Can You Do It Alone?

Successful people do not become successful on their own.

You cannot be successful on your own. You must first surround yourself with people you can learn from, gain support and get the encouragement to keep moving ahead. You must find yourself a mentor or a coach who can help propel you forward. Successful people have a support team of positive, confident, enthusiastic people who help them get to where they want to be.

It's normal to keep your dreams and goals to yourself. Most probably because you're afraid people would put you down or tell you to stop dreaming. The problem with keeping things to yourself is you wouldn't be able to get the help and support you need.

Share your goals and dreams. Ignore people who belittle your dreams. Find people who are supportive. Ask for what you need. Ask for information, assistance, support, time and whatever resources you need to help you achieve your goal.

When you ask, there's a 50-50 chance people might say yes. The worst thing that could happen is people would say no. So what? Not the end of the world. Ask another person.

One of the most important things to ask for is to ask someone else to do what you're not good at. Make a list of everything you need to do. Draw three columns on a piece of paper. In the first column, list every single task, no matter how small or trivial.

In the second column, decide if this is your core genius, i.e. is that something you can do well. Write a tick if it is.

In the third column is possible ways you can delegate. Based on the first and second column, figure out a way to delegate tasks that you're not good at.

Delegating could be as simple as getting a baby sitter twice a week so you can free two hours of your time to work on your goal. Or getting someone else to buy the groceries so that you have an extra hour for yourself. If delegating simple chores could free a few hours of your time a week so you can focus on working on your goal, wouldn't that be something worth doing?

When asking for what you need/want, keep the following in mind:
1. Ask as if you expect to get it.
2. Assume you can.
3. Ask someone who can give it to you.
4. Be clear and specific.
5. Ask repeatedly.

How Would You Like To Improve You Relationship With _________?

If someone tells you that he would like to give you some feedback, would you expect that he has something positive or negative to say? Most people would brace themselves for the critic.

When you receive a feedback, how do you react to it? Do you become angry, or defensive, or do you thank the feedback giver?

Getting angry or being defensive is pointless, even useless, because it does not allow you to improve yourself and grow. When people give you a feedback, listen, nod, thank them, and then think of how you can use the feedback to move forward. Of course it's not easy to do. Of course it's hard to sit there and listen. But if you could keep yourself from being angry or defensive, it will allow you to grow in various aspects of your life.

You can use feedback to improve your relationship with people around you. How? Ask them for feedback. Here's how you do it.

First, ask them this question: "On a scale from 1 - 10, how would you rate __________?". The blank might be "our relationship", "our friendship", "me as a boss", "me as an event organizer", "me as a team player" etc.

If the answer is less then 10, the next question to ask is "What would it take to make it a 10?".

Listen to the feedback and then think what you can do to make that relationship a 10. You can ask the questions to your significant other, friends, business partners, son/daughter, your employees etc.

I hope you'll have fun with this simple exercise. I surely did.