The Power of Focus: 2. Exercises and Plans To Execute

Since this was a very big and rich book, and because there were two different aspects of it that interested me and I started writing about them; I divided the full into two separate ones. The first was about the inspirational quotes I liked in the book, and the second (the one at hand), is about the exercises, checklists and plans to perform an do to achieve that this book is all about. This is like a gathered summary as a guideline to get more focused.

We start with the Successful Habits Formula:

1. Clearly identify your bad or unproductive habits.
2. Define your new successful habit.
3. Create a 3-part action plan. (Focus on the 3 immediate actions to take to change that habit: read about it, motivate yourself, substitute with alternatives, place a bet with a friend, ...).

Identifying what you're brilliant at, competent at and weak at; ask yourself these questions and reply honestly to each:

1. What do you do effortlessly - without a lot of study or preparation?
2. What do you do that other people find difficult?
3. What opportunities exist in today's marketplace for your areas of brilliance?
4. What could you create using your unique talents?

How to: Take note every 15 minutes or so with your activities and what you do every day. After a week, identify your brilliance and weaknesses.

The top-10 goals checklist:
This will help you validate your goals that you've set and verify that you're on the right track with those goals:

1. Your most important goals must be yours: Don't let anyone decides what you should become. Put your own definitions of success.
2. Your goals must be meaningful: What is really important to me? What's the purpose of doing this? 
3. Your goals must be specific and measurable: Be more specific in terms of when, how, why ...
4. Your goals must be flexible.
5. Your goals must be challenging and exciting.
6. Your goals must be in alignment with your values.
7. Your goals must be well balanced: Make sure you include areas that give you time to relax and enjoy the finer things in life.
8. Your goals must be realistic: A good rule of thumb is to double the time you think it will take for the start-up.
9. Your goals must include contribution.
10. Your goals need to be supported: 
1. Tell the world about it; when you have bog dreams, you attract big dreamers.
2. Keep to yourself; actions speak louder than words.
3. Selectively share your dreams with the few people you trust most, who are proactive and will support and encourage.

Your MASTER PLAN;

1. Review the top-10 Goals Checklist
2. Go for the gusto-101 goals: make a list of the 101 things you want to accomplish in the next ten years. once done with the list, prioritize your goals and set a realistic time frame for each.
3. Create a picture goals book.
4. Use an ideas book.
5. Visualize, think, reflect and review.
6. Develop mentors and Mastermind groups: surround yourself with carefully chosen team of experts and supporters. 
7. Try the Achievers Focusing System: setting a cycle of, say 2 months, to achieve a goal you've set in one of the seven goal categories (Financial, Career/business, Fun time, Health and fitness, Relationships, Personal, and Contribution). It's a good weekly goal measurement tool.

The B-ALERT System:
A unique system to elevate your awareness to a new level.
When you're truly alert, you are more conscious of what is going on.

1. B is for Blueprint:
This is how you prepare for the day. Either do it the night before, or early in the morning.
Recent research indicates that if you create your blueprint the night before, rather than in the morning, your unconscious mind will actually work during the night figuring out how to fulfill your next day's plan.


2. A is for the Action:
When it comes to reviewing your results, the amount of action you put into your day will directly determine your score. Concentrate on the activities that produce the greatest results for you. Don't allow yourself to be interrupted or distracted so many times. Even when you're on vacation, don't allow yourself to be interrupted by reviewing goals or so, just concentrate on the action of having fun.



L is for Learning:
There are many ways to learn as the day unfolds; all that is required is that you be curious. You can learn from every source around you, not only books and courses, like listening to audiobooks on your way to work. You can learn a lot by by just observing and studying other people.



E is for the Exercise:
Exercise does not need to be boring. Set a thirty-day goal with not exceptions policy and reward yourself for not missing a single day.
Exercising improves your sleeping habits, increases your energy levels, relieves stress and anxiety, promotes a healthy posture, relieves digestive disorders, enhances your self image, and expands your longevity.
Make it a study: learn about your unique metabolism and how to optimize that. Study nutrition and how best to make certain food combinations that benefits your body.



