The Quality of Life Blog
Mark & Jack: Principle #4 - Believe In Yourself
September 23, 2009 by Mark T. Rafter · Leave a Comment
This is the 4th week in my series, Mark & Jack: 52.4 Weeks of Living the Success Principles, my quest to master the Success Principles as written by Jack Canfield in his book of the same name. Last week’s blogs were about getting what you want and my approach to helping people create a Living Wealth Plan. If you didnt read it, check out how I applied this in my own life and some tips on how it can help you to be successful.
This week’s Principle is Believe in Yourself. I have been listening to Wayne Dyer’s latest audio book, Excuses Be Gone (recommended). It mentions another book called The Biology of Belief and how establishing a positive mental position for your intentions at some point goes beyond the thinking and starts to influence your actual cellular biology.
Heady stuff … I believe it. And, as we are discussing, that is the first step. Someone said the same thing about the Law of Attraction: you can either not believe in it and it will act on you without your participation (I prefer “full attention”) or you can believe in it and have it work for you.
At the end of the day, what is wrong with more positive thinking? Decide what one thing you want more in life right now. Financial stability is popular. To be a ranked USTA tennis player. To have self confidence to stand up to a bullying coworker. Put it into words and stand in front of the mirror, looking yourself in the eye and repeat the affirmation over and over, until you feel energized (or someone comes in and wants to know what’s wrong).
After awhile, I find that I cannot help but feel better. “I will be a million dollar a year public speaker in 3 years. I am knowledgeable, funny and helpful and 1000s of people will benefit from hearing what I have to say about being wealthy.”
That’s it - I am heading to the mirror right now. What are you waiting for?
More on Getting What You Want: The Living Wealth Plan
September 13, 2009 by Mark T. Rafter · 1 Comment
Continuing with my exploration of Jack Canfield’s Success Priniciples in my series: Mark & Jack.
As you may have noticed, it’s not working out to one a week either…so what? When I work though each of these principles and figure out what they mean to me and how I can integrate my expereinces into what I teach others, THEN I move on.
Last time time I broke the different areas of our existence (ya know … life?) into 9 areas, physical, mental, financial, etc. (Mark & Jack post No. 6) to be used as categories for goal setting, etc. You may have 5 or 16 or you might like 9. It don’ matter tah me … do your own thing.
Set goals in each of these areas, implement an action plan (a HUGE factor in success … some of us are AWESOME at making To Do Lists and never finishing) and move on to the next fun thing. Some of these can be brief. A Physical goal for example might be “exercise 4 times per week” and/or “weigh 175 lbs. by Dec 31 2009″).
Could be complex too as you figure out your financial goals for different phases of your life. I actually recommend this, SPECIFICALLY for financial goals. If you say, “I want financial independence by age 48″, that is not specific. It is much more realizable to look at the next 30 days, the next 6 months, the range of 6 to 24 months, 2 years to 5 years, etc. and identify things like net worth, cash flow, debt, hard assets, etc. for those time frames.
It’s OK to start with, “$2.5M liquid net worth by age 48″ but you will have to break that down to an action plan that is starts in immediately. Then, and this is the good part, you tie that into the other aspects of your Living Wealth Plan and figure out where that monetary wealth is coming from (vocational), what you need to do to get to it (mental, realtional) and who you have to be (personal, spiritual) to get there.
Someone once said that the best thing about becoming a millionaire is not the million dollars but the type of person you become along the way.
Now that’s a plan.
CAN You Decide What You Want? Sure You Can ….
September 6, 2009 by Mark T. Rafter · 1 Comment
The Mark & Jack series continues. This week I am helping you to figure out what you want (and dont want as it turns out).
