10 Tips to Set Empowering Goals and Achieve Them

Do you set goals and fail to reach them? Don’t worry because Scranton University has shown a study that as high as 92% of people who set New Year resolutions fail to achieve them. Thus, you are not alone.

It is very common for people to set their goals and then forget about them. They thought that goal setting is a one-time thing. They write down their goals once and then never bother to do anything about them.

Here’s what you need to know, goal setting is a continuous work, and you have to do it every day if you want to join the 8% group who achieve their goals.

Below are the 10 tips that can help you set empowering goals and accomplish them:

1. Put down your goals into writing

I know you have read this a gazillion time, so take this as a reminder. When you write down your goals, you are making it more tangible and telling yourself that it is something important to achieve in your life. More importantly, you will activate the Law of Attraction by creating an intention for what you desire to accomplish.

2. Practice daily goal setting

To make it more powerful, write your top 10 goals every single day. Once you get up early in the morning, the first thing you should do before you start your day is to write down your goals. Brian Tracy, the best-selling author and success coach, did this every day, and this habit has transformed his life forever.

“Setting goals is the firststep in turning the

invisible into the visible.”

– Tony Robbins

3. Visualize the achievement of your goals

Do you know that professional athletes visualize their winnings constantly? It is difficult to go through your everyday life without being distracted. Therefore, you visualize your goals as being accomplished to keep yourself focused and motivated.

Visualization is one of the most powerful techniques you can use to boost your mental ability to reach for what you want. When you visualize the achievement of your goal, you will feel good about it. And when you feel good, you will want to take action and make your goal a reality.

4. Create a scoreboard

What do you need to do if you want to lose weight? The first step is to weigh yourself. You need to know where you are to formulate a plan to reach your goals. Most people never do this, and they wonder why they are not making progress. When you watch football or a basketball game, what do you look at the first thing? The scoreboard, why? The answer is simple; the scoreboard tells you the score, which game it is, who is winning and how much time is left. And this is what you need for your goals too.

5. Review your goals daily or weekly

You have to review your goals every day or do it at least every week. If you did not review your goals and your results, you would never know if you are making progress or if you are on the right track. You want to know if your effort is giving you the result you desire. If you are not producing the result, you either have to improve your strategy, or you have to work harder on it.

6. Practice the ‘Big 5′

What you need to do is to take five small steps that will lead you toward your goals each day. The steps can be as small as sending an email or making a phone call. Whatever you do, you must make sure you are taking action and moving toward your goals.

Most people fail here because they get distracted and never do anything about their goals. They say that they want to build an online business, but once they got back from work, all they do is watch TV or waste time surfing the internet mindlessly. The action is the bridge that connects your dream and your reality. If you want to achieve your goals and make your dreams a reality, take action.

7. Focus on the progress

Goal setting is important, but so is the progress. Most people fail to realize that it is the progress that gets them what they want, not their goals. Success is a journey, not a destination. If you want to lose weight, you must exercise. In this case, losing weight is your goal; exercise, workout and hitting the gym are the progress. So focus on the progress because the progress will get you what you want. The goal is just the result.

8. Build a productive habit

Once you understand that it is the progress that gets you moving, you have to turn it into your habit. Make it your habit to exercise and workout. If your goal is to write a book, focus on writing 500 words or 1000 words a day and then turn it into your habit.

What matters most is you are moving forward each day. We tend to overestimate ourselves at times, and whenever we fail to reach our goals, we feel like a failure. Thus, to prevent the inferior feeling, you must develop a productive habit that will keep you going no matter what happen.

9. Improve yourself

One important key to increasing the probability to achieving your goals is to improve yourself constantly. You want to learn better strategies and develop better plans to reach your goals effectively. This is why you need to read and learn constantly. Commit and spend at least 30 minutes to read books every day. Attend seminars and learn from other successful people as well.

