7 More Reasons Not To Hire An Expert

It was three years ago this month that I wrote a post about Ten Reasons Not To Hire An Expert. I got to thinking today about that subject for some reason and thought I’d share some additional reasons with you.

You are too smart to need any help from anyone. You know everything there is to know about every subject under the sun. There isn’t a question you can’t answer nor a topic you can’t expound upon with certainty. If it weren’t for the fact that I think that puts you into category seven below I would actually envy you.
It would hurt your pride to admit that you could use some help. This is more of a male trait than a female trait. Not being willing to admit to being lost and not being willing to ask for directions is the epitome of this. So is refusing to read a user’s or instruction manual. How many things have you screwed up, broken or had to replace for this reason? Just remember: pride usually goeth before a fall.
You can afford the time, effort and expense of doing things over again instead of doing them right the first time with a little help from someone who knows more about the task that needs doing than you do. Just think about the amount of wasted time, effort and expense, not to mention the long-term negative effects on your life, your business and even the environment from indulging in this strategy.
You can’t afford it because you never budgeted for it. This is such a common problem with small businesses as to be almost epidemic. This one came from a friend of mine who is a CPA. It helps explain why so many small business owners are never able to scale their businesses to success.
You don’t see why you should pay someone for sharing their expertise with you even if it will take away your pain and frustration and provide you with more time, energy and profits. If this is what you feel, why do you think someone should pay you for your product or service or time or labor or knowledge?
You are too stubborn to accept help even when it doesn’t cost you anything directly. This is truly a cardinal sin in today’s world of the overwhelming availability of knowledge and expertise in virtually every field known to mankind. If you Google a subject and don’t get at least several pages of hits then I’d suggest you become the expert in that topic. When you see something offered that might help you, take advantage of it!
You are too ignorant to know that you actually need help. This puts you into the category of unconscious incompetent and you have my sympathy. There are ways to become conscious of the areas in which you could use some help and then to act upon that new knowledge. Does that make sense?

You can read the original article, which was couched in far more polite language than I’ve used here. Or you can ignore it and dismiss this one as well. See reason number one above.

As always, your comments, compliments, brickbats and other non-profane thoughts and words are welcome.

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July 22, 2015July 22, 2015

Celebrate Your Successes

Celebrate Your Achievements & Successes

Don’t wait until you’ve reached your final goal to be proud of yourself. Be proud of every step you take toward reaching that goal.

You’ve read seven chapters. Congratulations! Give yourself a pat on the back. Do your “happy dance.” Take ten minutes to do something you really enjoy. Tell someone how proud you are of yourself. Give someone a hug (with their permission, of course!) and ask them if there is something you can do for them that will make them want to do their happy dance.

As important as it is to celebrate success, it is also important to analyze the not so successful things that inevitably occur in the course of your journey toward accomplishing your goals – of achieving your dreams and desires. Let’s deal with those. Bill Gates, the founder of Microsoft, is one of the most admired and one of the most hated people in the world. He says, “It’s fine to celebrate success, but it is more important to heed the lessons of failure.”

This from a guy who is responsible for the creation – and perpetuation – of the dreaded “blue screen of death,” where your work disappears for no apparent reason and can never be recovered! This from a guy who knows there will be bugs in his software and accepts that as an OK state of affairs. This from a guy whose virtual monopoly on business operating systems lets him ride roughshod over the people who have and continue to contribute to his billions of dollars of net worth.

Totally off-topic note:When you are working on something on your computer, make sure to use “CTRL+S” every few minutes! “CTRL+S” is your friend.

Don’t get me wrong here. I’m not bad-mouthing Bill Gates personally. Or event Microsoft (although I bet some of you do)! I’m not suggesting that we not learn from our setbacks and “failures” – a word I hate to use. Certainly we need to say to ourselves “OK, self, what can we learn from this less than optimally successful outcome? What can we do better next time?” Then we need to celebrate the success we did accomplish!

We actually did something that no one else has ever done. We made progress toward realizing our dreams and goals even if that progress was, in Bill Gates’ terminology, a “failure.” I like Mia Hamm’s advice much better: “Celebrate what you’ve accomplished, but raise the bar a little higher each time you succeed.”

Many of life’s “failures,” according to Thomas Edison, “are experienced by people who didn’t realize how close they were to success when they gave up.” Napoleon Hill agrees, saying “Most people have achieved their greatest success just one step beyond their greatest failure.”

Celebrate what you accomplish, but raise the bar each time you succeed. – Mahamm

Success doesn’t come easily as I’ve pointed out before. It’s kind of like reaching for heaven. You have to work to get there. So celebrate your accomplishments, no matter whether they are huge successes or, more likely, successful steps along your way to the ultimate goals.

