You don’t want to wait for a major catastrophic event to change your business for the negative. So you must invent and constantly be reinventing your own better future. That means becoming ethically opportunistic, looking at everything around you (in and outside your business or industry) with an opportunity-based focus and asking yourself continuously, “Where’s the big overlooked opportunity here?” It’s also adopting a possibility-based mind-set that looks for new, different, and better ways to attain a goal or solution or address a situation. It’s starting to see opportunities where everyone else sees problems, obstacles, limitations, or boundaries. It’s recognizing how much more you can achieve by leveraging the impact of whatever is going on all around you. The most exciting breakthroughs occur when you reach beyond the traditional way of looking at or doing something and become open and receptive to new possibilities.
Major breakthroughs are merely fresh new ways to do something. And new means new to your industry, market, competitor, or clients; not necessarily new to the world. Applying old things in new ways is a breakthrough. Applying new things in new ways is a breakthrough. Applying old things in new combinations is a breakthrough. Applying new things to new markets, or old things to old markets can be a breakthrough, too. Look at Domino’s Pizza. When Domino’s started, home deliveries had become almost obsolete because the service was undependable. But they figured out a workable system and reintroduced an updated version, and a billion-dollar breakthrough was reborn. Getting Everything You Can Out of All You've Got: 21 Ways You Can Out-Think, Out-Perform, and Out-Earn the Competition by Jay Abraham When you can take a profit, take it.
The Mental Aspect In the penny world you have to be prepared for anything. You cannot get upset about your losses or let your gains make you seem unstoppable. If you take a big loss, count your losses and walk away with no regrets. If your loss was due to a mistake, take that as a gain on experience. Do not go out and try to make your money back by picking a stock you have only heard will go up. Carry on your trading normally and always do your own due diligence. If you manage to lock in a huge gain, congratulations, but make sure you put some of that money away in your bank account, and of course keep some of it for investing more. Again, always carry out your normal routine. Do not let big gains or losses change it. The biggest aspect you have to have in trading penny stocks is DISCIPLINE. From this book I have made a set of rules that you should follow and always have in your head. I have my rules as my background over the top of the next big item I would like to purchase. 1. Always have discipline, keep to your rules and routine 2. No Pump and Dumps 3. Always do your own due diligence 4. Take losses with no regrets 5. Always sell half your shares at around a 100% gain 6. Only invest what you are willing to lose 7. Make money! The Penny Book by Jordan D. Shaw But by regretting the past or guessing the future, we end up missing the only life worth living1/22/2013
Greek philosophers looked upon the past and the future as the primary evils weighing upon human life, and as the source of all the anxieties which blight the present. The present moment is the only dimension of existence worth inhabiting, because it is the only one available to us. The past is no longer and the future has yet to come, they liked to remind us; yet we live virtually all of our lives somewhere between memories and aspirations, nostalgia and expectation. We imagine we would be much happier with new shoes, a faster computer, a bigger house, more exotic holidays, different friends … But by regretting the past or guessing the future, we end up missing the only life worth living: the one which proceeds from the here and now and deserves to be savoured.
A Brief History of Thought: A Philosophical Guide to Living by Luc Ferry In moving toward mastery, you are bringing your mind closer to reality and to life itself.
Anything that is alive is in a continual state of change and movement. The moment that you rest, thinking that you have attained the level you desire, a part of your mind enters a phase of decay. You lose your hard-earned creativity and others begin to sense it. This is a power and intelligence that must be continually renewed or it will die. .....Verrocchio instructed his apprentices in all of the sciences that were necessary to produce the work of his studio—engineering, mechanics, chemistry, and metallurgy. Leonardo was eager to learn all of these skills, but soon he discovered in himself something else: he could not simply do an assignment; he needed to make it something of his own, to invent rather than imitate the Master. For Napoleon Bonaparte it was his “star” that he always felt in ascendance when he made the right move. For Socrates, it was his daemon, a voice that he heard, perhaps from the gods, which inevitably spoke to him in the negative—telling him what to avoid. For Goethe, he also called it a daemon—a kind of spirit that dwelled within him and compelled him to fulfill his destiny. In more modern times, Albert Einstein talked of a kind of inner voice that shaped the direction of his speculations. All of these are variations on what Leonardo da Vinci experienced with his own sense of fate Mastery by Robert Greene Usually, companies ...fall into the trap described in Clayton Christensten’s The Innovator’s Dilemma:
