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3 Unconventional Methods for Automatic Success
Motivation

3 Unconventional Methods for Automatic Success

Willpower helps you get started but it’s limited in keeping you going in the long term. By its design, willpower is limited and eaten away bit-by-bit by the daily stresses and the demands of life. As willpower loses its power to propel you forward you end up falling short just when you need it the most. To avoid this, you need low investment/high return strategies to conserve willpower that carry you towards your goals. To help, there are 3 easy methods that “put the wind at your back” that take little effort to set up but proven to keep you going in the direction of your goals. Environment Creating your environment can make the difference between taking the stairs or riding the escalator to your destination. Studies have shown that your environment has as much to do with influencing your behavior as your conscious decisions. Even more, how you structure your environment will either impede your progress or keep you inching forward automatically. For example, drinking more water, as a goal, is made more consistent by simply putting water bottles on the front of your refrigerator shelves and putting food and other beverages on the back of them. The simple act of creating more effort to reach for the back shelf versus the water on the front shelf makes it easier for you to maintain the new behavior. Designing your rooms with bright colors instead of neutral colors can create a greater sense of positive well-being; putting your workout clothes out the night before makes them easier to put on and get to the gym; placing a pen and paper on your desk each day makes it easier to maintain a set writing schedule. Anything you can do to elevate or remove barriers to your new behavior will make following through easier for you to create consistent behaviors in line with your goals. Routines Most individuals go through their day on auto-pilot as they follow the path of least resistance. This explains why you see people put on the same clothes after work day-after-day, cook the same food the same way, get up in the morning to prepare for the day the same way, watch the same movies, and more. Following the same routine is habitual and satisfies your need for certainty in an uncertain world. It gives you a sense of “control” as your habits burn little energy since they are optimized by the routines you follow. However, you can create better habits that take you in the direction of your goals by designing better routines. Begin by taking small steps to follow a series of daily consistent actions to support your long-term growth. For example, if you’re trying to drink more water, then set a routine to drink a glass upon waking up then adding a glass before meals then after meals. One event triggers the other and becomes part of your daily routine. You can do the same thing with exercise where you lay out your clothes in a spot, then at the set time you get dressed and go to the gym. It seems simple, but you don’t burn energy thinking about what to wear as your about to go exercise because you’ve already done it beforehand. In one seamless transition, from laying your clothes out, you’ve eliminated the need to think about it and just move into action. Start thinking about how you can prepare to make each action of your routine frictionless, where there is no unnecessary energy needed to move from motion to motion. Eventually, the routine creates better habits which strengthens the desired behavior. Social Proof Mirror neurons are hardwired into your DNA and are responsible for helping you learn how to survive and thrive in your early environment. They help you look out at the world to the people are around you (i.e. parents) and mirror back expressions of happiness, joy, fear, anger, and teach you how to copy a kaleidoscope of situations. They are always collecting data on your environment and social group to help you mirror back what you see and adjust in your group. This is important because the group of people you spend the bulk of your time with are likely to be the average of your career type, physical fitness, education, annual income, and the sum of your current life experiences. Because your hardwired with mirror neurons, the group you surround yourself with is also reflecting the group’s values back to you. While this provides you with a level of support and certainty, it fails to help you achieve greater things for yourself. Like the way gravity works in that you can escape its pull in the short-term but eventually it pulls you back to your level of comfort. To grow, you need to start by looking for people who are achieving the type of success you desire for yourself. Then, spend as much time as you can with them and their group of friends. This can be uncomfortable at first but, over time, subtly, you’ll begin to adapt new behaviors and a bias towards a new set of actions to reach the success you aspire to. Great achievements can take a lot of hard work but with the right methods you can reach your goals faster. Spending as little as 15 minutes a week to think critically about your daily actions and how you enhance your efforts with these 3 tools is all it takes to see meaningful progress. Commit to spending that time implementing these approaches to your daily life and you’ll find that you’ll make faster progress with less effort yet achieve more at the same time.

