What to Do If Your Potential Isn't Being Realized

Today ...

Are you crushing it...knocking the ball out of the park...and off to a blazing start?

Or...are you repeating the same patterns as last year...barely squeaking by...and in serious need of more, better and faster results?

Regardless of your answer, I'm going to share with you a simple, seven-step strategy for taking your performance to an entirely new level.

I just used it to evaluate my YTD performance and implementing the feedback into my plans for the month of February.

It's called an AFTER ACTION REVIEW (AAR), and it's purpose is to...

1. Celebrate and sustain strengths as you must reinforce the tactics and strategies responsible for winning.

2. Identify and correct deficiencies as it is imperative that you analyze behaviors which are compromising performance.

3. Focus on opportunities to exploit and goals to pursue for the remaining 335 days of the year.

DO IT NOW

To best position yourself, your family and business for the remainder of the year, you NEED to perform an AAR and analyze what took place in the first half of the year, and...YOU NEED TO DO IT NOW!
You NEED to identify every nugget of knowledge your past performance offers and milk it for all it's worth.

Please note the special emphasis on the word NEED, as if you hesitate to do this exercise or simply choose to delete this message, you'll most certainly pay the heavy price associated with neglect, ignorance and immaturity.

Unfortunately the vast majority of people and companies don't learn enough from their mistakes or their accomplishments.

It's like everyone is simply plugging along with their heads down, and it's Ground Hog Day all over again.

But, instead of repeating the same day over and again, both companies and individuals continue to repeat the same undermining attitudes, the same unproductive strategies and keep getting the same under-performing results.

IT"S TIME FOR A REALITY CHECK

You and I both know that no matter how good or bad your results have been these past 30 days - you can always do better—MUCH BETTER!

Yet, the single biggest key to improving both your performance and your results seems to go ignored by almost everybody. If you want to perform at the top of your game you NEED to review, analyze, and learn from what has already happened.

MASTER THESE SEVEN STEPS

There are seven steps in the AAR process, and you must begin implementing the ideas that you are about to generate...IMMEDIATELY.

Step 1 - Identify Your Three Greatest Accomplishments in the year so far.
Even if the first month of the year has been a challenging one for you, odds are...if you look close enough, there's something to be proud of.

Step 2 - Analyze What You Learned from Each Accomplishment?
Now that you have identified your three greatest accomplishments, go back to each one. This time though identify exactly what you learned or were reminded of by each of them.

Step 3 - Identify Your Biggest Disappointments in the year until now.
Practically every company and individual resists analyzing their mistakes. That's a shame because this is where the best learning comes from.

Step 4 - Analyze What You Learned from Each Failure or Disappointment.
No matter how great everything in life is going -we all make mistakes. The trick here is to analyze them, what preceded them, what could you have done differently and determine how can you prevent them from reoccurring in the future.

Step 5 - Identify How You Limited Yourself and How Can You Stop It?
Were there certain actions you took or didn't take that came back to haunt you?
In order to make sure you don't limit yourself again - you need to bring these self-defeating actions and self-limiting beliefs to the surface,confront them, and most importantly determine what you must do differently to make sure you don't make the same mistakes all over again.

Step 6 - Pragmatically Review the Information You Have Gathered?
The goal of this exercise is not simply to know yourself and your business better, but to actually use the information to make certain that you are best positioned for a strong first quarter and year, and that you have an actionable plan that far surpasses anything you have done in the first 30 days of 2015.

HOW DID YOU DO?

• What are the big takeaways from answering each question?
• What do you know about yourself or your business that you didn't realize or weren't thinking about?

Obviously, having this list isn't going to do it all, you still need to take this new knowledge and USE IT!
Fortunately, that's what the last question is centered around.
And here it is...

Step 7 - Determine How to Use This Information to Astonish Yourself in the year that is left

The purpose here is to build into your schedule,your interactions, your management style or whatever else you've surfaced in the previous questions and build yourself a new, better approach.
Okay, now that we've uncovered a lot of useful information, the final step is to incorporate it into a game plan for crushing the first quarter of the year.

My goal is simply to help you achieve yours, and the single best thing I can do for you (now that the first half of the year is in the history books) is to impress upon you the importance and URGENCY of this AAR discipline.

Implementing the seven steps of the AAR before you get into work on Monday will go a long way in helping you making this the best year of your life.

I wish for you a lifetime of abundance, prosperity and ever increasing opportunity.

One where you make sure...

Everything Counts!

