Evolve or Dissolve

Change is inevitable, before there were only two certainties in life, namely death and taxes. Now the ever changing and evolving world we live in, where the rate of change is accelerating daily, has seen a third certainty appear, namely “CHANGE”. This leaves you with two choices, bury your head in the sand and hope change won’t affect you or open your eyes and discover ways to use change to your advantage, by innovating and discovering new ways of doing things.

Innovation is not a Luxury – It is a Necessity

In the past the companies, which were not creative or innovative, could chug along and still make a good living. Yes of course, businesses, like horse carriage manufacturers, who did not adapt, innovate and create new products, have over the years disappeared, but the business cycle was so long back then, even companies, who did not see change very quickly, took a really long time to close their doors.
In the world we now inhabit, the business cycle is estimated to be around 11 months and it is getting shorter and shorter every day, so if you have not innovated and found new more creative ways of servicing your markets, over the past 11 months, it is possible and very probable that you may be doing things wrong.

Everything is Changing – Are you

The markets you service may have changed, customers’ expectations and needs may have evolved and your product may have even become obsolete, due to new products or services, which have appeared on the market, over the past few months. The secret to not only survive, but to thrive is to constantly survey everything going on around you. Ignorance is most certainly not bliss. Ignorance is failure, regret and could even cause your business to suffer huge losses.
Action Idea: Schedule time every week to survey your world. Look around with open eyes and try to discover all the changes going on around you. I schedule time every Friday afternoon at 17H00, to survey my world. I do this by going through a checklist of questions, described below. I ensure that I explore, discover and answer every question on my list. This helps me to stay awake and aware of any changes, which may negatively affect me or which may offer me new opportunities.
My Checklist:

• What is changed in my industry?
• What has changed in the markets I service?
• Are there any new opportunities, which have opened up for my products or services?
• What has changed from a legislative perspective?
• What changes are there in my community?
• What changes are there in my Country?
• What changes are there around the world?
• What new challenges have presented themselves?
• What new personalities are influencing the world?
• What new tools, techniques and technologies have come to light?
• How can I use any or all of these changes to my advantage?

When you schedule time to explore your world every week and you are an acute observer and astute evaluator, you no longer live in a bubble of ignorance. You have open eyes and will see change and be able to adapt to it. This will equip you with the foundation you need, to start to innovate and take advantage of change, before it is too late. Be awake, alert and observe the subtle changes going on around you, see the message being sent out all the time and you will be in a far better place to anticipate and utilise change, rather than be left to react to it, after it is too late.

Innovation is not done in a day

For innovation to work within any organisation, the leadership team must create a culture of innovation within the business. Innovation is not something you do occasionally, when you want to create something new. It is an on-going commitment within the organisation, which must happen daily and be an ingrained part of the culture of the business. The constant awareness amongst all stakeholders within the business, where everyone is responsible to observe and see change or opportunity, will see far better results, than would be the case if there were only a few people within the organisation tasked with innovating. The more eyes there are observing, the greater the chance of identifying opportunity or threats.

Action Idea: Organisations, who want to thrive and use innovation as a tool for growth and expansion, must hold monthly innovation meetings. These are meetings, where new innovative ideas are tabled and changes in the market are explored, to try to uncover new opportunities or threats. These meetings need to record all the ideas and brainstorm any changes and opportunities. A separate innovation forum, must be convened later to explore and evaluate all the ideas. My experience has shown that if you try to evaluate ideas at the first meeting, you spoil the flow and reduce the effectiveness of uncovering really great and innovative ideas.

Unlocking Creativity in your People

Up until the age of two, over 80 % of children test out as creative. Then the pressure of our schools system and the demands placed on our children to conform to societies norms, changes us. By the age of ten, the number of creative people has dropped to only 2 % and this continues for the rest of our lives. What happened to all those creative children? They are still there; they have just turned the volume down on their creative side.

