The following is a question I want you to seriously consider as the answer will tell you a lot about your future and ability to change. This question has allowed me to coach people to make monumental performance gains in all areas of their lives and careers.

I’d love to see your answers and will do my best to use them in the creation of future lessons and posts.

And the question is…

Q: Can you make yourself do something you really don’t want to do, in order to get a result you would really like to have?

When you are able to answer this question affirmatively, you will experience a massive shift in your perception of the immediate future.

This single concept can dramatically alter your relationships, your finances, and even your health!

The deeper question, of course, is:

What result would you like to have?

• How healthy (or unhealthy) are you willing to be?
• What kind of marriage do you really want to experience?
• Does it really matter to you whether or not your family is debt-free?
• Okay . . . So you want to be in peak physical shape . . .
• You desire a marriage filled with love, excitement, and laughter . . .
• You crave freedom from the stress and uncertainty of monthly bills . . .

BUT…

What activities must be done – with a single-minded focus – to achieve the life you long for?

And can you make yourself do those things?

I am betting that you can!

Remember, I’m The Goals Guy and I have personally witnessed the amazing changes people can make when they challenge themselves to do the things they really don’t want to do.

There it is. No more sugarcoating or explanation needed.

Do you truly want to succeed in your chosen endeavor?

Do you want to radically and permanently change your life?

Then, can you make yourself do something you really don’t want to do, in order to get a result you would really like to have?

Yes or No?

WHAT TO DO NOW? Post your response to these questions. I look forward to reading your replies!

The answer is, some men succeed because the cheerfully pay the price of success while others, though they claim ambition, are unwilling to pay that price.

In this post, I want to introduce you to an important truth on your path to success, “Choose Your Suffering”.

Everything you want in life, every goal you want to achieve, every dream you want to manifest comes with a price tag.

There is NO FREE LUNCH when it comes to true success and achievement.

To achieve any goal, you must choose the suffering that’s right for you, you must accept that reality, you must embrace that truth, and then you must live with it every day of your life.

Throughout the 100 Day Challenge, you will be reminded to pay the price of success each day and you will be astounded by the results that you are able to generate.

What To Do Now? Click here to get learn more about the 100 Day Challenge and remember to Comment and Share your feedback with friends and colleagues.

Building Your Bridge

Building your bridge OUT of this recession requires you to redefine “performance measurement.”

Far too many companies and individuals are focused on the accounting, and the truth is that the accounting system doesn’t really provide you with a lot of useful and relevant information.

This may tweak a few of you the wrong way, but read on before you shoot the messenger.

The reality is that most leaders have gotten more and more precise and sophisticated at measuring less and less of an organization’s TRUE value.

At present, the entire focus of financial analysis is on “the numbers,” despite mounting evidence that they’re the WRONG numbers.

An organization’s most valuable assets are intangible.

Consider the following:

• learning ability
• technological know-how
• proprietary software code
• databases
• market knowledge
• communications networks
• distribution channels
• customer loyalty
• staff morale
• strategic alliance partners
• corporate culture

Yet NONE of these assets are reflected in any balance sheet or profit-and-loss statement.

Innovative leaders need performance measures that are dynamic and forward-looking.

Acquiring these measures will require discovering, capturing, and reinforcing the key strategic and competitive drivers of future performance.

One of the very few management maxims that have stood the test of time is “You get what you measure.”

This being the case, it is unwise to expect strategic performance from organizations that depend on OBSOLETE measurement systems.

Organizations that attempt to build the information infrastructure necessary to compete and win in current economic times must devote considerable energy to devising systems that not only capture the new performance, but actually promote it.

A word of caution, performance measurement, whether strategic or otherwise, has little if any value in and of itself.

Performance measurement exists-or should exist-for one reason only:

TO ENHANCE PERFORMANCE.

No matter how elegant they may appear, performance measures will prove useless if they fail to meet four key stress tests.

To be effective, performance measurement must:

1. Help everyone to identify priorities they should pursue to maximize potential. They must be truly aligned with the strategic goals of the organization.CRITICAL POINT HERE — If they are not aligned with the company’s strategic goals then they are USELESS.
2. Focus the majority of your attention on those priorities once they have been identified.
3. Facilitate progress to EVERYONE involved in pursuing the identified priorities.
4. Lead to an observable difference in behavior and performance. This means that they must be consciously reinforced in practice, with both rewards and compensation. Be sure to reward the EXACT behavior you want repeated.