What I do - and what I teach others - is to break things down into the different areas of their life that are important to them. In my book, The Wealth Manifesto, I use these as the different categories of wealth (or wellbeing) in your life. These are the ones I use (you may have different ones):
- Health and fitness (physical)
- Learning (mental)
- Relationships (relational)
- Service (charitable)
- Self-esteem / Self-worth (personal) Read more
Mark & Jack: Principle #3 - Decide What You Want
September 2, 2009 by Mark T. Rafter · Leave a Comment
This is the third week in my series, Mark & Jack: 52.4 Weeks of Living the Success Principles, my quest to master the Success Principles as written by Jack Canfield in his book of the same name. Last week’s blogs were about being clear why you are here and finding significance and meaning in your life. It can get pretty philosophical if you allow yourself to go there but can come down to a few simple questions if you allow that instead. If you didnt read it, check out how I applied this in my own life and some tips on how it can help you to be successful.
This week’s Principle is Decide What You Want. What DO you want? Aladdin’s lamp type question: if there were no limitations on your asking, what would be on your list?
“If they granted you one final wish, would you ask for something, like another chance?”
- Steve Winwood, fr. The Low Spark of High Heeled BoysUnderstand one thing: this is one of the most important things in your life for you to decide. Consider this:
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If you dont know, who does?
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If you dont say, who will?
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If you dont put these things (what you want) in front of you as goals, values, objectives, dreams … whatever you want to call WHERE I AM GOING TO TAKE MY LIFE, how do you think you are going to get there.
And the other thing that I have found is that it is harder than you think. Next time I’ll post some of what I have learned in doing this in my own life and how you can make some progress on this in your life.
While I am thinking about it, here is one of my favorite quotes on this subject:
Cheshire Puss,” she began, rather timidly… “Would you tell me,
please, which way I ought to go from here?”
“That depends a good deal on where you want to get to,” said the Cat.
“I don’t much care where…” said Alice.
“Then it doesn’t matter which way you go,” said the Cat.- Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll
Success Principle #2: Be Clear Why You Are Here
August 20, 2009 by Mark T. Rafter · 1 Comment
OK, week #2 and 2nd in the series “Mark & Jack: 52.4 Weeks of Living the Success Principles.” This week we deal with purpose, significance, meaningful lives … lightweight stuff like that.
Some people drift aimlessly through life. Others specifically state that humans (themselves included I suspect) have no purpose or that the question - what is your purpose in life - is meaningless.
I dont buy it.
If you get into a spiritual arguement about the meaning or existence of God, free will and if you have a role as a part of God’s plan, I agree - this might make your head hurt. However, if you are able to discover how your life has meaning and significance you are on the right track. How do you do this?This is exactly what I teach people how to do in developing Your Inner Expert, my method of helping people to develop a niche that is willing and able to compensate you for what you do best: Be Yourself.
The first step is to Identify Your Inner Expert - who you are, what you want and the passions and Read more
Leadership
February 12, 2009 by Mark T. Rafter · Leave a Comment
I was interviewed yesterday. The conversation went really well with lots of interesting questions back and forth about my thoughts and experience in relationship building, energizing and motivating teams, delivering results and the like.
Then someone asked me the simplest question of the session and I didnt have a quick answer. In part because I had too many answers to the question: “How do you define leadership?”
I thought about this for awhile afterwards: in addition to the many possible answers to the question, I came to the conclusion that part of my inability to articulate in words how I define leadership is because leadership is evident in the moment it is delivered, it does not necessarily lend itself to a simple verbal characterization.
Like Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart said about pornography back in 1964: I don’t know if I can define it but I know it when I see it.
When his engines stopped and he knew his plane was going down, did Captain Chesley Sullenberger (pilot of the US Airways jet that went down in the Hudson with no loss of life) think: “Wow, I really need to demonstrate leadership right now. All these people are counting on me.”?
Of course not. He did what needed to be done to save the lives of his passengers. That’s what leaders do: Whatever needs to be done to complete the mission.
Be courageous, empathetic, persistent, fair, selfless, conscientious, enthusiastic, generous, impartial, decisive, visionary, joyful, adaptable, knowledgeable, and stable.
That is how I define leadership.
Go ahead, ask me that question again….
