One Percenters

If you are like me, your natural drive is to make a decision to do something, and then run-like-hell at it. Power your way through it. Use your will power to achieve your goal.

But some of life's goals are much, much bigger than the ones you can use your instantaneous determination to achieve. They are bigger and longer than that. Some goals are going to take you weeks, or months, or years to attain.

And the longer the duration of the goal, the more difficult it is going to be for you to use your willpower to achieve it.

You need to take a different approach. Often times this approach can be more difficult for the person with a driven personality than the "hammer and tongs" approach. This approach requires some planning, and persistence, but mostly it requires an understanding and acceptance that the best (and easiest) way to achieve this outcome, is to take smaller, bite-sized steps.

You know, most people (including me and you) fail to achieve a goal because we burn ourselves out with our own enthusiasm. We are so keen to "make it happen", that we over drive our bodies, and even though our minds keep saying - go, go ,go, our bodies (including our nervous systems are not up to the challenge.

This is where the planning, and understanding of the journey you are about to undertake is of so much importance.

Take this example: If you had to walk from the most westerly city in your country, to the most easterly city, would you think that it would be a good idea to start sprinting from the moment you start the journey?

Of course not. You have enough knowledge and understanding to know that you may have a journey of weeks, or in some cases many months of "pounding the pavement". It would not make any sense to start running as fast as you can from your very first step, as you know you would find yourself burnt out and exhausted. For most of us, that would occur only 5 minutes into the journey.

So, what would be the best way to begin?

You would probably start by walking. Maybe at a brisk pace. But after a fairly short time, you would begin to understand how far you have to go, and how fit (or unfit) you really are. You would then change your speed to ensure you could continue to walk at an efficient and effective pace, to ensure you can go the distance in the shortest possible time.

If you can take that idea, and use it in other areas of your life, you will undoubtedly get further, faster, in many areas of your life than you would have by just starting to run as fast and as hard as you can towards your goal.

I know I've talked about him before, but Adam Khoo has had log term success in many areas of his life. He is one of the people who can articulate the methods he has used to get to where he is.

Remember in an earlier email we talked about modeling. Adam Khoo is one of the guys you should try to model if you are looking for the same type of success he enjoys.

OK, so back to what this article is about. The 1 Percenters!

1 Percenters stands for doing those things, every day, so that gradually, and with total control, you achieve the outcome you desire.

If you decide that something worth doing is going to take 100 days. All you have to do each day is something that represents 1 principle to different areas of your life, you will find that, over time, these areas begin to improve. Each day, or each week, you will be able to see the improvement.

And because the steps you are taking each day are not huge, massive and scary, you will be able to achieve your goal and feel the success. You will even have little successes along the way each day to help you stay the course.

So, if we are talking exercise, start with 10 or 15 minute sessions. Don't just go out there on the first day and try to run 10 miles.

If it is a product you are developing, or some knowledge you are studying, start by doing something daily to get there. You don't decide to send your kids to school 7 days a week for 12 hours a day so that they can graduate high school by the time they are 12. So it is that in many cases in other areas of life it is better to get yourself to take smaller steps more often until you reach your goals.

Now, I'm just going to say one more thing on this, and that is -YOU MUST DO SOMETHING TO ACHIEVE YOUR GOAL. None of what I have written here today will do you any good unless you take action and move towards your goals.

I apologize for yelling, it's just that sometimes capital letters really help get the point across.

So until next time,
Grant.

P.S. Here is another mind empowering technique using audio recordings for "brain wave entrainment" http://www.nlpyourwaytosuccess.com/morrymethod.html. I'm trying out their free sample recordings at the moment.

Grant Stevens is interested in NLP and other brain and mind inprovement techniques.
http://www.nlpyourwaytosuccess.com