How This One Quality Will Help You Succeed in Everything
Skills

How This One Quality Will Help You Succeed in Everything

Inventor Thomas Edison toiled away doggedly in his laboratory to find the answer to the incandescent lightbulb with the goal of illuminating the world. Failure after failure plagued Edison as he tirelessly sought to find the way to create light on demand, going so far as to sleep in his lab in his clothes for weeks while pursuing the answer. Over 1,000 experiments were made in the pursuit of creating light on demand but failure was the result each time. However, Edison continued with the same breathtaking consistency and enthusiasm as when he first began, and he created the light-bulb illuminating the world in the process. In each case study, overwhelming odds were overcome by applying maximum effort in the face of repeated failure with the same robust energy as in the beginning efforts. The single variable was a distinct quality that makes the difference in overcoming great obstacles to achieve great outcomes -- grit. What is Grit? Angela Duckworth, author of the bestselling book Grit, calls grit a type of mental toughness to bear any burden with great enthusiasm while displaying the will and perseverance that never yields. Any goal worth pursuing is going to require taking on new tasks while learning new skills which can be a combination of intimidating and overwhelming. Adding to that, success is not a straight line remaining adaptable to the needs of the moment while maintaining the ability to go forward is vitally important. Duckworth’s purpose in studying grit was to help students to persevere through difficult work despite setbacks and failure. In pursuing her purpose, she discovered 4 distinct characteristics in gritty individuals across a diverse set of vocation. They are: Interest Deliberate Practice Purpose Hope Interest At the very beginning of an individual’s journey is the spark of curiosity about a thing or event they get exposed to. From this exposure, curiosity grows into passion drawing the individual deeper into the finer details of the activity. As the individual pursues answers in the pursuit of their passion, it transforms to ambition where they attempt to pursue a vocation while doing the thing that they love. Mark Zuckerberg was interested in coding from an early age. He would code for hours and hours learning the intricate steps to designing new programs. His passion for coding would keep him occupied, often causing him to be so drawn in to what he was doing he would forget to eat or drink anything. Later, when introduced to the early concepts of social media while attending Harvard, his coding experience allowed him to see deeper into its vast potential. That same experience gave him a different set of eyes into what would eventually become Facebook as he obsessively worked the long hours needed to bring his vision into reality. Even today, his interest in programming causes Facebook to continually evolve drawing ever-increasing amounts of billions of people to its site every day. Find what interests you -- what brings out your passion -- and pursue it relentlessly while seeking to get better along the way. Deliberate Practice All great goals are works of art which require long hours of deliberate practice to bring them into reality. The greater the goal, the greater the commitment is needed to persevere till success is achieved. Focusing on the process leading up to success is going to be an important distinction to avoiding the urge to quit. Practice evolves over time into “deliberate practice” where you can focus intensely with all your internal and external resources while striving to improve. Over time, small degrees of improvement cause your skillset to grow and become more efficient, transforming your practice into mastery. It’s at this level where the magic really begins to happen, and your progress begins to grow exponentially. Purpose As passion starts to take over, you begin to tie your identity to what you’re doing, and it begins to become your purpose. Having a purpose behind what you’re doing is a powerful motivator that can sustain you even in the greatest defeat or when you’re filled with doubt. In 2004, Stephen R. Covey, businessman and best-selling author of The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, wrote in a revised copy of that same book -- a story about his granddaughter, Shannon. Shannon was in Romania when she encountered a young orphan girl who was sick. The little girl was so sick that she vomited all over Shannon’s dress. Shaken, Shannon then glanced at the child to see that the small girl raised her arms for a hug. Immediately, she embraced the child and felt herself filled with a sense of purpose to serve the people of Romania. The power of purpose is a force multiplier that propels you forward to continue the work that you have been inspired to do especially when don’t feel you can continue. Hope The characteristic of hope maintains the belief that you can create the change that you seek in yourself and the world. Hope sustains in you in the lonely hours by supporting your belief that you can grow, attain the skills, educate yourself, and eventually create the change they want for yourself and/or the world. It’s this self-affirming belief that supports a growth-mindset, which helps you make small, incremental improvements and grow. These small improvements don’t make much of an impact by themselves but over time can cumulatively make a lasting impact on your ability to achieve success. Hope is strengthened when you experience doubt or fear and then move beyond them. Hope gives you the ability to set aside negative feelings and go forward anyway. Over time, as you take small but consistent daily actions in the pursuit of your goals, hope replaces disempowering feelings and thoughts of inadequacy. When it does, you’ll find yourself transformed into a stronger, more successful version of yourself. What it all means The hard truth is that most people give up too soon or put off doing the things that would help them succeed. Like a muscle, grit grows stronger over time and has the power to recreate a person’s identity, making them stronger, more resolute, tenacious, and able to support themselves in achieving excellence. Fortunately, each of the key components of grit can be trained and made stronger on the path to success.

