If you love what you do, then it is no longer work. The money you earn is secondary when you love your work. Money can never buy happiness, or peace of mind.

Those who continue to work at a job they hate for the money alone are more likely to be stressed, and very unhappy. They live for their vacations and weekends. Unfortunately, they are sadly missing out on the happiness of everyday life. It is better to receive less money and be happy with what you are doing, than to receive lots of money and hate what you are doing.

"Profit is a by-product of work; happiness is its chief product." Henry Ford

When you love your work, you look forward to each day. Your attitude changes from one where you are counting the days to the weekend, to one where you enjoy your weekend, but look forward to your return of work.

Unfortunately, not many people have found this quality. Often, people stay in jobs that they despise rather than taking a risk by changing their work to an area that they love. Sometimes, we fall into the trap of thinking we are secure in our positions, and believe it is better to remain where we are rather than change jobs.

If you do not love what you do, I would encourage you to find an occupation that you would enjoy, and set your goals to help get you there. Although, I have heard numerous people wish for a different position, they take no concrete action to move them towards fulfilling their wishes. By setting goals, you can start to advance in the direction you want. It may take time, but rather than wishing, you are actually taking positive steps toward achieving your desire.

"The great thing in this world is not so much where we are, but in what direction we are moving." Oliver Wendell Holmes

Many times I hear people say, "Loving what you do sounds great, but I’m not sure what I love to do." Well, let me suggest that you make a list of the following:

1. What things have you done in your life that you really enjoyed doing. Don’t judge your thoughts, just write - it could be anything from playing a sport, to cooking a dinner.
2. What do you have a passion for? What has made you want to jump out of bed?

From these two lists, expand on the ideas. What type of career do you see by using one of your ideas. Your results may reveal several possibilities. You then have to decide which one you want to pursue.

After you have decided which career to pursue, set your goals and take the necessary action to attain them. This may mean taking courses to acquire your credentials, improving your current skills, or conducting research. Use the three principles in setting your goals:

WHAT = Goal
HOW = Action Plan
WHEN = Time Frames

Goals are like a map. They help us determine where we want to end up, and give us personal direction on which to focus our energy! To quote Ralph Waldo Emerson, "The world makes way for the man who knows where he is going."

For more inspiration visit http://www.inspirationalquotes4u.com/ where you will find inspirational quotes to inspire and motive you. Sorted by subject and by author. Plus a quote for each day of your week.

In Part 1 I started the discussion on what to focus on in pursuit of a ‘time sensitive’ goal, a goal you want to achieve right NOW, such as winning an Olympic Medal or closing a major deal you need for the continuation of your business. In other words a goal, which you may never get the chance to attempt again and which requires a lot if not everything of you!

The conclusion of Part 1 was that processes are useful and necessary to build the resources and acquire the techniques for the job. We also realized that periodising your work quantity and quality can be beneficial if not crucial in order to peak higher than anyone else when it counts. To use the pyramid metaphor: the higher you aim the broader you need to make your base.

Now, having the highest pyramid does not guarantee success and many gifted and hard working individuals know exactly what I am talking about. The way I make sense of this is by looking at ‘Actual Achievement’ as a ‘Leap’.

Because once you are in the action, when you are on the spot you need to be able to let go of any preconceived notion of what is going to happen. There is only so much you can predict and it’s never all of what is going to happen. So, no size pyramid, no amount of preparation is ever going to make the real thing ‘fail proof’. Once you accept this you can start working ‘with it’!

This is precisely where the role of focusing on the outcome comes in, and this is where the magic is at…

In NLP (Neuro-Linguistic Programming) there is this term of a ‘well-formed outcome’. NLP promotes itself as the science of achievement and has done extensive research on successful people and structures to find out what works and what doesn’t. The results are astonishing and for today I will present what NLP has to say about setting goals.

NLP’s ‘well-formed outcomes’ are a way of imagining your goal in the most vivid detail possible, using all senses, especially visual, audio and kinesthetic. So that you pretend to be the way you would be if you had achieved your goal already. Does this work and make the ‘leap’ more successful? You bet. It’s closest to what Zen refers to when proposing to ‘be one with the target’.

The theory behind this is that the unconscious mind does not know the difference between imagined and real. So, when you present it with a compelling version of ‘how things are’ it will fully cooperate in making it so.

Research backs this up consistently, where such test groups practicing positive imagery of having achieved their goal already before the effort is made, regularly outperform such test groups that don’t practice that technique.

From having worked in sports at all levels, I came to know the flip side of this effect as well. I have witnessed plenty of athletes sabotaging their own performance, because it wasn’t in line with where they could see themselves. And this happens in live and business as well. There is nothing more frustrating than walking away from a major challenge not having fulfilled your highest potential, but that’s the stuff for another article…

© by Oliver Fix

Oliver Fix, Olympic Gold Medallist in 1996 and Olympic Medal Winning Coach in 2004, offers coach / consultant services that can propel you and your company into this outstanding level of success. Find out more on his website: http://www.oliverfix.com and contact him at: oliver@oliverfix.com

Most high achieving men and women are intensely goal-oriented. While most under-achieving men and women have poorly defined goals, if they have any goals at all. This is one of the main reasons why the majority of people suffer from the frustration of feeling that they are accomplishing very little in life.

