Ability to manage/control time
Time controls most people; the extreemely successful people instead have a way to control time. Remember Murphy’s law-work expands to fill the time available to complete it? People who are driven towards success will instead get the work done in whatever time it actually needs to take instead of stretching it to fill the time available. They are able to get work done effectively and efficiently, so that they have much more time at their disposal to do more and get more out of what is done!

Choose the people around you
Most people think they have limited control over the people around them– but that’s far from true. Successful people have a knack of being attracted to as well as attracting people who are like-minded. It is about recognising who you are able to learn from, who you can emulate and ensuring that is the company you want to keep.

Stop feeling ‘entitled’
Each person has to pay his/her dues, regularly! There are no short cuts and there are no ‘entitlements’. Sow and you will be able to reap – it’s as simple as that.

Experience is what you learn, not the number of years you put in
Very often, people equate “experience” with the number of years that they have been doing something and therefore begin to expect returns purely based on that, be in terms of compensation or rewards. Actually, experience should be a reflection of what you have learnt new and the added value one brings to that task/job. Key questions that one should ask regularly are: how am I able to bring greater value with the time I have spent doing this and the knowledge I have acquired along the way? How am I developing myself, intellectually and professionally, and how is that contributing to the results?

Embrace failure and learn from it
The average person shies away from and acts defensive in the face of failure. He is not willing to take responsibility for it and finds any number of reasons for not succeeding. The successful person on the other hand is willing to look failure in the eye, accept it, learn from it so as to avoid repeating it, move on and be successful. Every failure is one more lesson in how not to do something, and therefore an opportunity to do something better!

Volunteers win
Call it initiative. Call it the drive to move forward and the ability to stretch more than the average person. As Jeff Haden writes in his article: “Success is based on action. The more you volunteer, the more you get to act. Successful people step forward to create opportunities.” The next time there is an opportunity extended to you, you can think of it in two ways. “This is more work! Why should I do it? I might not even be given more compensation?” Or, “This could be interesting— I think I can learn a few things here, acquire some new skills and work with more people. I could become better and stronger!” . The choice is yours to make, of course, but it’s a choice that can determine the limits of your success.

Go the extra mile
Similar to the point above, those who are willing to go the extra mile end up breasting the tape ahead of the others. It’s a proven fact in almost every sphere of life. That little bit extra push, the effort that overcomes all barriers including those from your mind and body which urge you to stop is what will propel you across the finish line. It isn’t easy, of course, but then who said success comes easy?

– Contributed by Jeet Victor

Adapted from an article by Jeff Haden on Inc.com.

Image courtesy: CreatingYourBeyond.com

These are men and women with very little in the way of a future. They look upon their jobs as a form of drudgery, a penance they have to pay in order to enjoy their free time. And because of this attitude, they have trouble making progress.

They stay pretty much where they are, always wondering why other people seem to be living the good life while they feel like they are living a life of quiet desperation.

At my seminars, people frequently ask me what they can do to be more successful. In almost every case, they are working at a job they don’t like, for a boss they don’t particularly respect, producing or selling products or services for customers they don’t care about. And many of them think that if they just hang in there long enough, the clouds will part and everything will get better for them.

But in order to advance — in order to move up to more difficult, more interesting, and higher-paid positions — you must become extremely good at what you are doing right now. If you don’t have the desire to be very good at your job, that means you are probably in the wrong one.

Too many people do their work in a mediocre way, with the idea that, when the right job comes along, then they will really work hard. But the right job never comes along. They are always passed over for promotions. They are always the last ones hired and the first ones laid off.

What about you? Are you in the right job?

Be honest with yourself. Ask yourself what you would like to do if you only had six months left to live. What would you choose to do if you won a million dollars in the lottery tomorrow? What sort of work would you do if you were absolutely guaranteed of success in your field? If there were no limits on your abilities and opportunities — if you had no debts, no problems, no commitments — what would be your ideal career?

Research shows that the things people liked to do between the ages of 7 and 14 were a very good indicator of what they would be most successful at as adults.