Introducing the Ultimate Productivity Tool for All Your Business Needs
Productivity

Introducing the Ultimate Productivity Tool for All Your Business Needs

Today, it’s possible for a small business to compete on a global scale with the right information at the right time. And even if you're not trying to get to that level, you need access to data to make informed decisions -- the future of your business can depend on the visibility you get into certain metrics. Fortunately, there is a universe of specialized applications that can help you grow sales, track visitors, pull up key data, target ideal customers, and much more. These tools can help you sharpen your competitive edge, so you can reach new growth and attain success. However, with the overwhelming amount of business solutions on the market, you’re now faced with a new challenge: finding the best service for your company. And implementing the use of a new platform takes time and resources, so you want to get it right. Enter 9 Spokes, a centralized solution that serves several business needs with one convenient tool. Here's how it works, and how it can help you take your company to the next level. Consider it your cockpit Jet pilots understand the need to access real-time data. The cockpit of a plane is a tight, focused compartment that provides pilots with decision-making tools at their fingertips -- targeting, weapons to deploy, radar, and communications. The pilot interacts with each of these key areas to make continuous data-based, tactical decisions and win. Any weakness in any of these “spokes” and the whole structure collapses. In the same way, 9 Spokes offers you the ability to manage your business in several key areas: money, customers, product, people, marketing, sales, productivity, information, and a specialist feature. Each pillar features the best apps available on the market to improve that area of focus, and 9 Spokes vets every app that is integrated in its smart dashboard. With the 9 Spokes centralized dashboard, you can harmonize all these apps and tools to work together in the same way that a symphony conductor manages an orchestra. Each tool plays its part, but you act as the conductor bringing them together in harmony. Driving results Whether you need to deep-dive into Google Analytics to find sources of untapped opportunity or manage your expenses through QuickBooks, 9 Spokes allows you to integrate the tools you need to navigate your way through the treacherous waters of business. Want the ability to market to your customers from one focal point? No problem, add in Mail Chimp to your 9 Spokes dashboard. Need a platform to operate your e-commerce business? Add Shopify to your dashboard and simultaneously keep a close eye on KPIs. Do you need help managing your customer service requests? Plug in Zendesk’s app and/or Live Chat’s apps into your dashboard and you're good to go. Also, 9 Spokes goes beyond providing the ability to add apps to your toolbox. It also gives you the ability to optimize your tools as you grow. For example, if you’re a startup reaching a new level of growth and aren’t sure of what direction to take, 9 Spokes can help you personalize your service according to your unique needs. The Power of Pursued Simplification There is an inherent beauty in keeping things simple. Steve Jobs relentlessly pursued the simplification of all of Apple’s products to make it easier for users to benefit from them. In a similar way, Henry Ford simplified car manufacturing to make cars a more accessible commodity. Jobs simplified the ease of use for the customer, and Ford simplified the production process to drive affordability. The relentless pursuit of simplification had and still has a ground-shaking impact on the world. 9 Spokes has achieved both the things that Jobs and Ford worked on: It's easy to use as a business owner, and it's free to join. Find out more about 9 Spokes here.