The ability to set goals and make plans for their accomplishment is the master skill of success. It is the single most important skill that you can learn and perfect. Goal-setting will do more to help you achieve the things you want in life than anything else you can do.

Becoming an expert at goal-setting and goal-achieving is something that you absolutely must do if you want to reach your full potential as a human being. Goals enable you to do the work you want to do, to live where you want to live, to be with the people you enjoy, and to become the kind of person you want to become.

When you develop the habit of setting clear and realistic goals there is no limit to the financial rewards you can obtain. All you have to do is to set a specific goal for financial success your desire, make a plan, and then work the plan until you achieve it.

The payoff for setting goals and making plans is being able to choose the kind of life you want to live. With this being said, it’s amazing that so few people set goals. Over the past 50 years many organizations and educational institutions have conducted studies on goal-setting. Virtually every study has shown the same startling results. On average, only 3 percent of Americans have written goals and less than 1 percent review and rewrite their goals on a daily basis.

With all of this evidence showing what a person can achieve by setting goals. Why is that so few people actually do it? Over the past 25 years I have consulted with and spoken to thousands of men and women about goal setting, and I have found that there are five common reasons why people don’t set goals:

The first reason I’ve found that people don’t set goals, is that they feel they’ve done well without setting goals. If it’s not broken, why fix it?

Given the power of goals to transform lives, I’m always astonished how often I hear this from people. It’s easy to be satisfied if you’ve never set goals. It’s convenient to say that everything is fine if you don’t know where you’re going. You can always say that any destination you arrive at is OK.

The second reason I most often hear from people, is that they do have goals, they just keep them in their head. Most people believe in the fewest motions possible to get things done.

A person who thinks this way, does not have goals. They have wishes, desires, hopes, and dreams. Dreams come to all of us as we go about our daily business. Wishes drift in and out of our conscious thoughts. We think of new interests we’d like to pursue, changes we’d like to make, and great things we’d like to achieve, someday. We’re pretty sure we have the ability, and fully intend to do all those things sometime in the future.

The ludicrous nature of this way of thinking is that unless those vague intentions are translated into specific goals, they will drift into that never-never land called “Might Have Been,” and they will take your life with them.

Unfortunately, this is precisely the way most people conduct their lives. They claim they have goals when they do not. Until dreams are translated into specific goals, thay rarely become a reality, and even if they do, the person is denied the deep satisfaction that would have come from translating his or her dream into a specific goal and achieving it.

The third reason I find that people don’t set goals is that they’re afraid of failing. The person feels that without goals, he or she doesn’t have to worry about failing.

The problem with this way of thinking is that it goes against the foundation of life itself: you can’t be born without risk. You’re only kidding yourself if you think you can live without risk, no matter how carefully you tend to the financial, physical, and emotional aspects of your life. There are always risks in everything you do and setting goals involves risk.

You may succeed. But you may also fail. If you fail, then what? Risk taking is part of the process of growth. So is failure. You must be willing to risk failure again and again if you want to be in the company of the world’s most successful men and women.

Make a friend of failure. Use it as a valuable learning experience, a great motivator, and a necessary step on the road to success. At one point or another in their lives, some of the world’s most successful people have been miserable failures. Winston Churchill once said, “I would rather fail my way to success than be a successful failure.”

The fourth reason I find that people don’t set goals, is that they feel that by setting goals and achieving them, they will be expected to live up to their goals in the future. After achieving a goal where is their motivation going to come from to move on from that point?

This train of thought is even more ludicrous than the first three, because you become more motivated as you approach a goal. When you achieve a goal, you will want to try a more demanding one. Nothing approaches the motivating power that comes from systematically setting and achieving your own demanding goals.

The fifth reason I have found why people don’t set goals, is that they only set goals when there’s a need. I always hear things like, “I set goals when I have a major project at work, or when I want a larger house, or a new car.”

People with this type of thinking need to understand that goal setting is not an occasional need. It is a process that transforms lives and that mastering this process of setting and achieving goals is at the heart of life itself. If you don’t act intentionally, with purpose, you will be condemned to a life of mediocrity, in which anything meaningful occurs only accidentally.

I have given the most common reasons why most people don’t set goals, now let’s talk about criteria for effective goals that turn dreams into satisfying reality.

1. They must have a definite purpose. Why do you want to achieve the goal?

2. They must written and rewritten every day.

3. They must be measurable.

4. They must be visible in a place where you can see them everyday.

5. They must have deadlines. A goal without a deadline is simply a wish.

6. They must be realistic and achievable.

7. They must be demanding.

8. Goals must be flexible. You will often have to make changes to achieve your goal.

Effective goals will keep you very focused. Nothing will get in your way. Effective goals will liberate you rather than shackle you. They will improve the quality of your life. Effective goals will give your life balance, they will motivate you, they will challenge you, and they will allow you to live your dreams. Without goals, you can only dream your dreams.

Copyright©2006 by Joe Love and JLM & Associates, Inc. All rights reserved worldwide.

Joe Love draws on his 25 years of experience helping both individuals and companies build their businesses, increase profits, and achieve total success. He is the founder and CEO of JLM & Associates, a consulting and training organization, specializing in personal and business development. Through his seminars and lectures, Joe Love addresses thousands of men and women each year, including the executives and staffs of many of America’s largest corporations, on the subjects of leadership, self-esteem, goals, achievement, and success psychology.