Without these four conditions, performance measurement is a wasteful, counterproductive exercise.

But if these conditions are met, forward looking performance measures can become an indispensable part of your strategic arsenal and in helping you come out of this recession as a winner.

To learn how to “Strategically Reposition” your company in today’s economy, fill out the coaching form on this page and I will personally ring you within 24 hours.

What if I were to follow you with a camera crew 24 hours a day 7 days a week for the next 100 days while you went for your goals?

The 100 Day Challenge

I bet 3 things would happen….

1) You would START doing the things you say you need to do.

2) You would STOP doing the things you know you shouldn’t be doing.

3. You would MAKE monumental performance gains and change your life.

Throughout every area of your life it’s important to understand that ALL unfinished goals, projects and relationships are the result of broken promises, unfulfilled commitments, and lack of accountability.

With that reality in mind, I wanted to share with you an exciting opportunity to achieve every goal you set, to enforce ultimate accountability into your life, and show you how you can make monumental performance gains.

It’s called the 100 Day Challenge and you can check it out by visiting this site!

What To Do Now? Go to the 100 Day Challenge and remember to Comment and Share your feedback with friends and colleagues.

Enforce Self Discipline

Discipline is the umbilical cord of success. Refusing to apply discipline is a withdrawal from the bank account of what is possible.

Discipline is the virtue that gives you the courage and the inner resolve to do what you said you would do – when you said you would do it – period!

Study anyone who has achieved a measure of greatness and you will be studying discipline in motion.

Study a knucklehead on the other hand, and you will be studying procrastination in motion.

Discipline is the cornerstone of self-mastery. You exercise discipline for the same reason you take a bath. Without it you stink!

You may not be breaking any laws by not disciplining yourself, however success requires a higher standard of performance and accountability than that!

Discipline is the source, the wellspring that lets you live the life that you deserve. You must strengthen your inner core if you are truly dedicated to manifesting your highest potential for personal and professional success.

With discipline, you will possess the inner fire needed to focus on your primary goals and realize your dreams!

What's the score... you should know!

If you’re not keeping score, you’re probably getting beat!

If how you play or perform were all that mattered, then why do all sporting activities have some form of scoreboard?

The scoreboard is your report card and it tells you and the world that you are winning, losing, or holding your ground.

Keeping score and inspecting your progress is important, not only in determining the ultimate winner of a contest, but also as a measuring device by which a person, team or company can gauge itself against the competition.

Ask yourself this question and others of similar nature, “How are we doing relative to our nearest competitor?”

Specific questions on performance measurement are usually met with blank stares, kind of a light’s on but nobody’s home kind of stare. If not that then very vague or non-specific answers soon follow.

Keep this reality at the top of your mind, if you don’t know the score – you have a better than average chance of being the competitive sacrificial lamb!

Visualize successful performance.

What you see IS what you get!

Professional athletes are exceptionally adept at visualization.

• A professional golfer never tees off without first playing the course in his mind.
• A professional downhill skier never goes downhill without first visualizing the entire hill in her mind.
• A professional ballerina never performs without first performing the entire ballet in her mind.

They execute first in their mind and then through action.

By the time they are ready to perform they have already played the event in their mind, so that all that’s left to do is execute what they have already visualized.

This sort of positive reinforcement gives the professional an advantage in any endeavor.

When they perform well, they are not surprised at all. In fact, they expected to do well because they preformed flawlessly in their mind first – they visualized success in advance and you can do the same!

Work your system to accomplish the tasks on your list.

Your time management system might be good or bad, conscious or unconscious, but don’t be deceived; you do have a system for being organized or disorganized.

Your office or home might be in shambles. In that case, whether you admit it or not, your system consists of living in a mess.

Let’s be honest my furry friend. You must have an organizational system that helps you to manage time and achieve your goals.

In order to develop a new, more effective organizational system, you must first:

• Identify the system that’s right for you.
• Simplify the system so that it isn’t a burden.
• Monkey with the system so that it is truly your own.

ALL performance and organizational systems need to meet certain basic requirements in order to be effective.

Your organizational system must:

1. Be in Writing – If you’re relying on your memory, you’re toast. No matter how bright you are, memories fail, time escapes you, and things will slip through your mind and the proverbial cracks of productivity.

If you only write down half the things you need to do, your system is only 50% effective. If 75% of the things you need to do make it to your list than your system operates at 75% efficiency.

