1. Say Yes to Life. “Be not afraid of life. Believe that life is worth living, and your belief will help create the fact.” -Henry James

Saying yes to life allows wonderful blessings to come to you. Say yes to opportunity and success. Say yes to a life that you live by your standards. Say yes to making your own decisions and not seeking approval of others. Say yes to a fulfilling and rewarding career. Say yes to a relationship that energizes, supports and stimulates you. Say yes to a promising future. Say yes to living without guilt, resentment or regrets. Say yes to spending more time on yourself improvement. Say yes to living an authentic life. Say yes to taking chances and freeing yourself from fear. Say yes to happiness and achievements. Say yes to a well-lived life.

2. Love Yourself and Others Unconditionally. “Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude; it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs…” I Corinthians 13: 3, 5)

When was the last time you loved without hesitation or caution? Withholding love as a means of control only leads to distrust and resentment. Loving unconditionally means loving without judgment. Free yourself from unrealistic expectations and accept the person you love for who they are. Do not expect your needs and wants to be fulfilled by someone else. Allow those you love to express themselves without fear of rejection. Do not punish yourself or loved ones for past mistakes. People use the word love very loosely, but do not stop to think of the implications of using the word. Take the time to be responsible in how you show love. Allow yourself to love and be loved.

3. Take Risks “There came a time when the risk to remain tight in the bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.” – Anais Nin

Everything in life involves a risk. Are you allowing fear of rejection and failure to dictate your life? Fear inhibits success. Take chances and free yourself from limiting beliefs. Taking risks empowers you to take charge of your life. Be curious about life; experiment and try new things. Set goals for yourself and take action. Step out of what is safe, comfortable and familiar to you. Examine what feelings emerge when you are thinking about taking a risk. Ask yourself, “What am I afraid of?” Concealing yourself in a safe container prevents you from exploring other possibilities. Embrace the unknown and anticipate success. You will never know the outcome if you don’t take the risk.

4. Make the Impossible, Possible “The pessimist sees difficulty in every opportunity. The optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.”- Winston Churchill

Think it can’t happen; then it won’t. It is possible to get through the difficult times in life. Learn from failures and take responsibility for your life. Listening to your inner critic can sabotage your dreams. Silence the critic by reaffirming all the things you are capable of doing. Dream big and be excited about your future. Find and release your untapped talents. Believe in your abilities and discover what you have to offer the world. Think about all the things you can’t do and try to do them. Think back to a time, when something was difficult and you were able to overcome the challenge. Continuing to live life in a safe container doesn’t help you gain anything in life. Take the necessary actions to achieve your goals. Stop assuming and start achieving!

5. Make Your Life Really Count. “How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.” – Annie Dillar

What’s your legacy? How do you want to be remembered? The life you live defines who you are and the choices you make will determine what impact you will have on the lives of others. Never underestimate the power of your words and actions. You were uniquely created to make a contribution to the world. It is your right and your obligation to make your mark in this world. Surround yourself with people who are supportive, positive and encouraging. Show appreciation and gratitude to those around you. If you have a message to share, then share it with the world. Staying small and thinking small will not get you where you need to be in life. Starting today, have a new perspective on life. Start a new chapter in your life.

Think about anyone you know who is incredibly successful.

Do these people do everything themselves? Do they do it all themselves?

Think of the late Jim Rohn, the author of countless books. He writes the books, but does he do all the legal work, all the marketing, distribution, printing, advertising and public relations? No of course he does not. He has a “success team” around him.

These are people who are experts in their chosen fields. They are probably amongst the best in the world. They are people he trusts implicitly to do the job, with his best interests at heart.

Whilst he may trust these people, he doesn’t just leave them running his empire. He checks in on them, works with them, and keeps an eye on their running of his business.

Any successful person you can think of will have a success team around them. You too need to form your own success team in whatever venture you choose. Whether it is lawyers, accountants, advisors, mentors or experts, it is vital that you have this team around you.

Quite simply, you can’t do everything yourself. There is no way you can have the level of expertise you need to succeed in all the areas you need.

Jim Rohn spent his time focusing on what made him money and what he loved, writing and speaking. He left all the accountancy, legalities, advertising and everything else to his team of advisors. This left him time to do what he was best at, i.e. writing books and speaking.

