FREEDOMQUEST

Get Better Results than Ever Before
There are several principles of military strategy that you can apply to your business, every single day. These can help you to think better and get better results than ever before.

Do the Unexpected
One really helpful military principle that can be applied to business is the Principle of Surprise. The principle of surprise says, "do the unexpected!" In sales and marketing, this means to be continually seeking ways to out-flank or upset your competition.

Do the Opposite of Before
Sometimes doing exactly the opposite of what you have been doing up till now can turn out to be the perfect solution. The natural tendency for a person, when they find themselves in a hole, is to dig deeper. In many cases, the solution is to go and dig somewhere else. Remember, the first law of holes is, "When you find yourself in one, stop digging."

Follow-up and Follow-Through
A second military principle that applies to business is the Principle of Exploitation. The principle of exploitation emphasizes the importance of follow-up and follow-through. In business, this means that, when you get an opportunity, you exploit it to the fullest extent possible. If you have a great promotional idea or product or service, you sell all you can. You take advantage of your idea or breakthrough and use every opportunity to capitalize on it.

Work Harmoniously With Others
The third principle of military strategy that applies to personal and corporate thinking is the Principle of Cooperation. In business, this is often called the principle of synergy. In military terms, this is often called the principle of "concerted action." In business terms, your ability to work effectively and harmoniously with other individuals and groups is more responsible for your success than any other quality.

Win the Cooperation of Key People
A key part of strategic thinking is for you to identify the individuals, groups and organizations whose cooperation you will require to achieve your goals. Make a list of them and then organize the list in order of importance. Then ask yourself, "How am I going to win their cooperation?"

Answer Everyone's Favorite Question
Everybody wants to know, "what's in it for me?" The effective executive is always looking for ways to help or assist others knowing that this is the only sure way to create within them a desire to help you to achieve your goals.

By doing the unexpected, by following up and following through, and by constantly looking for ways to get other people to cooperate with you, you will accomplish more in a shorter time than you might ever have imagined.

Action Exercises
Here are two things you can do immediately to apply these ideas in your business and in your work:

First, look at your job, especially the areas where you are experiencing frustration, and question whether or not there is a completely different way of approaching your problem or situation. Do the unexpected. Perhaps you should be doing exactly the opposite of what you are doing today. All success in business comes from surprising the competition in some way.

Second, identify the people, groups and organizations whose assistance you will need to achieve your goal. Continually look for ways to earn their support and cooperation by thinking in terms of what is in it for them.

You Get What You Give
Ralph Waldo Emerson, in his essay, "Compensation," wrote that each person is compensated in like manner for that which he or she has contributed. The Law of Compensation is another restatement of the Law of Sowing and Reaping. It says that you will always be compensated for your efforts and for your contribution, whatever it is, however much or however little.

Increase Your Value
This Law of Compensation also says that you can never be compensated in the long term for more than you put in. The income you earn today is your compensation for what you have done in the past. If you want to increase your compensation, you must increase the value of your contribution.

Fill Your Mind With Success
Your mental attitude, your feelings of happiness and satisfaction, are also the result of the things that you have put into your own mind. If you fill your own mind with thoughts, visions and ideas of success, happiness and optimism, you will be compensated by those positive experiences in your daily activities.

Do More Than You're Paid For
Another corollary of the Law of Sowing and Reaping is what is sometimes called the, "Law of Overcompensation." This law says that great success comes from those who always make it a habit to put in more than they take out. They do more than they are paid for. They are always looking for opportunities to exceed expectations. And because they are always overcompensating, they are always being over rewarded with the esteem of their employers and customers and with the financial rewards that go along with their personal success.

Provide the Causes, Enjoy The Effects
One of your main responsibilities in life is to align yourself and your activities with Law of Cause and Effect (and its corollaries), accepting that it is an inexorable law that always works, whether anyone is looking or not. Your job is to institute the causes that are consistent with the effects that you want to enjoy in your life. When you do, you will realize and enjoy the rewards you desire.