R is for Relaxing:
This is the time to recharge your batteries during the day. TPM: Twenty-five peaceful minutes of napping. Take at least a day off every week with no calls or contacting the office.


3. T is for Thinking:
Not just thinking, but Reflective Thinking: At the end of the day, take a few minutes to take a snapshot of the day. How did you do? What did you do well? Be alert to shortcomings. Learn from your mistakes.

The Three big Questions:
Always surround yourself with positive people; list the names of all the people you know and put an N next to those who helped you nourish and grow, and a T next to those who are negative, always whining and complaining. Try to limit your spent time with those ones with the T.

At the beginnings of relationships, do your homework first and look for clues that demonstrate their integrity, honesty and experience, watch how they treat other people, and then ask yourself these three questions:

1. Do I like them?
2. Do I trust them?
3. Do I respect them?

Pay attention to your intuition.
Now my homework is to list all those bad habits that I need to change and work on them one by one, and maybe get someone to help.

The "And Then SOME" technique:
That's when you ask your closest ones to rate you for a certain period of time; say your husband/wife for a past week for example, and after so, ask them what would you have done better to get that perfect score or what you did wrong and could have avoided to make a better score.

How to Find Great Mentors:

1. Identify the target: choose a specific area - one as a start - of your life that you'd like to improve; e.g. learning new technology, hiring excellent people, doing effective presentations, ...
2. Select your mentor candidates: think about someone who is exceptionally experienced or talented in the area you have selected for improvement.
3. Create your strategic plan: How to find them, contact them, when, ... The first thing to realize is that you are probably never more than six people away from anyone you want to meet.

Mastermind Group:
A long-term supporting group that come together to discuss things positively and with a healthy open minded ways.

1. Select the right people: not more than 6 people including yourself. Depending on why you're creating this group, you'll need to identify the age group, the gender, the professions, etc ...
2. Everyone must make a commitment.
3. Decide when, where, how often and for how long you want to meet.
4. What will you talk about?

The Road to Freedom Paradigm:
What do I really fear?
What can I do to overcome this?

Six Confidence Building Strategies:

1. Every day remind yourself that you did some things well.
2. Read inspiring biographies and autobiographies.
3. Be thankful.
4. Build excellent support around you.
5. Push yourself to accomplish short-term goals.
6. Do something for yourself every week to celebrate your weekly accomplishments.

What to do if you hit a slump?

1. Recognize you are in one: take time out to rethink, re-energize and refocus.
2. Remind yourself of a major accomplishment.
3. Get back to Basics: you might not be practicing the fundamentals and doing the easy things instead of of doing the activities that will guarantee you results.

Seven ways to Boost your business, simply by asking:

1. Ask for information: suspend your own self-interest and focus sincerely on helping the person with whom you're meeting. Ask questions as a discovery process and don't rely on guesswork. only when you truly understand and appreciate the needs of the people you meet can you offer a solution. You must show genuine interest when you ask. Don't interrogate people; make a few comments, share an idea or offer a helpful suggestion in between your questions. Relate to what the other person is saying and then ask your next question.
2. Ask for business
3. Ask for written endorsements: Simply ask if your client would be willing to give you a testimonial about the value of your product or service. 
4. Ask for top-quality referrals: send gifts or do some nice gestures to those core clients who give you good referrals. Recognition of their help is more important than the size of the gift.
5. Ask for more business: look for other products or services to add to your portfolio. The simplest way to determine this is to ask your customers when you should contact them to reorder.
6. Ask to renegotiate
7. Ask for feedback

How to Ask:

1. Ask Clearly: be precise. prepare.
2. Ask with Confidence.
3. Ask Consistently
4. Ask Creatively: create "purple snowflakes". Make it fun.
5.  Ask Sincerely: Tell it the way it is, lump and all. Keep it simple and people will open up to you. When you really need help, people will respond.