“To improve is to change; to be perfect is to change often.” – Winston Churchill 

10. Persist until you reach it

Never give up and never quit. Always remember this, a quitter will never win, and a winner will never quit. Do whatever it takes to reach your goals and never get distracted along the journey.

By Shawn Lim 

What tips would you give to help with goal setting? Leave your thoughts below!

The Importance of Marketing for the Success of a Business

The heart of your business success lies in its marketing.

Most aspects of your business depend on successful marketing. The overall marketing umbrella covers advertising, public relations, promotions and sales. Marketing is a process by which a product or service is introduced and promoted to potential customers. Without marketing, your business may offer the best products or services in your industry, but none of your potential customers would know about it. Without marketing, sales may crash and companies may have to close.

Getting Word Out
For a business to succeed, the product or service it provides must be known to potential buyers. Unless your business is known in the community and have communication with your customers readily available, you have to use marketing strategies to create product or service awareness. Without marketing, your potential customers may never be aware of your business offerings and your business may not be given the opportunity to progress and succeed. Using marketing to promote your product, service and company provides your business with a chance of being discovered by prospective customers.

Higher Sales
Once your product, service or company gets on the radar screen of your prospects, it increases your chances that consumers will make a purchase. As awareness becomes a reality, it is also the point where new customers start to spread the word, telling friends and family about this amazing new product they discovered. Your sales will steadily increase as the word spreads. Without employing marketing strategies, these sales may not have ever happened; without sales, a company cannot succeed.

Company Reputation
The success of a company often rests on a solid reputation. Marketing builds brand name recognition or product recall with a company. When a company reaches the high expectations of the public, its reputation stands on firmer ground. As your reputation grows, the business expands and sales increase. The reputation of your company is built through active participation in community programs, effective communication--externally and externally--and quality products or services, which are created or supported by marketing efforts.

Healthy Competition
Marketing also fosters an environment in the marketplace for healthy completion. Marketing efforts get the word out on pricing of products and services, which not only reaches the intended consumers, but also reaches other companies competing for the consumers’ business. As opposed to companies that have a monopoly on products and services that can charge almost any price, marketing helps keep pricing competitive for a business to try to win over consumers before its competition does. Without competition, well known companies would continue to sell while lesser known companies or new companies would stand little chance of ever becoming successful. Marketing facilitates the healthy competition that allows small businesses and new businesses to be successful enter and grow in the marketplace.

Considerations
Although marketing is hugely important for a business to succeed, it can also be very expensive. In its first year, a company might spend as much as half of its sales on marketing programs. After the first year, a marketing budget can reach as much as 30 percent--sometimes more--of the annual sales. A marketing program that gives your company the best chance is a healthy mix of different forms of marketing, such as website development, public relations, print and broadcast advertising, design and printing for all print materials, trade shows and other special events.

By: Chef Bilal jamal Eddine
What do you think? Are you marketing your business enough? share with us your experience!

There is only one success - to be able to spend your life in your own way. "Christopher Morely"

Stephen Covey Video on Choosing Success

Start by Starting....Now!




Start by one little simple action..this is the beginning! Don't you agree?

How Complaining Rewires Your Brain for Negativity

Why should we stop being negative?

Research shows that most people complain once a minute during a typical conversation. Complaining is tempting because it feels good, but like many other things that are enjoyable -- such as smoking or eating a pound of bacon for breakfast -- complaining isn’t good for you. Your brain loves efficiency and doesn’t like to work any harder than it has to. When you repeat a behavior, such as complaining, your neurons branch out to each other to ease the flow of information. This makes it much easier to repeat that behavior in the future -- so easy, in fact, that you might not even realize you’re doing it.

You can’t blame your brain. Who’d want to build a temporary bridge every time you need to cross a river? It makes a lot more sense to construct a permanent bridge. So, your neurons grow closer together, and the connections between them become more permanent. Scientists like to describe this process as, “Neurons that fire together, wire together.”