Perception Is Everything
There are four "Ps" that will enhance your ability to persuade others in both your work and personal life. They are power, positioning, performance, and politeness. And they are all based on perception.

Develop Personal Power
The first "P" is power. The more power and influence that a person perceives that you have, whether real or not, the more likely it is that that person will be persuaded by you to do the things you want them to do. For example, if you appear to be a senior executive, or a wealthy person, people will be much more likely to help you and serve you than they would be if you were perceived to be a lower level employee.

Shape Their Thinking About You
The second "P" is positioning. This refers to the way that other people think about you and talk about you when you are not there. Your positioning in the mind and heart of other people largely determines how open they are to being influenced by you.

In everything you do involving other people, you are shaping and influencing their perceptions of you and your positioning in their minds. Think about how you could change the things you say and do so that people think about you in such a way that they are more open to your requests and to helping you achieve your goals.

Be Good At What You Do
The third "P" is performance. This refers to your level of competence and expertise in your area. A person who is highly respected for his or her ability to get results is far more persuasive and influential than a person who only does an average job.

Commit to Excellence
The perception that people have of your performance capabilities exerts an inordinate influence on how they think and feel about you. You should commit yourself to being the very best in your field. Sometimes, a reputation for being excellent at what you do can be so powerful that it alone can make you an extremely persuasive individual in all of your interactions with the people around you. They will accept your advice, be open to your influence and agree with your requests.

Treat People Politely
The fourth "P" of persuasion power is politeness. People do things for two reasons, because they want to and because they have to. When you treat people with kindness, courtesy and respect, you make them want to do things for you. They are motivated to go out of their way to help you solve your problems and accomplish your goals.

Being nice to other people satisfies one of the deepest of all subconscious needs, the need to feel important and respected. Whenever you convey this to another person in your conversation, your attitude and your treatment of that person, he or she will be wide open to being persuaded and influenced by you in almost anything you need.

Perception Is Reality
Again, perception is everything. The perception of an individual is his or her reality. People act on the basis of their perceptions of you. If you change their perceptions, you change the way they think and feel about you, and you change the things that they will do for you.

Action Exercises
Here are two things you can do immediately to put these ideas into action:

First, think continually about the impression you want to make on others and then make sure that everything you do or say is consistent with that perception.

Second, be nice to people. Practice the Golden Rule in your interactions with others. Always be polite and make others feel important.

The more people like you, the more open they are to being influenced by you.

Motivational leadership is based on The Law of Indirect Effort. According to this law, most things in life are achieved more easily by indirect means than they are by direct means. You more easily become a leader to others by demonstrating that you have the qualities of leadership than you do by ordering others to follow your directions. Instead of trying to get people to emulate you, you concentrate on living a life that is so admirable that others want to be like you without your saying a word.

The Most Powerful Motivational Leaders
Perhaps the most powerful motivational leader is the person who practices what is called "servant leadership." Confucius said, "He who would be master must be servant of all." The person who sees himself or herself as a servant to others and who does everything possible to help them perform at their best is practicing the highest form of servant leadership.

The Leader of Today
Today's leaders are the ones who ask questions, listen carefully, plan diligently, and then build consensus among all those who are necessary for achieving the goals. The leader does not try to do it all alone. The leader gets things done by helping others do them.

Qualities of Leaders
The following are important qualities of motivational leaders. These are qualities that you already have to a certain degree and that you can develop further to stand out from the people around you in a very short period of time.

Vision
The first quality is vision. This is the only single quality that, more than anything separates leaders from followers. Leaders have vision. Followers do not. Leaders have the ability to stand back and see the big picture. Leaders have developed the ability to fix their eyes on the horizon and see greater possibilities.