How long would it take him to become an expert accountant and to keep up with the tax laws?

How long would it take him to become an expert lawyer and keep up with the changes in legislation?

By picking a team of advisors to help you and guide you, you give yourself the time to focus on your area of speciality.

So what should you look for in your success team? Someone who

* You feel a connection to and comfortable with

* Is dedicated to keeping up to date with their professional education

* Has an excellent track record in their field

* Has excellent references that you can check up

* Integrates well with the rest of your success team

 Where would you find your success team?

The best way is to find them from personal recommendation. Look at other successful people in your field and who is advising them.

Look through the Yellow Pages, call people up and interview them. That’s right, you interview them to see if they are good enough to work with you and of the right stuff. Before you see them, create a list of questions you want to ask them. See how you get on with them and check up on the references they give you.

A success team isn’t just lawyers and accountants, it could also be your “cheerleading” squad. This is friends, family and colleagues who support you and believe in what you are doing. It’s much better to have them around you than naysayers who will drag you down and try to stop you succeeding. Discard them and get your own set of cheerleaders.

Surrounding yourself with a success team will give you the opportunity to focus on what you do best for yourself and your business. Your success team can focus on what they do best, freeing up your time and efforts to become even more successful.

1. Have goals
Being more efficient with your time is irrelevant if you don’t know how you want to spend it. In managing time, the compass is more important than the clock. Know where you want to go and spend your time on the things that get you there.
Many people spend energy trying to be more efficient without first doing what’s important: setting goals. It’s like being lost on your way to a new city. Driving faster doesn’t help if you are going in the wrong direction. Figure out what direction to go in and head that way.
Once you’ve prepared it, your list of goals will reveal what is important to you.
 
2. Analyze how you spend your time
It is always good to know how you’re spending your time right now. You can track this by setting a timer to go off every 15 minutes; whenever it sounds, write down exactly what you are doing. Alternatively, divide your day into 15-minute blocks and record each activity you do.
Once you have your time logs, examine them. How do they compare to your goals? Are you spending time where your priorities are?

3. Keep a to-do list
This sounds too simple, but it really is the basis of all time-management systems. Your to-do list can be electronic, on fancy paper, bound in a notebook or loose-leaf. The key is to have everything you want to accomplish on one list. My to-do list might have a one-line item on it, such as “write annual report,” which refers me to a much larger file or even a file box on that item.
 
4. Prioritize your list
Once you have the list, determine which are the most important items. Mark these with a highlighter, a red pen, or in any other way that makes them stand out.
I sometimes find my to-do list is too big. Every item on the list calls out “pay attention to me!”, even though most of them weren’t highlighted as important. In these cases, I take a blank sheet of paper and cover my to-do list and write down only the three or four most important items. Those are the ones to focus on.
 
5. Control procrastination
I use a number of tricks to break any lingering tendencies to procrastinate. For instance, I happen to like having a hard copy of my digital to-do list. I reprint it every few days as new items are added and completed ones dropped. It is at these times that I look for the items that I’ve marked as high priority, but which are just not getting done.
People often say I have great self-control. In truth, though, much of it is environment control. I control my environment to eliminate things that I might use to procrastinate.

I have developed one effective habit that has helped break me of procrastination: “Do the worst thing first.” At the beginning of every day, I do the one task that is causing me the most stress, and that I haven’t been getting done. Sometimes I just give it a quarter of an hour — based on the theory that I can stand just about anything for 15 minutes. Frequently it is this short thrust that breaks me through.
If I still find myself procrastinating, I review my reasons for setting a goal. To create extra motivation to complete a task, I strengthen the reasons why it should be done. Similarly, many people reward themselves for completing a job.
 
6. Organize
Organization and time management are linked. I find that I get important things done when I have all the tools I need to perform the job.
The opposite of organization — chaos, clutter, disorganization — generally leads to busy work. If your desk is piled high, every piece of paper says “look at me.” You can end up doing a lot of work without ever getting to the important stuff.
 