they are very good at creating incremental improvements to existing products and serving existing customers, which Christensen called sustaining innovation, but struggle to create breakthrough new products—disruptive innovation—that can create new sustainable sources of growth. Innovation is a bottoms-up, decentralized, and unpredictable thing, but that doesn’t mean it cannot be managed. The amount of time a company can count on holding on to market leadership to exploit its earlier innovations is shrinking, and this creates an imperative for even the most entrenched companies to invest in innovation. A company’s only sustainable path to long-term economic growth is to build an “innovation factory” that uses Lean Startup techniques to create disruptive innovations on a continuous basis. I explained the theory of the Lean Startup, repeating my definition: an organization designed to create new products and services under conditions of extreme uncertainty. Yet if the fundamental goal of entrepreneurship is to engage in organization building under conditions of extreme uncertainty, its most vital function is learning. We must learn the truth about which elements of our strategy are working to realize our vision and which are just crazy. We must learn what customers really want, not what they say they want or what we think they should want. We must discover whether we are on a path that will lead to growing a sustainable business. In the Lean Startup model, we are rehabilitating learning with a concept I call validated learning. Validated learning is not after-the-fact rationalization or a good story designed to hide failure. It is a rigorous method for demonstrating progress when one is embedded in the soil of extreme uncertainty in which startups grow. Validated learning is the process of demonstrating empirically that a team has discovered valuable truths about a startup’s present and future business prospects. It is more concrete, more accurate, and faster than market forecasting or classical business planning. It is the principal antidote to the lethal problem of achieving failure: successfully executing a plan that leads nowhere The Lean Startup: How Today's Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses by Eric Ries I am reading six books right now, which is normal for me, because I like to read various books, each one offsetting the other. I think we stay focused for about 20 minutes on a subject so I like to jump whemn my mind wanders.One fiction, one business book, one book that makes me think, etc.
I just realized I also have them broken out by four devices and five formats , and each format seems to fit the type of book it is and I am reading and I find that interesting. Each book type reads better on a certain format. Here is what I am reading right now, and on what. 1. On my cell phone I am reading Makers by Chris Anderson - a great book on the futre of manufacturing, really a great read, and makes me think and re-evaluate my business thinking. Reads great in small chunks on the go. Makers: The New Industrial Revolution 2. IKIGAI by Sebastian Marshall is a collection of his blog posts on strategy and business and I read this on my ipod around the house during quiet moments. I really like his blog, and this book gives a nice overview. Ikigai 3. On my Kindle I am reading a book of fiction, Wonder Boys by Michael Chabon, an author whose work I love. Wonder Boys: A Novel 4. On my computer I am reading the Boron Letters by Gary Halbart, which is a great small treatise on direct marketing and copy writing. http://www.thegaryhalbertletter.com/Boron/BoronLetterCh1.htm 5. On my kindle, I am also reading Eat to Live, by Joel Fuhrman, which is totally changing how I eat. I first got hooked on smoothies, and that lead to this book. Eat to Live: The Amazing Nutrient-Rich Program for Fast and Sustained Weight Loss, Revised Edition 6. Finally, I am reading an actual book, the 4 hour Chef by Tim Ferriss. I originally bought it for $5 for the kindle, but saw it in a supermarket, and picked it up, and it is a beautiful book with photos and color layouts, and I just had to buy it. I am improving my cooking, learning to learn, and reading a great adventure book. The 4-Hour Chef: The Simple Path to Cooking Like a Pro, Learning Anything, and Living the Good Life I have tried reading each of them on in other formats, but these each seem to have fallen into a format that fits its style the best. D You can’t make radical changes in the pattern of your life until you begin to see yourself exactly as you are now.
As soon as you do that, changes will flow naturally. You don’t have to force anything, struggle, or obey rules dictated to you by some authority. It is automatic; you just change. But arriving at that initial insight is quite a task. You have to see who you are and how you are without illusion, judgment, or resistance of any kind. You have to see your place in society and your function as a social being. You have to see your duties and obligations to your fellow human beings, and above all, your responsibility to yourself as an individual living with other individuals. And finally, you have to see all of that clearly as a single unit, an irreducible whole of interrelationship. It sounds complex, but it can occur in a single instant. Mental cultivation through meditation is without rival in helping you achieve this sort of understanding and serene happiness. “What you are now is the result of what you were. What you will be tomorrow will be the result of what you are now.." Mindfulness in Plain English: 20th Anniversary Edition by Bhante Gunaratana You really can do anything that you can think of doing, you truly can.
