|
Preview of Contents
The following is an excerpt from Stack The Logs! Building a Success
Framework to Reach Your Dreams by Frank F. Lunn © 2004. Published by Kahuna Business Group, Bloomington, IL. All Rights Reserved.
Chapter 6- Personal Initiative! How to Completely Separate Yourself
from the Crowd.
“Do or do not. There is no try.”
-YODA
Time (Choice) Management
There is not really any such animal as time control or time
management. You do have the ability for time choice and event or
activity management within the time allotted. This may seem like a
small distinction, but it is quite important. You cannot control
time, no one can. Your success in “time management” is to better
control your incremental activities within a given time period for
success. Instead of spending time in front of the television or
relaxation activities, what if you invested those hours in study
toward improving your skill set or increasing your specific
knowledge in your industry or exercising, etc. Imagine what that
translates to over time. According to Nielson Media Research 2000™,
the average person watches over 30 hours of television per week
which translates into 1460 hours or the equivalent of 36 forty hour
work weeks wasted in escapist activity. That is incredible! I am not
against relaxation and leisure in moderation. Unchecked however, the
trade off between what Brian Tracy characterizes as tension
relieving versus goal achieving is tremendously steep. Success comes
not through the months and years, but through the hours and minutes
and the choices within each.
How to Get Promoted in Life
Don’t wait for things to happen. Set yourself apart from the crowd
and make things happen. Take initiative and take a chance. Most
people never will so if you do, it naturally sets you apart from
others. We all have areas of weaknesses and personal liabilities.
Our strategy should be to determine which areas are improvable to
provide us maximum benefit for the investment of our time, effort
and energy. Don’t spend time and effort dwelling on your limitations
or what you can’t do. Instead, look to magnify and capitalize on
your strengths and potential. Spend energy focusing on finding
Incremental Advantages and changing and improving areas you can
rather than focusing on what or why you can’t.
Assume you have two financial accounts. One is a mutual fund
providing you an annual yield in consistently in excess of 15% per
year. The other account is a savings account getting you 3% if you
are lucky. You just earned a thousand dollar bonus check and you
want to invest all of it. Assume further you have emergency saving
covered and you are interested only in future gains with this new
found money; where do you invest it? Unless there was some
compelling reason otherwise, you would naturally invest your capital
where it could get the best highest return on investment. This is no
different for your skills talents and abilities invested in the time
increments available and equal to all human beings. Leverage and
separating yourself comes from consistently doing the highest payoff
and highest leverage activities.
The interesting thing is most people look outward for success. They
look for someone else to appreciate them, someone else to promote
them, someone else to motivate them. Success is not external shining
in, it is internal radiating out. If you look for other people to
define your success or happiness, you will never find your full
measure of either. You are the convening authority for your own
life, not others. If you want a promotion, set up the conditions to
get promoted. Apply the STACK Strategy and you will find the power
and control in yourself rather than in others or circumstances.
You, Inc.
When you have your own business, it is clear to see the selling of
services or other value in return for money. You may not realize
this, but even if you are an employee, you are basically self
employed. You are your own personal services corporation selling to
one customer in this case, your employer. Whether you earn minimum
wage or are in the top bracket of income earners, your business
entity, You, Inc., is at the heart of your earning. In a job, you
package and market your talents, skills, abilities, attitudes and
efforts into something traded to your employer for income. This is
no different than being self employed. The quickest route to earning
more money is to recognize your situation and to provide more value
to your organization. The more you develop your skills, talents,
abilities, attitudes and efforts into value for your employer or
your clients, the more you earn and are worth.
In working with other business owners, as an employer myself and a
former supervisor of over 350 people, I can relate to you the most
desirable characteristics for employees. Skill and talent are
helpful, but only a basis to start. The most important
characteristics revolve around attitude. Employees possessing a
positive attitude, willing to learn and grow and who take initiative
to advance the supervisor’s goals or take away headaches are rated
the highest. Is this any surprise? Employees provide leverage to a
business. The more benefit an employee brings you, the more valuable
they are in the leverage they bring to advance the business’s
objectives. If you want to earn more or move up in an organization,
add more value to your supervisor and the organization. If you have
your own business, do the same for your customers. It is quite
simple, yet missed by so many who forget that they are hired to
serve rather than to be served. If you cannot provide value to an
organization, why would they employ you? If someone else can provide
the same value you do for less money, why would they not look to
replace you with that person. If you have scarcity mentality, this
might rub you the wrong way or make you scared. I would challenge
you to look at it the reverse. Knowing most people look at their
jobs as an entitlement, find ways to add more value, learn more and
apply your skills to your organization.
Create a personal balance sheet for yourself. List out your assets
and your liabilities in the areas of knowledge, talents, skill set,
abilities. Also evaluate your attitude and advantages you have to be
a benefit. Your liabilities in reality are only what you have yet to
learn and apply to improve the items on the asset side. You may
think you have more liabilities, but those are only self limiting
beliefs created and enforced by yourself. The key to your potential
is to develop and refine your potential of you. The concept of You,
Inc. is not new. It has been used by many people to illustrate that
your earning power and production capability rests squarely on YOU,
Inc.
What are you doing to push the boundaries and improve the production
capability of You, Inc.? The good news is that you don’t have to get
all of your education at once. You don’t have to quit your job to go
back to school or take a sabbatical to learn new things. The best
education is the application of knowledge to your goals. Incremental
learning is certainly a “log stacking” activity. Learning is like
climbing a mountain. The more you climb, the more you see and the
better you can improve your perspective of all that is below you.
The more knowledge and information you gather and put to applied use
in your life, the easier it is to gain new information and apply
that information to your life. Whether you acknowledge it or not,
you are self employed regardless of who signs your paycheck. Failure
to recognize this leads to dependence on others and a failure to
develop the single most valuable asset you own.
"We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but
a habit."
-Aristotle
“Stack the Logs! is a wonderful, illuminating, and inspiring book.
Through laughter and tears, you will re-think how you are living
your life, and discover how we all have the capacity to contribute
and make a difference in the world.”
Stacy Allison, First American woman to reach the summit of Mt.
Everest &
Author of Beyond The Limits and Many Mountains to Climb
“As a father who has spent many months in hospitals with a seriously
ill son...I can fully understand why you felt compelled to share
your story in order to highlight how it IS possible to keep a
positive view on life when it all seems to be falling apart. The
seven staggeringly simple steps to success defined so clearly in
Stack the Logs! are a wake up call for anybody who is interested in
having a more positive, successful...and above all, happy life.”
Gary Vurnum
Author and Publisher of "Our Success Partnership" www.oursuccesspartnership.com
Contact Information
For information on Stack the Logs! including
Please contact:
Tammy Cook
tammy@kahunaworld.com
Kahuna Business Group
801 W. Chestnut, Suite C
Bloomington, IL 61701
309-828-8396
888-357-8472
ISBN 0-9728300-4-9
LCCN 2003101717
Publisher- Kahuna Business Group (2004)
  
|