Gary Ryan Blair

The Power of Habit : Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business

A young woman walks into a laboratory. Over the past two years, she has transformed almost every aspect of her life. She has quit smoking, run a marathon, and been promoted at work. The patterns inside her brain, neurologists discover, have fundamentally changed.

Marketers at Procter & Gamble study videos of people making their beds. They are desperately trying to figure out how to sell a new product called Febreze, on track to be one of the biggest flops in company history. Suddenly, one of them detects a nearly imperceptible pattern—and with a slight shift in advertising, Febreze goes on to earn a billion dollars a year.

An untested CEO takes over one of the largest companies in America. His first order of business is attacking a single pattern among his employees—how they approach worker safety—and soon the firm, Alcoa, becomes the top performer in the Dow Jones.

What do all these people have in common? They achieved success by focusing on the patterns that shape every aspect of our lives. 

They succeeded by transforming habits.

In The Power of Habit, award-winning New York Times business reporter Charles Duhigg takes us to the thrilling edge of scientific discoveries that explain why habits exist and how they can be changed. With penetrating intelligence and an ability to distill vast amounts of information into engrossing narratives, Duhigg brings to life a whole new understanding of human nature and its potential for transformation. 

Along the way we learn why some people and companies struggle to change, despite years of trying, while others seem to remake themselves overnight. We visit laboratories where neuroscientists explore how habits work and where, exactly, they reside in our brains. We discover how the right habits were crucial to the success of Olympic swimmer Michael Phelps, Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz, and civil-rights hero Martin Luther King, Jr. We go inside Procter & Gamble, Target superstores, Rick Warren’s Saddleback Church, NFL locker rooms, and the nation’s largest hospitals and see how implementing so-called keystone habits can earn billions and mean the difference between failure and success, life and death.

At its core, The Power of Habit contains an exhilarating argument: The key to exercising regularly, losing weight, raising exceptional children, becoming more productive, building revolutionary companies and social movements, and achieving success is understanding how habits work. 

Habits aren’t destiny. As Charles Duhigg shows, by harnessing this new science, we can transform our businesses, our communities, and our lives.

About the Author

Charles Duhigg is an investigative reporter for "The" "New York Times." He is a winner of the National Academies of Sciences, National Journalism, and George Polk awards, and was part of a team of finalists for the 2009 Pulitzer Prize. He is a frequent contributor to "This American Life," NPR, "PBS NewsHour, " and "Frontline." A graduate of Harvard Business School and Yale College, he lives in Brooklyn with his wife and two kids.

  Fishpond,  The Nile,  Book Depository,  Amazon

The indispensable first step to getting the things you want out of life is this:  decide what you want.

Ben Stein

Where you are headed is more important than how fast you are going.  Rather than always focusing on what's urgent, learn to focus on what is really  important."  

Stephen Covey

"People who soar, are those who refuse to sit back and wish things would change." 

Charles R. Swindoll

How Hollywood Villains Can Teach Us How To Make Our Dreams Come True

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When we know deep down that we're acting with integrity despite impulses to do otherwise, we feel gates of higher energy and inspiration open inside of us."  

Dan Millman

My Goldilocks "Just Right" Adventures

How did Goldilocks find the three bears' cottage without a GPS? 

I believe her inner GPS—her heart's desires—led her there in three easy steps.  

She knew what she wanted. She encountered what she didn't want, but used that feedback to gain clarity. And then she attracted her desired results. 

I'm going to share how I learned to manifest a life that is "just right" in so many ways. And I did it with simple shifts in my thinking that anyone can learn.

Six years ago, my husband passed away after a long illness. When his cancer was diagnosed three years before that, we sold our award-winning construction company.  In the course of over twenty years, we'd created custom swimming pools, ponds, and waterfalls for A-list clients like Brad Pitt, Will Smith, James Coburn, Aaron Spelling, John Stamos, and more.

While my husband Bill's health declined, so did the housing and stock markets. My financial safety net collapsed.  After Bill died, I embarked on my long-held dream of being a full-time writer, but success eluded me.  I fell prey to my mindset that Bill was the one who knew how to make money—not me!  I had never even closed a sale. How would I support myself in my dream life?

I knew that if I didn't change something fast, results would spiral downward, so, about five years ago, I began studying with great teachers in personal development. I became a certified coach, so I could share the process of transformation with others.

A year ago, I decided to sell our big house. My husband was gone. Our daughter was engaged and living in New York City. I knew that I had a choice: feel upset at leaving after fifteen years in a wonderful view home, or manifest a fabulous new adventure as a single woman in her golden years.

