7 Tips That Can Help Improve Your Discipline

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7 Tips That Can Help Improve Your Discipline

Most people want something more from their lives wouldn’t that be a fair assumption to make?  They may want more free time, be able to travel more, maybe they want to improve a talent or skill.  Maybe better health or to be in better shape, or at least one more pleasing to themselves or the opposite sex. 

They may want a bigger house, nicer car, better boat or simply more money to live on or have saved up for future years and retirement feeling more secure about their future.  They may think about helping others less fortunate and may really contemplate on how to make a difference in the world.  If they are Christians, they may even think about spreading Gods word and becoming more of an evangelist.  The list can go on and on.

The simple truth is that most of us can have many of these things and more if we really get serious about life and work on one internal strength each of us has and which can be made stronger, discipline. 

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A Focused Life

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2018-06-03_0913A Focused Life

How often have you really sat back and took a good look at your life and wondered if you have achieved what you set out to do many years ago?  Do you remember what your intentions, goals or dreams were 20 or more years ago?  What did you believe your “life’s purpose” to be back then?  Is that purpose still what gets you going every day?  Has it changed any?

Reflecting back on your past can be a great method to help re-align your future plans.  Looking back and weighing the pluses and minuses of your life, as you remember them, will help you understand more about yourself and allow you to use some of your wisdom to make better decisions about your future.

There are many types of people that approach this reflection differently and if two people had the exact same experiences with their past, my guess would be that each would reflect and remember it in different ways.  Each would draw different conclusions on what was a plus and what was a minus.  Each would be correct, from their perspective, but still have only one point of view, theirs.  A singular point of view is not what you may want when planning your future, is it?  This singular point of view, because of its singularity, may tend to blind you from other options that are in front of you and because of this singular thinking pattern, you may not see or acknowledge potential options.  This is not to say that after all options have been uncovered, researched and weighed, and a plan for the future is determined and put in place, that this action plan cannot become a focus and somewhat a singular point of view.  In fact, this is how big goals are achieved.

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Who Was Thankful For You This Year?

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2018-06-03_0902Who Was Thankful For You This Year?

Is Thanksgiving a day of the year, a state of mind, a way of life or the start of the retail shopping season?  Did you give thanks yesterday for only those blessings you have been given lately or do you give thanks for them all year around?  When you give thanks, do you thank the Lord for putting someone else in your life that had a significant impact in your life?  Have you made any significant impact in anyone else’s life?  Do you think you were on someone’s list of what they were thankful for this past year?

There are many things we all should be thankful for.  Consider if you were born in another part of the world?  Say Europe, Africa, South America or Asia?  What if you were born at a different point in time?  Say 1655 AM1 (Anno Mundi “year of the world” or 2349 BC “Before Christ”; approximately one year before the flood), 32 AD (when Jesus Christ was 32 years old, 1492 AD (Christopher Columbus finds the new world) or 1929 AD (the start of the USA Great Depression).

You were born to live at this point of time in your current location of the world for a reason.  What that reason is, only you can decide.  What you do or don’t do with your time while here, only you can determine.  If you are living your life and doing things with a focus to only improve your current situation, then you may need to broaden your scope of thinking and step into a lifestyle that includes doing things for others in need and next year you may be on a few more thankfulness lists.

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Living “The Life” of 100 Years, (Part 3, Yearning)

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2018-06-03_0832_001Living “The Life” of 100 Years

Part 3 – Yearning Years

They say that hindsight is 20/20 meaning that when we look back in our life, we see much more clearly what we should have done at different points over our life; positive or negative as that may be.  More times than not, I think we tend to focus too much on decisions we made that we believe were incorrect at the time we made them and if we would have chosen a different path our current situation in life would be different.  Much better of course!

As we age and daily face different challenges and opportunities in our lives, the number of decisions we make piles up for each of us.  The negative outcomes of those decisions around doing or not doing something correctly or incorrectly in our past may be seen as regrets; based entirely from our current singular viewpoint at this time.  Regrets or disappointments about our past choices are not something we want to look back on in our life. What regrets do you have so far in your life?  Are you making better decisions today about the many tomorrows you have coming up in your future? Are you using your past to make a better tomorrow for you and for your family?

