Anyone who stops learning is old

                                                     whether at twenty or eighty. Anyone

                                                     who keeps learning stays young. The

                                                     greatest thing in life is to keep your

                                                     mind young.

                                                                        --Henry Ford

                                                                           Inventor/Automobile Manufacturer

                                                                           (1863-1947)

One Sunday morning I felt shocked to see in the local newspaper an obituary of a 24-year-old man who had died in an automobile accident. He was to be married in less than a month to my cousin’s daughter. I felt shock, sadness, and utter desperation in searching for a reason why we had lost the young man in a freak, arbitrary accident. I thought of my cousin's daughter, who had celebrated her wedding shower a few weeks earlier and had received beautiful gifts.

I wondered about this young man’s sudden death and it finally sank in: there are no tomorrows guaranteed to any of us.

            You know what you expect and what you want to happen tomorrow, but you don’t know what other events will change your life, change your future, or whether you will even be alive.

            Today is the only day to live, to dream, and to act.

The present time is all you have as your “guaranteed time.” You need to say to yourself, “I cannot allow my dreams and goals to lie dormant inside me. From this day forward, I will write down all the things I want to accomplish. I must plan and set into motion the actions that will accomplish my great goals.”

Writing Leads to Accomplishing Your Goals

Begin by writing down what you specifically want to accomplish.

No matter how complicated a project, desire, or want, write it down. Although you may be writing a rough draft, you will have begun to formulate your end goal. The act of writing your goals places the desire to accomplish this goal into your subconscious mind.

Step one: write out what you want in life.  You can organize your ideas as short-term goals and long-term goals. This may be the first time you seriously set down goals. If you have already done this exercise at one point in your life, do it again. It may have been a long time since you last did this and you need to focus on your new goals.

The writing helps you to identify goals and, in turn, your creative imagination will be stimulated to find new ways to accomplish these goals.

Writing your goals is a necessary step to accomplishing them.

God gave every single human being

                                                   a certain amount of talent, and unless

                                                   you utilize that talent to the utmost

                                                   of your ability 24 hours of every day

                                                   your life, you deceive your God, your

                                                   family, and above all yourself. This is

                                                   what life is all about, this is my religion.

                                                                                                            --George Allen

                                                                                                               Football Coach

                                                                                    (1918-1990)

The Little That Make All The Difference

Do your work - not just your work and

                                                 no more, but a little more for the

                                                 lavishing's sake; that little more

                                                 which is worth all the rest. And if

                                                 you suffer, as you must, do your work.

                                                 Put your heart into it, and the sky

                                                 will clear. Then out of your very doubt

                                                 and suffering will be born the supreme

                                                 joy of life.

                                                                                                  --Dean Briggs

                                                                                Spiritual Writer

No More Just An Average Person

If you look at the average worker, you will see that too many people do only what is expected of them and no more. How many people do you know who are enthusiastic about their work? Do most of the people you know only dream about getting off work in order to be free to have their “fun time?”

            Since the average person will only do the minimum amount of work, you can distinguish yourself and achieve greater opportunities by investing your “extra effort.” Your extra effort will develop new opportunities for you, provide you with financial rewards, and help you to excel. To excel in your field should be one of your goals.

Remember the old cartoon Yogi Bear? His motto was, “Smarter than the average bear.” That’s a good motto for all of us. Being average does not guarantee success. Being average is boring. Be different by being above average, and you will excel.

The real challenge is in being different.

Excel Beyond the Average

The annual New York City Marathon draws at least 20,000 runners. The race is a little over 26 miles long. After running 26 miles, the first runner may be ahead of the second runner only by 30 seconds and 50 yards. Such a small window of time over 26 miles may make the difference between winning and losing the race. The first-place runner did a little bit extra that made all the difference in winning the race.

It's said that if the average baseball player were to get only one more hit out of every 10-15 times that he comes to bat, that player then would be guaranteed a spot in baseball’s Hall Of Fame.  In addition, that player would have earned millions of dollars extra over the average player. Average? Anyone can be average. Ted Williams, an outstanding player who qualified for baseball’s Hall of Fame, showed what it meant not to be average. There may seem to be small differences in players, but the results are profound.

