What Are Your Core Values?

I recently had lunch with a group of my friends and business associates, the conversation turned a very important but overlooked part of life; it turned to personal core values and why so very few people today have them.

If someone asked you to give him or her, the core values by which you live, could you tell him or her, what they are? Successful people in all walks of life, whether they're students, housewives, employees, business owners, no matter who they are or what they happen to do, really need to have a set of core values to live by.

My friends and I came up with six values we all felt should guide the life of any person who desires to live a successful and happy life. See if you agree with them.

1. Awareness. Without awareness, a person becomes little more than a machine, marking time and living mechanically. You need to be consciously aware of the need to be aware; to notice things, to see things, to be curious, to maintain a youthful zest for what's going on around you; to see the limitless opportunities begging for attention everywhere.

2. Skepticism. You need to have to have a good and healthy skepticism. You need to be a challenger of the way things have been done in the past. All human advancement has been brought about by people who have refused to believe that just because something is done a certain way it is the best way, or even a good way. You need to try to get the facts for yourself instead of just going along with the crowd. If something has always been done a certain way, there's likelihood that it's obsolete.

3. Integrity. You must be a person who others can trust and believe in. You should never compromise with what you believe to be honest, and because of this you will be a person of great value that others can trust implicitly.

4. Courtesy. This is always the mark of a well-rounded, successful person. You should always be courteous to other people no matter who they or what their social or economic status in life is.

5. Learning. You should learn something new every day of your life. You do this because you know that life is a lifetime journey of learning and without knowledge you cannot succeed.

6. Commitment. You commit yourself completely to what you choose to do. Unlike millions of people who have no goals, you put your whole heart and soul into accomplishing what you want.

If you have these six core values you will become outstanding in every area of your life and opportunities will continuously come your way. Whatever you set out to do you'll do to the very best of your ability and you'll do it a little bit better each time.

You may and should have other core values to live by, but I think these six will most certainly guarantee your success and happiness in life.

Creating Your Own Reality

I have had the opportunity during my 25 year career to meet thousands of people from all over the world and I have found two things to absolutely true time and time again regarding people no matter what their background, education or social status in life.

First, is that the more optimistic a person is the more successful and healthy he or she is likely to become.

Second, is that both optimism and pessimism tend to be self-fulfilling prophesies. Our reality becomes what we expect it to be.

There is a circular self-feeding loop of human nature that you can use to your advantage. For example, a woman who lacks confidence can acquire confidence by an act of will and convince herself with confident action and self-suggestion that she is confident.

This change in her thoughts and actions will produce a corresponding change in the way other people respond to her, which reinforces her original act of will. In effect, the world proves her right and her own certainty increases because objective, concrete events have proven that her confidence is justified.

Negativism works the same way. For example, a man with indigestion caused by stress may worry about the pain, further increasing his level of stress and making his indigestion worse. Since his pain is worse, he is even more worried, which makes the indigestion even worse.

Faith and doubt work the same way. When a person doubts his ability to succeed, he lowers his energy level because he feels defeated before he starts, and he impairs his health, which further lowers his energy level.

A lower energy level limits his progress, which causes him to doubt even more, further depleting his energy. Because of the self-defeating nature of the feedback loop, doubt makes success less likely.

Conversely, if you assume that your efforts can and will succeed your assumption helps create the fact by making you more energetic in the pursuit of your goal, giving you robust vitality and health.

Because you feel more energetic, you take confident strides forward, and you make more progress. You can then see that you are gaining on your goal which validates your assumption that you can succeed. This, in turn, gives you more confidence that you will succeed, which makes you even more energetic.

Faith is the starting point for creating your own reality. When you have faith that you will succeed, your faith that you will succeed, your faith feeds itself, building and growing as you make progress. The result is a positive self-fulfilling prophesy.

Planting For The Future

Right now in the middle of August, many farmers have planted seeds despite the fact that it might not rain, it might rain too much or it might be too hot. In August, just when everything is looking good, the big wind might blow and they will lose everything.

When harvest time comes, it might be too wet, and the crops may die in the fields. Who knows what prices will be and don't forget the bugs.

Before trains, trucks and supermarkets, spring was the hungriest season. In winter people still had stores from the harvest, but by springtime the stores had run out. Even though spring might be beautiful, nothing had produced. It was possible to starve amidst the beauty.

Those hungry farmers would look at the seed they saved with ambivalence. They had no choice: They could eat the seed and ease their hunger or plant their seed and go hungry, now.

Of course, if they didn't plant, they would surely starve the next year. So what should they do?

Their dilemma is one each of us faces every day. Kids must ask themselves whether they should study or play. The fruits of study won't be harvested for many years. Play feels good now.

Adults must decide whether to save money to invest in the future or blow it now on something that promises instant gratification. Should you make the next sales call? Write the next sentence in your proposal? Bite off a piece of the large task that will really pay off, or finish a job that makes little difference?

The big question is, “Shall I sacrifice not for a better future, but one which is not guaranteed?

The answer separates the wheat from the chaff. Nobody in the history of the world who consistently answered “no” to this question ever accomplished anything worthwhile.

There are no guarantees. There never were. Ask any farmer. Some seeds never sprout. Some are eaten by birds and bugs. Some harvests are ruined by weather.

Even in the sunny spring, seeds are safer out of the ground. Much safer than when you plant them. It's possible that you can lose them all and go hungry, but keeping seeds safe is not what seeds are for.

As General Douglas MacArthur said, “There is no security in life; there is only opportunity.”

The Importance of Recreation

I recently spoke to a group of young business professional during a seminar I gave in Cincinnati, Ohio and one of the topics I covered was the need to make time for recreation.

In today's highly competitive business world we live in, where the need and pressure to succeed is greater than ever most people fail to make the time for recreation; a time for rest, relaxation and most importantly renewal.

Most people look at recreation as a chance to have fun and maybe play their favorite sport, but to me recreation is more important than that. To me recreation is all about taking the time away from work to reevaluate your life, your life, work, goals, and reason for living.

Taking a morning or an afternoon off to play a round of golf or a game of tennis, simply doesn't give you enough time reevaluate your life. You need more time than that, several days or even a week or two.

For me it's taking the time to go to a beach and just walking along the beach or just sitting and watching the waves come in. It's the therapy of the fresh are, the sea itself

Everyone has his or her own way, or should have his or her own way or recreation or renewal, so that he or she can look at life once again with a new interest and enthusiasm. What's yours?

My friends and associates have different ways as well; for some it's gardening; for others it's painting, cooking, fishing, and camping. I have one associate that get recreational therapy from mountain climbing. Everyone needs to get away for some recreation.

For any recreation to be meaningful and fulfilling it must do three things: (1) It must stimulate your identity, the person you really are: (2) It must be stimulating: (3) It must give you a level of security as to take away your anxieties from work.

Occasional recreation helps you find yourself, reestablish who you are, and what you want, it helps with your identity. It most certainly involves change and stimulation, and it helps you develop inner security, the kind you need the most. If you have inner security, real security as a person, your world can come crashing down all around you and you can still emerge secure within yourself and build a new and possibly better one.

So when you find yourself getting stale, what you need is some meaningful recreation; you need to stop the world and get off for a while and look at things from a distance. You'll be surprised at the new ideas you'll get; and the new opportunities you'll see, opportunities that have been there all along but you've been too close to see them.

When you're lost in the recreation that you love, you're really living; you're living as fully as it's possible to live. That's the whole idea of life, isn't it?