Whatever system you choose, it must force you to write everything down if it is to be 100% effective.

2. Be Convenient – Since you are always on the go your system must be portable and convenient to access at all times. If you write your plan down but don?t keep it with you, what worth is it?

Your organizational system is no good to you if you are in one location and it in another.

3. Be Easy to Read and Understand – No one needs to understand your system but you. Keep it personal and make it work for you. Abbreviate where you can and do all you can to save time.

You don’t need to spell correctly in your system or use correct grammar; the objective is to work your system to accomplish the tasks on your list.

The secret to quality and perfection.

A commitment to quality is a commitment to perfection as quality comes from putting your heart and soul into your work.

It means that you are lovingly doing all of the things that bring out your absolute best.

The word love is appropriate, because it is precisely right in both the meaning and the feeling that it carries.

Do all things lovingly; that is the secret to quality and perfection, and expecting nothing but perfection is the first step toward achieving it.

A loving devotion to quality allows no detail to be overlooked. It wants everything to be just so, nothing that might affect that which makes the performance spectacular can be neglected or regarded as trivial.

A compulsion to be tidy, orderly and well organized is a natural impulse and by-product in a workplace where quality is taken to heart.

While the ideal of perfection is always humbling, it should never be thought of  as defeating. There is no rest when it comes to quality; therefore, quality must be an obsession.

The passionate pursuit of perfection is what gives work meaning and gratifies the human soul. When the work we do is the work we love, the results are a shining testament of quality.

Quality first, quality always is the mark of greatness; therefore choose to be great today!

WHAT TO DO NOW? Share your two cents worth on what quality means to you?

Attention to every detail is mission critical.

Paul Dalton has…

• handled more super cars than any A-list celebrity or athlete.
• developed a reputation for being the best in the world at what he does.
• raving clients that express deep devotion and loyalty to his services.
• the audacity to charge up to $5000 to wash, wax and detail a car.
• such exceptionally high standards and proudly refers to himself as a perfectionist.

Paul Dalton has been haled as “the best car wash in the world” by Autocar magazine, but an average invoice of $550 gives you a clue that this is more than your average shampoo and polish.

His company Miracle Detail, specializes in ‘detailing’ high-end cars, from vintage classics to super cars such as the Bugatti Veyron, and can cost anything up to a wallet-busting $5000.

To say that Paul is passionate about detailing and paintwork correction would be an understatement.

His commitment to his craft, pursuit of perfection, and exceptional attention to detail rival’s the precision a heart surgeon and has led to his reputation as being the best in the world.

So what can you learn from Paul Dalton and his perfectionism?

1. If you truly want to develop a reputation as being the “best” in your chosen profession, than accept that the pursuit of perfection is mandatory.

2. If you pick the right target audience and deliver fanatical, over the top service, you will be be able to claim premium prices and long-term client loyalty.

3. Embrace your perfectionism, promote it, and use it as a powerful and sustainable competitive weapon.

So what do you do if your performance is not currently superior to everyone and everything else around you?

Easy. Decide to deliver fanatical results, and deliver them – starting right NOW!

There will NEVER be a day nor a job that does not provide the opportunity for a sensational performance.

If you own a business or work for one, you must be able to engineer your performance so that is PROFOUNDLY superior thus separating you from everyone in the marketplace.

Paul Dalton did, and so can you. That is if you want to succeed badly enough!

WHAT TO DO NOW? Share your two cents worth on the benefits of being a perfectionist.

Improvement is the key to success.

Every morning when you wake up, you can — and should — embrace the notion that there is something about you, your life, your business, or the way that you carry yourself that could stand to be improved.

Every day requires dedication, discipline, good judgment, energy — and the feeling that there’s something about yourself that you can make better.

Each day offers an opportunity for improvement; and each moment serves as an opportunity to advance or to retreat in the pursuit of your goals.

Personal development is a lifelong pursuit, because life is a work-in-progress. You never totally arrive; there is always some polishing to do, some knowledge to gain, and a love to deepen.

Self-development ends only when we run out of time. You are and will always be the self in evolution. Who couldn’t progress a little as a parent, child, spouse, friend, citizen, or employee?

No one is perfect; no one walks the straight and narrow line all the time. And this absence of perfection leaves the door open for improvement. Our fight is not external; it lays internally in mastery over self.

If we are to dominate events and experience greater levels of performance, we must first dominate ourselves and it begins with a rigorous focus on personal development.