3 Warrior Principles that Will Get You on the Path to Meaningful Living
Purpose

3 Warrior Principles that Will Get You on the Path to Meaningful Living

Modern life seems geared towards helping you gain everything for nothing, without sacrifice or pain, yet falls short in teaching you how to overcome life’s inevitable challenges. And, looking closer, the high promise of success without effort is really a lie that appeals to lazy thinking and leads you to falsely believe you can gain something meaningful without working for it. Worse, this type of thinking breeds entitlement and a false sense of superiority. When success doesn’t come, it creates strong resentment that can cause you to lose faith with yourself and the world. But if you can just reconnect with your own wisdom and strength, you can emerge a stronger, more capable version of yourself. The warrior archetype Famed Swiss psychoanalyst Carl Jung discovered common psychological patterns across humanity, which are called archetypes. Archetypes are deep-rooted aspects of ourselves that can act as frameworks for fully developing your potential. The most common archetype across all cultures is the warrior. In modern times, the warrior is commonly identified as a man in battle, but it is much more than that. It represents the importance of living bravely and having the courage to face your fears rather than shy away from them. The warrior offers distinct lessons on living authentically while transcending our fears. 1. Living courageously At the beginning of each January, millions of people make New Year resolutions to change their lives, but often see their commitment start to wane at the first sign of adversity. The warrior embraces this adversity and uses it to grow stronger, looking at it as a source of strength to inch forward towards goals, past fears and onto success. Stephen Hawking personified this concept, as he was diagnosed with Lou Gehrig’s disease at 21 and told he wouldn’t live past 25 years old. He ended up living for another 56 years, even as his body was ravaged by the disease that confined him to a wheelchair, unable to move and only being able to communicate through a voice box. Despite dealing with a condition that would have driven most of us to depression, Hawking never considered himself handicapped, and spent his live learning about his disease. He later became a subject matter expert and brought his experience to ongoing research, while also becoming an accomplished author, professor, and physicist. In life, obstacles are constant, but the warrior symbol reveals that you have a choice: Allow yourself to be defeated at the first sign of adversity or face them head on with courage. 2. Being willing to confront The warrior archetype shows that you must be willing to confront your dragons and slay them. Dragons are metaphors for fears that arise on the way to your goals or dreams. Your inability to ask for a raise, confront a bully at school, deal effectively with your insecurities, own up to your shortcomings, admit your own innate weakness, deal with your own trauma, or follow through on your plans are all examples of dragons that must be confronted and slayed. This is not to say you have to be confrontational, but you have to train yourself to be willing to meet your problems head on. If not, you can become a slave to your own doubts and be forced to live beneath your potential. Today, pick something that you’ve been avoiding and take small, measured actions towards dealing with it. As you do, you’ll discover that your own dragon is not as powerful as you think, which will give you the confidence to tackle bigger issues that have been holding you back. 3. Fighting for what's right During the war with Nazi Germany, Winston Churchill said, “You may have to fight when there is no hope of victory, because it is better to perish than to live as slaves.” This remark was made when Germany had a strong military advantage over Great Britain, but Churchill was steadfast in his opposition to the Nazis. Even when the Nazis offered Great Britain an honorable peace in exchange to end the war, Churchill remained unmoved. He displayed a warrior archetype behavior because he understood what was at stake. He believed with all his heart he was on the side of justice in what was a clear clash between good and evil. For Churchill, the only choice he could make was to fight forever. That said, it’s important to consider that you are remembered for the fights that you take on but also the fights that you don’t take on. Always ask yourself if your cause is on the side of justice and in the service of a higher calling. And, once your choice is made, then the warrior within you remains steadfast no matter the cost. Think about it: If Churchill had wavered and settled for peace, how different would the world be today?

