Here they are

1. Keep your list short – too many resolutions tend to defocus you.  Only keep a short list of resolutions and you’re most likely to achieve them.
2. Start something new – most of our resolutions are based on the “stop” word.  I’ll stop eating too much food, stop smoking or stop watching too much TV.  While it is OK, people tend to fail on the “stop” resolutions.  Instead, try to think of starting something new that will effectively achieve the same goal.  Instead of saying “stop eating too much food”, rephrase it to “start maintaining a healthy diet”.
3. Don’t cry over spilled milk – many people quit reaching for their new year’s resolutions when they encounter failure.  They think that they could no longer do it, that they don’t have enough will power.  Well, tell you what… WE ALL FAIL and that’s a part of life.  It’s not how much you fail but how much you keep trying that determines your success.
4. Plan it all out – if you want to lose fat then have a plan.  Put up an exercise schedule, list out your menu, etc.  This will give you guidelines and checklists to monitor your progress.
5. Write down your progress – a simple diary should do.  Research shows that people who write down their progress have greater success in sticking with it.  Think of it as a “pat on your back” each time you read your progress and a “reminder” each time you read your failures.

Hopefully, these 5 tips will help us all achieve our new year’s resolutions!

1. Know your business in and out – it’s your business and you have to know it all the way through.  Do as much as research as you can about your field of business and the competition.  This will help you build confidence in what you’re doing.
2. Make friends, a lot of friends – join associations that are related to your business and make friends.  Invite a bunch of like-minded folks to your home, eat barbecue and discuss business along the way.  Attend parties and local events.  You might just meet some really good friends in the process.  This also builds your credibility.
3. Shout it out – let people know what you’re doing.  Let your family, friends, neighbors and anyone else who will qualify for a human being.  Donate some of your products a few associations.  This builds a good image both for you and your business.  Warning: Do not over-advertise – people don’t like it.
4. Do not hype it out – do not oversell and over-promise.  It is always better to under-promise and over-deliver.  We’re so full of hype in this world already so let’s not add to the mess.
5. Offer your knowledge for free – people like free stuff.  Write articles and post them on the internet.  Put up free seminars in your area.  Create a video-tutorial and give out free CDs.  The more you do this, the more people will trust you.
6. Make good use of technology – it makes things easier.  Make the most out of your voice-mail, cellphone, email and websites.  Technology is here for a reason so use it.
7. Provide referrals – building your referral network is not just about bringing business along your way.  It’s also about sending business to other people.
8. Ask for it – yes, ask for it.  Don’t be shy to ask for referrals.  Let your friends know that you’d be happy if they can point a few people along your way.  Also let your existing clients know the same thing.
9. Don’t be a salesperson – while making sales is important in a business, it’s not just about sales.  If you want to build your business network really quick then don’t sell.  Just make friends and let them know of what you do.
10. Be your business – your business is an extension of you.  It’s not separate from you – it is you.  Whatever you do directly affects your business and vice versa so always keep this in mind.

See, it’s easy.  It’s not about selling or promoting all the time.  It’s just a matter of making people know what you do and making friends.  Friends = network.  Network = customers.  The more people who like you, the more sale will come your way.  It’s never the other way around.

Asking him what his driving force for success was, he answered, “Desperado na ako.  Yung iba inspirado, ako desperado na.” (I was already desperate.  Others were inspired but I was desperate.).

Inspiration is a good thing but this kid (12 years younger than I am) was not just inspired.  He had nowhere to go and he had no idea what to do.  He was 17 years old when he came across an opportunity with a great potential.  Seeing his future in it, he dove in and focused on it.  He did whatever it takes to succeed.  He threw away his pride and started selling to everyone within his circle.  His desperation was his driving force – he had to get out of that ditch called poverty.  He was really mad at his situation that he’ll do whatever it takes to get out of it.