The Double-A Formula:
Agreements and Accountability

• Constantly maintain your integrity: True integrity is based on keeping your agreements. If you're having a difficulty keeping an agreement, it is possible to renegotiate to maintain your integrity.
• When you develop the habit of being accountable for your actions, you will stand out as a unique individual.

The Integrity Formula:

1. When you always say the truth, people trust you.
2. When you do what you say, as promised, people respect you.
3. When you make others feel special, people like you.

The Six Big Reasons you may be procrastinating:

1. You're bored: raise your expectations and go for bigger and larger goals.
2. You are overwhelmed with work.
3. Your confidence has slipped.
4. You have a low self-worth.
5. You are doing work you don't really enjoy.
6. You are easily distracted, or just downright lazy!

There are primarily two ways to motivate yourself: You can fear the consequences of not taking action; or you can get excited about the rewards and benefits of being proactive.

The TA-DA Formula to help you take decisive actions:

1. Think: Reflective thinking allows you to pause so you can consider all of your options.
2. Ask: Ask good focusing questions and find out everything you need to know to make an intelligent, informed decision.
3. Decide: Use the double spiral technique to increase your decisiveness; visualize the negative consequences if you don't make a decision and compare these with the positive benefits of moving forward.
4. Act: Kickstart yourself into focused action.

Sir John Templeton list on how to create unlimited prosperity:

1. To achieve success, be neither an optimist nor a pessimist, but a realist with a hopeful nature.
2. count your blessings to enrich yourself and your neighbors, first spiritually, and then, perhaps financially.
3. Debt, whether personal or collective, should not keep you from investing in your future. Strive to be debt free.
4. Invest in many different places - there is safety in numbers.
5. Money should do far more than simply reproduce itself.
6. Remember that patience is a virtue.
7. If you want to prosper, investigate before you invest.
8. Never forget: the secret of creating riches for oneself is to create them for others.
9. Looking out for Number One doesn't make you number One.
10. Make success with a single word - Love.

Art Linkletter list on how to create unlimited prosperity:

1. I'm going to do the work I enjoy. You only live once, so do what you love.
2. There will always be difficulties, failures and challenges along the way.
3. The margin between mediocrity and success is very small when related to time and effort, over and above what is expected.
4. I will use pull whenever I can to open the doors to opportunity, but I will make sure to work when the door is opened for me.
5. I will recognize and be alert to my own weaknesses, and find people who excel in the things where i falter.
6. I will consider an opportunity to advance more important than the immediate moeny and fringe benefits of the situation.
7. I will always stretch my abilities and goals a little further than my comfort zone, within reason.
8. I will learn from my failures and then put them behind me.
9. I will follow the Golden Rule. I will not do a deal where someone else is short-changed, cheated or taken advantage of.
10. I will use other people's money provided I feel certain the money itself can grow at a faster rate than the interest charges. I will not be greedy.

More lists:

• Do what you love with passion and excellence and the money will follow.
• Read all you can, attend seminars, listen to tapes and put what you learn into action.
• Make a study of the universal laws of success, prosperity and abundance.
• Tithe a percentage of your income to your church and favorite charities.
• Always strive for constant and never-ending improvement in everything you do.
• Make the decision to be financially independent.

The Problem Solver: p264

How to activate your own purpose:

1. Align your purpose with your natural ability.
2. Be determined
3. Maintain a humble attitude.

Discovering Your Purpose:

You Quest begins with recognizing your special skills and talents. What do you do best? What do you really enjoy doing?

The only way to truly enjoy a higher level of success, including financial freedom, job satisfaction and richer relationships, is by changing your inner Level of Being.

Check the test on page 290 for discovering your purpose and page 294 for the Stop List (this is a list of all the things you are doing that are self limiting).

Life's Fundamentals:

Know what you want and why you want it.

Discover your talents and use them Daily.

Work hard; work smart.

Give unconditionally. Love unconditionally.

Find your purpose. Live your purpose.