Reach Joe at: joe@jlmandassociates.com

Read more articles and newsletters at: http://www.jlmandassociates.com

Each year we start the year thinking about our goals, our job, our health, all the ‘new’ routines and commitments we make to ourself to make this our best year yet… but two weeks into January all our planning and resolution goes out the window! You can make this your best year ever by applying some of these simple ideas (and re-reading this article each year to keep you on track.

Make a date. Make time in your diary to find a quiet, comfortable location to set your goals. I spend a morning at my favourite table in the tearoom of the Sheraton on the Park (a beautiful hotel in Sydney city) in January every year to review my goals and set new ones for the year ahead.

No more New Year’s Resolutions! Instead, focus on creating realistic goals for all areas of your life – I call these your top 5.

Take five. Create five categories for which to set goals: physical, educational, spiritual, financial, and relational. By setting goals for each of these areas of your life, you will be taking a balanced approach and not neglecting any important aspects of your life.

Write it. You must write your goals down – it makes them more powerful. Use positive language – words like “I will” and “I am” – this will help you to feel as though you have already achieved your goals and to change your behaviors accordingly, for example, “I am going to the gym three times per week”. Make sure you allocate a specific timeframe for the completion of each goal, for example, “By the beginning of March, I am going to the gym three times per week”. Now, identify a reward for achieving each goal – don’t just make a list of rewards, relate a specific reward to the achievement of a specific goal. This will inspire you even more toward the achievement of your goal. And finally, list the possible obstacles that will get in the way of you achieving each goal, and how you will overcome these. This will help you to pre-empt the things that might go wrong and immediately swing into action with your solution, rather than giving up on your goal.

Review constantly. I have been told that the difference between a millionaire and a billionaire is that a billionaire reads their goals twice a day. Simple really. I keep a copy of my goals in several locations around my house (on the bathroom mirror, on the printer, outside the shower screen, on the fridge, on my bedside table and in my wallet), which makes it easy for me to see my goals and be reminded of what I am working towards several times a day.

Use it or lose it! I recently read – people who spend a thousand dollars or more each year on their personal development will increase their business by 20 percent. Read more books, attend workshops, find a new networking group, listen to tapes or CDs in your car, do online courses or enrol at college or university. Keep your brain active.

Make time. Eliminate time-robbers from your day – make a list of all the things you do that rob you of your time, such as watching too much TV, running errands inefficiently, checking and responding to your email too often, making long phone calls, waiting in traffic and even other people. Focus on controlling your time – organising your day efficiently and getting rid of the things in your life that are not a high priority.

Update your Resume. Make an appointment with yourself for one hour to update your resume. Be prepared. You never know when that job of your dreams might come along or if an internal opportunity becomes available.

Create a paperless desk. Remove all paperwork from your desk: establish files for your projects; reference folders for information you need to access regularly; a reading file for articles, reports, journals and FYI documents; and a daily-file for administrative, miscellaneous and day-specific tasks, and keep these on shelves or in drawers.

Out of sight, out of mind. Remove your in-tray from your desk or get rid of it all together if you can! Keep it out of sight so the contents don’t distract you and so that people don’t drop new items into it without you noticing.

Hang a ‘Do Not Disturb’ sign. If you have an actual office with a door, this one is easy. But many workplaces today are open plan and it’s difficult to alert people to the fact that you don’t wish to be interrupted – but there are ways around it. I know one workplace where each person has an item (in this case, a toy frog) which when placed on top of their computer means that they are not available – that they are trying to concentrate on something. When the frog comes down, everyone knows they are available again. With the agreement of everyone in the team, this system works particularly well for an open plan environment. Another technique is to use headphones – when people see you have headphones on they know you are not tuned-in to what’s happening around you – you don’t even have to be listening to anything if you find that too distracting – just put your headphones on to signal your ‘do not disturb’ request.

Book a daily meeting with yourself. Block-out the first 60-minutes in your diary or calendar every day. Treat it as a standing commitment and protect it from being eaten into by other people’s meeting requests. Overtime, people will learn that you are not available until a certain time (which will vary depending on when you schedule your 60-minutes) and they’ll work around you.

Unplug. Schedule one TV-free night each week. Switch off the set and instead listen to your favourite music, play a board or card game, read a book, enjoy a quiet meal by candle light (alone or with someone whose company you love), go on a date or soak in a bath. Start being aware of your television viewing habits and make a point of only watching programs that you truly enjoy and stop wasting precious time in front of the TV.

Manage your reading. Create a reading file and put it in your briefcase. If you don’t already have one, start a reading file and carry it with you on your way home. You can get through a surprising amount of reading while on public transport to and from work and while waiting in queues.

VIPs Only. Surround yourself with VIPs (Very Inspiring People) and eliminate VDPs (Very Draining People). Spending more time with VIPs will inspire, motivate and invigorate you. Minimise your time with the VDPs in your life. It can be difficult to make the switch – be strict with yourself and you’ll reap the rewards of being among the VIP crowd.

Where are you going next? Plan your next holiday, even if you’re already on one! Block-out your holidays and short breaks at the beginning of each year. By scheduling and planning for your holidays in advance you’ll not only have something to look forward to but you’ll have a much better chance of avoiding the usual pre-holiday stress which comes with trying to complete everything before you go – and much less chance of neglecting to take those much-needed breaks.