A man at one of my seminars told me that when he was 7 he loved to build model airplanes. As he got older, he built more and more complicated planes. By the time he was 14, he was building them with engines and flying them in contests.

Today, he is 35 years old. He has a degree in aeronautical engineering. He designs small aircraft. In addition, he owns an aircraft maintenance company and an air charter firm. He is a multi-millionaire, and he feels like he has never worked a day in his life. He has always done what he loved to do from the time he was a boy.

If you’re not sure of your true calling, ask the people closest to you. Ask them, “What do you think would be the very best thing for me to do with my life?” It is amazing how the people around you — your spouse, your best friends, your parents — can clearly see what you should be doing when you cannot see it yourself.

Project yourself forward five years, and imagine that your entire life is perfect in every respect. Imagine that you are doing exactly the right job for you, in exactly the right place, with exactly the right people, and earning exactly the amount you want to earn.

What would that look like? Where would you be, and what would you be doing? Who would you be with, and how would you have changed?

When you have that picture in your head, think about the steps you would have to take to get from where you are today to where you want to be in five years. What skills would you have to develop? What information would you have to acquire? What obstacles would you have to overcome?

Success comes from being excellent at what you do. The market pays excellent rewards only for excellent performance. It pays average rewards for average performance, and below-average rewards for below-average performance.

All really successful and happy people know in their hearts that they are very good at what they do. And if you are doing what you really love and enjoy, if you are following your true calling, you will know it too.

This article appears courtesy of Early To Rise, a free newsletter dedicated to creating wealth and success through inspiration and practical, proven advice. For a complimentary subscription, visit http://www.earlytorise.com.By Brian Tracy.

Throughout my adult life, people have recommended that I should work harder. Some have suggested I work smarter. My choice is the latter, to work smarter. Business is getting more complex, seemingly by the day. Both you and I should continually seek additional solutions to our daily business challenges. Partnering with others to create alliances for various reasons is my answer to the idea of working smarter.

Develop Your Mastermind Alliance

First on my working smarter list is to develop a personal Mastermind Alliance. Mastermind Alliances, also known as strategic alliances for individual development, can assist you in eclipsing your competition. This holds true for both your career and your enterprise. I belong to a geographical mastermind alliance, called Gold Coast Speakers, which consists of other professional speakers and consultants.

We started meeting early in 1989 and continued to get together about once a month or so. This is a confidential environment where each can share their gifts and receive counsel on important business, career and personal issues. I do not believe I would have survived in my speaking career without this relationship. The members of my mastermind alliance are some very special and giving people. The group consists of not more than a dozen members that are geographically close to one another, this allows us to regularly meet. We rotate from home to home, each member having the opportunity to host a meeting. We make it simply for the host by ordering delivered pizza.

Another mastermind alliance success story is the Downtown Palm Springs, CA breakfast club. A couple years ago I interviewed Tim Ellis, general manager at the Riviera Resort & Racquet Club in Palm Springs. The interview was for an article about Palm Springs’ strategic alliance with other California cities to draw tourists to the state. He told me about his downtown Palm Springs mastermind alliance. It consisted of general managers from seven other deluxe hotels, the convention center director and the owner of the aerial tram. They meet every Wednesday and rotate member locations weekly. They discuss issues uniquely important to the hospitality business in downtown Palm Springs.

I recently spoke with Tim. He is no longer at the Riviera. He started his own company, Lathom Hotels. Tim bought one hotel and leased another. The hotels both feature suites with full kitchens. He started his company to serve a neglected niche in town, long-term retired guests. He told me that much of his success comes from the networking relationships in the breakfast club. He said that he could not have picked up and done the same thing in another town. And yes, he still belongs to the alliance.

Mastermind Alliance Core Values

There are five personal core values that I believe are necessary for your Mastermind Alliance members to possess. They are trust, tolerance/ understanding, cooperation/growth, caring/commitment, and synergy/mutuality. Use these values as your guide when making member selections. Too often I’ve heard people talking marriage but really acting one-night stand. This behavior is what I call cotton candy partnering. Like cotton candy, it looks good and tastes great but disappears in seconds. These are definitely not concrete deeds and not the type of members you’ll want in your Mastermind Alliance. In contrast, integrity partnering is what allows synergistic solutions, the concrete deeds.

