Tomorrow is 100 percent based on the negotiations you do today.
Constantly study yourself, the negotiations you’ve done, and try to improve so you don’t experience the terrible effects of bad negotiations. One key point to remember; Make Sure Your List is Bigger Than Theirs Let’s say you are negotiating a book advance. They offer a $10,000 advance and they can’t budge higher. That’s fine. Now make your list of other things: how much social media marketing will they do? What bookstores will they get you into? Who has control over book design? What percentage of foreign rights, of digital rights, can you get? Do royalties go up after a certain number of copies are sold? Will they pay for better book placement in key stores? Will they hire a publicist? And so on. Make a list before every negotiation. Make the list as long as possible. If your list is bigger than theirs (size matters), then you can give up “the nickels for the dimes.” This is not just about negotiation. This is to make sure that later you are not disappointed because there is something you forgot. Always prepare. Then you can have faith that because you prepared well, the outcome will also go well. Make sure you know all of your numbers. All of your lists of wants. All of the other side’s numbers. All similar deals in your industry. All similar deals that the other negotiator has done. As many examples of negotiation, particularly in this arena, that you can find. Then make sure you are negotiating from a position of strength. People usually think that means, “I have more power than you.” But this is not what strength is. That will only result in a bad negotiation that will satisfy nobody in the long run. Strength simply means physical health (you’re well slept, you’ve eaten well, you feel energy), emotional health (you are dealing with people you like), mental health (you have done your preparation), and spiritual health (you feel fully deserving of the abundance and gratitude that is coming your way). Having faith in your strength is all you need to bring to the table. Nothing else. Once you do your preparation, have faith that the right negotiation will happen. The Choose Yourself Guide To Wealth
Goals are for losers. Your mind isn’t magic. It’s a moist computer you can program. The most important metric to track is your personal energy. Every skill you acquire doubles your odds of success. Happiness is health plus freedom. Luck can be managed, sort of. Conquer shyness by being a huge phony (in a good way). Fitness is the lever that moves the world. Simplicity transforms ordinary into amazing.
You already know that when your energy is right you perform better at everything you do, including school, work, sports, and even your personal life. Energy is good. Passion is bullshit. failure is where success likes to hide in plain sight. Everything you want out of life is in that huge, bubbling vat of failure. The trick is to get the good stuff out. But in the process I learned a valuable lesson: Good ideas have no value because the world already has too many of them. The market rewards execution, not ideas. From that point on, I concentrated on ideas I could execute. I was already failing toward success, but I didn’t yet know it. I asked what he did for a living and he told me he was CEO of a company that made screws. Then he offered me some career advice. He said that every time he got a new job, he immediately started looking for a better one. For him, job seeking was not something one did when necessary. It was an ongoing process. This makes perfect sense if you do the math. Chances are the best job for you won’t become available at precisely the time you declare yourself ready. Your best bet, he explained, was to always be looking for the better deal. The better deal has its own schedule. I believe the way he explained it is that your job is not your job; your job is to find a better job. This was my first exposure to the idea that one should have a system instead of a goal. In most cases, as far as I can tell, the people who use systems do better. The systems-driven people have found a way to look at the familiar in new and more useful ways. To put it bluntly, goals are for losers. That’s literally true most of the time. All I’m suggesting is that thinking of goals and systems as very different concepts has power. Goal-oriented people exist in a state of continuous presuccess failure at best, and permanent failure at worst if things never work out. Systems people succeed every time they apply their systems, in the sense that they did what they intended to do. The goals people are fighting the feeling of discouragement at each turn. The systems people are feeling good every time they apply their system. That’s a big difference in terms of maintaining your personal energy in the right direction. The system-versus-goals model can be applied to most human endeavors. In the world of dieting, losing twenty pounds is a goal, but eating right is a system. In the exercise realm, running a marathon in under four hours is a goal, but exercising daily is a system. In business, making a million dollars is a goal, but being a serial entrepreneur is a system. For our purposes, let’s say a goal is a specific objective that you either achieve or don’t sometime in the future. A system is something you do on a regular basis that increases your odds of happiness in the long run. If you do something every day, it’s a system. If you’re waiting to achieve it someday in the future, it’s a goal. Systems have no deadlines, and on any given day you probably can’t tell if they’re moving you in the right direction. The minimum requirement of a system is that a reasonable person expects it to work more often than not. How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big: Kind of the Story of My Life
Being a leader doesn’t mean you are the guy who runs things. Being a leader doesn’t mean you created something or you did something great in the past or some other person has given you any kind of authority. Being a leader happens right now, today. It’s something you can do without money, without authority, and without anybody. But first, you have to lead yourself. It’s a mind-set.