You can excel at anything, but you must be willing to make the tough choices, and put forth the extra effort.

I remember starting out as a young salesman for a major company when the vice president of the company came to our office for a sales meeting. After the meeting, I walked up to him and shook his hand. Before letting go of our handshake, I said, “Mr. Posa, I'm going to be one of your district managers one day. I don't know exactly when, but you are going to promote me to that position one day.” Two years later I fulfilled that prophecy I had made to him and the promise I made to myself to advance quickly in the company. At age 27, I became the company’s youngest manager.

            I knew I would be promoted in the company because I was totally consumed by the desire to be a district manager. Every day I thought about it.  I pictured myself as the manager of the agency and acted as if I’d already had the position. I knew in my heart I would be promoted; I just didn’t know when.

When you have a burning desire to accomplish something, nothing can stop you. You accept the hardships and disappointments. You separate yourself from the average workers by your consuming desire to reach your goal.

Small Efforts Can Pay Off In Big Ways

Assuming you get eight hours of sleep, imagine if you could get by with 7 1/2 hours of sleep from age 35. Over a lifetime you would end up with an extra 7,720 hours of waking time. Can you imagine how much more you could achieve in your lifetime with all that time?

A little extra effort can result in greater rewards.

You may have to start by sleeping five minutes less every day, until you are comfortable with that goal. After that goal is achieved, you can get up another five minutes earlier. Gradually, you will be giving yourself anywhere from ten minutes to thirty minutes of “extra time” that will help you reach a greater goal.

If you heat water to 211 degrees Fahrenheit, you simply have hot water. By heating the water to 212 degrees Fahrenheit, you have boiling water. That one degree makes the difference that can move locomotives, and steamships, while also even melting certain compounds.

Are you operating at the 211 degree level? Are you willing to give that extra one-degree effort? With just a little bit extra effort and creative imagination, you could improve yourself and the world around you.

Horse races, sometimes, are won “by a nose.” In a photo finish, that may mean that the first place horse was a hundredth or one-thousandth of a second faster than another horse.

Roger Maris, a former New York Yankees ballplayer and a member of the Baseball Hall of Fame, became famous when he broke Babe Ruth's home run record. In 1961, Maris hit 61 home runs, breaking Ruth’s home run record of 60 home runs held since 1927.

            In 1982, Rickey Henderson guaranteed himself a spot in Baseball’s Hall of Fame by setting a new record for stolen bases. He stole 130 bases in one season, breaking Lou Brock's old record of 118, set in 1974.

Since the first Olympic games many centuries ago in Athens, Greece, records have been shattered and new ones made. The brain often wills the body to accomplish the record-breaking feat.

The Mental Attitude To Doing More

Sports records have been broken by those willing to make the extra effort.

In Success Through A Positive Mental Attitude, a self-help book by Napoleon Hill and W. Clement Stone, a story about Roger Bannister appeared:  “In 1954 Roger Bannister set a new world record by running the one-mile race in less than 4 minutes. It had never been done in the history of track and field competition. How did he do it when no one else in history could do it? Here's how: his trainer Dr. Cureton came up with a training plan of action: 'Number one, Train the whole body. Number two, push yourself to the limit of endurance, extending the limit with each workout.' Dr. Cureton said, 'The art of record-breaking is the ability to take more out of yourself than you've got.'

“Roger Bannister trained in the following manner: Since the quarter of the mile can be run faster per quarter than the full mile, he trained so that each quarter of the mile was a race in itself, and if he ran them at quarter mile paces, he could put four of them together and run the mile faster than he normally could.

“Bannister would run all out a quarter of a mile at a time to the point of collapse, and each time he would push the point of collapse a little further along the way. Well, on May 6, 1954 Roger Bannister ran the mile in 3 minutes 59.6 seconds, the fastest time in the world.”

After Bannister broke the four-minute mile, many other runners started breaking the four-minute mile barrier. They had learned that they had to develop the power of positive thinking in order to produce greater results. Once they learned to set their minds to accomplish a new goal, more and more runners began learning that their minds could be used to help them break the old records.