Find a mentor. When you identify the person you believe would be a suitable mentor, spend some time watching them in action. Ask around to find out what other people’s opinion of your chosen mentor are and find out all you can about their achievements, beliefs, values and way of operating. This will give you insight into them before you approach them about mentoring you.

Leave a detailed message. Whether it is voicemail or with the person who does answer the phone. Make sure you include the time and date you called, a brief mention of what you are calling about and how and when they can contact you. If you are going to be difficult to catch or have scheduled some time during which you won’t be taking phone calls yourself, by leaving a contact time you can avoid a frustrating game of ‘phone tag’.

Schedule email time. Email messages popping into your inbox all day long can be an enormous distraction, particularly if your email is set to alert you every time new mail arrives. To check in on your emails and respond to them as they arrive not only distracts you from whatever tasks or projects you are working on but can rob you of an entire day, responding to other people’s needs while your own are neglected. Schedule a couple or a few times each day to check and respond to emails rather than constantly looking-in on your inbox or being bounced there by your email program with every new message.

Your signature. Use your email program to create an email signature block that will automatically attach to all of your outgoing messages; it’s a little like an email letterhead. It saves you the effort of including your contact information every time and brings a professional touch to your communications. You might simply include your name, business name, contact details and website or you might also include a sentence or two about your business, a special promotion you are running with a link to your website, or even a favourite funny or inspirational quote.

Spelll chceck. Email makes each one of us an instant author – and, that’s not necessarily a good thing! Always, always re-read your emails before you send them to make sure they make sense and to fix any spelling or grammatical errors. I recommend you set your email to automatically spell-check every message before it is sent. And if you need a second opinion to check for clarity, tone or correctness, ask a colleague to look over it for you. It might be inconsequential to you, but a poorly worded email that conveys the wrong tone and is riddled with spelling and grammatical errors can destroy your creditability and relationships.

Spring clean. Schedule time to clean out your email regularly, once a month should be enough to keep you on top of it. Empty your deleted items and any unnecessary sent items, and go through any completed project or task folders and ensure that anything you are keeping is essential to your records. Cleaning out your email will ensure you are managing your email files and disk space effectively.

Set up systems. When using filing cabinets, decide how you will allocate your space to make it easiest to locate your files: for example, rather than mixing all your files together you might decide to keep current customer files in one drawer and potential customer files and marketing information in a separate drawer, or you might choose to store current projects in one drawer and research and reference information in another, or you might decide to file everything in alphabetical order – you get the idea – look at the type of files you have and decide how to logically divide them into categories. Then, label the front of each drawer with the type of files it contains.

Colour it. Use colour coding to further systemise your files and to enable you to identify different types of files at a glance. Choose a range of coloured manila folders and allocate a different colour to use for different file types: for example, blue for customer files, purple for staff files, pink for project files and so on. Make a reference list of what each colour represents until you are familiar with your system.

Create a confidence journal. We don’t all feel confident every day and sometimes it helps to take note of our feelings and how situations affect us. By writing down how you feel each day in a confidence journal you can track your responses to situations and also identify areas of your like you might need some help with. Just do this for 30 days and then spend an hour at the end of the month assessing where you find your confidence gets shaken and then determine strategies to help you overcome that in future.

Choose to be amazing! It’s as simple as making a commitment to yourself every morning that you will have an amazing day. Remember, life is not a dress rehearsal – we only get one performance, so let’s give it our best!

Neen is a Global Productivity Expert: by looking at how they spend their time and energy – and where they focus their attention – Neen helps people to rocket-charge their productivity and performance. A dynamic speaker, author and corporate trainer, Neen demonstrates how boosting your productivity can help you achieve amazing things. With her unique voice, sense of fun and uncommon common-sense, Neen delivers a powerful lesson in productivity.

Subscribe to Neen’s free monthly ezine at http://neenjames.com

W.I.I.F.M. Radio

Have you ever heard of the radio station, WIIFM?

It is the “What’s In It For Me?” Radio Station and it is inside your head.

Everyday we hear radio commercials, read newspaper ads, see TV commercials, get Internet spam, pick-up our junk mail, read billboards, see posters and hear someone pushing their ideas and/or product on us. Sometimes we buy what they are selling on emotion or needs but we always make that decision by a “What’s In It For Me?” perception.

How do setting goals relate to the WIIFM concept?

Without goals, we stagnate and our dreams will not come true. Without a written game plan we will not achieve success in our endeavors. You could not build a house that would stand for hundreds if not thousands of years without a plan. You would not travel to a destination of any distance without a plan. A plan does not mean that you get it right the first time but a plan allows for you to have the freedom make corrections in order to get to the final destination. Do you realize that airline pilots are off course a large percentage of the time? It’s the course correction that finally takes them to the correct landing spot. They also have a chart or a map that has been created by someone who has been there before. That takes much of the stress off of doing it all by yourself.

Goal setting is your plan, writing it down is your way to chart your course and make corrections to get what you want. Taking daily action steps are the ways to make it happen. Using a mentor or an upline leader is a sure fire way to achieve your goals because they have been where you are and you don’t have to re-invent the process.