Turn the Volume up, once again

Unlocking your creative juices, requires you to re-develop those neural pathways, which were lost as a child. It took many years to lose your creative neural pathways, so don’t expect them to reappear overnight. Have patience and follow the few recommendations I have made below:

• When you are driving your car, use the seek button on your radio to search for the next available channel. Whatever comes up, force yourself to listen to it for the rest of the day. This pulls you out of you comfort zone and forces you to listen to music you are unfamiliar with. Your brain hears this and goes, wow I have not heard this before, I better form a few new neural pathways to help me interpret this, should I hear it in the future. New neural pathways, which will help you to awaken those slumbering creative neural pathways, which have been asleep since your early childhood.
• When ordering in a restaurant, order something unusual, which will challenge your taste buds. Again this new sensation will, cause you to develop new creative neural pathways.
• Try to engage in as many new activities as possible, write with your other hand, eat with your knife and fork in the other hand, dance, walk backwards, balance on one leg etc. The more things you can change the greater will be your ability to re-awaken that slumbering creative person hidden within you.
• Do different things. My wife and I have a saying “When last did you do something for the first time?” We try new things all the time, from ballroom dancing to bungy jumping, to traveling to new and interesting places all the time. Again this will help you to re-awaken and utilise your creative self.

Innovation must become a way of life, something you are, not something you do. Once you learn to live this way, you will be astounded at how creative and innovative you become. Dreaming up new ideas and better ways of doing things, will just be the norm for you.

Author: Andrew Horton

http://www.andrewhorton.co.za

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Fear destroys

Fear about any facet of your life, is very limiting and will either paralyse you into inactivity or hold you away from performing at your best. Both are not desirable states, if you want to achieve success. Fears, even irrational ones, which have no grounding in fact at all, can and will destroy your ambitions, fortunes and even your relationships. If left unchecked, they will eventually destroy your future success completely. Fear is an unseen enemy to your future success and if you are not vigilant, it will creep into your life and steal your dreams.
Action Idea: Confront your fears. Explore them, until you uncover the reason you have them and then find ways to mitigate and eventually eliminate them from your life completely. If your fears are grounded in fact i.e. you are in imminent danger, because someone is out to steal from you or do you harm, then you need to use the fear to protect you. In most cases though, your fear is not grounded in fact at all. You feel fear, because you are tugged out of your comfort zone, you are moving into unchartered territory or you are taking a calculated risk etc. Under these circumstances you need to find ways to mitigate and even eliminate the fear from your life completely, otherwise it will negatively affect your future.

Other enemies holding you away from success

Once you have confronted your fears and found creative ways of eliminating them and the negative effect they have on your life, you need to look to eliminate a few other enemies, which emanate from within too.
Indecision – If you are to begin taking inspired action daily, to achieve the success you desire. You must become decisive and commit to make the tough choices to firstly get off your butt and start and secondly to continue to take daily action until you succeed. Indecision, if left unchecked, will steal opportunity from you before you even start.
Lack of Belief or Doubt – I have emphasised on numerous occasions that all the super achievers, I have studied, have all had an incredible belief in themselves and their ability to achieve their vision for the future. Of course you should explore opportunities and be a little sceptical. You can never just throw yourself into something, without thoroughly doing your homework to ensure that it is indeed what you need. The secret to success though, is to explore, discover whether the opportunity is what you want. Then you must pull the trigger and begin taking action. Once you pull the trigger, you must believe 100 % in yourself and your abilities. Belief fills your life with success and doubt on the other hand, will over time, rob you of everything.
Indifference – Too many people have a lacklustre approach to their lives and the opportunities, which come their way. Their indifferent attitude stops them in their tracks and they never pull themselves out of their comfort zone. Indifference will cause you to drift through life and as you know you can only drift in one direction – downhill.
Risk Averse – Of course you cannot gamble with your future and take irresponsible risks. You can also not afford to be over cautious to the point, where you take the timid approach to life. Timid people don’t step outside of their self-imposed comfort zones and therefore they remain trapped in average.
Unnecessary worry – Of course you need to always be aware of what is going on in your world. You need to review and measure your progress daily, to ensure the actions you are taking are delivering the desired results. What you must not do, is get bogged down and trapped in a place where you become paralysed by unnecessary worry. Worry will push into a place of overwhelm and inactivity, a place where average people hang out all the time.
Have the courage to confront your fears and work to eliminate any of the other enemies, which may be holding you away from the inspired, fulfilling life you deserve. As soon as you do this, new opportunities will emerge and you will start to achieve all your goals and dreams. By having the courage to take inspired action daily, you can gradually attract the success you want and you will become the person you need and want to be.