Repeated complaining rewires your brain to make future complaining more likely. Over time, you find it’s easier to be negative than to be positive, regardless of what’s happening around you. Complaining becomes your default behavior, which changes how people perceive you. And here’s the kicker: complaining damages other areas of your brain as well. Research from Stanford University has shown that complaining shrinks the hippocampus -- an area of the brain that’s critical to problem solving and intelligent thought. Damage to the hippocampus is scary, especially when you consider that it’s one of the primary brain areas destroyed by Alzheimer’s.

Complaining is also bad for your health

While it’s not an exaggeration to say that complaining leads to brain damage, it doesn’t stop there. When you complain, your body releases the stress hormone cortisol. Cortisol shifts you into fight-or-flight mode, directing oxygen, blood and energy away from everything but the systems that are essential to immediate survival. One effect of cortisol, for example, is to raise your blood pressure and blood sugar so that you’ll be prepared to either escape or defend yourself. All the extra cortisol released by frequent complaining impairs your immune system and makes you more susceptible to high cholesterol, diabetes, heart disease and obesity. It even makes the brain more vulnerable to strokes.

The solution to complaining

There are two things you can do when you feel the need to complain. One is to cultivate an attitude of gratitude. That is, when you feel like complaining, shift your attention to something that you’re grateful for. Taking time to contemplate what you’re grateful for isn’t merely the right thing to do; it reduces the stress hormone cortisol by 23%. Research conducted at the University of California, Davis, found that people who worked daily to cultivate an attitude of gratitude experienced improved mood and energy and substantially less anxiety due to lower cortisol levels. Any time you experience negative or pessimistic thoughts, use this as a cue to shift gears and to think about something positive. In time, a positive attitude will become a way of life.

BY: TRAVIS BRADBERRY

Co-author of Emotional Intelligence 2.0 and President at Talent Smart

Spending Happily While Achieving Financial Empowerment

How to Spend Happily and Still Get Ahead 

By: Sharon Lechter

The formula to creating abundance, not scarcity, in our lives starts with planning to spend. In fact, when we focus instead on a budget, it may seem like we need to be doing the opposite: planning to spend. The reality is that we are bound to spend money. Some expenses are essential for living — others are lifestyle preferences. The point is it is essential to have a plan for your money so you will have a plan for your future freedom.

The word “budget” is such a negative word. Just saying it, or writing it, validates a mindset of scarcity. In fact, the adjective form of the word “budget” means “inexpensive,” like “budget condo.” So let’s replace the phrase “create a budget” with “create a spending plan!” Most of us love to spend.

At the end of the day, we are all either masters of our money or slaves to our money! And the formula for becoming a master of your money is to have a plan on how you are going to spend your money with an eye on your financial future.

Creating a Spending Plan

A spending plan takes into account how you are going to use the money coming in (income that you make) to cover your money going out (expenses) and allows you to create a plan for what you are going to do with the money left over. It is a road map that will keep you on track financially. Just as a map would help us get from point A to point B using the fastest, most direct route, planning how we spend our money provides the same financial superhighway.

Get started by following these steps to creating a spending plan:

1. Track Your Money: How much have you historically made in income and spent on your expenses?
2. Create Categories: What are your different sources of income and expenses?
3. Assign Amounts: How much do you need to plan to cover your needed spending for each category?
4. Implement: Put your plan into place.
5. Evaluate and Adjust: Are there categories that you need to adjust?

Track Your Money

During this step, be sure to include all sources of income and expenses as accurately as possible. For all your income sources, check your tax returns as a place to start as well as looking at deposits into your bank account. Then, look at your bank statements and credit cards to see how you spent your money.

This is where credit cards can be very helpful. They help you keep track of how much you are spending, and are easy to analyze each month. As long as you pay them off each month to avoid costly interest charges, credit cards are a fabulous method to help you keep track of where your money is going. Credit cards can be great tools and earn you great loyalty rewards as well! I love my credit cards!

Your expenses will fall into one of two types: fixed or variable.