The value of setting goals is that it is the only way to make your dreams come true.

Goals come from a dream, a dream that comes from your heart and what is in your heart comes from your creator. Your creator loves you and your dream loves you but the question is… Do you love your dream well enough to go after it? Can you ask for help with your dream? Ask and you shall receive…Receive your dream…That’s “what’s In It for you”, the realization of a worthwhile dream.

Frank Gasiorowski or as he is known on the Internet as, "Mr.90DayGoals" has been teaching 90 Day Goals techniques as a speaker, workshop and seminar leader and "TodaysGuest" Interview Host with Goals TV and Goals Radio. Get your FR*EE 90 Day Goals ezine at http://www.90DayGoals.com

Send an email to Frank@90DayGoals.com and ask for a FR*EE "Moving Forward Daily Goals setting List" as my gift to you.

In games of chance, what separates a player from a winner and are they mutually exclusive?

It takes some skill to be a good poker player. Certainly one needs to know the number of cards in a deck, how many suits in each deck and what the different hands are and which hand beats which. One must also be very good at math and be able to figure the odds of any card or hand showing up in the game and memory is an exceptional bonus.

Poker is more than a game of "chance;" chance takes the power away from the player. Poker is a game of choices that lead to a desired outcome and for a true winner there is no "luck" or "chance."

In order to be a successful player, one must know why they are in the game in the first place. Are they there just for the sake of being in the game or are they there to win. There is the love of the game and the winning, but there is also losing.

Poker is much more than randomly playing each hand, it is a mind game as well. To be a successful player, that is, to continually stay in the game one must be able to put energy into the game and then be able to take that energy and more from the others. A game of cards is a "closed system," and cannot sustain itself unless there are bets, and that means something has to be added. The addition is collateral, value or energy added to the game to keep it going, it is fuel that drives the game, when the money or collateral is gone so are the players.

All players know that in order to stay in the game they must continually feed the pot. The odds are that everyone in the game will win hands and lose hands and no one will win or lose all hands. So gamblers play odds and the odds are calculated during the game. Each player expects to lose a few hands and by playing the odds skilfully they will be the major winner at the end of the game. The game may include only one or many hands until the player stops putting energy (collateral) into the game.

In games of chance all participants are winners whether they have losing hands or not. The reason for the game is the game and an opportunity for the players to demonstrate their thoughts about themselves in a social interaction. Each player gets back from the game what he/she has mentally put into it, and the rewards are as individual as the player.

Who determines the winner in a game of poker? Most would agree it would be the one that walks away with the pot at the end of the game. However, this definition is really superficial because the root causes of the players are not considered. If one is playing long term strategy then walking away from the game a loser is only an illusion, it may well be just another step on the way to being a winner. So the strategies of others may never be judged accurately because the philosophy of any one particular player is unknown.

What separates a winner from a player or a loser with long-term gamblers is the internal thoughts of the player himself.

A player has many skills and control over how he plays his hands. He has some understanding of how other players play their hands from his own interaction with them. If the game is being played honestly the player has absolutely no control over the cards he receives as they are drawn randomly from a deck or several decks.

Some players stand out as winners over time because they continually win their hands, and yet all players have exactly the same odds or chances of getting the same cards from one game to another.

Is it that some players simply play their hands with more skill and can calculate the odds better or read the other players better? I believe it goes deeper than that.

When one looks around the table you see other players, you do not see their minds. It is the mind that drives the body, the body is the illusion of the player that turns over the cards, but the mind is controlling the game. It is the mind that creates the desire and the body that displays that desire physically.

One’s mind is the source that predetermines the outcome of the game. If it is within one’s thought process that he/she is a loser, then that is reflected in the physical part of the process, in this case the game. If one’s root thought is that he is a winner then the game will also reflect that thought in real life. If one considers her or himself just a player that is how the game will be played out. He will never be a consistent winner or loser but will go along with the ride as one who enjoys the game and breaks even.

All of these kinds of players can be considered winners at some level of understanding as the results of the game reflect their most inner thought about themselves and why they are in the game.

A winner does not go to the table to play poker. A winner does not consider him or herself a player. A winner has only one root thought and that is that he/she is a winner and that can only be reflected physically as one who wins most of the hands and walks away with the pot. It can not work any other way. If you know yourself as a winner then your life has to reflect that, it is a universal law. What you think must be manifested at some level of physical existence. All thoughts are manifested as physical things or circumstances. To the extent that one’s thought is known as truth; is the degree that it will be physically observable.

You cannot truthfully say that you are a winner if it is not observable physically. What you are displaying is a physical lie, you are lying to yourself about who you are and you are not in contact with your inner truth. If you say that you are a winner and consistently lose, you have displayed your ability to lie and fool yourself.

If you say that you are a loser and you consistently display that physically, then in fact you are a winner by your own definition because you are successfully creating what you know as you truth. You can never fool yourself. Your true thoughts are always displayed physically for all to see. It is also important to realize that you can never be judged accurately by others or even yourself unless the root cause for the physical observation is known and to know that one must communicate with the spiritual part or inner thought process of the individual.

