Principles & Ideas to be Discussed in the Personal Success & Leadership Workshop

1. What is the underlying purpose of this workshop? – To facilitate your focus. What we focus on we move toward … the sharper our focus, the quicker our progress. 2. Why are we here? … What is the purpose of life? … What is success? – To develop our full (unlimited) potential by discovering/developing our talents and skills and using them to serve others. 3. So … what is it that we focus on? – Our dreams/goals/passions (what we are most interested in and most enjoy doing … things we have a naturalrn inclination toward and in which we have a strong desire to increase our knowledge and skill). This is the beginning of allrn success. If you have no dreams/goals, there’s nothing to shoot for (focus on)! 4. What if you don’t have any particular dreams/goals/passions? – Now’s the time to check out the possibilities! … Look over a list of possible careers/interests/hobbies … which do you think you’d like to learn more about? Research, investigate and experiment with those that appeal to you. Talk with experts in those areas you are looking into, who can tell you the most about that area, who are most enthusiastic about it and can give you the best advice! 5. Create a Vision Board! - Focusing, to be effective, must be a daily practice … and since we think in pictures, one most effective way to focus on our dreams/goals is a Vision Board consisting of pictures representing each dream /goal! rn6. How can we best focus on multiple goals? – It is easier to focus on similar goals at the same time … like, say, business goals. So the key is to organize your goals according to what role in your life they apply to (student, baseball player, musician, family member, club president, etc). Look at your goals … assign each to a role. Each role will have at least one goal. 7. How do we sharpen our focus? – Answer this question: How do you eat an elephant? (One-bite-at-a-time!) We do likewise with our dreams/goals by breaking them down into their smallest (bite-size) pieces, organizing these pieces in the proper order (i.e. goals to steps to tasks), and assigning target dates/times for each (do this on paper … writing makes it easier to solidify your thoughts). Create a weekly calendar, assigning times during the week for recurring tasks and blocking out times for non-recurring tasks, according to roles (say, from 1-3 pm Tuesday -- Club President tasks) … Now we know, from one day to the next, what we are focusing on … we have sharpened our focus! By this means, nothing is overlooked or delayed. 8. The Slight Edge Principle – It’s the easy little things we do from one day to the next (our habits) that make all the difference (like brushing & flossing our teeth). The challenge is that they are also easy not to do …and not doing them, typically, has no immediate drastic consequences. However, in the long run, bad habits will reap profound negative outcomes, just as certainly as good habits will reap positive ones. (This principle is expounded upon in the book, Success for Teens, mentioned in the second workshop handout) 9. We become what our past thoughts and decisions have led us to become – The results we get, the person we have become, are the outcome of our decisions/actions/habits, which come from our thinking, which comes from our attitude (frame of mind), which comes from our philosophy (how we view life and the part we play in it). Philosophy tends to be either negative or positive (i.e. we either see the glass half empty or half full, we see ourselves as very limited because of our circumstances or as having unlimited potential no matter what our circumstances, we see people as naturally self-serving or we see them as naturally thoughtful of others, etc). Developing a positive attitude (frame of mind/philosophy) about ourselves and the world around us is where it all begins and will make all the difference in our thinking, the decisions we make and, therefore, the quality of life we live! rn10. How do we motivate ourselves to do what we know we should do? How do we change from reacting to situations … to creating them?! – There is a powerful 3-step process of gearing up for the action necessary to accomplish anything: (1) Know why you are wanting/needing to do a task [list the reasons]. If you have a big enough “why,” you will convert all your “should” do’s to “must” do’s; (2) Visualize the task as completed and imagine the emotions that you would feel having just completed the task. This emotion will “push” you into the third step; (3) Take action! Once you take action on that small, easy-to-do task [and, by definition, tasks are small and easy-to-do], you will experience what it feels like to be successful … and that feeling will carry you on to complete the task and move on to the next task! Taking action will become a habit! (www.PSLinstitute.com/workshop.html)