Author: Andrew Horton Motivational Speakers in South Africa

http://www.andrewhorton.co.za/motivational-speakers-in-south-africa-13/

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Write your goals down

I speak to so many people, who tell me that they don’t need to write their goals down. Something that important is committed to memory. They cannot forget about their dreams. I have no problem with thinking about your dreams throughout the day, this is a powerful process, which helps you to reinforce your commitment to take action, which will bring your goals and dreams to life. The challenge is that, if you do not have five minutes to write your goals down. Do you think you have the commitment to keep taking action for five years, until you succeed?
Have you ever woken up in the middle of the night, with such an incredible idea; you were woken from a deep sleep. Those people, who write those ideas down, actually do something with the great idea. Those of you, who do not have more likely than not forgotten about it by the time they wake up. So if you can forget such an important thing, in only a few hours. How likely is it that you will remember your goals and more importantly to take action on them, if you have not written them down.

Writing a shopping list

Research shows that people, who do not write a shopping list, spend on average 15 – 20 % more than people, who have a written shopping list. They also take on average, about 30 minutes longer to shop than the people with a list. People with a list take about an hour to complete their monthly shopping, whilst people without a list take about one and a half hours to shop. This means that people with a plan save between 15 – 20 % on resources and also have about 50 % more time to focus on their success. If this does not convince you to write your goals down, I am not sure what it will take.

Author: Andrew Horton Sales Training

http://www.andrewhorton.co.za/sales-training/

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Then you must have a system for consciously tracking your daily progress, all the things you have to be grateful for, a record of your success, the lessons you have learned from your challenges and a way of recording all the great ideas you may come up with.

There are many different options, which you could use to do all of these things.

Keep a journal – This is a book or series of books in which you record all the important facets of your life. By keeping a journal you are forced to invest time every day to think about all the things, which matter in your life. This daily activity will help you to track your progress, record your victories, record and log all your experience, focus on all the things you have to be grateful for and give you a place to store and easily recall any new ideas you may have.
Keeping a journal is a really great way of recording all the important things, which happen in your life. It is however not always the easiest system to recall and utilise all of them. It is for this reason that I recommend that you supplement your journal with the following:

• An electronic or printed chart to track your progress daily, weekly, monthly and quarterly against your goals or targets.
• An achievement board to record all your victories. This is a really important tool, which will help you to see progress, reward yourself and will serve as inspiration, during those challenging times, when it feels like you are not making any progress at all.
• Gratitude board helps you to record all the wonderful things you have in your life. This pictorial representation, gives you something positive to focus on every day. This positive picture will help you to remain focused and assist you to have a positive attitude.
• An idea map, where you record all your ideas. This will help you to put your ideas in one place, where you can schedule time once a week to explore all of them and see, if there are any opportunities hidden within any of the individual ideas or a combination thereof.

Your journal and all the support tools around your journal as described above, will serve as both a record of what has been and a daily reminder about what you need to do every day to achieve the success you desire. These tools will also help you to remain inspired, driven and passionate about your future success. These tools will become the building blocks, which will support you to build a success habit set and lead a productive and successful life.
Yes of course this will take work, but the benefits you will enjoy as a result of this success habit, will be well worth the effort.

Author: Andrew Horton Motivational Speakers Gauteng

http://www.andrewhorton.co.za/motivational-speakers-gauteng-to/

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The time to act is NOW!

When a great idea enters your mind, don’t wait around too long before you do anything about it. For example: when you make the decision to start down the road towards your own personal development. Don’t think about it for too long, take action immediately. Go online and order that first personal development book, or go to the bookstore and buy the book. The next step is to schedule time every day to read the book. Take action and actually use that time to read. Measure your progress daily, during your daily review and don’t forget to reward yourself, every time you keep your commitment to read. The daily reward can be as simple as a smile and allowing the glow of satisfaction to flow over you. This reward will help encourage you to repeat the behaviour every day.