The 4 Steps to Finding Your Purpose That No One Told You About
Purpose

The 4 Steps to Finding Your Purpose That No One Told You About

Your ability to go out, compete for jobs and earn a living reveals that you’re self-sufficient and deserves recognition. Yet, at the end of the day, you may experience the inevitable question: Is this all there is? To achieve greater levels of fulfillment, you need a higher calling than just serving your individual needs or pursuing external rewards. But getting to that next level of fulfillment requires a bigger purpose -- and it won't show up by itself. Most people passively wait for their purpose, agonizing over their failure to become inspired or the fact that life is passing them by. The truth is, they are making this too complicated. For the purpose of this exercise, we'll use the same example throughout the article. Keep in mind that this technique can be applied to any area of interest. The 4 steps to finding your life's purpose 1. What do I enjoy doing for fun? To give your life purpose, you need find out what’s important to you first. What are the things that you like to do? What do you spend time on when you’re not working? This could include hobbies like reading, woodworking, fixing old motorcycles, working out, playing tennis, golfing, or whatever else you like to do for fun. List all the things that you like to do, and pick your top passion activity. 2. Who needs what I know? If your top passion activity is reading about business strategy, then spend some time searching for Facebook groups, book review blogs, forums, LinkedIn groups, or look for local book clubs. Find ways to connect with people who could benefit from your knowledge on the topic you're passionate about. Once you’ve established a list of contacts and joined online or in-person groups, start reaching out and engaging those who could use your help. Make it your mission to find out what their passions are and what kind of problems they experience. You will get a variety of answers about obstacles you could potentially help these people with, so take notes. 3. What do they want? By engaging with others, you start to understand things. For example, if we stick to the interest in business strategy mentioned above, you could notice that startups are desperate for sales and the revenue they bring in, but they can’t afford to hire a high-priced consultant. Many startups will fail prematurely simply because they are not able to target their ideal customer and take them through the sales cycle by helping them solve a problem. As someone who is passionate about business strategy, you understand that startups need to grasp how to setup a system of lead-generation. This lead-generation system targets their ideal customer while having a process in place that takes the customer from prospect to client while adding value to both sides. 4. How will they change as a result? The company learns to create its own lead-generation campaigns and becomes self-sustaining. This increases the odds that the startup will succeed and prosper, thanks to you simply doing what you already love to do. Crafting Your Life’s Purpose Try this exercise for yourself and answer each of the four questions in order. Now, distill your answer into a statement for your life’s purpose. Some of the life-purpose statements could look like this: “I teach startup companies how to setup their own successful lead generation systems.” “I help startup companies succeed by getting all the business they can handle.” “I help businesses succeed with lead-generation.” “I develop lead-generation systems to make startups profitable.” “I help make customers aware of cutting-edge business products and services.” “I help bring together ideal customers and cutting-edge companies to add value to both parties.” Don't overcomplicate things You can have a lot of fun with this as you refine your message, but be careful about dismissing the exercise as too simple. It’s supposed to be simple. Too many people overcomplicate the process of finding their purpose and make it more complex than it has to be. The key to this process is understanding that this is not about money, but about helping elevate others so they can fulfill what’s truly important to them. By doing so, they can reach their dreams and goals while you fulfill your sense of contribution, adding meaning to your life. Oh, and this is also the perfect way to start making a living doing what you love.