Quality of Life According to Mark - Part 1
January 30, 2009 by Mark T. Rafter · 1 Comment
Since this blog is (often) about Quality of Life, how to get there, how to stay there and how to pay for it, I figure a blog or two about that specific subject would be worthwhile.
I look at Quality of Life as fulfillment (satisfaction, contentment, being at one with … whatever you want to call it) in all the dimensions of who you are. If that sounds like the usual self-help blathering woo woo talk, let me be more concrete:
- If you exercise regularly and dont eat like you’re some kind of an idiot that hasn’t read anything about what’s in a good diet in the last 20 years (eating whole grains, fruits, vegetables and avoiding excessive sugar, alcohol, fast food, saturated fats etc. ), you have quality in the physical dimension/aspect of your life. You have physical health/well being/wealth.
- If you are able to turn off the chattering voice in your head where your ego allows you get offended and take personally what people say about you, causes you to feel inferior, insignificant, etc., you have quality in the personal dimension/aspect of your life. You have personal/well being/wealth. Read more
Time Management 101
January 12, 2009 by Mark T. Rafter · 1 Comment
Educator and speaker Stedman Graham says that the 24 hours in a day is what makes us all equal. It’s what we do with it that makes the difference.
Most of us are text book time wasters and procrastinators. Does not work if you want to make progress in your life, be a success in your business, etc. So, here are a couple of ideas.
Break whatever tasks/goals/to do’s that you have for the day into 15 minute chunks. Focus for that 15 minutes on getting one thing done. After the 15 minutes, look back for a few seconds, acknowledge what you did, what you learned, what you are going to do next. For bigger project, it may be just continue on with the job.
Yes, you can get totally lost in your work and hours just disappear. Most people who work for themselves or at home dont have that problem.
Tip number 2: get a cheap-o digital timer/alarm. I bought one on ebay for $1 (I think the shipping was $4 … funny business model where your profit center is on the shipping markup and not the product itself)
I use the internet for all kinds of things - research, online marketing, blogging etc etc. Continuously available source of distraction. When I open up my browser, all bets are off for how long I will get lost in all of the amazingly cool stuff you can find “out there.”
I put 2-5 minutes (depending on what it is I’m in for) on my digital baby sitter alarm and when it goes off, if I have got what I wanted, I get out immediately. If not, I get it immediately and get out.
You can use the timer in association with the 15 minutes idea as well.
Amazing what you can get done.
Creating Your Own Reality - A Placebo For the Good Life
December 30, 2008 by Mark T. Rafter · Leave a Comment
I get these random ideas all the time. Some juxtaposition of facts, current events, old school learnings that I have from way back, lead to some kind of epiphany that lends itself to my current philosophy of life.
Much of which ends up in here. This is today’s version of exactly that ….
It is most often the case that when someone is discussing or describing the test results for a new drug (or process or whatever … I’ll use a drug in my example), that they focus on the number of subjects that reacted positively or “recovered” from whatever the drug was designed to address. This makes sense as the reason for having developed the drug in the first place was to cure the condition, disease, etc.
The number of people who reacted positively to the drug are quite often compared to a control group that was given a placebo or something to give them the impression that there was nothing different between what they were given and what those receiving the actual drug were given. Read more
Love the Adventure - The Power of Presence
December 29, 2008 by Mark T. Rafter · Leave a Comment
You have probably heard an expression something along the lines of Life is a Journey - Enjoy the Ride. I really do believe this and personally think it is important to move this out of the realm of bumper sticker wisdom and make it a part of your waking consciousness.
Every personal growth coach or self help guru on the planet will tell you it is important to set goals. I tell my coaching clients and audiences the same thing, encouraging them to set goals within the various dimensions of their lives in which they find value. This is how I define wealth, a more holistic approach beyond the traditional financial perspective of wealth. This is important as it focuses our energies and intention on something we define as important to us. There are several practical reasons for adopting this philosophy. Read more
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