Friday, October 20, 2006

Super Self

I am surprised how dark it is in the morning - even at 7:20. Winter is coming.

This weekend is my sales retreat. I am always daunted by this. It is a huge undertaking (and I am not doing much of the work or orchestration). I want so much for it to be a great experience for everyone. We have lots of learning planned.

I will come away with tons of ideas and things I need to implement.

I read a classic self-development book on my recent flight called, Super Self Doubling Your Personal Effectiveness by Charles J. Givens. Charles is one of the long-time motivational speakers and rags to riches type person that people like to read about. Often I find these people to be somewhat shallow but the basic message is right.

In the book he shares a number of success strategies. The first one is to learn from the experience of others rather than your own. In my opinion, this is true wisdom and this is something that I still seek.

Charles Givens' outline is very basic and is what you would see in almost any self-help book:

1. Have dreams and goals. (I always thought the difference between dreams and goals is that goals were dreams with action)

2. Develop strategies to achieve these.

3. Practise – consciously and continuously apply the strategies at every opportunity.

4. Habits – as I have often said before, we become what we repeatedly do.
Results, with these new skills and abilities, you will achieve results.

I would not make it as linear as that, I would make it into a circle. As results start to happen, then new dreams and goals need to be set. I feel a need to constantly revisit goals.

Overall this is a great book and I would highly recommend it to anyone who is interested in improving themselves and achieving goals in life.

His program takes it right from the goal setting through the time management area. It is a great refresher on what we need to do to be successful. I always seem to need this. I know what I should do but I frequently fall back into not doing it. books like this challenge me to once again play at the top of my game all the time.

2 comments:

  1. Jim
    You made the comment about Charles J. Givens and Brain Tracy that you find them shallow....why did you say that?

    Gerhard

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  2. Do not get me wrong, I am a big fan of both of these guys. Shallow in perhaps their material seems largely obvious and often does not have original ideas. There seems to be a lack of research depth behind some of their material.

    This said, both of these guys are both great at the basics. We all need to refresh ourselves on the basics from time to time.

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