Life Is a Do It Yourself Project!

If you have not realized it yet, no one is going to hand you the golden platter with your life’s forward path laid out on it for you to follow. You are the only one that can take the steps to improve your situation and life. Change is difficult; I’m here to help you take off. Get started with some very basic steps that will allow you to t can and I show some simple steps to follow in getting started. First let’s understand the three phases you are going to dive into; the what, how and when.

The *What* phase is digging into your self improvement psyche and brainstorming a list of areas to improve about yourself. This list should include anything about you requiring improvement. Dig deep and be honest.

The *How* phase is simply five steps that guide your through your list created the *What* phase, to actions you will take. Examples may include your desire to be a more creative and healthier cook at home, train for a 5k run, learn a foreign language.… the key is list than all. In this phase these five steps help me get going on my self improvement journeys; convince, create, categorize, prioritize and initiate.
1. Convince- you are the only person that can commit yourself to this whole process, if you can not convince yourself no one else can and you will fail. Why, because you will let distractions and setbacks stop you. Any doubts at this point, a close friend or partner may be able to review what you are engaging in a give you that push, I encourage you to talk with them as a way to convince yourself, *I can do this*.
2. Create – write out your list of improvement items, at this point put anything and everything you may think of on the list. Include areas specific to health, personal relationships, family, income, your job, education, sports, family, communication, relationships … the list is limitless as you can see.
3. Categorize – now that you have your list it is time to put the lists in common categories that are manageable. These categories should be such that some of the items may compliment each other. For instance, cooking or eating may fall under improving your health, walking, and swimming or running can fall under improve physical activity and appearance. You get the idea, simplify.
4. Prioritize – Take you categories and review them critically, pick out the top 3 or 4 ones that you seem the most interested in, put the others aside for now but do not throw away, remember this is a Life long journey. With your selection down to 3 or 4, now pick only two … you guessed it … now pick one. There may be more than one item under this category so you need to repeat this same prioritization exercise again until you have identified the one!
5. Initiate – What are the resources you can tap to learn about this subject, is it the internet, local continuing education, on-line universities, seminars ... seek out subject matter experts. This may take a little time a so be patient. A good starting point on the internet search is to identify key words regarding your subject; these will expedite the search and give you greater access to the resources that are available. I have found the resources at Success University to be among the best, here is a link for you - http://start.successuniversity.com/specialoffer.aspx

For just $2 you have 14 days of unlimited access, how great is that!

Next comes *When*, this phase creates milestones and a timeline for measuring your achievement towards the self improvement goals. Do not underestimate or overestimate the time it will take you to achieve some of these life changing activities. Understand and remember how long it took you to be where you are, it will not be easy, but you can do it.
Include in this milestone and timeline chart, specific tasks required to get you towards your ultimate achievement goal. Keep this list with you and visible, not only will this keep you focused. If you are a visual person, stick-up reminders everyplace you can on the specific task to be accomplished as well as you ultimate goal. Many tools can be helpful, calendars, day planners or PDAs are terrific.

You are in control; now just dedicate yourself to giving the 1st project a try.

A Good Memory Equals Greater Success

If you can learn how to improve your memory you will certainly be able to become more successful. Just think of how nice it would be to be able to recall little nuggets of information from your last business trip. Sure you can write down a lot of information so that you can refer back to it later, but you will not always have the ability to take notes. In a face to face, personal conversation with a prospective client, you may not want to take notes. In this case you will be relying on your memory until you can translate the information onto paper.

There are two important parts to your memory: concentration and recall. These are the two areas that you are going to have to improve upon if you want to have a top notch memory. There are a few ways that you can improve your concentration and recall skills.

The first thing to do is make sure you get the information correct the first time. It is very difficult to obtain bad information, and then replace it with the correct information. Pay attention to the speaker carefully so that you get everything right the first time.

Next, make sure that you understand what you are learning. If you do not have any concept as to what something means, you are going to have a very difficult time recalling the information. If you do not understand something the first time, go over the information again until it is thoroughly understood.

Also, being selective can also help you recall information. Instead of trying to recall the entire conversation that you had with a business associate, concentrate on trying to remember the important points. The less information that you have to remember, the easier it will be to recall it at a later point.

Concentrate on what is important, and try to test yourself as you move forward. If you are reading a manuscript and want to remember the main theme of every page, test yourself at the end. This will let you know if you have fully understood the page. If you have trouble recalling the information read it again.

Finally, remember to take everything that you have memorized and write it down. The second that you leave a meeting or classroom you will want to translate your memory onto paper. This way you can repeatedly study the information at a later date.

A good memory can go a long way in achieving success and reaching your goals. You need a good memory for everything from the business world, to the classroom, to social situations. The above tips are a very good place to start if you need to improve your memory skills.