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DAY 68: Friday, 29-Apr-2005 10:19 PM
Started on Friday for Saturday's blog...

Tomorrow (Saturday, April 30th) is Queens Day in the Netherlands. It is also the 25th Anniversary of Queen Beatrix's helm. As an American I don't really care all that about "Royalty". I grew up with the British Royals in the news and after their fiascos, I really didn't give all that much credit to royalty.

However, I must say the Dutch Royalty cannot be measured by any means that I have grown up with. They are a true "Leaders" in any class. They are very much a family that I would feel honored to meet or just sit by the road side as they stroll by.

Once again the importance of LEADERSHIP. It makes a world of difference and when done nicely, as it is in this case, the world is a beautiful place. It is here... I like holidays as well.

Now back to what I started and will take a bit longer to complete.

--------Now back to the Investors Business Daily article that got me started on this track. All the ideas that I will discuss are in the previous days dialog...

2. Unreachable Goals: Once again, the idea was that by starting with a little capital or in this case, the smallest capital I could hold in my hand, I started at the "base" (at the bottom).

Even the Pyramids at Giza have a pretty sound foundation. And the builders, who ever they were, new that to go high, they must have the best foundation to start out with.

So, what I have been doing all this time is to research and learn what I have to do later as the steps grow. So far there have been a myriad of issues that I have to look into and solve. Once again, thanks to the Internet, Google and some other resources, this is not at all that difficult.

Things have come a long way since going thru a card catalog and then going up into the selves of the library. Now, the ideas from all the worlds libraries and knowledge that is updated daily come to the eye via the actions of the fingertips. How convenient.

But does that mean that people take advantage of it?

Nope. Not by what I am seeing. Still most of the people today are very much ignorant about success and goal setting. Certainly, I have been. I have a lot to learn and practice as well.

Anyway, my point is that not only do you need to consider the entire issue of setting goals for your life, your education, your retirement or your business, but also you'll need to set goals that are realistic and achievable.

Remember my goals for the sit ups? Just 50. That has been done two days in a row now. Want to bet on the third day, which is tonight? You bet it will get done.

However, there have been times that I set out to do 250 for my start. The next day I had a pain or two in my abdominal muscles, and I said to myself, "well, a bit of pain, let me take a day of rest" and that was the end of that. Then a year went by... Not the best way to do it. Well, I didn't realize my error, but now I have a much better understanding of it.

Small goals. Then STEP by STEP. Soon you'll be up a FLOOR and then a few floors and you'll end up scaling a building!

And Trigger Change: Now, there is the interesting part of all this. The actions so far have truly made a difference in the way I do things. In fact, it was often that I would take on too many tasks. In the past year or so I have stuck to mainly three tasks. And I have focused on them well. My resolve to keep working on them keeps getting energized as well. All of this I believe is because I am excited about doing it in the first place.

And IF you have any doubts about that, consider this: I have collected only about $25.00 after working on this for over 6 months. SO, there has got to be something about it. You bet. It has very much become a part of my life, as I had mentioned a while back.

Now the dollar are little by little adding up after I started putting Google ads on the site. These ads have become my "low end sponsor" and the pennies are doubling with the handful of visitors that I have.

Now consider this, all of this may be minuet, all of this may be very little and insignificant. OR is it?

Wrong. Everything is vital! Everything is like water for you and me.

Everything that you'll do and the way you do it is vital.

So, the point is that you'll need to not only do anything that you want to do, but you'll need to do it in a successful manner and with the energy that you find in the deepest corners of your being.

I feel that I have it now. And that the trigger of change, the spark that you are looking for. STEP by STEP it can be done. STEP by STEP it can be found. Just do it!

3. "Your Goal": Coach Quick could not have said this more elegantly. Once again, the entire project that I have undertaken is "MINE" --100 percent mine.

I have taken the opportunity to tell a few people about it and it didn't really matter what those people thought of it.

In fact, most had positive comments, but I don't think any of the friends that I talked about this understood that this was not about the money but about reaching excellence.

That has been my goal all along.

However, the problem was that I kept trying to hit home runs all the time. I kept trying to excel by leaps and bounds and often the resulting tumble was so painful (restrictive, embarrassing, non satisfactory) that I didn't move forward all the time.

However, as you may have gathered by now, I am a very stubborn person and that I have taken advantage of, and in this case given it my best. Once again, doing the tasks --step by step, in little advances that have been easy to accomplish has been the best outcome. Not the leaps that many would aspect or aspire to accomplish.

Consider yourself taking a class and you get a C- or worse and barely make it to the next class.

What are you going to set as the goal for the next class? Will you say "I am going to get an "A" this time? Most likely that is what you'll do.

However, what would happen IF you said I plan to just do a bit better and I'll go for a "C". Then I'll keep working at it and get a "B" on the third and final series of the classes, for example.

That is a much more realistic approach to the situation and much more likely that you'd realize a goal like it.

I have many times. And I have done it the earlier method and failed often. In fact, I realize now that the many business endeavors that I failed working at during my early twenties were the result of trying too hard to accomplish insurmountable goals. Many times I just didn't and that cost me a lot of time and anguish.

 

I also learned from it. I grew from it. I resolved to rise up from it. And then things got better. Now, it's nice to look back and REFINE the successes --STEP by STEP and see what more can be done.

 

4. Being Consistent: And what more can be done? And what more could be done without "consistent" behavior? Well, not much. If you look at the blog index, you'll see that I didn't do that well in the past year. Things were not going well.

There were some events that got in my way, and I talked about it several times and I am not going to bore you again here. Those events had to be overcome and I did just that.

Then, bit by bit, came the 'consistency' that I needed to keep building to the goals. That didn't happen overnight, but they had to be done, or the project would have been 'dead in the water' to use something that Coach Quick may have said from time to time.

Once again, this was new territory to me. I had never done something that didn't get called "work" over and over. Sure I have studied and that was not something I did for money. But, at that time it was something I had to do, as I had no other ambitions.

However, in this case, the goals were not clear, the path was not straight and the vision was blurry.

Then the consistency was not there. I had mentioned several times that I was missing the "rhythm" in my life that I needed.

Then I got my desk complete. I am sure that I wrote about that ordeal. I've built my own desks for 20 years, and the one that I use now was the hardest. In fact, I was surprised that the "Chief of home decor" (aka my wife) even approved that I'd build the centerpiece of the office area that everyone coming into our living room can see.

Well, it still has another paint job ahead and some doors to hang, but I have called it functionally complete and it started working for me. I got into a rhythm and then the "consistency" started to build.

Here I am... That was around day 20 or so and months ago.

Wow, time flies... Friday, 29-Apr-2005 11:06 PM --It's late. Still sit ups to do and I see below that I have a lot more discussion left. I have to go. Hope you have a great weekend, and I am sure I'll find a bit of time to write and finish this in the next day or two.

5. Small, incremental STEPS! --in the next page.

6. Staying Hungry: --next page.

7. Keep the "big picture" in mind --make sure that you keep your humble beginnings: --next page.

8.
“Swimming fast, winning championships, winning gold medals, I really don’t think any of that is important unless in the process of the journey to those high goals you learn principles and values that are going to help you have a better world for yourself and have a better world for (other people),”: --next page, tomorrow or so.

 

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