            Your mind is capable of many more things. All you have to do is break through your own mental limitations.

It was William James who said, “The first and most important factor at the beginning of any project is belief.”

The Power Deep Inside

I believe your subconscious mind stores information you can use to be successful. Use that information by following Dr. Cureton’s advice and take yourself “to the limit of endurance.” With a little bit of extra time and effort invested in yourself, you will surprise yourself at what you will achieve.

            Did you ever notice in sports, such as baseball, the American pastime, that many times, if a team scores two quick runs on another team, the opposing team coincidentally catches up by scoring back those two runs themselves? In basketball, one team will seem to score 10 points quickly. Amazingly, the other team rebounds with a surge of 8-10 points quickly.            Have you seen in hockey where both teams will go scoreless most of the game? When one team scores, the opposing team will rebound with a goal to tie the score. Why is this so common?

Your subconscious mind is a great powerhouse to help you do whatever you have to do. The subconscious mind is constantly sending thoughts to your conscious mind. I believe your subconscious mind can force you to accomplish greater results.

I am convinced that if we were to take a baseball team into a room midway through a game, even if that team was winning the game, we could convince them through hypnosis that they were losing by 5 runs. At that point, the subconscious mind of each player would start sending signals to his conscious mind that he had to play harder in order to win the game. There is an amazing power going on in the subconscious that can force the conscious mind and eventually the body to perform either aggressively or lackadaisically.

Since you know this power exists, be very careful what you feed your mind. I believe that your subconscious mind is like a sponge, absorbing information, only to reappear later as positive or negative impulses.

            Don't let your subconscious draw in negative thoughts. Someone once said, “We are what we think about.”

            What are you feeding your mind lately? Remember the computer user’s phrase, “Garbage in, garbage out” can hold true for your mind. The better phrase to live by every day is “Positive in, positive outcome.”

Never forget: A successful person never lives a nonchalant life!

Do more than exist, live.

                                                            Do more than touch, feel.

                                                            Do more than look, observe.

                                                            Do more than read, absorb.

                                                            Do more than hear, listen.

                                                            Do more than think, ponder.

                                                            Do more than talk, say something.

                                                                           --John H. Rhoades

                                                                              Poet/Philosopher
 

A Positive Attitude

Nothing can stop the man with the right

                                                mental attitude from achieving his goal;

                                                nothing on earth can help the man with

                                                the wrong mental attitude.

                                                                    --Thomas Jefferson

                                                                       3^rd United States President

                                                                       (1743-1826)

The Creative Fire In You

Don't let anyone stomp on your dreams, kill your inspirations, or put out your fire of aggressive creativity with gratuitous negativity.

Inspiration is the creative fire of phenomenal ideas.

Thankfully, the great inventors through the ages were not quitters. They did not let negative public opinion sway them from accomplishing their endeavors.

You are capable of great ideas. What is your great idea? Could one of your ideas become a useful invention? Could one of your ideas be turned into a great book? Could one of your ideas help save the lives of millions of people? You have such great potential. Just dream it, be consumed by it, and it will be yours.

You may have decided you would rather forget your idea than subject yourself to others laughing at you and embarrassing you. Ridicule from others is not easy to accept and something you don’t want to hear. You become scared about your ideas when others tell you “you’re wasting your time.”

            Do you remember the Dick Tracy detective comics in the newspapers years ago? Remember how Dick Tracy would talk into his wristwatch telephone? It sounded crazy then, but the idea became a reality once an inventor developed the microchips needed for such a telephone. To the average person, the idea seemed too big and too difficult to comprehend. How could a big telephone be reduced to the size of a wristwatch? For the person who uses his creative imagination, the questions became, ‘How can I miniaturize the telephone circuitry and make it work?’ and ‘How can I make the telephone work over the airwaves without a connecting wire?’

            “Dream it; believe in it; be consumed with it; and it will come to fruition.”

Thanks to a lot of inventions in technology and satellite communications by many people and companies, you can now talk to people around the world from a small portable phone just like Dick Tracy.