If one knows oneself to be a winner in poker then that person is in direct control of the cards, they are no longer randomly distributed. The players root cause will control the cards so that the player is manifested as a winner. The spirit will know the hands of the other players and will cause the appropriate cards to be displayed, all participants act together in agreement at some level with this arrangement so there are no random losers and the winner is already known. The only exception to this is that the player may be playing the game from the superficial physical level. The ego always has the last word and his conscious thoughts about how to play any hand may get in the way.

If all the players have folded at the table except for yourself and another then you would guess at what cards he holds and would calculate what cards are needed to beat his hand. If you are playing the game at a strictly physical level you might be thinking "Royal Flush," when all you really need is a pair of threes and you would have severely limited your odds of winning. A true winner would only hold the thought of winning knowing that he could, without the burden of having to figure out the winning hand or second guess his natural process for creating winning hands.

A player’s most inner thought is always reflected accurately at the poker table.

In physical life a persons most inner thought is always displayed accurately in his/her daily life. Judgements are always inaccurate and cannot reflect your truth unless the purpose of the mind is known.

To know oneself as a winner, one must demonstrate winning physically. To know oneself as a loser, one must also display that physically. To experience either one of these things physically then you must know that it was your thoughts that created the experience, not anyone else’s. You must also know that you can change your thoughts about who you are at any time and allow the process to reflect those thoughts physically and you do that by simply knowing what it is that you desire, and you do not try to control the process by allowing the ego to pick the winning cards.

A winner considers a losing hand as another step to winning in a game of strategy. Therefore the losing hand is actually a winning hand. All steps for a winner are winning steps because they bring to him/her what is desired, and the outcome is always visible or made real in physical terms.

You cannot play to be a winner; you are a winner first, then you become a player. A winner never gambles to win; he wins because that is who he is.

If you go into a game to prove yourself a winner, you cannot be a winner; at best you can only be someone who is trying to "prove," himself a winner. Winners, losers and players are mutually exclusive; you do not have to be one to be the other.

A winner can never be a winner from need, desperation or addiction (illness) but from knowing that he is a winner in all aspects of his/her life and it comes from the most fundamental aspect of who you are, from spirit and even these aspects cannot be judged because they may be part of the strategy or process that takes one to what he desires. The game is never over until you say that it is, until you get up and walk away from the table.

Roy E. Klienwachter is a resident of British Columbia, Canada. A student of NLP, ordained minister, New Age Light Worker and Teacher. Roy has written and published five books on New Age wisdom. Roy’s books are thought provoking and designed to empower you to take responsibility for your life and what you create. His books and articles are written in the simplicity and eloquence of Zen wisdom.

You may not always agree with what he has to say. You will always come away with a new perspective and your thinking will never be the same.

Roy’s style is honest and comes straight from the heart without all the metaphorical mumble jumble and BS.

Visit Roy at: http://www.klienwachter.com

Why is it important to set goals?

Having a goal enables you to focus your energies on devising ways to achieve it. When someone makes a decision and begins focusing on achieving a specific goal (and even better in a specific period of time), the powerful subconscious mind goes to work and begins playing with ideas and developing strategies of various ways to bring about the successful completion of the goal.

When you set yourself a goal both your conscious and subconscious start working on it and begin to develop an action plan. You will find you begin asking yourself questions about what needs to be done to enable you to reach your goal. You may find yourselves coming up with amazing ideas and solutions to problems or obstacles that have been in the way of achieving your goal. Solutions and ideas that you are surprised you ever thought of may start popping into your mind.

Our subconscious is an extremely powerful tool. The more often you remind yourself of your goal, the more your mind will work on ways for you to achieve it. Some people find answers come to them when they are asleep and dreaming.

Have you ever noticed that there is no correlation between being wealthy and having a high IQ or a university degree? If there were, every doctor and university graduate would be wealthy, and as statistics show, most of them end up in the same situation as 95% of the population. The main thing that the majority of independently wealthy people have in common is that they have set goals for themselves and achieved them. They invest time in reading and learning about wealth creation and are happy to learn from other people’s mistakes and experiences, as well as their own. They set goals, and realise that they will be far better able to achieve them if they familiarise themselves with the ways in which other people acted and the things that others have done to succeed. Wealthy people create wealth by carefully utilising the income that they have available to them to their best advantage. They know that working harder and longer hours is not the way to achieve financial freedom, instead they have to utilise what they have, and make it grow.

Setting Goals.

When you begin to work out your goals you need to make them as specific as possible. A vague idea or generalization like “I want to buy investment properties and become wealthy” is not enough. You need to be much more detailed. “I want to own my first investment property within six months. I will save for the legal and bank fees, and borrow 100% of the value of the property. I will find an extremely well priced, three bedroom brick veneer house that is close to schools and shopping centres. It will be either brand new or less than ten years old. It will be structurally sound, and require a minimal amount of maintenance. I will find a good agent to manage it, who has a lot of experience and will find me a good tenant.”

This is a specific goal, and you could add a lot more to it. Because your goal is specific your mind immediately begins to ask questions such as “How much money will I need for the fees and charges? How much does that relate to if I break it down on a weekly basis? Will I have to look at my current expenses to see where I need to cut back so as to make up the difference for the amount I need to save?” Specific goals help you to create specific, realistic action plans and as the old saying goes, “If you fail to plan, you plan to fail”.

You will find that if you write down your goals on a piece of paper, and put it in a prominent position, so that you will read it often, your subconscious as well as your conscious mind will start asking questions and coming up with answers, and you will find that you have already begun to take the necessary steps to achieving your goal.