The opportunity came with a cost – 11,588 pesos to be exact – but that didn’t bother him.  If that’s what it would take to get out of poverty, then he’ll find a way to raise that minimal business investment.  His desperation brought him inspiration and in a year’s time achieved a level of success unlike any other Filipino teenagers in the country.  Here’s a short video of him speaking more than a year ago – I found it on Youtube and he was only 19 when it was taken.

(Note: It’s in Tagalog, my apologies to the non-Tagalog speakers for now…)

Want to achieve the same success as he did? I can point you to the right direction. Post a comment below expressing your interest and I’ll email you back as soon as I can.

There are other inventors at the time who were also developing light bulbs but it was Thomas Edison who got it to the finish line.  His name is forever etched in history not because he was the first but simply because he was the most persistent, the most flexible, and possibly the most cunning as well.  As with many successful inventors, he too knows how to handle failure successfully.  Qualities like these define a true winner.

He too was a visionary, a trait displayed when Edison made the first public demonstration of his incandescent light bulb on December 31, 1879, in Menlo Park. It was during this time that he said: “We will make electricity so cheap that only the rich will burn candles.” – these words I often remember when I see expensive candle light dinners in first class restaurants.  LOL.

Finally, I think it’s worth saying that he did not invent the light bulb.  What Thomas Edison did was simply innovate, improving what others before him have already achieved.  Here’s an excerpt from Wikipedia that best shows Edison’s innovativeness:

In addressing the question “Who invented the incandescent lamp?” historians Robert Friedel and Paul Israel list 22 inventors of incandescent lamps prior to Joseph Wilson Swan and Thomas Edison. They conclude that Edison’s version was able to outstrip the others because of a combination of three factors: an effective incandescent material, a higher vacuum than others were able to achieve (by use of the Sprengel pump) and a high resistance lamp that made power distribution from a centralized source economically viable.

In summary, Thomas Alva Edison is a man with focus, persistence and determination.  He too knows how to handle failure, a visionary and an innovator.  Lastly, I think it is rightful to say that there’s a Thomas Edison in all of us.  We all have our light bulbs to create and we all have the obligation of lighting up the world one way or another.

That’s exactly what happened to me during the past couple of weeks and as opposed to riding a real theme park roller coaster wherein you’d love to get another ride after the gut-wrenching experience, I do not want to get another ride of this roller coaster ride of life.  I’m pretty sure most of us have already experienced such a scene in life, this in fact is not my first one – I’ve been through a lot, each being worst than the previous.

But what do you need to do if you’re in such a ride of your life?  Actually, all you can do is just ride it through knowing that it will all end sooner or later.  Your knees may shake after you’ve been through it but soon enough you’ll gather the strength to get back up and start living your life – reaching for your goals – again.

Now, I share this experience of mine (albeit in a vague manner) to you in the hope that you may be inspired.

I am writing this short article for a single purpose – to encourage you and the rest to just keep on going and going.  Go on until you can no longer go, reach for the goal until you’ve exhausted all your energy.  That’s what defines a winner.  To me, it’s not about getting their first nor is it being the fastest or the strongest.  To me this concept of “winning” is nothing compared to what I believe winning is all about.

Winning is about persistence.  It’s about how far you can go and it’s about whether or not you will do whatever it takes just to achieve your goal. In a race, some will be ahead, some will be left behind, some will be fast and some will be slow but all will be winners so long as they reach the finish line. That’s what I believe in.

It may take you days, months or years before you can reach your goal. People may start discouraging you but winning is about getting focused and not getting distracted by what others are saying. So what if it takes you your entire life to achieve your goal? Winners have one thing in their mind and that’s nothing else but their goal.

In short, winning is simply NOT TO QUIT!

I’ve missed more than nine thousand shots in my career. I’ve lost almost three hundred games. Twenty-six times I’ve been trusted to take the winning shot and missed. I’ve failed over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed. -Michael Jordan

Want it or not, failure is a pre-requisite of success.  Accepting this fact is the first step to successfully handling failure.  Most if not all successful people in this world have suffered lots of failure before they experienced success.  The very thing that made them victors is that they merely know this basic fact, that failure is part of being successful.