Use your group as a sounding board for ideas you might have missed, to uncover unnoticed pitfalls in your plans and various other important areas that offer you value. In the group of which I am a member, we spent an entire year dedicating each meeting to individual members for dealing with their specific issues. Wow! It was powerful to have several people focus their energy and attention to a single member’s issues. Giving energy can be as powerful as receiving it. I learn when I am being helped with my issues and when others are helped with theirs.

To make this kind of alliance relationship valuable for all involved the giving or Relationship Bank deposits must be frequent. Additionally, all the members of the alliance must be committed to the alliance itself. When this happens the alliance becomes a living entity and begins to evolve in it’s own direction. While this might seem odd, I have regularly found it to be true.

Benefits and Pitfalls

Inherent while building Mastermind Alliances, you will notice both benefits and pitfalls. The benefits of alliance relationships usually outweigh the pitfalls. Be careful and methodical in the search for Mastermind Alliance partners and in the elements of which the alliance will operate. Remember Caveat Pars (Partners Beware), as the road to successful alliance partnering has roadblocks, land mines and quicksand pits. Knowing how to select the right alliance partners and making good selections is truly a concrete deed, of which Kennedy spoke. Make your relationship Bank Deposits and you will surely develop Outrageously Successful Relationships (OSRs) with your Mastermind Alliance group members.

Copyright © 2010 Ed Rigsbee http://www.rigsbee.com. All rights reserved. Grateful acknowledgment is made to Ed Rigsbee for permission to reproduce selections from the copyrighted works of Ed Rigsbee

1. Stop spending

2. Worry

3. Blame someone or something

4. Give up

5. Go further into debt

6. Sell a possession

7. Become depressed

8. Complain

9. Cheat or steal

10. Hope someone will just give you the money you need

Of course, none of these solutions help you gain more money.

However, this solution is effective.

“I answer money problems with lots of money, not with worry or sadness or impractical hope.” — L. Ron Hubbard

You solve your money problems by making money. No other approach is a solution. An abundance of money is your only solution.

Recommendations

1. Figure out how much money you need. Write the total at the top of a page. For example, “I need to earn $10,000 per month.”

2. List all of your assets. Include all of your possessions, your skills, your knowledge, your contacts and your passions. These are some or all of the ingredients to your ultimate success, so make the list as complete as possible.

Examples: You have a truck, a camera, an empty bedroom and $11,225 cash. You are good at organizing, listening, learning, speaking and making people feel important. You know all about horses, word processors, furniture building, the State of Texas, Internet auctions and using e-mail. You know Jennifer, Robert, Tim, Ruth, Steve, Dave, etc. You have a passion to help others, build model airplanes, solve complex problems, learn new things and more.

3. Dream up every way you can use your assets to make money. Make a list. Old methods, new methods, any combination of assets that produce income.

Examples: Use your empty bedroom to start a small business selling cameras, furniture and jewelry for others at Internet auctions. Learn how to prepare tax returns. Help your boss make deliveries with your truck.

4. Select a method that is proven. Does this method already make money for someone else?

If so, it is a good candidate.

If no one has ever made money with your idea, look for something else. Stick to methods that already work and invent new methods as a hobby at some other time.

5. Verify that others would pay you for the product or service.

For example, ask your boss, “Did you know I know 150 horse owners. They need shelters for their horses. What if I tested the market to see if we could add portable shelters to our product line. If it works out, I would be willing to run the new division.”

As another example, you are thinking of taking pictures as a profession. So you meet with professional photographers to see how much money they make.

Ask around. For instance, ask your friends “If I had my own insurance company and could save you money on your car and home insurance, would you be interested?” “If I made a video on how to cut children’s hair, would you buy it?”