I began picturing my ideal daily life. How would I feel waking up, walking my Golden retriever Sugar Bear, writing, coaching clients virtually, stargazing, socializing? Images in my mind led me to a 1953 ranch house that most people would've scorned for being too rustic. Yet I've enjoyed a magical, creative year here, writing four books, starting three more, and launching a new venture as a toymaker.

Now it's time to move on. My writer's retreat will soon make way for a house befitting its multi-million dollar neighbors. I must bid farewell to four-legged friends I visit daily: horses who trot to greet me, and Danny the alpaca who has a sweet tooth for grapes.

To get ready for my next phase, I began visualizing  another "just right" home. I looked at rentals online, and some in person. They were too hot or too cold! I held to my vision and expectations that what I desired was already mine. And we found each other. Further, since our heavenly Creator loves to surprise and delight us when we align with a beautiful life, the garden features my favorites: roses, jasmine, lavender, and a lime tree. Neighbors have dogs; Sugar Bear is welcome. The piano teacher next door feared a new tenant would complain about classical music—I invited her to drop in and inspire me to play my own piano again.

"Just right" adventures don't happen by chance. But we can learn how to deliberately entice them into our lives. What are your thoughts attracting? Is it something you'll love when it lands at your doorstep? Or will you try to fling it away and declare, "I never ordered that cold porridge!"

I used to think my circumstances were a matter of luck. Today I understand we can have 100% control over our thoughts, and choose the results we want to experience and enjoy. Life can and should be a fun and delightful "just right" adventure in creativity, joy and expansion. 

Evelyn Brooks

Evelyn Roberts Brooks is a bestselling author, speaker, success coach, and toymaker. She's offering an exclusive gift for Insight of the Day readers. Use code INSIGHT to get 50% off all e-courses and products in her online store through August 15, 2014. To visit Evelyn's store and claim your bonus gifts, go to: http://evelynbrooks.com/store 

"Each problem has hidden in it an opportunity so powerful that it literally dwarfs the problem.  The greatest success stories were created  by people who recognised a problem and turned it into an opportunity." 

 Joseph Sugarman

Motivational video

“Success is deciding from the start what end result you want and creating the circumstances to realize that result.” 

—Mark Victor Hansen

Olympic Champion's Secret

What do three-time Olympians use when they simply HAVE to operate a peak mental attitude to compete and win against the world's greatest athletes?

They use this...

Used by self-made millionaires, CEOs, Olympic athletes, and champions from every field...

Subliminal Power is one of the smartest and easiest ways to adopt "peak mentality"--fast.

Just go to..   http://bit.ly/z1dgzc

Uncover the real power behind 'Think & Grow Rich'

Can YOU imagine going through your day-to-pay life without worry about your financial future? Constructing your financial path with The Master Blueprints is amazing! Author Bradley Thompson has recently released a system to understanding and implementing the Think And Grow Rich way of life. So, would YOU like to be on your way to financial security and beyond? Just click on THIS link to learn how: http://www.consultivotal.com/e_master.htm

“Winners take time to relish their work, knowing that scaling the mountain is what makes the view from the top so exhilarating.”

-Denis Waitley

Here is the Ultimate Success Formula:

1. Decide what you want.

2. Take Action

3. Notice what’s working or not.

4. Change your approach until you achieve what your want.

From Giant Steps by Anthony Robbins

"People become really quite remarkable when they start thinking that they can do things. When they believe in themselves they have the first secret of success ~ Norman Vincent Peale

"Something in human nature causes us to start slacking off at our moment of greatest accomplishment. As you become successful, you will need a great deal of self-discipline not to lose your sense of balance, humility and commitment."

- H. Ross Perot

Dream Big! Be Inspired! Take Action! Live Free!

“Double Your Income, Double Your Time Off and

Double Your Speed to Financial Freedom!”

There are 3 critical elements to success: “Knowing what you want, knowing what to do, and doing what you know.” The SuccessTracs Coaching Program ensures that you will have all three! The objective of the program, for those 100% committed, is to double your income, double your time off, and double your speed to financial freedom!

Every client will increase their income, increase their time off, and increase their speed to financial freedom, but not everybody doubles their income, doubles their time off, and doubles their speed to financial freedom. The determining factor is how hard you play the game – so please play full out and you’ll win!

"The big rewards come to those who travel the second, undemanded mile."

Bruce Barton

"Successful people make decisions quickly and change them slowly if and when at all."
Napoleon Hill

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