Conceive, Believe, and Achieve

Notice how the airplane looks like a bird. Man observed, conceived, believed, and then achieved flying according to the same principles by which birds fly.

The first television set came out in the 1940's. If I told people in 1940 that I was going to invent a one-inch by one-inch color television, they would have laughed behind my back by calling me the biggest fool on earth. That miniature color television set now exists. And not only that, you can now have your color video telephone to go along with your miniature color television.

I’ve become aware how miniaturized everything has become. Our western culture has become a culture of miniaturized, technological devices. Inventors, scientists, and researchers have used their creative imagination to find ways to put volumes of books on a CD, to scan billions of bits of information in less than a second, and to incorporate whole libraries of books into small memory boards. Researchers, applying their creative imagination, are trying to develop future computers that use atoms for storing information, not just chips. These new inventions will lead to further miniaturizing computers, cameras, telephones, and all kinds of electronic and communication products.

            You can certainly see that technology keeps changing and improving. If you don’t start working on your creative ideas now, someone else may have the persistence to accomplish what you wanted to accomplish.

Thank God there are individuals who have the vision, determination, and drive to forge ahead through failure after failure. You may only have the mental picture of a given idea or invention, but that mental picture can be enough to keep you working on your idea. Thousands of new inventions are being patented every day. When will people see the completion of your idea?

Imagine somewhere that there should be a monument to lost ideas. It’s not a junk heap. It’s the should-have-been heap. It’s a pile of the best ideas that were never tried or fulfilled. It’s the unfulfilled patents or never-written books or never-created ideas because somebody was afraid to try or somebody ridiculed the idea to death. Is that where you want your ideas to end up?

Look at Henry Ford, who in his early years began working on inventing a gas-driven engine. Ford had a study done by a leading college to see if the gas engine could be invented. After extensive study, the college’s technical department determined that the idea could not be done. A piston could not be made to move by gasoline-ignited power.

Henry Ford still believed he could build such an engine. He purchased his own parts and with  help from his wife, he got the first makeshift piston powered by droplets of gasoline ignited by a spark. The rest is history. The horses and the steam engines of the day were gradually replaced with the internal combustion engine in the early 1900s. Henry Ford then developed the first successful automobile assembly line, building cars faster than anyone had imagined. A man with vision, determination, and fortitude, Henry Ford proved himself a true visionary who would not let his ideas be extinguished by the negativity and ridicule of others.

Steps To Securing Your Vision

First, don't stop yourself from dreaming; dreaming is the starting point.

Second, don't let others stifle your creative imagination. Your ideas are greatest when you feel free to use your imagination.

Third, don’t let your problems stop you. It’s been said that going to sleep with a problem can be a good thing. During your sleep, your brain can quietly think about the problem. You can actually wake up with a new solution to your problem. Allow your

subconscious mind to work on the problem.

Your mind is a tremendous tool when given the opportunity to prove itself.

Researchers believe people use only about 5% of the brain’s capacity. That leaves 95% room for your creative imagination. You can use that extra part of your brain to keep telling yourself, “I’m going to do it!  I’m going to do it!  I’m going to be successful!”  Let yourself be different and think! Use your brain and think! There is so much more you can be doing with your brain capacity than you imagined!

Wilber and Orville Wright first flew a heavier-than-air machine in 1903. But they were successful only after repeated failures. The average person around them dismissed the idea that any human could fly. Once the Wright brothers proved flight in machines to be possible, the world quickly picked up the pace and improved the design. Today, we’ve gone from flying a few feet off the ground to flying into space.

It amazes me how it takes a major breakthrough before all the rest of the people in the world believe what is possible.

It’s always easier to say, with the average person, that something is impossible than to use your creative imagination, work hard, and let your subconscious bring about a breakthrough, a new invention, or to turn a new idea into reality.

What the mind of man can conceive

                                                    and believe it can achieve, through

                                                    a positive mental Attitude.