Motivate Others
The best way for you to motivate others is to be motivated yourself. The fastest way to get others excited about a project is to get excited yourself. The way to get others committed to achieving a goal or a result is to be totally committed yourself. The way to build loyalty to your organization, and to other people, is to be an example of loyalty in everything you say and do.

The Ability to Choose
One requirement of leaders is the ability to choose an area of excellence. Just as a good general chooses the terrain on which to do battle, an excellent leader chooses the area in which he and others are going to do an outstanding job. The commitment to excellence is one of the most powerful of all motivators. All leaders who effect change in people and organizations are enthusiastic about achieving excellence in a particular area.

Action Exercise
Try a new attitude toward your employees; show up on Monday morning and be positive and cheerful. If you are motivational, your attitude will rub off on your employees and they will work more efficiently.

Here are seven goal-setting questions for you to ask and answer over and over again. I suggest that you take a pad of paper and write out your responses.

Question Number One:
What are your five most important values in life?
This question is intended to help you clarify what is really important to you, and by extension, what is less important, or unimportant. Once you have identified the five most important values in life for you, organize them in order of priority, from number one, the most important, through number five.

Question Number Two:
What are your three most important goals in life, right now?
This is called the "quick list" method. When you only have thirty seconds to write down your three most important goals, your subconscious mind sorts out your many goals quickly. Your top three will just pop into your conscious mind. With only thirty seconds, you will be as accurate as if you had thirty minutes.

Question Number Three:
What would you do, how would you spend your time, if you learned today that you only had six months to live?
This is another value questions to help you clarify what is really important to you. When your time is limited, even if only in your imagination, you become aware of who and what you really care about.

Question Number Four:
What would you do if you won a million dollars cash, tax free, in the lottery tomorrow?

How would you change your life? What would you buy? What would you start doing, or stop doing? This is really a question to help you decide what you'd do if you had all the time and money you need, and if you had virtually no fear of failure at all.

Question Number Five:
What have you always wanted to do, but been afraid to attempt?
This question helps you see more clearly where your fears could be blocking you from doing what you really want to do.

Question Number Six:
What do you most enjoy doing? What gives you your greatest feeling of self-esteem and personal satisfaction?
This is another values question that may indicate where you should explore to find your "heart's desire." You will always be most happy doing what you most love to do, and what you most love to do is invariably the activity that makes you feel the most alive and fulfilled. The most successful men and women in America are invariably doing what they really enjoy, most of the time.

Question Number Seven:
What one great thing would you dare to dream if you knew you would not fail?

Imagine that a genie appears and grants you one wish. The genie guarantees that you will be absolutely, completely successful in any one thing that you attempt to do, big or small, short or long-term. If you were absolutely guaranteed success in any one thing, what one exciting goal would you set for yourself?

Action Exercise
Study the pad of paper that you used to answer these questions. This paper represents your future goals. Look at what you wrote every day and shape your life the way you see it on that paper.

The most important application of the law of cause and effect in your life is this: thoughts are causes, and conditions are effects. What this means is that your thought is creative. You create your world by the way you think. Nothing in your world has any meaning except for the meaning you give by how you think about it and talk about it. If you don't care about something, it has no effect on your emotions and actions.

How to be Happy
Many thousands of people have been interviewed over the years to find out what they think about most of the time. Can you guess what the most successful and happy people think about all day long? The answer is simple. Happy healthy people think about what they want, and how to get it, most of the time. When you think and talk about what you want, and how to get it, you feel happier and in greater control of your life.

How to be Unhappy
What do unhappy people think and talk about most of the time? Unfortunately, they think and talk about things they don't want. They think and talk about their problems and pains, and the people they don't like. Sometimes, their whole lives revolve around their complaints and criticisms. And the more they think and talk about what they don't want, the unhappier they become.

The Most Important Quality
Based on many psychological tests, the happiest people seem to have a special quality that enables them to live a better life than average. Can you guess what it is? It is the quality of optimism! The best news about optimism is that it is a learnable quality. You can learn to be a more positive, confident, and optimistic person by thinking the way optimists do—most of the time.

