APRIL 2017
REMEMBER TO SAVE THE DATE AND REGISTER FOR OUR 32nd BENEFIT TOURNAMENT AT HACKETTSTOWN HIGH SCHOOL – SUNDAY, APRIL 23.
THERE IS STILL TIME TO REGISTER FOR THE 2017 ISSHINRYU WORLD KARATE CHAMPIONSHIP EVENT – JUNE 23rd & 24th IN MAINE.
IF YOU HAVE RECENTLY RECEIVED AN AMERICAN ISSHIN-RYU MEMBERSHIP, PLEASE BRING ME THE MEMBERSHIP NUMBER.
IF YOU ARE PLANNING TO ATTEND THE WORLD EVENT IN MAINE IN JUNE, PLEASE TELL ME.
“The 3 Rules of Simplicity” from Keep It Simple by Joe Calloway
One of my clients is a national trucking company. This is a business that involves logistics, systems, schedules, and details that could easily become overwhelmingly complicated. Yet this trucking company, which is one of the largest in the country, has harnessed the power of simplicity and focus to drive consistent success for years.
They have boiled it down to three simple rules that they abide by every single day.
- Pick it up when you said you would.
- Deliver it when you said you would.
- Deliver it intact and all there.A successful drive-in restaurant chain has done much the same in getting clarity on what is most important:
- Give customers the freshest, highest quality foods they can buy.
- Provide meals with friendly service.
- Serve in a comfortable, sparkling clean environment.These companies are great examples of the power of having a team with a shared, and simple, vision. It’s actually quite easy to come up with a wordy, complicated vision, mission, or goal. It’s much more challenging to create a goal that is simple and easy to understand. Resist the temptation to over think things. Boil it down to the essence of what matters most. We should strive to focus on the essential and minimize the rest. So what are the three most important things in your life, your work, or your business? You can stop overcomplicating. Boil it down to those three most important things that you must do well every day to create success, happiness, or fulfillment. This can, and should, take some time and thought, but it’s well worth the effort. Will this help me to create positive relationships?
- Will this assist me in reaching my goal?
- Will this get me where I want to go?
- Look at your daily choices, activities, and decisions and ask yourself your own version of “Will this make my life better?”
Stop and ask yourself:
- How do you see the world?
- How do you see yourself in the world?
- How do you see your relationship with the world?
- Do you see the opportunity?
- Do you believe it is yours for the taking?
- Do you feel worthy of success?
- Do you feel deserving?
- Are you asking for it?
- Are you looking for it?
- Are you listening for it?
- Are you open to it?
- Are you allowing it to manifest in your life and your presence, or have you convinced yourself that you do not qualify for one reason or another?
- Are you seizing the opportunity to advance yourself and the world in a mutually beneficial way or are you putting it off for another day?
- Are you expecting success or suspecting it?
- Are you even aware the choice is up to you?
- Success is the intentional, premeditated use of choice and decision. Unless you choose—with certainty—what it is you want, you accept table scraps by default!
- The world is plump with opportunity. With boldness and conviction, stick a fork into the goals you want by being decisive.
- You are born with great capabilities, but you will not achieve your potential until you call upon yourself to fulfill it. You will rise to the occasion when it presents itself; yet, to assure self-fulfillment, you must provide occasions to rise to.
- Clearly defined goals allow you to travel toward another horizon that represents the end of one experience and the transition to a new and better existence. The objective is to choose the right goals, and then to create the necessary causes—the effects will follow!
- The DIFFERENCE between what one person and another achieves depends more on goal CHOICES than on ABILITIES.
- The profound differences between successful people and others are the goals they choose to pursue. Individuals with similar talents, intelligence, and abilities will achieve different results because they select and pursue different goals.
- Each decision affects WHAT YOU BECOME. We form our decisions and our decisions form us.
- There is no escaping this; the smallest choices are important because—over time—their cumulative effect is enormous.
- Never overlook the obvious: The nature and direction of your life change the instant you decide what goals you want to pursue.
- Once you make a decision, you start down a path to a new destination. At the moment the decision is made, your decision to pursue a goal alters what you are becoming. Just one spin of the lock’s dial—a single choice—can alter your life, your destiny, your legacy.
- Think about it—your goal decisions represent and express your individuality. You seal your fate with the choices you make.
- YOU DEFINE YOURSELF BY YOUR DECISIONS.
- Your dialog with success is ultimately a solo one. Decisions and goals made must be your own if you are to call your life a success.
- Always establish the best goals you can. Goals are the seeds of success—you become only what you plant. The quality of your harvest is a direct reflection of the quality of your seeds…your decisions!
- Indecision is the big eraser of opportunity and potential. Risks and costs accompany every decision; however, the price of decision is far less than the long-range risks and costs of comfortable inaction. When it comes to decisiveness, squatters have no rights.
- Everyone has an official wish list of things they think are “reasonable.” What about the unofficial wish list? The one that common sense tells you to ignore? The list that exists deep in your mind, the list that keeps you up at night, the list that makes your toes wiggle when you think of it? Why not choose that list for a change?
- How long have you dreamed of being, having, and doing what you really want? Think big, as when it comes to your goals, the size of your ambition does matter.
- Choose a path, commit to success, and you’ll rise to the occasion.
The fact is, you have more potential than you could use in a hundred lifetimes. And the more of your potential you use, the more potential becomes available to you. You have the ability right now to achieve more than you ever have before, as long as you incorporate essential mental skills into your life: clarity, focus, and concentration. These are the three essential requirements practiced by all successful people throughout history to accomplish extraordinary results and great achievements. Just as you can strengthen your muscles through hard work and concentration, you can develop mental toughness through discipline and repetition.
Think about what is being done at our dojo. Each class has a clear pattern that leads toward success. Learn basic fundamentals and then practice them. Repetition heightens concentration, strengthens the body and mind leading to improved focus and improved ability. This improved focus positively impacts the success each student finds in the dojo, school and work.
“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.” —Margaret Mead