If you aren’t sensing some common themes as you read this book then either I’ve done a less than adequate job of presenting them or you are really obtuse. J

Winston Churchill defined success as the ability to go from one failure to another with no loss of enthusiasm. Taken in the abstract, outside of any specific goals, success can be considered as the sum of small efforts, repeated day in and day out, that move us toward our ultimate objective.

You know you’re on the right track when you become uninterested in looking back.

How will you know that you are on the right track as you move toward your goals? For one thing, you will find yourself “in the zone” more often than not. You’ll find yourself visualizing the end result you are pursuing so vigorously that you’ll stop looking back and really concentrate more and more on looking forward. You’ll begin to adopt thinking patterns and action habits that will consistently propel you forward.

Celebrate the small successes as well as the large ones. A great life isn’t necessarily about great huge things. It’s about little things that can make a big difference.

When your self-doubter begins to try to undermine what it is you are doing to achieve your dreams and desires – to become truly happy – then remember that how you think and act will have a significant impact on how well you perform.

Unsuccessful People:

Fear change
Blame others
Think they know it all
Are Transactional
Talk about people
Hope others fail
Never set goals
Horde data and information
Exude anger

Do you want to attract people who fear change and blame others for their every misfortune? To be around people who think they “know it all,” avoid forming close and lasting relationships and talk about others? People who take perverse pleasure in hoping that others fail, never set goals for themselves, horde data and information and exude anger all the time?

Not me. You can have these kinds of people – if you want them in your life. But these types of people will suck the life out of you. You want to surround yourself with positive people. People who will lift you up, help you move forward, celebrate your successes with you as if they were their own. People who will continuously encourage you to grow and excel in whatever it is you’ve decided to do.

Successful People:

Embrace change
Accept responsibility
Continuously learn
Are relational
Talk about ideas
Hope others succeed
Keep “to-do” and “to-Be” Lists
Share data and information
Exude joy

I want to be around successful people. People who accept responsibility for their own situation, who learn continuously and who embrace change. People who value relationships and who talk about ideas instead of people. People who share information, hope – and help – others (me! you!) succeed and exude joy as we celebrate our successes.

Your celebrations don’t always have to be loud, grand or raucous affairs involving multiple people. If you’ve had a good day with a success or two you might just look in the mirror, smile, and nod at the person looking back. Sometimes the best way to end a great day is with a silent acknowledgment of achievement and, more important, fulfillment.

One activity that I’ve found very valuable is to build up a storehouse of favorable outcomes and their accompanying feelings for use with future challenges. If you use, for example, the physical techniques that Amy Cuddy suggests, you can couple those physical actions with the feelings of success that are associated with overcoming past challenges to build your confidence in overcoming future challenges.

You can also simply try smiling for ten minutes before entering a meeting or an interview. The act of smiling will change your brain chemistry just as Amy’s techniques have been proven to do. I do this before joining networking meetings and it works wonders.

Rather than letting your self-doubter undermine your confidence you can use positive self-talk to increase it. So when life is sweet say, “Thank you,” and store those times away for times when life is not so kind to you.

When life is sweet say “thank you” and celebrate. When life is bitter say “thank you” and grow.

You can use even the not so nice times to make life more pleasing in the future. As Oprah Winfrey has been known to say, “The more you celebrate in your life, the more there is in your life to celebrate.”

Promise yourself also to be just as enthusiastic about the success of others as you are about your own.

There is magic in celebrating your achievements and successes.

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The above material is from Chapter 8 of Inspiration Now! Order your copy now at http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00RQT1BLK to read the other 8 chapters!

July 15, 2015March 11, 2016

Visualize and Plan

Visualize & Plan – Chapter 2 Excerpted from Motivational Magic

Beginning the process of growth requires you to ask yourself a lot of questions. What is it that you’d like to accomplish in your life? What would you like to be doing as a career? How would you like to look? How would you like to be contributing to your own good, the good of your loved ones and the good of society? How do you want to be viewed by those who you care about? By those who you leave behind?

What is your fondest dream? How does it look when you visualize it? If you are not currently living it, and I can only assume that you are not or you wouldn’t be reading this book, how does it feel when you imagine that you are living it?

Regrettably, I can’t answer any of these questions for you. Only you can imagine how things should be, how you want them to be, how they will be once you’ve done what’s needed to make them happen.

What is your dream? How important is it to you? How willing are you to pursue it? What risks are you willing to take and what sacrifices are you willing to make to achieve your particular dream? Sometimes life is about risking everything for a dream that no one can see but you!