                                                                                              --Napoleon Hill

                                                                                Motivational Author

                                                                                (1883-1970)

There are some race horses who can not run a good race because they're distracted by the commotion at the starting gate. The trainers usually try to fix the problem by putting blinders on a horse’s eyes to block out the distractions and keep the horse focused directly in front. The blinders in some horses can make a difference between winning and losing a race.

All of us occasionally need to put on mental blinders to block out too much negativity and skepticism. You don’t need bad comments, bad thoughts, and people emphasizing your failures at a time when you are very close to succeeding.

You have to keep focused, stay positive, and eliminate dwelling on any comments from others that are not helping you to find solutions you need to succeed.

Anyone criticizing you should also try to help you find success. The last thing you need is to have one or more people telling you what a failure you are. You can always find someone who will want to kill your idea, inspiration, perseverance, and drive. Remember, success is not easy to achieve. It’s a long road that many refuse to walk.

            As for the negative people around you, you will have to work around them or avoid them. You don’t want their negativity to register inside and overpower your subconscious.

I believe most of the great inventors and achievers have had to use mental blinders and have had to get past a lot of negative comments. Just as a bodybuilder works hard to build up his or her muscles, so too, you have to build up your mind to learn to sidestep all the negative influences and stay focused on your goal of success.

Remember:

      1- Determine clearly what it is you want to accomplish.

      2- Write it down in detail.

      3- Write down why you wish to accomplish this goal.

      4- Write down how long it will take to accomplish the goal. Write down exactly the time needed and how you will invest yourself daily and weekly to reach your goal.

      5- Write out a complete statement to the effect that under no circumstances will you allow anyone to alter your attitude toward the accomplishment of the desired goal.

Success seems to be connected with

                                                   action. Successful people keep moving.

                                                   They make mistakes, but they don't quit.

                                                                                                  --Conrad Hilton

                                                                                       Hotel Owner

                                                                                       (1887-1979)

I read an inspirational story that I will never forgot. It came from the aforementioned Success Through A Positive Mental Attitude by Napoleon Hill and W. Clement Stone. They told a story about a farmer named Milo C. Jones, who for most of his life had owned a small farm in Wisconsin. He had been barely able to provide enough for his family and himself year after year, never making a great living.

            One year Jones was struck down with paralysis that left him bedridden and incapacitated. Though paralyzed, he had a very sharp mind. He believed in being responsible and strengthened his determination not to quit or give up on life. Jones knew he had to do something to help his family. He called his family together around his bed for a meeting at which time he told them his new plan of action.

“I am no longer able to work with my hands, so I have decided to work with my mind. Everyone of you can, if you will, take the place of my hands, feet, and physical body. Let's plant every tillable acre of our farm in corn. Then let's raise pigs and feed them the corn. Let's slaughter the pigs while they are young and tender and convert them into sausages.  Then we can package and sell the sausages under our own brand name. We’ll sell them in retail stores around the country. They'll sell like hot cakes,” Jones told his family enthusiastically.

This was the founding idea that began Jones’ Little Pig Sausages. The family members followed the plan and the sausages sold in stores and the business thrived. That was in 1889 and the recipe is still used today.

Milo C. Jones could have given up on life very easily and nobody would have blamed him because of his disability. But Jones was a man who did not want to lie in bed doing nothing. He took what he had left, his mind, and used it to the very best of his ability. He used his creative imagination. I'm convinced that his mind actually got sharper after he became paralyzed.

A blind person learns to hear differently than a person who has the ability to see. People have learned to work through their physical limitations without being defeated by the limitations. We may call it compensating for the limitation, but it’s more than plain compensation. There’s a new way of thinking. The limitation forces some people to think differently in spite of the limitation.

All of us have limitations of some type – physical or financial. Your goal is to achieve your dreams in spite of your limitations. Limitations are no longer limitations; they are no longer an excuse for failure. Limitations are simply a set of problems that you have to solve in order to go forward to find success. Your creative imagination is the spark, and hard work is the piston driving you forward. You can achieve your goals in spite of your problems.

Imagine what you could do if you went from using the five percent of your brain to using ten percent of your brain. Every percentage point that you increase in using your brain could yield incredible results in your life.