One of my favorite classic books on the philosophy of success is Think and Grow Rich, by Napoleon Hill. I was advised long ago “to read it for the rest of my life”, and so I do read it several times per year and I also have the audio book version so I can listen to it on my ipod.
What I love most about his writing is he is direct! He gets you to think differently. Napoleon Hill provides practical teaching of HOW you too can apply successful methods to your life. I always pick up new insights or “golden nuggets” to apply to my life and in my business and as a result I have created a wonderful life and business..
As a Results Coach, almost everyone I talk to has ongoing goals, challenges, many successes as well as (temporary) defeats. It’s completely normal, right?
The one challenge I see so often is how to effectively manage time so that the majority of your time is spent on the things that are most important to you. (This is common sense yet not common practice.)
Here is a good place to look in your own life. Your goals for 2009 will either be achieved or not and I can guess if you take some time to assess yourself, you could easily see how time played a major role in whether or not you achieved your goals for 2009.
The good news is you still have some time left. Actually you have 36 days left in 2009. Below is a great tool to Take Inventory of Yourself.
The next step of course it to TAKE ACTION! If you’ve read Think and Grow Rich, read it again and if you’ve not read it, do it very soon, you will be glad you did.
Enjoy!
Donna
Take Inventory of Yourself
by Napoleon Hill
This philosophy calls for a careful personal inventory on your part in order to determine how much of your time you are using wisely and beneficially, and how much of it you are wasting. This inventory requires that you answer (to yourself) these questions:
a. Do you have a definite major purpose, and if so, how much of your time are you devoting to attaining that purpose?
b. If you have such a purpose, what plan or plans have you for its attainment? Are you working your plans persistently, through organized effort, or working them only intermittently, when the notion strikes you?
c. Is your definite major purpose obsessional, or is it merely a wish or a weak hope?
d. What have you planned to give in return for the realization of the object of your definite major purpose?
e. What steps have you taken to associate yourself with others, under the master mind principle, for the attainment of your purpose?
f. Have your formed the habit of accepting temporary defeat as a challenge to great effort?
g. Which is the stronger, your faith in the attainment of the object of your definite major purpose, or your fear that you may not attain it?
h. To which do you devote more time: the carrying out of the plan you have adopted for the attainment of your major purpose, or brooding over the obstacles you may have to overcome to attain it?
i. Are you willing to forego personal pleasures temporarily so that you may have more time to devote to the attainment of your major purpose, and are you doing so?
j. Do you recognize the truth that you have no assurance of more than one second of time - this very second - in which to live; that your life is being measured out to you second by second; that once a second has passed it can never be recalled, and the use you make of it can never be changed or modified?
k. Do you recognize that the present circumstances of your life are the result of the use you have made of your time in the past; that this very second may through its proper use, change the entire course of your life?
l. Do you recognize that your mental attitude, whether it is positive or negative, can be changed at will in one second of time?
m. Do you know of any way in which you can be sure of personal success except by the use you make of your time, through the thoughts you think and the physical action with which you back those thoughts through organized plans?
n. Do you believe you will ever succeed by luck or by some unexpected good fortune which is not related to your own thoughts and deeds?
o. Do you know any person who is apt to inspire you with the necessary personal initiative to enable you to attain the object of your major purpose unless you take the lead and first inspire yourself?
p. When you are overtaken by defeat, do you analyze its cause and determine why it happened, or look for some plausible alibi with which to explain it?
q. Do you believe there is a natural law through the operation of which every individual is forced to benefit, or suffer, from the results of his own thoughts and deeds?
r. Finally, are you accepting a part of this philosophy and rejecting other parts? Or, are you applying the entire philosophy, according to the instructions given, in all of your thoughts and deeds?
These are questions you must answer if you are to take a firm hold of yourself and make the best use of your time. They are direct questions and some of them are very personal, while others are almost brutally blunt. But they are the questions which every successful person must answer at one time or another.