Change begins with a vision. A picture coupled with an emotion – how things feel when you’ve done what needs to be done to make reality as you experience it match reality as you have envisioned it. We’ll talk much more about the details of using the Visual Image Formation technique in Chapter 9, but the concept is essential to any and all changes that you’d like to make in your life.

If you can create a vision, and you most certainly have the power within you to do so, then you can constantly remind yourself of that image. You can use affirmations, notes on your bathroom mirror, schedule messages to pop up on your computer, tablet or smartphone. You can do whatever you need to do so that the vision remains in the forefront of your conscious mind so that it can be continuously transmitted to your subconscious mind.

Your subconscious mind – mainly the right brain hemisphere – is designed to keep reality as you experience it in harmony with reality as you envision it. In other words, if the reality as you’re currently experiencing it does not match the reality as you visualize it, then your subconscious mind will go to work to make you do the things you need to do to make reality as you experience it match reality as you envision it. Or it will change your vision. But more about that later.

Once you have successfully implanted your vision in your brain, you won’t be able to stop thinking about it. And if you can’t stop thinking about it you won’t be able to stop working on it – or for it. It’s a simple, but not necessarily easy, matter of putting your mind to work on making you do the things you need to do to make the vision a reality.

What will it make you do? Let us count just some of the ways:

It may prompt you to get answers to questions you hadn’t thought of before;
It may provide you with “aha” moments or answers – particularly after “sleeping on it;”
It may cause you to be more aware of something or someone around you;
It may encourage to gain new knowledge or new skills.

I have no clue exactly what will happen for you since I have no clue as to who you are, what you want, who you want to become or why you want the dreams you want. But you do! Or at least you can begin to find that out.

Identify what you want – creating a vision or mental picture as clearly and in as much detail as possible – enables you to plan to make that vision a reality. And it is in this planning phase where special care is needed.

Let’s say that you have a relatively short term dream of walking across the stage of a prestigious university in a cap and gown to receive your college degree. Visualize yourself doing that. Imagine, in great detail, how that will feel. Think about how much pride you will feel when that degree is hanging on your wall in your home, your study or your office. Imagine the things you can do now that you have your degree that you couldn’t do before.

Are you with me so far? And isn’t something else happening as you go through this exercise? What is it? Isn’t it your brain telling you that you can’t? That you don’t have the time, the intelligence, the money or something else to make this dream a reality?

This is where you really need to watch out. When you create a vision that is different than reality as you are currently experiencing it, then your subconscious mind will go to work to help you resolve the disharmony that is created when reality as you envision it doesn’t match reality as you experience it. So it will either help you do the things you need to do to make reality match your vision or it will change or corrupt your vision! But it will resolve the disharmony!

We all have the self-talker inside of us. It’s usually negative and left over from our earlier experiences as children or early in our careers. The “Well, I can’t because…” syndrome: I’m not good enough, I’m not handsome or pretty enough, I’m not smart enough, I’m not blah, blah, blah…”

When this happens, we need to recognize it and tell this inner voice to shut up! Tell that doubting voice that those excuses are in the past and are no longer inhibitors to new dreams and plans. Those were the bad old days and those were the bad old ways. You are good enough and, by golly, if you aren’t yet you soon will be! The strongest factor in achieving success is self-esteem: Believing you can do it, believing you deserve it and believing you will get it.

If you fall victim to this inner voice and begin to say to yourself “I can’t…,” then you will achieve nothing except the ability to say that you are always right. For if you say you can’t then you won’t and you should probably stop reading here.

Keep in mind as you visualize and begin the process of goal setting, strategy development and tactical implementation of your plans is that you’ll want to learn to develop a sense of urgency for achieving your goals. Life is short, and if there was ever a moment to follow your passion and do something that really matters to you, then the moment to get started on that passion is NOW!

Another thing that we’ll talk about further in future chapters is letting going of other kinds of baggage besides the self-doubter and the I-can’t-er. It is hard to keep a sharp focus on your vision of the future if your eye is stuck on the past or even sometimes on today.

This is not to say that the vision and the plan should become so all-consuming that we go overboard and ignore our day-to-day duties and responsibilities. Moderation in all things is the watchword.

We want to keep our vision in the forefront so that as we set goals, develop strategies and implement tactics we are making sure that each action we take contributes in some way, shape or form to the overall plan. We want to make sure that we make the rest of our lives, starting from this moment, the best of our lives.

I said in the beginning that there is magic in this book.There is also magic in believing – believing in what you want, what you visualize, what you need, what you desire or want and, most importantly, believing that you will get it!

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Get your copy of Motivational Magic on Amazon.com or from Kindle at http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0112ODGD. Order or download your copy now.