dreams
Nicholas Bate: Have It Your Way: 52 brilliant ideas for getting everything you want
Nicholas Bate: Beat the 2008 Recession: A Blueprint for Business Survival
1. Stay hungry. Stay foolish.
Steve Jobs
2. And in the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make
Paul McCartney
3. Dream as if you will live for ever. Live as if you will die today.
James Dean
4. Seek first to understand, then to be understood.
Stephen Covey
5. Be the Change you are Seeking
Ghandi
6. There is no failure, only feed-back
Richard Bandler
7. Whatever you do, do it with passion.
Carlos Castaneda.
Technology is great. But sometimes it just makes things too complicated. Experiment with getting back to basics, by just using paper and pencil.
Paper + Pencil 3: Personal Financial Planning
You need a pad of paper. You need a pencil. Use it to:
1.write down when you want to retire (even if partly)
2.write down what you believe you will need as an income when that happens
3.write down what your current worth is (assets-liabilities) and what it will be when you retire
4.is the result from (3) enough to fulfil (1)? If so: well done
5.if no, how can you (1) close the gap (2) re-set expectations (3) bit of (1)+(2)
6. open the diary and set a date for the first bit of work on this.
Paper + Pencil Time Management is here
Paper + Pencil Selling is here
Logic alone rarely gets full 'buy-in' to an idea; the idea will need selling. Don't be adverse to that idea. Ok, you trained for years and you have a whole stack of vocational qualifications plus an MBA and you are not sure about doing something which apparently anyone can just 'walk in off the street' and start doing. Here's why you need to start getting good at selling:
-you'll increase the % of your ideas which are accepted in meetings
-you'll be able to handle resistance to your desired salary increase
-one day you'll be running your own team or division or business and you'll have a quota to hit. The sooner you know how to do that, the better
-selling is exhilerating
-simply because it's not such a highly regulated industry doesn't mean it's easy to be good at it
-it's fantastic being paid for performance
Book on a sales course. Search on amazon for top recommended sales books. Add it to your skill portfolio. And do it sooner rather than later. You'll never be hungry if you can sell.
Making a change, standing up to a bullying boss, taking a riskier but more enjoyable job, exposing your draft novel to the world....they all require you to manage fear. Here are 4 tips. Treat them as a mantra: repeat them to yourself at tough times.
1. Feel the fear and do it anyway (the title of Susan Jeffer's first book, by the way). Accept that you will get all the physical symptoms we associate with fear. But go with it anyway.
2. No failure only feed-back. You simply cannot fail: it's all learning. It's all growth.
3. Chase challenge, not comfort: you were designed to be goal-centered. You do your best with challenge.
4. Feel more alive than you ever have. Suddenly everything is clearer, more focused. That's adrenaline for you.
So: do it and manage that fear.
Technology is great. But sometimes it just makes things too complicated. Experiment with getting back to basics, by just using paper and pencil.
Paper + Pencil 2: Time Management
You need a pad of paper. You need a pencil. Use it to:
1.write down what you have to do
2.write down what you want to do
3.break down anything in 1 and/or 2 which is longer than a 20 minute time-slice
4.open your diary and place 1 and/or 2 and/or 3 on a page in your diary when you will do it.
Paper + Pencil 1: Selling, here.
Technology is great. But sometimes it just makes things too complicated. Experiment with getting back to basics, by just using paper and pencil.
Paper + Pencil 1: Selling
You need a pad of paper. You need a pencil. Use it to:
1.find out what the prospect wants: write it down.
2.influence what the prospect wants: illustrate points on your pad.
3.agree an action plan for the next stage: write it down and review it with the client.
You did well. In the New World of Work, where the challenges grow daily, we survive and thrive by steady, easy re-invention. A productivity boost here, a little more exercise here. A shift in reading there. Nothing manic-that's no fun-just steady, easy kaizen.
How might you keep this process going? Perhaps take a retreat once a month? Or have a kaizen day where you spend 15 minutes on re-invention? Or a session with your team? The main thing is to to do it.
Look back on your Personal Re-invention, here.
Time to re-visit the good work you have done on Personal Re-invention during August. As you review your work-and you may find the original list useful, here-congratulate yourself on progress. Notice how much you have done in such a short time. And now ask yourself, of all of that list what's the one thing that would really make a difference if it were well and truly accomplished? And how can you do that?
One of the easiest ways to re-invent is to raise your standards. Once you have essential competence in a topic-baking, lecturing, selling, parenting-you can by choice become even more effective. Re-invent by raising your standards. There are eight levels at which you might operate:
DIRE; why work at this level? It's no fun for you and whatever you deliver will not be acceptable. You'll be out of a job or your business will go bust.
POOR; slightly better but of course that is not saying much. It'll take a little longer for them to catch up with you but you will be out pretty soon.
OK; well it is OK, but nobody comes back for more OK. And OK doesn't get promoted. No, OK is not for you.
GOOD; only thing is, good is no longer good enough.
VERY GOOD; you'll get noticed. You'll get promotion. Your business will thrive.
EXCELLENT; you'll be in demand. As you re-invent, make excellent your new minimum standard.
OUTSTANDING. They will be chasing you. Name your fees. Name your job title.
AWESOME; the world is your oyster. Reinvent now to this level. It's always a choice.
How's your network? Draw a spider diagram to represent it with thickness of lines to represent depth of relationship. How could it be extended? How could it be improved?
Who could you phone, today?
Who could you drop a note to, today?
Who could you attempt to develop a relationship with? Today?
Who could you help, with no expectation of return, today?