7. Delegate
One way to expand your time is to get others to help you with it. The key to delegation is to hand off any tasks that someone else can do significantly faster or more easily than you can.
If you’re protesting that you don’t have anyone working directly for you to whom you can delegate tasks, no problem. Consider delegating to a peer, a superior, a supplier, or even a customer. Treat delegation like networking: who in your network would be best for the job?
In some cases you will need to invest up-front to train someone so he or she can take over a task from you. The long-term savings are usually worth the up-front time and costs.
After delegation, remember to thank appropriately. You might think people would resent being delegated to, but exactly the opposite is true. People like to be asked, especially if it is to do something that they’re good at.
 
8. Master efficiency tricks
The best trick I have found is “The Power of While.” What can you do while you drive? While you walk? While you clean? While you watch TV? I am a huge audio tape advocate and frequently listen to tapes while I am doing something else.
Being a techno person, I love all the organization software out there that allows me to keep my contacts, to-do lists and appointments. I also use gadgets such as cellphones, wireless e-mail, and personal digital assistants. Good use of technology can save you valuable time.

9. Its OK to say no
Saying “No” can be the most powerful time tool you can master. When someone asks you to do something, ask yourself how important this is. Does it help you achieve your goals? Is this a task you would be better at than most people? Don’t always look for reasons to get out of things, but be strategic about what you take on.
This doesn’t mean that I always say no when asked to help out. But if I do say no, I am always polite and tactful, and try to suggest someone else who would do the job well.
 
10. Focus
Committing 100% focus and concentration on one task at a time can be very powerful. Eliminate distractions. Focus on the task. When you’re properly organized and prepared, when your energy and power are high, you can often complete a task in 20% of the time it would take when you’re distracted or open to interruption.

11. Build your efficiency bank
High efficiency is not possible if you don’t look after yourself. Eat right, exercise, sleep well and drink moderately. I also believe meditation can be a great way of building your efficiency. It could be a walk in the park, gaze at the horizon, watch birds fly by or just finding a way to get into a relaxed state that lets you focus on the task you have to do. No matter how you do it, recharging your batteries gives you the power to do more during the times you need to be at your best.
  Pastor Sam’s definition of meditation: Replaying and focusing on the most important things in the most quite and settled envouronment.
 12. Take care of yourself
It isn’t possible to be “on” all the time. Take the time you need to look after yourself — body and soul — so that you can reach peak efficiency when you need to. Have a list of things you like to do. Find out what activities energize you, and spend more time doing them. This will give you the power and energy to be more productive when you return to work.
Finally, a word of advice. If after reading this far you’re feeling a bit overwhelmed, I suggest you go back to Rule 1 and add peace (contentment) to your list of goals. Time management is not about adding stress; it is about giving you the time to be the person you really want to be.

KNOW THAT FAILURE IS JUST AN EVENT.

We talked about this at length previously, but it bears repeating. If you fail, it doesn’t define you—it just puts
you back at ‘square one’ with your idea and plan.

 CONSIDER YOUR RESPONSIBILITIES BEFORE YOUR RIGHTS.

Our American culture drums it in to us that we must “have it now,” and many of us comply. You are successful when you are mature enough to delay gratification and move your focus from your “rights” to your “responsibilities.”

FILL UP ON FAITH, HOPE, & LOVE.

Your outlook determines your output, and your output determines your outcome. Choose to be optimistic, to read
uplifting books, to listen to inspirational speakers. When you put faith, hope, and love in your mind and heart, you’re able to overcome adversity and live free from anger, greed, guilt, and envy.

MAKE FRIENDS WITH YOUR PAST—AND THEN LOOK AHEAD.

You can use your past as a stepping stone to your future or you can let it cripple you. Either way, it’s your choice. When you can make friends with your past, be focused on the present, and have a bright opinion of your future, you have succeeded, no matter what your goal is.

KNOW THAT SUCCESS DOESN’T MAKE YOU.

Along with the idea above, understanding that a win doesn’t make you and a loss doesn’t break you. If you
win, you’ll still have more wins to make before you “arrive,” and if you lose, you’ll have more opportunities to turn that around in the future.

STAND UP FOR MORALITY.

If you take a stand for what is right, even if it’s unpopular or costs you your job, you are successful. There is no disputing this fact.

BE A “SERVANT FRIEND.”

Success isn’t defined by how many people wait on your every whim or need; it’s defined by how many people you can help or serve while you achieve your goals. If you can help others as you climb, you’ll learn more and climb quicker. A servant’s heart is the true hallmark of a leader and shows the character of the person in the position of leadership.