4 Steps to Living Like a King - In the Best Possible Sense of the Word
Self-Development

4 Steps to Living Like a King - In the Best Possible Sense of the Word

The pace of your life can seem overwhelming and out of control at times. Competitive pressure at work, growing demands from your family and external events seem to eat away at your peace of mind and ability to be fully productive. Yet, deep within yourself lies an ancient part that yearns to reconnect with you and give you order out of chaos. Famous Swiss psychoanalyst Carl Jung explained that there are psychological archetypes that are common among all humanity. Archetypes are psychological patterns that act as a framework for behavior in a given area of your life. The King archetype is a framework for leadership roles and acting in the pursuit of a higher calling. Living the Right Virtues The King represents an idealized version of the person you want to ultimately become. Every person has a unique ideal self, comprised of the traits, character, and virtues that they aspire to develop. Children often play games while trying to display acts of courage, fearlessness, creativity, and intelligence, which are the early signs of these ideal virtues. And if this is done consistently, it will become hard-wired as part of their personality. Throughout history, the King archetype follows the mythos that if the King embodies the right virtues -- justice, for example, he will flourish and so will his kingdom. This means that the King must think, feel, and act in alignment with these virtues. And just like the King archetype and the way kids play games, in your own life, there must be categorical imperatives or maxims (ex. Don’t lie, don’t cheat, go the extra mile, etc.) that you must truly live by to set the tone for your success. As a leader, manager, business owner, or just as a person, you are the ruler of your given domain and you are responsible for your results, as well as nurturing those in your sphere of influence. You lead by example with the intention of creating prosperity for those around you. Providing Order Every king has a kingdom to rule. The mythos of the King archetype reveals that when the King embodies the right virtues, he sets the example for others around him. At any given point in your life, you’re going to be given responsibility for the welfare of someone else, either directly or indirectly. Your family, your department, your position at your church, coaching little league baseball, mentoring a young person are all different examples of these opportunities. Your ability to live your values in those situations will set the tone and create a positive influence over others. Your expectations for your behavior will raise the standards for the people around you even when you’re not around, which is the ultimate form of leadership. Begin by acting honestly in all your interactions and going the extra mile in all your activities. Act as if every moment is being recorded for review to help stay consistent with your principles. As you do, your actions will begin to provide a sense of order for others to follow. Fertility One of the King’s responsibility is fertility, which is to create an environment of prosperity. Begin to think about the long-term impact of your decisions instead of the short-term gratification. For your household, it means thinking more about saving and investing versus taking on consumer debt. American households carry an average of $16,061 in credit card balances, while making just the minimum payment every month, which hardly sets the stage for a compelling retirement. Growing household debt not only makes it harder to save for a secure retirement but creates a strain on most marriages. The main cause of discord among married couples is money, a leading reason for divorce. This creates another dilemma when considering the impact of divorce on children. When factoring in its negative impact on child development, you see another domino fall in the poverty side of the equation. In business, failing to maintain strong relationships with your customers or catering to their needs creates an opening for a competitor. Lose enough of your best customers and business suffers. From a prosperity standpoint, in every aspect of your life, every decision you make has an impact -- positive or negative -- on the long-term effect on your "kingdom." Begin spending time considering the long-term impact of both the decisions you make as well as the decisions you fail to make. Blessing The King is responsible for bestowing blessings on his followers. This is symbolic, and is done by affirming the positive virtues and actions of others around you. By giving recognition, rewards, and praise, you bring awareness to the very virtues you wish to nurture. Many marriages have broken up due to a partner not feeling appreciated, and many first-class workers have quit good jobs because they didn't feel valued or recognized. Managers recognize and reward ideal employees for displaying excellent customer service, generals award medals to soldiers for bravery, and parents praise their children for displaying good behavior. These are all acts of gratitude and awareness of a job well done. Plus, they set higher standards for your domain while motivating everyone else to follow suit. Going Forward The King archetype is a strong framework to regain a sense of control over your life by answering a higher calling in the service of others. Having authority over others is not being a tyrant yelling commands and making threats. That just reveals a weak character that will never lead quality people and will likely sow the seeds of their own failure. But using this framework to idealize the person you want to be based on your principles and making sure you are of service to those within your sphere of influence can help you and others prosper. This sets the stage for your success but, more importantly, a life well lived.

