Initiative

I wanted to share with you something that I discovered while I was watching an excellent video online. I learned about the concept of initiative and taking action and how simple it can be to catapult yourself past immobility. Having said this, keep in mind that initiative is as essential to success as a hub is essential to a wheel. And initiative is precisely taking action when we know it ought to be done but no one is asking for it to be done. Most of the time, when we elect to put aside some action that needs to be taken, we are anticipating that our effort may not give us exactly what we desire from it. Whether our desire is instant gratification or simply a journey of smooth sailing we often anticipate one or both of these things will evade us and we are caught up in immobility due to fear. When we accept that our efforts will at some point deliver to us that which we are working toward, we can more easily surpass any fear that stumps us.

Taking action that results in achievement truly does require us to gradually overcome the bumps and tough spots along the way, but by continually putting forth effort in this manner, we can achieve numerous things that are very much worth the work.

I'd like to share with you a powerful example of how initiative can propel a person into high achievement. Two men who initially came to know one another while in high school, were each doing their own thing in their adult lives, but they did manage to keep in contact. One day the two men decided that since they recognized a need in the computer industry they would take it upon themselves to write a simplified version of the programming language called BASIC. For two months they worked on the rewriting of BASIC, and then contacted contacted the computer engineer who designed the computer that used the language. The simplified version worked, and the engineer was so impressed with the work that the two men were given a contract with the production company. Soon they were adapting other programming languages for the computer and by that summer they formed a company they called Microsoft. Without initiative, a person will remain caught up in a life of less than average quality. With initiative, comes great reward.


Thank you for taking initiative in reading this post.
Joe Clinton.

100% Attitude

The effect your attitude has on everything – some steps to improve it.

Your attitude will determine a lot, we’ve all heard the glass half full or glass half empty way off looking at things, both are the same thing, but are vastly different as well.  You have the ability to transform your life and reach new heights of success and fulfilment. Whether at this moment in time your attitude is positive, negative or somewhere in the middle you can take control of your life and set yourself free!  Everyone has potential, the unfortunate thing is that most people go through life and never realise or take advantage of this!

Firstly you must visualize what you want - you the dreams everyone has – unfortunately most people leave them as just that, dreams.  The second thing that you must do is see yourself in your dream environment, and see yourself getting there.  I can, I will and when I are the things you must say rather than the negative version I can’t, I won’t and if I!  Don’t worry if you fall into a more negative category – the good thing about attitude is that you can learn and train yourself to have a positive one given a bit of time and practice.

You’ve told yourself that it is going to happen and now must talk about it by doing this you are making yourself accountable and putting yourself under a little pressure to make it happen!  If you dream is to be on Millionaire Street and you are currently in debt – you must realise that this dream is not going to happen overnight in may take a few years – you don’t go around saying you are going to be a millionaire by next Thursday afternoon in three weeks time!  Don’t set unrealistic targets otherwise you may put yourself under undue stress and pressure to achieve, which can be detrimental to your cause.

Attitude isn’t everything – it is simply the first thing!  Remember it’s going to be action that actually gets you there and the attitude will determine what pace that will be.  You are the architect, the builder and the benefactor of all your life’s endeavours.  So when something doesn’t go your way the first place to look is inwards.  You must ask yourself what you could have done differently to have gotten a more favourable result, after this inward analysis is done then you look at some of the external issues that may have been amiss too.

Everyone has their fears; I don’t mean things like scared of the dark or spiders etc.  I am talking about fears to do with success, for example, it might be something that you haven’t learnt to do yet, and you fear that you may fail.  Remember that if you don’t try you fail anyway, and if you do fail sometimes then success is that much sweeter because you actually had to get over obstacles to get to the end result.

In summary we’ll use something interesting to illustrate a point.  There are 26 letters in the alphabet, A = 1 and Z = 26 working on that basis we assign a number to each letter of the word attitude and add them up:
A(1) + T(20) + T(20) + I(9) + T(20) + U(21) + D(4) + E(5) = 100 - 100% Attitude!
Having a positive or optimistic attitude helps you to achieve more for yourself than a negative or pessimistic one.  Visualise what you want, take action to make it happen, overcome any fears and keep plugging away, remember that tree that you see in your local park didn’t get that big overnight.  You can learn to train your mind, and over time you will learn how to develop and maintain a positive attitude.