It is helpful to have a series of goals, ranging from daily, weekly, monthly, yearly, ten yearly and thirty to forty yearly. You can always refine and change your goals as time goes on and situations change. You may find that it is easier to start at the 40-year mark, and then work backwards. Try to work out what steps would be needed to achieve your 40-year goal, and spread them out over the different time spans, to what you would need to achieve to end up with the final result.

Try to make your goals realistic and achievable. Do not set a goal that is too hard. Set lots of small, easily achievable goals and work step by step to achieve your road to success. Stay positive. Believe in yourself and your abilities to succeed, even if other people patronise you or try to put you off, or tell you there is no point.

Setting and achieving goals help you to create a stronger character. It is always helpful to remember that our brain cannot entertain both positive and negative thoughts at the same time. If you stay positive you will dispel negative thought patterns. Even if you come across little obstacles that get in the way of your goals, don’t give up. Focus on finding a solution, rather than focussing on the problem – utilise a positive response. Focussing on finding solutions enables you to put your brain to work, to find ways around things. If you just see an obstacle as a problem and just accept that life has dealt you a blow, and let it stop you in your tracks, then you will never learn and grow. Remember that children learn to walk by falling over. Focus on the long-term achievements that you want to fulfil, and it will be easier to overcome your problems.

Debra Lohrere works as a Commodity Trading Logistics Administration Officer. She previously spent over ten years working in an Accounts Administration position with her primary roles being collections and financial forecasting. She also ran her own computer retailing business for many years. Knowing the vital importance of cash flow in business led her to begin investigating the benefits of personal investments and the value of setting and achieving goals.

Debra Lohrere is an author of several books on property investment and how to create financial security. Please visit. http://www.debra.lohrere.com/home.shtml/

Journal Your 100 Life Goals

By Doreene Clement

www.the5yearjournal.com

info@the5yearjournal.com

Recording and tracking your 100 Life Goals in a journal is a powerful tool that can add to your personal and professional well being. Journaling goals is a great way to focus, clarify, and understand what your true intentions are, and how you are going to reach your goals.

In your journal you will record and track your Life Goals, 1 thru 100. (Or your 10 Life Goals, or 150, or 1,000, whatever number of goals you have now, remembering you can add to and delete from your list of Life Goals through the years.)

To start- Find a blank book that is hardcover and has more pages than your number of goals. You also may use more than 1 blank book. Next, write "Goal Number 1" on page 1 of the blank book, then write your goal. (Your goals do not need to be listed in order of importance to you, they can be listed as you think of them.)

Example - Goal Number 1. I want to read over 100 books.

As you read each book you can record the titles and how you liked the book. Would you recommend it? Journal what feels important to you about what you have read.

You can leave one or more blank pages, then write your next goal. Example - Goal Number 2. I never want to get stung by a bee or a wasp.

Example - 10.02.02 I was at the Blue Door restaurant on Wednesday, sitting near an open door, and there was a bee. As I was moving away from my table to get away from the bee, it landed in my food. No bee stings for me.

Again, leave as many blank pages as you might need. Continue by listing Goal Numbers 3, 4, 5, etc. After each goal you can journal what your feelings, ideas, dreams, desires, etc., are for your goals. Journal the people, experiences and circumstances as things happen in your life to accomplish your goals.

You can also journal your Life Goals on the computer. Create a document that uses the above system. As your goals change and evolve you can edit the list, or rearrange according to the order of importance. What was number 1 on your list can change to number 55.

As you think about your Life Goals, take the time you need to create the list. It may take you days, or years. It is your list, create it in your time.

Copyright 2002 Doreene Clement All rights Reserved Doreene Clement is the creator of The 5 year Journal, a journal where you can journal your life in one book, for 5 years. You can tour the book at http://www.the5yearjournal.com dkcomni@aol.com 480.423.8095

Feel free to pass this along to your friends. If you want to see my column, About Journaling, to subscribe http://www.the5yearjournal.com

“How do you handle the obstacles that get in the way of achieving your goals?” This was one question I asked many Silicon Valley business people that I interviewed a few years ago.

The day I asked this question to Cesar Plata, the networking guru of www.InfoBayArea.com, he seemed puzzled. He paused for a moment, looked at me, and then questioned me with one word, “Obstacles?” I nodded yes and remained silent waiting for his answer.

“As with anyone launching a startup business," the trail blazing entrepreneur said, “I have endured many personal and financial sacrifices and struggles. I did not see these efforts as barriers; I accepted them as learning experiences. The way I see it, they were simply unmet challenges.”

“Unmet challenges?” I asked curiously wanting to know more.

“Yes,” he said.” When something doesn’t work right, you try another way and another until you achieve the results you want. In my mind there are only unmet challenges.”

Oh, I get it, I thought. You just keep on going until you reach your goal. You stay focused and keep on trying until you succeed.

Unmet challenges: Cesar opened up a whole new world for me on how to handle my goals. Forget obstacles. Stomp out the word, roadblock. Break away from fear. Block out, stuck. Don’t say, “I can’t do it.” Instead I must say, “That step didn’t work, I’ll try the next one.”