6. If all the signs are good, test the idea in the real world before devoting much time or energy to the idea. For example, run a part-time business from your house to ensure it will be popular and profitable. Make a few products or services to see if anyone will buy them. Try the new ad campaign with a small newspaper. Dip your toe before taking the plunge, especially if the idea is new.

7. Once the idea is certain to work, then and only then should you invest significant time and money into the project.

8. If you cannot work out a workable income source, work out a plan to increase your assets. If you have the right ingredients, creating new income sources is much easier.

For example, you may need additional education, apprenticing or experience in certain fields before you can earn more income. You may need to become more responsible. You may need more familiarity with a subject. You may need to make more contacts.

9. Once you have a plan you are certain will work, work long and hard to make it happen. You will solve your money problems by making more money on your own.

10. This final step is rarely taken, but is key to becoming wealthy.

“I never count on any one source. I always plan to get the total sum of all the money I need from each one of three or four ways or sources.” — L. Ron Hubbard

After you have one steady source of income, look for another source by repeating these steps.

Copyright © 2009 TipsForSuccess.org. All rights reserved. Grateful acknowledgment is made to L. Ron Hubbard Library for permission to reproduce selections from the copyrighted works of L. Ron Hubbard

If you have been brought up in a happy and positive atmosphere, where people value success and self-improvement, then it will be easier for you to think positively and expect success. If you have been brought up under poor or difficult situations, you will probably go on expecting difficulties and failure.

We all view everything through our predominant mental attitude. If our thoughts are positive, that is fine, but if they are negative, our lives and circumstances will probably mirror these thoughts.

If you believe that you are going to fail, you will unconsciously sabotage every opportunity to succeed. If you are afraid of meeting new people or having close relationships, you will do everything to avoid people and relationships, and then complain that you are lonely and nobody loves you.

Do you often think about difficulties, failure and disasters? Do you keep thinking about the negative news you have seen on the TV or read in the newspapers?

Do you see yourself stuck and unable to improve your life or your health? Do you frequently think that you do not deserve happiness or money, or that it is too difficult to get them? If you do, then you will close your mind, see no opportunities, and behave and react in such ways, as to repel people and opportunities.

The mind does not usually judge or examine thoughts and opinions before accepting them. If what it hears, sees and reads is always negative, it accepts this as the standard way of thinking and behavior.

The media constantly bombards the mind with a lot of information about disasters, catastrophes, wars and other unhappy events. This information sinks into the subconscious mind, and then manifests as your habitual manner of thinking. By occupying the mind with depressing and pessimistic thoughts you radiate negative energy into the surrounding world, thus creating and recreating more negativity, failures and disasters.

The mind is neutral energy. The way you think determines whether the results are positive and beneficial or negative and harmful. It is the same of energy acting in different ways.

The good news are that persistent inner work can change habits of thinking. You must be willing to put energy and time to pursue positive thinking, in order to change your mental attitude.

A few Tips:

- Each time you catch yourself thinking a negative thought, reject the thought, and think a positive one instead.

- If you catch yourself visualizing failure, visualize success instead.

- If you hear yourself uttering negative words, change to positive words instead.

- When you say, “I cannot”, say, “I can”.

- Do you repeat negative words and phrases in your mind? Change them to positive ones.

- Open your mind to positive attitude and expect positive results.

- Decide that from today, from this very moment, you are leaving negative thinking behind, and starting on the way toward positive thinking and behavior.

It is never too late to change your attitude and your life.

© Copyright Remez Sasson

Website: http://www.SuccessConsciousness.com
Books: http://www.successconsciousness.com/ebooks_and_books.htm

Here I have sorted a few ways to be happy at work.

1. SMILE!
Smile to everyone around you. Even if you hate the people around you, all you got to do is smile and be happy for yourself. Don’t mind who thinks what about you. The more you smile, the less complex everything else will seem to you.

2. Develop
This is a fast paced selfish world. The sooner you realize the better. So, don’t wait for someone to come, hold your hand and help you develop personally and professionally. You’re in charge of your own self and it is your responsibility to look out for all possible opportunities to develop in every possible way.