Diminishing Intent

As you know your drive, determination and passion is highest, when a great idea first comes to mind and as time passes, so too does the drive and passion dwindle away to nothing. The secret to turn any great idea into something meaningful is to try to translate the idea and intent, into action as soon as possible. If you wait too long the passion goes cold and eventually the great idea cannot even be found any longer.

Take Action

There is no substitute for taking action, whilst the emotions are still high and the idea is strongly carousing through your brain. If for example you want to improve your health, don’t spend too much time thinking about it. Immediately go buy a book on nutrition, join a gym and then schedule time to attend gym every day. Remember whatever gets scheduled gets done. How about lying on the floor immediately and doing a few push-ups. The sooner you take action the better will be the results and the greater the possibility of turning the idea into something meaningful. Don’t wait for too long, otherwise the wisdom of the moment is wasted.

Discipline Breeds Self-worth

One of the greatest benefits, which will flow to you as a result of acting on great ideas when they come to you, is consistently practicing the art of self-discipline. How great do you feel when you keep commitments you make with yourself? The art of self-discipline breeds, self-worth, which in turn helps you to feel better about yourself and your self-esteem, improves too. The more positive you are and the greater your belief in yourself, the greater the chances that you will succeed at the things you attempt. This will inspire you to always try your best.

Author: Andrew Horton Motivational Speakers

http://www.andrewhorton.co.za

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Vision Gives Clarity

Life happens whilst you make other plans. In other words the winds of circumstance blow on you in a never ending flow, which inevitably touches your life in very unexpected ways. By clarifying your vision for the future, you have clarity about the direction your life will go. It does not mean that you will not encounter any challenges along the way, but the clarity of purpose will help you to quickly mitigate or eliminate them altogether.

Varying circumstances occur in everyone’s lives

Your life is not different from everyone else’s life. Everyone encounters challenges, opportunities and threats and many other circumstances, as they travel down the path towards the success they desire. We all experience disappointments, victories and everything else in-between, the only thing which separates the super achievers from the herd is their resilience and ability to never allow challenges to overwhelm them.
Despite your best efforts, things will sometimes feel like they are falling apart and at times, they will also feel like no matter what you do, you can’t put a foot wrong. The secret to success is to accept that neither will last forever. When things are going badly, if you preserve, things will eventually improve. In the same way, when things are going well, that will also not last forever. Life is cyclic and there are times when things don’t go to plan and then there are times when things seem to just move along perfectly. My experience has shown me that, if you have clarity of vision, meaningful goals, you take goal specific action daily and you measure your progress regularly, there are always far more times filled with success than challenge.

Author: Andrew Horton Sales Motivational Speakers

http://www.andrewhorton.co.za/sales-training-super-star/

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Success is a Becoming – Becoming requires Action

Success is never something you pursue. I believe that anything you pursue will always elude you. Success is a process, which is accomplished daily throughout your life, by investing as much energy and resources, as possible, into your personal development and growth. As you continue to grow throughout your life, so too does the value of your labour. In short, you are able to accomplish far more valuable activity, in far less time each day, as your knowledge and experience grows and you continue to hone your skills, so too does your ability to get far more done in less time.
Skilful labour and daily activity, which is guided by better knowledge and experience, will always deliver better and better outcomes, as you progress through your life. As you grow and become more, so too does your ability to make better decisions and as such, you make fewer and fewer mistakes. You are also better equipped to identify the right opportunities and are able to get far more from each one, which does come your way. Add to all of this the fact that people will see your growth too and they will be more likely to support you by providing you with better resources in the form of financing, mentoring etc. and you can see the importance of committing to invest as much as you can, into your personal development and growth.