Look for the Good
Optimists seem to have different ways of dealing with the world that set them apart from the average. First, as we mentioned, they keep their minds on what they want, and keep looking for ways to get it. They are clear about their goals and they are confident that they will accomplish them, sooner or later. Second, optimists look for the good in every problem or difficulty. When things go wrong, as they often do, they say, "That's good!" and then set about finding something positive about the situation.

Seek the Valuable Lesson
The third quality of optimists is that they seek the valuable lesson in every setback or reversal. Rather than getting upset and blaming someone else for what has happened, they take control over their emotions by saying, "What can I learn from this experience?" Fully 95% of everything you do is determined by your habits, good or bad. When you repeatedly look for the good and seek the valuable lesson in every obstacle or disappointment, you very soon develop the habit of thinking like an optimist. As a result, you feel happier, healthier, and more in control of your world.

The Body-Mind Connection
More and more doctors are coming to the conclusion that 80% or more of all diseases and ailments are psychosomatic in origin. This means that "psycho," the mind, makes "soma," the body, sick. You do not get sick from what you are eating, but from what is eating you.

Action Exercise
Resolve from now on to see your glass of life half full rather than half empty. Give thanks for your many blessings in life rather than worrying or complaining about the things you do not have. Assume the best of intentions on the part of everyone around you.

Great business leadership is characterized by honesty, truthfulness, and straight dealing with every person, under all circumstances. This law requires that you be impeccably honest with yourself and others. As Emerson said, “Guard your integrity as a sacred thing. Nothing is at last sacred by the integrity of your own mind.” Integrity lies at the core of leadership, at the heart of the leader. Everything you do revolves around the person you really are inside. And the person you are inside is always demonstrated by your actions, the things you do and say.

Leadership Defined

Leadership has been defined as the “ability to get followers.” For people to follow you, to subordinate their interests to yours, they must be able to believe in you and be willing to commit their time, money, and energy to you. Leadership is therefore a trust conferred upon you by others. To earn this trust, to deserve this trust, you must be true to yourself. Only then can you live in truth with everyone else in your life and work.

Be a Good Role Model

Perhaps the most important thing you do as a leader is to be a good role model. Lead by example. Walk the talk. Live the life. Always carry yourself as though everyone is watching, even when no one is watching. Good leaders are completely reliable. People can take them at their word and trust that they will do what they say. They make promises carefully, and then always keep their word.

Consistency

A key mark of integrity in human relations is consistency, both internal and external. The best leaders are consistent from one day to the next, from one situation to the next. Because of this internal consistency, these leaders are trusted. People know what to expect. There are no surprises.

Two Basic Types of Leadership

There are two basic types of leadership in business today, transactional and transformational. Transactional leadership is the ability to direct people, manage resources, and get the job done. But transformational leadership, the most important form of leadership today, is the ability to motivate, inspire, and bring people to higher levels of performance.

Transformational Leadership

Transformational Leadership is the ability to touch people emotionally, to empower them to be more and to contribute more than they ever have before. This ability enables transformational leaders to elicit extraordinary performance from ordinary people.

Action Exercise

Resolve to live in truth with yourself and with every person and situation in your life. Listen to your body and trust your intuition. Identify the main stress points and people problems in your life and then ask yourself, what is the right thing to do in this situation to resolve this problem and alleviate this stress?

On a flight, when your plane takes off, the pilot tells all the passengers to stay in their seats with their seatbelts buckled. In many cases, the pilot will say, “We expect a certain amount of turbulence for the first part of the flight, so please stay buckled up.” When you start any new business or job, you will experience turbulence as well.

Control Your Responses

Strong people expect to experience problems on their journey toward their goals and destinations. Weak people are surprised and dismayed when things don't work out the way they had expected. They become angry and lash out. They blame other people for their problems. Often they become depressed or irrational. Your success is largely determined by your ability to respond effectively to problems as they come up. Fortunately, you can learn a number of effective strategies practiced by successful people to deal with problems.