Failure is an absolute pre-requisite for success. You learn to succeed by failing. -Brian Tracy

For each failure you encounter, you are one step closer to success.  Thomas Edison made thousands of mistakes before he finally got it right when he invented the light bulb.  What kept him from quitting was his mindset.  He believes that he wasn’t making a mistake but rather that for each failed lightbulb, he simply discovered one more way NOT to make a lightbulb.

Being defeated is often a temporary condition. Giving up is what makes it permanent. -Marilyn Vos Savant

So, how many times does one have to deal with failure before he quits? My answer to this is you deal with failure until you achieve success. You just never quit. It may be the hardest thing in the world to do but still you don’t quit until you get there. It’s getting there that makes all the hardships and failures in life worth having. It’s all these embarrassing and heart-breaking moments that make us really appreciate the value of the goal that we want to achieve. So don’t quit.

I am not judged by the number of times I fail, but by the number of times I succeed… and the number of times I succeed is in direct proportion to the number of times I can fail and keep on trying. -Tom Hopkins

How many times do you have to be spat on the face, looked down at, called names, humiliated, scared to death and so on? As many times as it takes for you to reach success. That’s how you successfully handle failure.

Credibility is important for any entity – be it an individual or corporation. It’s not easy to build it but it’s way too easy to tarnish or even destroy it, especially online. So how does one build credibility and keep it good online? Here are a few tips that may just help.

1. Build a website – you can never build online credibility without it.  A blog is more than sufficient for this purpose and you can build your blog for free at www.blogspot.com
2. Be kind – be as kind as you can to everybody.  You can do this by writing comments on their blogs, praising their articles, or simply writing on their facebook wall.
3. Be honest – never exaggerate on things and never lie.
4. Be sociable – respond to people’s comments on your blog and social networks
5. Never spam – spamming can destroy your online credibility in seconds
6. Be yourself – don’t act as if you’re somebody else.  Just be yourself and you’ll have more friends online
7. Offer help – if you’re an expert in some field, offer your help for free to other people in forums, blogs and social networking websites
8. Post photos – upload wholesome photos of yourself and your family on your social networking websites.  You can also upload them on your blogs
9. Be consistent – be as consistent as you can in updating your online profiles, blogs, etc. This let’s people know that you’re alive and kicking
10. Be friendly – nothing can be better in building online credibility than being genuinely friendly to others

This list is not in any particular order.  I just wrote them as they popped into my head.  If you have more suggestions in building your online credibility, please feel free to post them as comments below.

Thanks!

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I think it’s called procrastination – the act of delaying an action to a later time. It all starts with putting off a single task either because you have something else to do, you think it’s too easy that you can finish it in no time or you simply don’t want to do it right now. Then another item gets added to the list and so on until the list gets so large, the mere sight of it tells your brain to procrastinate even more.

But, how do you deal with it? Here’s a short quote that basically sums up what I’m about to say.

“If you wait until all the lights are “green” before you leave home, you’ll never get started on your trip to the top.” – Zig Ziglar

Basically, what you need to do is to take on your list one “green-light intersection” at a time. As soon as you’re finished with item #1, then move on to item #2 and so on until you finish everything that you can finish for the day. Set a goal like “I’ll finish at least 5 items in my todo list today” and focus on it. Each item in your list is a “green light” telling you to move on.

The same quote applies when you feel overwhelmed by the huge number of items in your list. What I do here is organize the items into categories and start working on them – one step at a time. If there’s too much in my list to accomplish in one day, I tell myself that I don’t have to finish all of them today. This tells my brain to “relax” and makes everything look easier. I then set my goal to finish 5 to 10 items off the list.

So, the next time you feel procrastinating, just take it one step at a time and before you know it, your todo list is empty once again.