Schedule time for Personal Growth

Whatever gets scheduled – gets done. Unless you are going to build time into your schedule, every day, to invest into your personal growth, you will continue to blunder through life and never find the crucial time necessary, to invest into this crucial life changing activity. Try to set aside a minimum of 30 minutes a day to invest into your personal development. This time should be used to read a developmental, educational or inspirational book.
Add to this investment, your commitment to utilise your commuting time in your vehicle, to listen to motivational, educational or transformational audio books and you will begin to see dramatic changes to your life over the next few years. It is estimated that people spend almost 500 hours a year, commuting, that is equivalent to two semesters at university. Imagine if you could utilise that time for growth and development. Time you would have otherwise wasted.

Skills, Knowledge and Experience multiply Labour

As you continue to invest into your personal growth, throughout your life, you will begin to see an exponential improvement in your results. Every action you take will over time start to deliver better and better outcomes. You will effectively be multiplying your labour by two, ten, even one hundred or a thousand times. Your labour, when combined with the right skills, knowledge and experience, will deliver miracles to you, in the form of better relationships, a satisfying vocation, improved health, more financial wellbeing and you will get to enjoy the meaning and fulfilment you desire. Can you think of any other investment, which will deliver better results?

Author: Andrew Horton Motivational Speakers in South Africa

http://www.andrewhorton.co.za/motivational-speakers-south-africa/

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Love the opportunity

Stop focusing on lack and everything you don’t have in your life right now, where you wake up every day, wondering how you are going to get through your day. Train your mind to focus on possibility and all the incredible wonder the future holds for you. Focus on all the incredible opportunity available to you right now, which will allow you to move your life in the direction of meaning and fulfilment, you want. See the incredible opportunity you have to build a future, which has all the elements you desire, namely great health, fantastic relationships, awesome career and all the financial wellbeing possible.
Allow yourself to “LOVE the OPPORTUNITY” and everything in your life immediately changes. You no longer wake up every day wondering how you are going to get through your day. Instead, you wake up inspired and passionate about possibility, eagerly looking for ways to get as much as possible from each day. Yes of course knocking on someone’s door, to show them your value proposition, may not be something you love to do, but learn to love the opportunity, which awaits you behind that closed door and doing the difficult things becomes far easier.

Even Digging Ditches is Ok

Yes of course digging ditches may not be the ideal career for you. Can you or should you love digging them? The truth is that you never need to love digging ditches at all. What you need to focus on, is the wonderful opportunity you have, as a result of you digging the ditches. Digging ditches gives you your first entry point, onto the ladder of success, where you can say to yourself. “I am so glad I have this opportunity to dig ditches. I am going to do it so well in fact that I won’t be here long, before I get a better opportunity to do something more fulfilling and inspiring”.

Can you love Discipline?

As you travel down the path towards new horizons, new levels of success and achievement. Of course you will be thrust out of your comfort zone, of course you will need to introduce new disciplines into your life, which will not be comfortable, and of course you will not love everything you need to do daily. In fact you don’t have to love any of it. All you need to do is to appreciate all you have and “LOVE” the opportunity your labours will bring to you. Learn the art of loving what you have and loving the prize, which you will get to enjoy once you have paid the small price of discipline today and life, becomes an enjoyable journey, packed with wondrous possibility and opportunity.

Embrace Opportunity

If you can make the shift, where you no longer look for what is missing in your life right now and instead focus on what you have, namely incredible opportunity. You will find that you immediately feel so much better about your life, your self-confidence grows and you awaken your ability to believe in possibility. I have no doubt that your life is filled with opportunity and possibility. Learn to focus on what you have right now, namely the opportunity to live a life of meaning and fulfilment and forget about what is missing and you will have discovered the key to unlimited joy, happiness and success.

Long Term

Success, achievement, meaning and fulfilment are your birth right, so do not allow yourself to ever be discouraged or tempted to give up. All it takes to live the life you desire is long term commitment, belief, vision, discipline, a great positive attitude, daily inspired action and the patience and persistence, to move from one stepping stone to the next. Of course you won’t “LOVE” every stepping stone along the way. Learn the art of “LOVING” each stepping stone for the opportunity it brings and you will have uncovered the secret to enjoy your journey through life and pathway to live the success you desire.