Introducing the Best App for Building a Meaningful Network
Skills

Introducing the Best App for Building a Meaningful Network

Sponsored content — thank you for supporting Goalcast in its quest to help you unlock your full potential. There is a factor that gives some people an unfair advantage in life and business -- their network. A powerful network can create a quantum leap in the number of business opportunities you get, your career and your income. People who are born into well connected families do have a clear advantage, but it is possible for you to make your own luck by building a new network full of thoughtful and help people. Shapr, a free networking app, is working to level the playing field. The app gives you the power to connect to the right people, even if you are an incredibly busy person or have no network to start. Shapr can help level the playing field by introducing interesting people that can play a role in your success. You are the sum of your network Famed speaker Jim Rohn once made the statement that you are the sum of the five people you hang around with the most. The implication of his statement is that you absolutely need to surround yourself with people who are as motivated as you. If you only stick to your circles, unless you are one of the few lucky people born into a top business family, it will be much harder to rise in your career. Let’s say that your goal is to launch a business. Shapr can introduce other thoughtful and motivated professionals who may have complimentary skills to your own and could make the perfect cofounders. If your goals are more personal, such as strategizing a promotion or exploring a career change, there are likely several people on the app who can provide advice from their own unique career paths. To get started, you just need to download Shapr and fill out some simple profile information. Shapr will probe into a community of over 1 million users to curate nearby people who share your interests. Every day, you will see up to 20 people selected for you, and can swipe right on the profiles that most interest you. When the interest to connect is mutual, the app will unlock messaging, and you can schedule a time to continue the conversation offline. Make connections in minutes Shapr gives you the ability to build a high-quality, hyper-relevant network in just minutes a day. The only time required is the time you’ll spend meeting your matches face to face, actually building meaningful, mutually beneficial friendships with people that match your goals. Shapr is one of the only social media apps that is actually meant to connect people in real life. It’s like the best dinner party you’ve ever been invited to, only it’s on your phone and you don’t need to know the host to get in the door. So why does it work? Well, Shapr doesn’t look at your last name as a factor in your success. Shapr instead focuses on what you bring to the table – your unique set of interests and your commitment to also being helpful and thoughtful with others on the app. Download the app now and you’ll see how easy it is to make new connections!

3 Ancient Samurai Secrets that Will Get You On the Path to Higher Living
Self-Development

3 Ancient Samurai Secrets that Will Get You On the Path to Higher Living

American philosopher Henry David Thoreau once made the observation that most men “lead lives of quiet desperation." This is a pattern that every individual subtly falls into at some point. Day-to-day life can cause us to get swept up in the currents of endless marketing messages, the cycle of paying bills, the stresses of modern life, the allure of social media, etc. Plus, the instant gratification brought by easily accessible entertainment often comes at the expense of meaningful goals, and at the sacrifice of our life’s purpose. Over time, you can get to a place you never intended to be at, only to look back on the months and years that led up to it, feeling regret at the loss of opportunity. The three ancient warrior lessons below offer you the power to avoid this vicious cycle and experience your life on a higher level. The Samurai The Japanese samurai were part of an elite warrior class in ancient Japan whose traditions and teachings have inspired military thinking and business all the way into the 21st century. Fierce warriors who were skilled in war, weapons, and martial arts, they were implacably resolute in battle, fearless, tenacious, highly focused, and supremely disciplined. The samurai emphasized sharpening “the inner sword” as much as their personal weapon, the katana, because it was their inner strength that would allow them to overcome impossible situations. These samurai warriors broke their training down into three areas of focus: Kime, Mushin, and Zanshin. Kime - Honing Focus Kime means “focus” or “to decide at the exclusion of everything else.” The samurai deliberately trained their ability to focus on nothing but the task at hand. Their focus was so refined that they could block out pain, doubt, negative thinking, or even the risk of losing their life. Today, focus is critical because society offers endless distractions like the latest Instagram fads, celebrity hookups, or political dramas. While there may be a time and place for all of that, it’s critical to understand that when you focus on those things, you’re not focusing on what’s truly meaningful to you. Zooming in on critical tasks helps you stay on your path, not someone else’s, allowing you to go further, faster. Go now and make a list of what’s important and meaningful to you and make another list of what’s not important to achieving your goals. Then, commit to spending more time fully focusing on the important things, and getting rid of useless distractions that only slow your down. As your focus becomes sharper you will experience… Mushin - The Mind of No-Mind When you train your focus to a high degree, you can enter in and out of a state of “mushin,” or no-mind. In the West, we call this the “flow state” where you act with a combination of grace and power. Actions seem more effortless, progress comes faster, and you can lose track of time as you find yourself more immersed in the meaningful work you choose instead of mindlessly wandering through daily life. Over time, you become a force of nature accomplishing important work with the smooth, machine-like precision of a Swiss watch. Even better, this state of being becomes more habitual and sets the stage for you to experience… Zanshin - Relaxed Alertness, Fully Present Samurai scholars have explained Zanshin as “standing powerfully, in the present as if your hair was on fire." It is the intense feeling of being fully present in the moment, unimpeded by worry, guilt of past mistakes, and detached from any outcome, only fully being fully immersed in the present. This is a heightened sense of awareness of the present moment, where you reject everything except the task at hand. When you eat, you eat; when you write, you write; when you exercise, you exercise. But you do these things while putting every effort and resource available towards the present moment. When you achieve this state, you enter a level of mindfulness that allows you squeeze every ounce of experience that each moment offers. For the samurai, who faced death often, this not only made them more effective warriors but help them live life to the fullest and without regret. Training for Life These ancient concepts can help you avoid aimless wandering -- no more wasting precious time on things that add little to no value to your life. Kime, or focus, is the cornerstone concept to begin training for. Spend time alone and decide what you really want, and then take incremental steps training yourself to focus on just that. Then, direct your intention to keep improving, and you will begin to experience mushin and then zanshin. At that point, the color and texture of your life will take on a new luster and, you'll have unlocked greater meaning and success.