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“The Big Cheese”, Leadership

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2018-06-03_0857The Big Cheese, Leadership

Every organization has a leader, even the organizations you belong to. Every entity, every company, every City, County, State and Country has a leader.  The leader is the person who is responsible for the direction of the organization they lead.  The leader makes sure strategic direction has been defined for the organization, that precise future goals are set and resources are available to accomplish those goals.  The leader is the person out in front, “the big cheese”; they get everyone to march to the same step.  The leader is the one the rest of the organization sees as the one to follow and the one person the followers trust most to make good decisions improving the organization so it benefits its stakeholders, which includes the followers.

Where would you follow your leader?  Are you following your leader?  Do you know what your leader stands for?  Do they work to benefit themselves or the organizations stakeholders?  How many different leaders are you following?

Over the years many different types of individuals have held leadership positions.  Some seek it out while others have it thrust upon them.  Some individuals rise to the occasion and do a fantastic job leading their organizations, while others, do not.

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Living “The Life” of 100 Years, (Part 2, Earning)

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2018-06-03_0832Living “The Life” of 100 Years

Part 2, Earning Years

 

Last week I posted part one “Learning Years” of a three part series called Living “The Life” of 100 Years. This week we continue with “Earning Years”, the next 35 years of our 100 year life.

Have you ever considered living a lifetime of 100 years?  What does it really take to do such a life feat?  What type of planning should be involved?  You may think you will never live that long, but what if you do?  What if the Lord blesses you with long life?  Will you be ready for your golden years, mentally, physically, spiritually, financially?  Have you been using your knowledge to improve your earnings in life so far, or have you simply taken a job to collect a paycheck and allow life to happen to you?

We tend to spend a lot of our time predominately focused on generating income and accumulating wealth since it is the time when most of us are at our peak earning years, from 35 to just around 70.  As we enter the “Earning Years” phase many of us have completed a desired level of schooling, have an education in our intended field of interest along with a fair amount of work experience in an industry we have sought out or ended up in.  In any case, as we move through our 30’s and 40’s, we have a value to offer the job market, and the job market has an amount it will reward us with.  Hopefully, the job market reward is equal to or higher than our own calculated value.

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Living “The Life” of 100 Years, (Part 1, Learning)

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2018-06-03_0831Living “The Life” of 100 Years

Part 1, Learning Years

 

Have you ever considered living a life time of 100 years?  What does it really take to do such a life feat?  What type of planning should be involved?  You may think you will never live that long, but what if you do?  What if the Lord blesses you with long life?  Will you be ready for your golden years, mentally, physically, spiritually, financially?  Have you been applying the knowledge you learned in life to improve your life so far?

100 years is 36,525 days (365.25 days in a year x 100 yrs). Even in today’s terms, that is a long time.  However in an earlier time, a time discussed in detail in the Bible, individuals lived much longer.  In Genesis 5:27, the Bible says, “Altogether, Methuselah lived a total of 969 years, and then he died”; Methuselah, being one of the oldest long lived men on record, if not the oldest.  Can you just imagine the type of planning that would be needed to live that long in today’s time?

Consider also, that God later in Genesis 6:3 mentions man should live to be approximately 120 years old.  Given that information, along with living a healthy lifestyle, consistently working daily at some God pleasing task and being assisted with the correct balance of pharmaceuticals it is very likely we may live close to being 100 if not longer and we should all plan accordingly.  What is your life long plan for your future?

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8 Small Business Challenges

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2018-06-03_08298 Small Business Challenges

Running a small business today takes a lot of determination, stamina and problem solving skills by the owner if they want to even attempt to run a business.  If they intend for it to prosper and grow, they will still be faced with many waves of challenges that may knock them off their feet from time to time.  A small business owner will need to be aware of, understand and will probably have to address each challenge at some point in their business.  Let’s look at eight challenges that may need to be addressed.