Author: Andrew Horton Sales Training

http://www.andrewhorton.co.za/sales-training

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Unlock your power from within

You have an incredible mind with capacity, well beyond, your comprehension and you have the ability to learn new skills, acquire new knowledge, believe in possibility, visualise your future as though it were real. In fact you have all the ingredients inside you right now, which are necessary to invite incredible success and wonder into your experience. All that is standing between you and the most incredible future is your lack of belief in your ability to make it real for you. Unlock your inner believing and you will be unlocking possibility and pent up potential, which is your birth right to utilise.

Believing starts the Achieving

Action Idea: Find some quiet time, without any distractions and look and search inwardly. Reflect on what you really believe is possible for you to achieve in the future? What do you see? Is the future you see merely a slight expansion of your current world and circumstances or are you able to see incredible wonder and new levels of success, which transcend your current reality and thrust you onto a new plane of possibility? Remember that what you are able to believe, is all that you will ultimately achieve.
So if you can only see small things in your future that is what you will experience. If on the other hand you can open your mind and see an incredible future, filled with all the pictures of possibility you desire, where you are living your perfect picture of what success should be. Exactly that future possibility opens up to you. If you can train your minds eye to see and your brain to believe, any future possibility becomes possible for you.

Know why

After creating that incredible vivid picture of possibility in your mind’s eye, where you have a knowing, a deep belief that it is possible for you. The next step is to ask yourself why you want to achieve it. This understanding of why you want to unlock that future for yourself, is the key, which will help you remain focused and driven to succeed, despite the inevitable challenges that will cross your path.
If I placed a ladder on the floor and offered you $ 100 to walk across the ladder, I am certain that you would gracefully take my money. If I changed one thing and I suspended the same ladder between two high-rise buildings, I am sure that the offer of money would no longer hold the same attraction. You would not be willing to risk your life for a measly $ 100.
What if your child was on the other building and that building was on fire and the flames were licking at your child’s feet. I am certain that you would run as fast as possible across the ladder and rescue your child, despite the danger. What changed? All that changed was the reason why you needed to walk over that ladder. That is why I say if you can unlock your deep rooted reason why you want to achieve anything, nothing will stand in your way.

Commit to Life-long Learning

Now throw in a healthy dose of an on-going investment into your personal growth and you have all the makings necessary, to invite any level of success into your experience. In a nutshell you are truly magnificent and all that is standing between you and the most incredible level of success in the future is “BELIEF” Dare to see possibility, believe it is possible for you, know why you want to achieve it, keep focused on growing and learning and then take inspired action daily and you can achieve anything.

http://www.andrewhorton.co.za

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Focus on what will be

Don’t think negative thoughts like:
“What if no-one responds”? Instead think “What will happen when they do respond”?
“What if someone says no” instead think “What will happen when they all say yes”?
“What if people start and then stop”? Instead think “How amazing things will be when they start and remain the distance”?
“What if things don’t work out”? Instead say “How amazing will things be when they do work out”?
The list goes on and on. The secret I want you to uncover here is to learn to never focus on lack or loss. Rather focus on possibility and results. This puts you in a very strong position of belief, where you will feel inspired and be equipped to project a believable positive attitude to the world, one, which will allow you to feel passionate and driven to succeed.

What you think about you bring about

Of course you know that what you think about, you will eventually take action on and bring about. So if you focus on possibility and on what you would like to see manifest in your life in the future. Your thoughts will shift in that direction and your daily activities, in turn will start to also pull you towards what you want. So be aware of the thoughts you think and the language you use as they are both acting to pull you either towards the success you desire or they will inevitably pull you away from it. A little shift in your thinking and a small positive twist in the vocabulary you use, will not only help you to have a more positive attitude, but also assist you to improve your performance too.

Subtlety of Language

My daughter has learned that, if she wants any money. The wrong language to use with me is “I need some money”. She has realised that if she is going to have any success in actually getting her hands on the money. The right language is “How can I earn the money I need”? When she uses positive language, which shows inspired intent, she learns a valuable life lesson. When she uses the language of desperation, she learns nothing from the experience. Teach your children how to use the right language and they will grow into well rounded adults, who have so much to offer this world.

http://www.andrewhorton.co.za

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