Problems Go with the Territory

First of all, expect to have problems, disappointments, and temporary failures. Don't be shocked, surprised, or angry when they occur. Instead, take a deep breath, relax, and say, “Solving problems is my job; problems are what I do.” Each time you solve a problem, you will become even more capable of solving even greater problems. The major reward you get for solving problems is the opportunity to solve even bigger problems.

Think in Terms of Solutions

Superior people are intensely solution oriented. They think about solutions and what can be done rather than the problems and who is to blame. They are future oriented and continually think in terms of the actions that they can take immediately to control the damage, minimize the problem, and move ahead. One of the best strategies you can use is to practice mental preparation with regard to problems. Resolve in advance that no matter what happens, you will remain calm and relaxed.

Ask Questions

When you deal with unexpected turbulence in your business or personal life, you can keep yourself calm, clear, and focused by asking questions rather than reacting or overreacting. First of all, get the facts. What exactly is the problem? How did it occur? Sometimes, the solution to the problem is contained within the problem itself. The very act of asking questions keep you calm and in control. Focus on the solution.

Accept Responsibility and Take Charge

Once you have clearly defined the problem (and confirmed that it actually is a problem) and you have thought about the various actions you can take to solve or minimize it, the next step is the either take responsibility for taking action or assign specific responsibility for taking action to someone else. Think always in terms of actions you can take. Just as a pilot facing unexpected turbulence keeps both hands on the wheel and his or her eyes on the gauges, when you experience problems, you must take command of your situation and ensure that you are flying in the right direction.

Action Exercise

You become a superb pilot of your own destiny by dealing effectively with the inevitable storms that occur in your work and personal life. Next time a situation occurs take a deep breath, and then begin to think of solutions to that situation .

The turning point in my life came when I discovered the law of cause and effect, the great law of the universe, and human destiny. I learned that everything happens for a reason. I discovered that success is not an accident. Failure is not an accident, either. I also discovered that people who are successful in any area usually are those who have learned the cause-and-effect relationship between what they want and how to get it.

Determine Your Personal Growth and Development Values
To realize your full potential for personal and professional growth and development, begin with your values as they apply to your own abilities. As you know, your values are expressed in your words and actions.

You can tell what your values are by looking at what you do and how you respond to the world around you. Your values are the root causes of your motivations and your behaviors.

Clarify Your Personal Growth and Development Vision
Create a long-term vision for yourself in the area of personal growth. Project forward five or ten years and imagine that you are developed fully in every important part of your life. Idealize and see yourself as outstanding in every respect. Refuse to compromise on your personal dreams.

Set Goals for Your Personal Growth and Development
Now take your vision and crystallize it into specific goals. Here is a good way to start. Take out a piece of paper and write down ten goals that you would like to achieve in the area of personal and professional development in the months and years ahead. Write in the present tense, exactly as if you were already the person you intend to be.

Determine exactly what you want to be able to do. Decide who you want to become. Describe exactly what you will look like when you become truly excellent in your field and in your personal life.

Upgrade Your Personal Knowledge and Skills
Set specific measures for each of your goals. If your goal is to excel in your field, determine how you will know when you have achieved it. Decide how you can measure your progress and evaluate your success.

Perhaps you can use as a measure the number of hours you study in your field each week. Perhaps you can measure the number of books you read or the number of audio programs you listen to. Perhaps you could measure your progress by the number of sales you make as the result of your growing skills.

Develop Winning Personal Growth and Development Habits
Select the specific habits and behaviors you will need to practice every day to become the person you want to become. These could be the habits of clarity, planning, thoroughness, studiousness, hard work, determination, and persistence.

Action Exercise
Decide today to develop yourself to the point where you can achieve every financial and personal goal you ever set and become everything you are capable of becoming. Write down your goals and make sure to look at them every day, then ponder ways you possibly achieve these goals.

