1. If you do what you have always done, you will always get what you have always got! – Yes, this is true.  You will always get whatever you will when you do the same thing over and over again.  If you want something bigger and better or being more successful, you need to break out from your usual cycle!
2. Everyone has his or hers own unique map of the world – To change it, you need to first understand it – This is taken from NLP.  Each of us has our way of thinking and life experience.  To influence someone, we need to know their mental model.  We need to know why certain things are important to them and through that we can address them accordingly when we want to influence them.
3. You already have most of the resources you need to influence people – You are all of the resources.  You need not read all the books on influence and negotiation to get you influential.  What you need to do is practice and practice.  Practice makes perfect.  Sharpening your influencing skill in every session.  You can shape the way you perceive things.  It all starts from you!
4. If someone else can do something, you can learn from the person’s success – You just need to model their skills – Do not reinvent the wheel.  People are success because they have a model that is effective and working already!  Learn from them.  Emulate the best practices from them that work well for you.
5. The meaning of your communication is the response you get – There are no failures, only outcomes – Yes there are no failures, only outcomes.  Whatever response you give, whatever decision you make will only generate outcome.  Therefore, it’s wise to always think of what you desire to achieve and work towards that, instead of blaming on yourself or anybody for being the point of failure.

This is taken from the book, The Influential Fundraisers authored by Bernard Ross and Clare Segal.  This book has content targeted to fundraisers as the title describes.  However, the applicability of the techniques can be used on all aspects of influence and negotiation.  That is even to influence your colleagues and boss to a decision or influence a customer’s sales decision.  Be sure of what your colleagues are basing on in deciding and you will definitely be able to influence them more easily.

You must have heard from motivation speakers about living your dreams.  Thinking is believing (following the doing).  But is that possible in the real world now?  We have tons of baggage to carry along with us in the journey of life.  We have to make money in order so survive.  How can we think ideally and achieve the ideal outcome?

It is possible in some sense if we believed and hold on to this belief!  It goes the same at work as well!  Ideal situation wants the best of both worlds.  NO! Ideal situation wants the BEST OF ALL WORLDS! That is what it means.  This will make us plan and execute to have the ideal outcome.  But what we are doing at work is compromise.  We adopt a give-and-take mentality with whatever situations that are given to us.  We work with our limited resources and optimize the maximum outcome.  We work with our colleagues to achieve results that are partially beneficial between both of us.  It’s not ideal at all!

Now, let’s compare between ideal situations and compromise.  Ideal situations plans for getting an ideal outcome while compromise plans and executes for a compromise outcome between both sides.  We should achieve more than what our normal (compromise) baseline!

From young we were taught to live our dreams.  But when we step into the real world, it is almost impossible to vision what we dreamt of in the young.  We were taught to compromise on resources.  What must go up somewhere will result in something going down somewhere.  When you want to earn more cash by meeting more clients after work, you get less time to spend with your family for dinner.  It is a zero-sum equation. But now, think Ideal situation!  You want to meet more clients after work yet you want to have time to spend with your family for dinner every night!  You work towards that by planning effective schedule, by meeting targeted high ROI clients!  You get your sales and you get more time with your family!

That’s why; thinking (and planning and executing) of achieving ideal situation is such a powerful concept in personal productivity and success!  Now do you compromise your position or negotiation power in order to keep things moving?  At the end of the day, do you get what you desired?  Is it what you want in the end?  Can you feel the potential of this concept if you were to apply it to your daily life and work?

1. Drink more water – Plain water.  Not soda or caffeine.  Plain water is good and essential for your body to work properly.  From our biology classes, you should have known that most of our body mass is water and water is required to remove impurities from our body.  Therefore, it’s essential to consume appropriate amount of water throughout the day.
2. Visit the loo on time – Don’t hold your bladder just to sit through the meeting or to complete piece of work.  Let’s admit it, some of us do that.  You may have completed the work on time and on momentum, but this will eventually hurt your body in the long run.  Holding the bladder is unhealthy for the body.
3. Avoid staying in air-conditioned rooms for long hours – If you are living in a tropical country that has a weather that is totally unpredictable, where it can cold in the early afternoon, extremely warm in the mid afternoon and back to cold in the evening, you can run into the risk of virus infection.  Air-conditioned environments are usually dry and contain dust that can cause nasal allergy.   Also, with a central air-conditional system running in the building, it is vulnerable to the “sick building” symptom where viruses or illness can be spread easily with the central system.
4. Occasionally go for a light diet – Too much burgers and fries will build large amount of unnecessary carbohydrate in your body.  Maintain a light diet.  Take less meat.  Take more vegetables and fruits.  You need a balance diet that consists of balance nutrients in take.
5. Stretch frequently – If you are desk-bounded and do not go out often, up and stretch!  Stretching for 15 minute every hour is enough to compensate the lack of exercise at work.  Stretching not only boost blood flow in the body, but also prevents the joints from degenerating easily.

By doing all these simple activities at work, you can have a healthier body to keep up to your daily needs.  Keep your body healthy at all times.  Remember, no matter how much planning you made and efficient you are, you will still need a healthy body to deliver output.  Therefore, do not neglect your health and you be sure to get even more productive than you can imagine.

Do not Bow to Challenges!

The first and foremost, do not bow to the difficulties of the challenge.   Think, a challenge would not be called a problem/challenge if there isn’t any difficulty with it.  If we withdraw ourselves from facing a challenge, and admit that we will never overcome the challenge, then we will never be able to achieve any success in our life.