  1. The Owner Themselves

An entrepreneur is a special class of person that has something that is driving them to start a business in the first place.  It could be a passion or they may have something to prove, whatever their reasons for starting the business, chances are they will be lacking in certain knowledge and skills.  They may excel in some areas and they may be able to work 22 hours a day to make up for a lack of some knowledge, but at some point time, their fatigue and uncertainty, while trying to do it all alone may get the best of them.  A business that is largely dependent on the owner can only grow to the point of that owner’s ability, willingness and time spent on getting things done.

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Building A Team

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2018-06-03_0825Building “A Team”

Having a group of individuals come together to successfully accomplish a task is why most of us want to build a team in the first place.  Whether for a short-term project or long-term engagement, team building can take a lot of effort.

There are all kinds of different teams in the world; sports teams, project teams, corporate organizational or business management teams, political teams, family teams and even married couples are a team.  They are all brought together through various ways and motivated to succeed at all kinds of different tasks or events.

Have you ever wanted to be part of a special team? Humans are social people and want to be on a team; it’s human nature to want to be part of something bigger than our self and be part of a group.  What teams are you on or would like to be a part of?

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What Profit Target Are You Hitting?

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2018-06-03_0814What Profit Target Are You Hitting

Are you successful at hitting what you are aiming at?  How do you know what target is the one you should be aiming at?  Small businesses have always had a challenge with identifying the proper profit target for their business.  In fact, many new businesses go out of business before they consistently turn a profit, much less worry about attaining a certain targeted profit amount.

Our LifeLongU™ blog today explores ways a small business owner could focus their aim on different targets of profit. You may be reading this and think, “Isn’t that what all business owners focus on.”  I don’t believe they do.  Many I have met think about sales first.  They become sales driven organizations with processes focused on driving up sales, whatever the cost.  They have a philosophy that if we only had more sales, we would make more profits which is very dangerous and can hurt a company as quickly as having no profits can.  This way of thinking can create lots of sales activity, lots of risk, lots of cash being funneled through the business and lots of extra loose spending if proper controls are not in place to protect profit margins.  It can also create a “feeling” of profitability within your business, which might be false.

Are you clear on what profit you or your business are aiming at?  Are you hitting it?  Are you sure that is a good goal for your business?

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Are You Producing Customers?

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Are You Producing Customers?

Successful businesses focus on generating new customers in multiple markets while servicing current customers constantly strengthening the value being offered by their product and service.  This enables a business to add additional product offerings to customers and increase the lifetime value of each customer to their business.

Where do your new customers actually come from?  As an owner entrepreneur or business manager, you should have a good handle on how a prospect becomes a customer within your organization.  What type of sales team do you have?  Do they have the correct incentive plan motivating them to convert prospects to customers and generate sales?  Are they properly trained and managed?  Can you use Rep’s to plug some of the holes in your sales territories?  Do you know where the holes are?  Does your product or service have a good presence at area trade shows?  Is your company getting any business from trade shows?  How many new customers do you generate each month?  Again, where did they come from?  What are the average sales per customer?

As the owner entrepreneur or business manager, you should have the answers to these questions.  Cash is King, but without sales, there is no cash.  Every business should be generating new customers and trying to increase the average sales per customer.

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Filter Your Senses

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Filter Your Senses At An Early Age

How many times a day are your five main senses engaged with an offensive attack on your beliefs or convictions?  What have you seen today where the image has left a negative or damaging impression in your mind?  What touched you today that made your skin crawl?  What sounds have you heard that really are noise and have caused you to lose focus, distracted you from what matters in life?  Have you smelled or tasted anything that made your stomach turn or simply made you sick? Our five senses are being overly engaged to get our attention…what can we do about it if we don’t want to give our attention?

Our presence in today’s “civilized” world is full of life, some of it good, and some of it not so good.  In fact, some of it is bad, really bad.  As a person that holds themselves to a higher standard, we should try to filter out as much as we can of the things that try to draw us away from our beliefs and convictions.  If we continue to allow ourselves, our five senses, to be subjected to a barrage of stimuli that goes against our belief system, we will in time become desensitized.  Our convictions will slowly erode and we will find what once bothered us no longer is as much of an issue today.  Is this a good thing?

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