Perhaps the most outwardly identifiable quality of a high performing man or woman is "action orientation."

1. Take Time to Think and Plan
Highly productive people take the time to think, plan and set priorities. They then launch quickly and strongly toward their goals and objectives. They work steadily, smoothly and continuously and seem to go through enormous amounts of work in the same time period that the average person spends socializing, wasting time and working on low value activities.

2. Getting into "Flow"
When you work on high value tasks at a high and continuous level of activity, you can actually enter into an amazing mental state called "flow." Almost everyone has experienced this at some time. Really successful people are those who get themselves into this state far more often than the average.

In the state of "flow," which is the highest human state of performance and productivity, something almost miraculous happens to your mind and emotions. You feel elated and clear. Everything you do seems effortless and accurate. You feel happy and energetic. You experience a tremendous sense of calm and personal effectiveness.

3. Become More Alert and Aware
In the state of "flow," identified and talked about over the centuries, you actually function on a higher plane of clarity, creativity and competence. You are more sensitive and aware. Your insight and intuition functions with incredible precision. You see the interconnectedness of people and circumstances around you. You often come up with brilliant ideas and insights that enable you to move ahead even more rapidly.

4. Develop a Sense of Urgency
One of the ways you can trigger this state of flow is by developing a "sense of urgency." This is an inner drive and desire to get on with the job quickly and get it done fast. This inner drive is an impatience that motivates you to get going and to keep going. A sense of urgency feels very much like racing against yourself.

5. Create a "Bias for Action"
With this ingrained sense of urgency, you develop a "bias for action." You take action rather than talking continually about what you are going to do. You focus on specific steps you can take immediately. By employing this technique you concentrate on the things you can do right now to get the results you want and achieve the goals you desire.

Action Exercises
Here are two things you can do immediately to put these ideas into action:

First, select one major task confronting you and launch into it immediately. Don't hesitate. Move fast.

Second, start doing this every morning, first thing, until it becomes a habit.

This is a wonderful time to be alive and working in the profession of selling. Regardless of the ups and downs of the economy or temporary changes in your industry, there have never been more opportunities for you to achieve more of your goals—and enjoy a higher standard of living—than exist today by selling more of your products and services in the marketplace.

Commit to Excellence
Ambitious people have one remarkable characteristic in sales. They dream big dreams. They have high aspirations. They see themselves as capable of being the best in their fields. They know that the top 20 percent of salespeople make 80 percent of the sales, and they are determined to be among that top group.

Act As If It Were Impossible to Fail
Fear, uncertainty, and doubt are, and always have been, the greatest enemies of success and happiness. For this reason, top salespeople work continually to confront the fears that hold most salespeople back. The two major fears that stand as the greatest obstacle on your road to success are the fear of failure, or loss, and the fear of criticism, or rejection. These are the major enemies to be overcome.

Put Your Whole Heart into Your Selling
Selling has often been called a transfer of enthusiasm. The more enthusiastic and convinced you are about what you are selling, the more contagious this enthusiasm will be and the more your customers will sense it and act on it. Human beings are primarily emotional in everything they so and say. This is why caring is a critical element in successful selling.

Position Yourself as a Real Professional
Top salespeople see themselves as consultants rather than salespeople. They see themselves as advisors, helpers, counselors, and friends to their clients and customers. They see themselves as problem solvers more than anything else.

Dedicate Yourself to Continuous Learning
To earn more, you must learn more. You are "maxed out" today at your current level of knowledge and skill. You cannot get more or better results by simply working harder using your present abilities. If you want to earn more in the future, you must learn and apply new methods and techniques. Remember the old saying: "The more you do of what you're doing, the more you'll get of what you're getting."

Action Exercise
Develop an action plan for personal and professional development. Prepare a "training schedule" for yourself exactly as if you were training for a marathon or a big competition.