Challenges can be seen like a wall. This wall separates the people that want to achieve success and those that do not want to achieve success.  If you allow yourself to stop in front of the problem/challenge, then most likely you are not those that have the desire to succeed in life.  In fact, you should consistently tell yourself, by taking up challenges, you are actually keen to succeed in your life.  The challenge is merely a door that you have to walk through.  Those that fear walking through it will never be able to find success.

Get Back Your Life Goals

In our modern age, we tend to seek a lifestyle that is far necessary of what a normal human being should.  The pursuit of such life style makes the world we live in more demanding and complex. Behind the pursue, when we achieve the type of lifestyle, we become complacent with what we have.  Our desire to excel slowly fades away in time when we always want to go the easy way out.

Sometimes, we need to look back at where we started off.  There are people who left their high-paying job in exchange for a simple business.  Or even join volunteering groups.  By looking back at ourselves, we find things that are close and true to ourselves.  We find new challenges in us and the motivation to push ourselves to excel.

Transform Risk into Motivation!

When the tough gets going, the rewards are higher.  No pain no gain.  These are unarguable truth.   We frequently get disappointed after a failure.  More than often, we are afraid to bear the consequences of failure.

Everything there is an associated risk.  And we know, risk and rewards come together in a package.  If you choose to take low-risk approach, your rewards will be not as fantastic.  You might as well continue with whatever you feel comfortable with.  However, when you take a high-risk approach, your rewards can be of limitless.  View risks as forces of motivation instead of fearing them.  We are sure that by doing sufficient preparation and homework, you will gain confidence in taking up the challenges!

1. Walk – Yes walk more.  Try not taking your ride out for the week.  Experience walking.  Feel the environment around you that you may have missed out while driving.  Jog too.  Breathe in the fresh air in the park.  Don’t you find it boring to run on the treadmill (like some hamster)?
2. Smile – Always.  To everyone.  Smile silly to yourself sometimes.  This cheers you up and brightens your day.  Smile even if someone makes a mistake.  Smiling is contagious.
3. Drink Water – Yes more plain water.  Plain water is essential for a healthy body.  Your body needs it.  Not soda or the caffeinated beverages.  It’s unhealthy and waste of the money.  You can curb the urge to have these flavoured drinks.
4. Buy Used Items – Be thrifty.  It’s not necessary to get the latest stuff or getting branded goods.  Whatever works will do.  You can save tonnes on it.  Same philosophy, sell your used items.  Keep them in good condition and they can fetch you some money.
5. Under-organize – Sometimes it’s counter-productive to keep things complex.  Sometimes things are work better when they are simple and sweet.  There’s always this saying, “Keep It Simple Stupid!” and it does have its rights in its message.
6. Live Small – Don’t over spend.  Don’t spend beyond your capability.  Don’t get a personal loan.  You will always be indebted to the creditor (unless they collapsed).  Save or use the money for better purpose.  In the long run, you need not worry about your cash flow in the office and you’ll be happier.
7. Be Adaptable – You are always adaptable.  Stay nimble and flexible.  Always remember that you can be adaptable in all situations.   If things don’t go your way at a point of time, change yourself, change your mindset, adapt to the situation.  This will make you more accustomed to changes around you and keep you positive.
8. Don’t JUST follow the Lists of Rules – Don’t confine yourself with rules.  Yes, we do need rules to guide our directions.  But at times, break out of the rules.  Do what is necessary and productive accordingly.  Don’t blindly follow them.

1. Get in tune with things such as reading or listening that motivates you every single day. Don’t allow a single day to pass without injecting external motivation in your daily life.
2. Keep track of your daily progress in a journal and carry it wherever you go.  Record the changes.  Observe if you are abiding to your daily schedule.  It may seem like a chore but the main objective is to monitor your daily progress and if it eventually leads to your life/career goal.
3. Set goals and make changes to the goals accordingly.  Goals will change overtime.  Don’t worry about making goals that right now feel unattainable or baseless. The hardest part of making big goals is starting.  Break goals into smaller achievable ones.  In this way, you won’t feel overwhelmed and you gain a sense of achievement whenever you reach the smaller ones.
4. Keep track of every person you meet.  Record the name and the details of the conversation you had with them.  In this way, you never miss out any new friends and opportunities.  It will come in handy in future as your network grows.
5. Start investments.   Let your money grow for you at the same time where you progress in your career.  However, do let one of them reduce the productivity of the other.
6. Begin looking for opportunities to build passive income (money that you don’t have to work for once you’ve done the initial work).  Note down all the ideas you have for passive income.  The most important thing you can do is be aware of the ideas you already have.   You want to retire early right?
7. Sleep at your optimal level.  Do not waste your time sleeping your life.  Just imagine how much you can achieve with all the time wasted when you are over sleeping. However, do not get yourself burnout by depriving yourself from your necessary rest hours.  It will be counter-productive if you push yourself over the limits.
8. Look for opportunities to serve. Others will be wiling to help you when you are willing to help others too.  You will find more happiness and peace when you help people.  Which at times more valuable than real cash.
9. Stop being a victim. Focus on what YOU can DO, and DO IT. Stop assigning blame and don’t look for excuses. Take responsibility of your decision.  No point going on in a downward spiral of self-blame.  Divert the negative energy towards positive growth!