Each time I work on my goals now, I relax, take a deep breath and just do it. Every step of the way along life’s journey I know that I will handle those unmet challenges with ease. Thanks to Cesar I meet more of my goals now and look forward to handling those unmet challenges.

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You can find Cesar Plata’s story in the book Top 10 Traits of Silicon Valley Dynamos at http://cloutpower.com by Author, Joan Clout-Kruse. She is also the author of the e- book: ABCs of Success at http://powerhousewriting.com—a book that helps people remember the success principles.

**Attention ezine editors/site owners** Feel free to reprint this article in its entirety in your ezine or on your website so long as you leave the links in place. Please do not modify the content and include our resource box as listed above

To have hopes and dreams for the future is a wonderful idea. If you want to call them ‘goals’ that’s fine also but do learn to get things in perspective. They are NOT achieved in the way you have been led to believe.

The much talked about conscious mind, subconscious mind, the will, belief patterns, etc. are simply descriptions of mental procedures and do not exist in isolation, as many people believe.

They are all part of the same ‘mental cooperative’.

Ah, there lies the rub!

The moment you set a goal you instantly cause an ‘inner conflict’ to take place between various departments of this mental cooperative.

This is unavoidable due to the way we were brought up, our parents, how we were educated, where we grew up, our religious beliefs or lack of them. The list is almost endless.

All these factors make up our core beliefs. These beliefs give rise to our very own particular and personal creative patterns of thought which dictate our own individual realities which, in turn, give life to our very own set of ‘Living Laws’.

‘Living Laws’ means laws that we follow, in other words, adhered to, for the sake of leading a ‘normal’ acceptable life. But it also means that they have a life of their own and can be changed, amended or completely abolished to make way for new ones.

Each one of us has a set of these laws. Some of the laws you live by are similar to other people’s but never 100% - that’s what makes us individuals.

Sure, we are all human beings - but we are NOT the same. We are all different, albeit only slightly, but we all differ.

The inner conflict arises when what I call ‘The Judge’ evaluates, compares and checks out your goal to see if it is valid. That is to say, if it complies with your current set of internal laws.

When your goal is found to be contravening these laws, for whatever reason, and reasons you are very rarely aware of, it is immediately and unceremoniously overruled and thrown out of court with no hope of appeal.

The secret to achieving our goals, therefore, is to cause a new creative pattern of thought and thereby amend our current set of Living Laws.

We must become an active and willing member of the cooperate. We must, in fact, cooperate with the cooperative!

The modern day idea that you can use visualization techniques or repeat endless affirmations in order to change these laws and therefore The Judge’s mind is totally erroneous - it will not make the slightest difference.

This is totally misguided thinking.

Sure, after many years of constant repetition of your affirmations/visualizations you may eventually get some reaction from The Judge even if it takes a lifetime, that’s if they don’t lock you away in a funny farm first!

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Meme machines
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Before we go any further let’s just take a look at these beliefs and where they come from and see why they are so darn difficult to change.

It’s all very well being told to change our beliefs and we will change our lives but just how do we do it?

We know from experience that simple visualization doesn’t work, nor do affirmations or anything else for that matter. So, what’s the answer?

The DNA of beliefs are MEMES (pronounced as in cream). Memes are a relatively new discovery and seldom, if ever, talked about in books or courses about personal success and achievement.

Why? If memes are the very foundation of our personality why are they never mentioned?

The main reason is that few people actually understand how they work or the significance they have in our everyday lives.

The dictionary defines a meme as “a unit of cultural information, such as a cultural practice or idea, that is transmitted verbally or by repeated action from one mind to another”

Memes have been likened to viruses and the comparison is indeed very apt. The Oxford zoologist Richard Dawkins defines memes as a set of ideas that can replicate itself like a virus and spread from one brain to another.

For example, it took only 300 years for the meme of Christianity to overrun the Roman Empire and less than 130 years for the meme of communism to “infect” 1.8 billion people across the face of the Earth.

So you can imagine that memes such as: “life’s a constant struggle”, “there ain’t no free meals in this life”, “money doesn’t grow on trees” etc. etc. and all that these silly memes represent (that life is not easy and you have to constantly struggle to make ends meet) have had many generations to set up home in our psyches and become part of our everyday lives. Besides, it’s got to be true – our parents said so!

Memes come in all shapes and sizes. Some are relatively innocent, such as the ‘hula-hoop meme’, ‘the pet rock meme’ and ‘music memes’ normally associated with a particular race or creed.

But some are extremely dangerous and far from innocent.

I don’t wish to enter into the religio-political arena, so, suffice it to say that the ‘religion memes’ and the ‘political memes’ are particularly virulent and in some cases deadly!

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Paradigms
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Memes then form what are known as PARADIGMS.

A paradigm is “a set of assumptions, concepts, values and practices that constitutes a way of viewing reality for the community that shares them.”

We must be very clear on the understanding of the power of paradigms and how they affect us in order be able to exercise our right of free choice.

For, whatever paradigms we choose to accept determine the form or our perceptions, which in turn shape our decisions, actions, experiences, social systems, worlds and futures.

If you don’t understand just how much of a grip paradigms have on your life and shaping your experiences then you will be under the impression that you and the world are set in stone and there’s nothing you can ever do to change that.

Ian S.N. Randall
Author of Accelerated Goal Manifestation
http://www.tinyurl.com/6zbsf