3. Always ask for feedback
For anyone to prosper it is always important to gain feedback from the experienced and the less experienced. One can never achieve growth if they are just doing something aimlessly, as one just ends up making innumerable mistakes.

4. Meet deadlines
It is important to meet deadlines at work as that creates a good impression about you. However, make sure that you never over-promise and under-deliver.

5. Stay positive
Avoid as much negativity possible. Think about it, when you speak negative about anyone, do you feel any better? It’s just spoils your mood even more. So try and avoid such negative interactions. Let people be the way they are. You have the power to change, but only yourself. So just be indifferent to negativity and be happy.

May be a new job could be the answer to your problems, but the right attitude, a positive mindset, a desire and commitment to continuously develop, improve and accomplish are pre-requisites for a permanent ticket to happiness and fulfillment at work.

But what happens if you’ve been doing the doing thing for awhile after hours and you’re still not successful? You can either give up or keep on creating.

If you don’t absolutely love what you’re creating, don’t bother. The most successful creators are those that can’t help but create because they love the process. If you’re working on your project and it feels like a job more than a privilege, do something else. You already have a day job; you don’t need a second job when you get home.

On the other hand, if you enjoy creating but are getting discouraged because you’re not seeing results, the solution is to keep creating, writing, inventing, building, painting, or pursuing.

Craig Benzine was a waiter in Chicago. No, scratch that. Craig worked as a waiter in Chicago. Serving food was his job. That’s not who he was. In fact, behind his waiter uniform and coy grin was a video producer bursting to come out. Did he complain about having to wait tables for a living? Probably, but he did more than complain. Craig channeled Charles Bronson and decided to take matters into his own hands.

“I was frustrated waiting tables when I knew I could make video,” says Craig. His goal was to ditch his waiter job and get a job producing videos. The problem, as Craig tells it, was that “I didn’t have any professional experience or a portfolio of work, so I decided to make stuff on my own for free.”

Craig started creating short and entertaining YouTube videos that showcased his video production skills under the moniker Wheezy Waiter. Month after month he’d work on these videos in his limited free time. After five months, he was introduced to a firm that needed a corporate video producer. Fortunately, he had put in the time to build his portfolio. “They watched my videos and basically hired me over the phone,” Craig recalls.

So far so good, but it gets better — actually it gets worse before it gets better. Craig realized that his passion wasn’t necessarily video — that was the medium — his passion was to entertain people. So he continued to create hilarious YouTube videos while working a full-time day job. Success was slow to come, however.

The day he uploaded his 100th video to YouTube, he had just 32 subscribers. Each of his two or three minute videos can take between three to six hours to create, so you can appreciate the magnitude of creating 100 of these – it took a year and a half and countless hours of work.

During my interrogation, I tried to break him. “After years and 100 videos you only had 32 subscribers? Wasn’t that frustrating? What kept you going? Didn’t you feel like giving up?” The Wheezy Waiter, while slightly out breath, wouldn’t have any of it. He shot back, “My friends liked it. My family liked it. I thought, ‘If they all like it why can’t everyone like it?’ I knew I could get an audience.”

In fact, he wasn’t discouraged, he was thrilled. “What I always wanted to do is entertain,” he said. “If I can get 100 people watching my work that’s great. I’m going to keep going and keep trying to entertain them.”

Turns out his family and friends were right. He’s hilariously entertaining and now has almost 150,000 YouTube subscribers – that’s more viewers than Jersey Shore gets. Okay, maybe not quite that many, but Craig’s work is far more entertaining. He has such a large and passionate following that just last month he has been able to quit his job and support himself (granted, he saves a ton on razors) through his YouTube videos.

The takeaway? Stop focusing on instant success and reading columns on how to get famous overnight. Instead, create because you can’t imagine doing anything else.

- Robert Pagliarini

Download several free resources (assessment, poster, audio interview, video, and more) at www.other8hours.com and learn more about Robert’s new book, The Other 8 Hours: Maximize Your Free Time to Create New Wealth & Purpose.

Article originally published on BNET.com. Reprinted with the permission of the author.