Gandhi said, "Men often become what they believe themselves to be. If I believe I cannot do something, it makes me incapable of doing it. But when I believe I can, then I acquire the ability." As a manager of people and processes, I talk to people for a living and it never ceases to amaze me how often we all limit ourselves by how we think. The world can often be tough on us, but too often we are harder on ourselves. We tell ourselves that we can't do something or how hard things are for us to change, but we don't try to actually do what we what. People do amazing things everyday, all over the world, because they know they can. You just have to try. Go make a sales call, put that idea on kickstarter, write that book. People do it every day. D 7 Things I learned About Success and Business Watching a Man Free Fall 23 miles Down to the Earth10/14/2012
7 Things I learned About Success and Business Watching a Man Free Fall 23 miles Today Austrian extreme skydiver Felix Baumgartner became the only human being to break the sound barrier outside of an airplane after skydiving from 38 km above the earth. That feat was amazing, and it made me think about what we all do on a daily level, and what we don't do. I also thought about how we could stand to be a little more adventurous and take more risks. Here are the seven things I thought as I watched; 1. There is power in putting your back up against the wall - I was watching the ascent and it dawned on me. There really was only one way down. To jump. If you watched the flight and jump, you realize just what that means. If you have no plan B, if you have to succeed, it makes you tackle problems just a little harder, and you don't give up. You can't. 2. Do go if the numbers say go, don't go if the numbers say it is not time - this wasn't the first run at this, he had previous attempts stopped by wind. Sometimes it isn't the time. Respect the numbers. Too often we go off emotion, but as study after study has shown, we are the best judges of risk. Get the numbers, live by the numbers. 3. Just because you didn't go the first time, it doesn't mean you give up. It doesn't mean you stop. This has been in the works for a while, he has tried before. Just because it didn't work the first time, doesn't mean you were wrong to do it, it just means you need to regroup, and come at it again on a new day. 4. Teamwork can make anything happen. Did you see the team behind him. Systems matter. Systems make things happen. Your business is made of systems. Teams matter. 5. Doing something that frightens everyone else, or everyone is afraid to do, and that leaves that opportunity wide open for you. Do what everyone else does, and you then are simply everyone else. Go where other are afraid to go, then use your head, train, get the numbers, build a team, and win. 6. Think big, and big things happen. This jump wasn't just a record breaking free fall 23 miles up, it was also a record breaking balloon flight, and it was also the first time a free fall broke the sound barrier. Three amazing feats, one jump. That was one man's dream that he slowly built one person at a time. Amazing feat. 7. Finally, Spacesuits are cool - agreed, not a business topic, but they are still cool. You have got to watch the video. D I picked up an ebook, Ikigai by Sebastian Marshall, on a recommendation from a podcast I listened to (lifestyle business podcast), and at first I wasn't too sure.
The author seems to wander, going occasionally off track, and I think the the book is a collection of older online posts, so it wanders a bit, but then it became of the spirit of the book. The author wants to be this century's strategist, and maybe, but but as I get deeper into into his way of thinking, I found that I liked it more and more. It is the perfect book to read on my phone, in small bits, it makes me think, and it makes me question. His web site is; http://www.sebastianmarshall.com/ I really like his way of looking at problems or goals; here he discusses how we pursue goals by working on the wrong things "Why do most of us, most of the time, choose to "pursue our goals" through routes that are far less effective than the routes we could find if we tried? My guess is that here, as with the calculus test, the main problem is that most courses of action are extremely ineffective, and that there has been no strong evolutionary or cultural force sufficient to focus us on the very narrow behavior patterns that would actually be effective. We do not automatically "but we should": (a) Ask ourselves what we're trying to achieve; (b) Ask ourselves how we could tell if we achieved it ("what does it look like to be a good comedian?") and how we can track progress; (c) Find ourselves strongly, intrinsically curious about information that would help us achieve our goal; (d) Gather that information (e.g., by asking as how folks commonly achieve our goal, or similar goals, or by tallying which strategies have and haven't worked for us in the past); (e) Systematically test many different conjectures for how to achieve the goals, including methods that aren't habitual for us, while tracking which ones do and don't work; (f) Focus most of the energy that *isn't* going into systematic exploration, on the methods that work best; (g) Make sure that our "goal" is really our goal, that we coherently want it and are not constrained by fears or by uncertainty as to whether it is worth the effort, and that we have thought through any questions and decisions in advance so they won't continually sap our energies; (h) Use environmental cues and social contexts to bolster our motivation, so we can keep working effectively in the face of intermittent frustrations, or temptations based in hyperbolic discounting; .... or carry out any number of other useful techniques. Instead, we mostly just do things. We act from habit; we act from impulse or convenience when primed by the activities in front of us; we remember our goal and choose an action that feels associated with our goal. We do any number of things. But we do not systematically choose the narrow sets of actions that would effectively optimize for our claimed goals, or for any other goals." Ikigai by Sebastian Marshall |
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