As the name implies, a fixed expense is consistent over time. An expense is fixed if it requires payment on a recurring basis, is difficult to change the amount of or is a contractual obligation. If you have a cell phone contract, consider the related monthly charge as a fixed expense. Fixed expenses can be harder to reduce quickly.

A variable expense is an expense that is easier to reduce or eliminate. It may be adjusted from one payment to the next or does not recur on a consistent basis. Examples include entertainment or eating out.

Note that if you own a business, its expenses should be kept separate from your personal expenses and compared to the income generated from that business. Your business should have its own spending plan.

Create Categories

Based on what you discovered in the first step, create categories for where your money comes from (income) and where it gets spent (expenses). Organize your expenses into the following categories:

• Housing
• Transportation
• Food
• Personal Insurance
• Health Care
• Entertainment
• Apparel and Services
• Miscellaneous and Contributions

Then, determine the percentage for each amount spent in each category against total expenses paid, and then compare your own expense habits to the national average for consumer spending. To do this, use the following formula as your guide: Amount spent in category / total spending = percent of total spending.

National Average Consumer Spending*

• Housing: 33 percent
• Transportation: 17 percent
• Food: 13 percent
• Personal Insurance: 11 percent
• Health Care: 8 percent
• Entertainment: 5 percent
• Apparel and Services: 3 percent
• Miscellaneous and Contributions: 10 percent

This is a great way to quickly identify where your spending may be way out of whack. It would be good to concentrate on making adjustments in these categories first. It may be that your housing expenses, typically a fixed expense, is 45 percent, well above the national average of 33 percent and therefore draining your ability to get ahead. If so, a more dramatic action plan related to your housing may be needed since it is such a large percentage of your expenses.

Assign Amounts

Now that you have identified your hot spots in spending that need fast attention, you can declare ways you can reduce those specific expenses quickly. It also allows you to review your income for ways to increase the income you are earning each month. Then, total your income and your expenses to make sure that you have enough income to cover your total expenses, with money left to spend on your future, by saving or investing. It is the money you keep and spend on (invest in) assets that will determine when and if you will become financially free.

The word “asset” is the sexiest word in the world. Assets become income-generating machines for you and work for you while you sleep. When the income generated each month from the assets you own — over and above income from you working — exceeds your monthly expenses, you are financially free.

Implement and Adjust

A spending plan (map) is only good if you follow it. It is time to make your plan real. If you determine that you are going to spend $500 per month to your Food and Entertainment categories, promise yourself you will stick with it! You will probably find that once you start implementing this strategy it will become instantly rewarding and you will want to continue finding ways to make even more money, and ways to spend less on consumer expenses so you can spend more invest for assets.

Evaluate and Adjust

Monthly, or at least once quarterly, review each category to see how your actual numbers compare to your plan. This is critical to being successful and becoming a master of your money.

This step allows you to see if you have created a plan that you can stick with over time. Here are a few questions:

1. Have I reached my expected level of income?
2. Are the amounts assigned in each expenses category accurate and reflective of my actual spending habits? Keep an eye on the national averages.
3. Am I saving and/or investing money each month and creating assets? This should be a category in your spending.
4. Do my expenses exceed income? (Danger, danger!) Am I using credit cards the wrong way — to cover some of my costs?

If the answers to the questions above are not favorable, then it is time to make further adjustments to your spending plan. It is also time to look in the mirror and ask yourself, “Do I want to be a master of my money, or a slave to it?”

The law of attraction states that what you think about, comes about. I am a firm believer that it takes more than positive thinking to get what you want. Action is the key to making huge leaps to get to where you want to be. Effective action usually starts with a plan. When you combine intentional thought with action, it is a powerful one-two punch in achieving your goals. When it comes to your finances, spending plans give you this one-two punch. Create a spending plan that includes spending on assets and you will become a master of your money!

* Based on data from the Sept. 2015 Bureau of Labor Statistics consumer expenditures report.

Master your money before it masters you, start planning your expenses today, are you willing to?

Do you have any extra tips you had tried and worked for you? please share it with us!