Desire More Success for Others Than for Yourself Most important by far is that you be able to care about others’ success more than your own. Everyone around you needs to ultimately become better than you. That’s how you lead. The light is in front of you and you take them to the light and then go back. Say “Yes, and…” I just wrote a book called The Power of No. Buy it because your life will be better (and I am not ashamed of plugging it). But now I’m about to tell you to say yes. Constructive criticism works like this: You say, “Yes, and…” List what’s good about the person’s idea. Describe how you would improve it even more. Figure out the vision that is the base of the idea that you are talking about. Connect the “why” of what you are suggesting to the initial vision. Does it work better than the initial idea? Always be open to the fact that you might be wrong. Show Gratitude Yesterday I was talking to Lewis Howes, an athlete turned multimillion-dollar webinar and LinkedIn expert who was on my podcast a few months ago. Lewis told me that his outgoing voice mail says, “Before you leave me a message, tell me one thing you are grateful for.” He says the messages people leave blow him away. Follow The “30-150” Rule (AKA The Vision Rule) An organization with less than thirty people is a tribe. There is evidence from 70,000 years ago that if a tribe got bigger than thirty people, it would split into two tribes. A tribe is like a family—that is, you learn personally whom to trust and not to trust. You learn to care for their individual problems. You know everything about the people in your tribe. Having just thirty people in the tribe allows a leader to spend time with each person in the tribe and to listen to their issues. Be OK with Change Everyone has pain they don’t want to feel. For instance, I might feel pain if someone makes fun of my looks. I used to feel pain if someone questioned my net worth, which I equated with self-worth. If I’m a CEO, I might have pain if the “numbers” go down. A leader is always prepared for change, and realizes that pain is just an opportunity to live in a bigger and more abundant world. This is the secret that most people forget when they build their brick houses and hide inside from the outside world so pain doesn’t seek them out. Know The Importance of Dignity If I don’t treat my own projects with respect, then how can I expect others to? If I don’t treat myself with dignity, then how can I expect the people around me to treat me, or even one another, with dignity? Know There’s Always a Good Reason and a Real Reason for Everything, and Share It When you are a leader, people come to you with problems every day. The problems are usually very good problems. “The client is asking for too much.” Or “Jill didn’t do her job right,” or “My car broke down.” A leader listens to the good reason closely to try and figure out what the real reason is, and then comes up with a solution. And there is always a real reason. Listen for that and see if you can help. A good solution solves one problem. A real solution solves a hundred problems. Care About Your Health A sick leader is not a great leader. A leader who is spending time with people not good for them is not a good leader. A leader who doesn’t constantly practice creativity is not a good leader. A leader who is not grateful for the abundance already in his or her life will never lead his vision into abundance. He won’t know how. There’s no such thing as instant health. There’s only such thing as practice and progress. All you have to do is check the box on progress. Progress compounds every day into enormous abundance. Love What You Do Don’t do something just for the money. Money is a side effect of persistence. You persist in things you are interested in. Explore your interests. Then persist. Then enjoy all the side effects. Know How To Lead Yourself You don’t need to be leading anyone. Before I can lead anyone I have to lead myself. I have to read. I have to try and improve one percent a week. I have a handful of interests and I have a lot of experience. I have to get better at the things I’m interested in. I have to understand more deeply the painful experiences I’ve had. I have to every day practice the health—physical, emotional, mental, spiritual—that I suggest to everyone else. Sometimes I don’t. And I feel it. But that’s OK. Don’t regret. Today is a new day. Today is the only day. The Choose Yourself Guide To Wealth
By and large you are what you do. At least in terms of your identity being externally expressed, what you do defines who you are to those around you in a big way. Conversely, if what you are doing now does not feel like an accurate representation of who you are and what you want to be, then it’s time to focus on acting more in-line with how you feel inside and beginning to update some of your internal identity drivers to support a more accurate external expression through your actions day to day.
If you can dream and not make dreams your master; If you can think and not make thoughts your aim; If you can meet with triumph and disaster; And treat those two impostors just the same, If you can fill the unforgiving minute With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run, Yours is the earth and everything that is in it, And, what is more, you’ll be a man, my son. — Rudyard Kipling Thoughts are discrete packets of energy that flow from your belief system and are the precursor to all conscious action. As those thoughts move from the formless realm of the mind to impact the world we live in they are felt as emotions, or energy in motion. “Just as no one can be forced into a belief, No one can be forced to unbelieve.” — Sigmund Freud Creative Constructs are temporary lifestyle changes that draw on your interests and passions to shuffle the deck in the game of life. Whether this means traveling for the summer, living abroad for half a year, participating in an intensive learning program or going off the grid and working on an organic farm for a season, creative constructs are an integral part of a dream lifestyle. Creative Constructs consist of setting parameters that let you work, learn and play; meet new people, relax and have an experience that is long enough to be meaningful, but not so long that you’re committing to a whole different lifestyle long-term or indefinitely. Lifestyle Entrepreneur: Live Your Dreams, Ignite Your Passions and Run Your Business From Anywhere in The World |
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