Meet the Productivity Dashboard that Can Help Take Your Business to the Next Level
Productivity

Meet the Productivity Dashboard that Can Help Take Your Business to the Next Level

Today, it’s possible for a small business to compete on a global scale with the right information at the right time. And even if you're not trying to get to that level, you need access to data to make informed decisions -- the future of your business can depend on the visibility you get into certain metrics. Fortunately, there is a universe of specialized applications that can help you grow sales, track visitors, pull up key data, target ideal customers, and much more. These tools can help you sharpen your competitive edge, so you can reach new growth and attain success. However, with the overwhelming amount of business solutions on the market, you’re now faced with a new challenge: finding the best service for your company. And implementing the use of a new platform takes time and resources, so you want to get it right. Enter 9 Spokes, a centralized solution that serves several business needs with one convenient tool. Here's how it works, and how it can help you take your company to the next level. Consider it your cockpit Jet pilots understand the need to access real-time data. The cockpit of a plane is a tight, focused compartment that provides pilots with decision-making tools at their fingertips -- targeting, weapons to deploy, radar, and communications. The pilot interacts with each of these key areas to make continuous data-based, tactical decisions and win. Any weakness in any of these “spokes” and the whole structure collapses. In the same way, 9 Spokes offers you the ability to manage your business in several key areas: money, customers, product, people, marketing, sales, productivity, information, and a specialist feature. Each pillar features the best apps available on the market to improve that area of focus, and 9 Spokes vets every app that is integrated in its smart dashboard. With the 9 Spokes centralized dashboard, you can harmonize all these apps and tools to work together in the same way that a symphony conductor manages an orchestra. Each tool plays its part, but you act as the conductor bringing them together in harmony. Driving results Whether you need to deep-dive into Google Analytics to find sources of untapped opportunity or manage your expenses through QuickBooks, 9 Spokes allows you to integrate the tools you need to navigate your way through the treacherous waters of business. Want the ability to market to your customers from one focal point? No problem, add in Mail Chimp to your 9 Spokes dashboard. Need a platform to operate your e-commerce business? Add Shopify to your dashboard and simultaneously keep a close eye on KPIs. Do you need help managing your customer service requests? Plug in Zendesk’s app and/or Live Chat’s apps into your dashboard and you're good to go. Also, 9 Spokes goes beyond providing the ability to add apps to your toolbox. It also gives you the ability to optimize your tools as you grow. For example, if you’re a startup reaching a new level of growth and aren’t sure of what direction to take, 9 Spokes can help you personalize your service according to your unique needs. The Power of Pursued Simplification There is an inherent beauty in keeping things simple. Steve Jobs relentlessly pursued the simplification of all of Apple’s products to make it easier for users to benefit from them. In a similar way, Henry Ford simplified car manufacturing to make cars a more accessible commodity. Jobs simplified the ease of use for the customer, and Ford simplified the production process to drive affordability. The relentless pursuit of simplification had and still has a ground-shaking impact on the world. 9 Spokes has achieved both the things that Jobs and Ford worked on: It's easy to use as a business owner, and it's free to join. Find out more about 9 Spokes here.