March 28, 2013 by Dymphna

Do you use peak performance mind tools?

Performance enhancers aren’t just for athletes; they’re for anyone who wants to do their very best in life or in their chosen profession. And unlike some of those artificial performance enhancers that athletes get in trouble for using, the ones I’m talking about are all very good for you, both in mind and body…and for your bank account as well.

I’m talking about the same mental tools used by the most successful people in the world to achieve their goals, perform at their highest levels and realize levels of success that other people marvel at and wonder, “how did you get there?”

Well, today, we’re going to find out what you can do to ‘get there’, too. It’s not magic; in fact, as you’ll see, it’s all within your reach! It does take some effort, however, but who’s afraid of effort when the payoff is so life changing?

Success is a habit

What we do on a daily basis determines what our lives look like. It determines where we live, what we do for a living, how much money we earn or don’t earn, and really, how happy we are and how full—or empty—our lives are.

imgresIn the vast majority of cases, all of these things result from our own actions or inactions. We become what we do and lead the lives we do because of our own actions. If you’re not as successful as you want to be, then you need to change what you’re doing with your time, don’t you? And let’s face it; much of our behavior is learned and reinforced on a daily basis, isn’t it? Most of our behavior is a result of our own habits.

If you have bad habits that have led you to unsuccessful results, then the first thing you need to do is identify what your bad habits are. That takes some honesty about yourself, doesn’t it? Once you identify those bad habits, you need to unlearn them and adopt better ones.

Establish good discipline and good habits

This is a very fundamental part of learning to be successful. Changing your habits, your ways, will change your results, so that your success is enhanced, multiplied, and will flow more easily to you and for you. To do this, you need to document the way you are doing things in order to see your errors; then you must change what is not leading to best outcomes to achieve your desires, your goals and your dreams.

For instance, do you put things off so they never get done on time if at all? Or do you have the habit of always thinking negatively about things? Whatever the bad habit is, admit it to yourself and admit that you must change that about yourself. Be disciplined about it.

At the same time, identify the best use of the skills you have (and perhaps even develop some new ones) and put them into practice. Focus on this. The more you do something, the more natural it will become to you and the more you will turn those new behaviors into good habits. Again, this process doesn’t have to be money related; it can help you in your real estate investing or in any endeavor.

Establish a structure in your life

In order to unlearn those bad habits and adopt some new ones, you have to establish a structure in your daily life that allows you to change your bad habits into good ones and to re-orient your mind from negative thoughts to positive ones. Restructuring your day will help you do this. It may be getting up an hour earlier so you can plan your day or have time for self-improvement. Or, it may be watching the television less—this is a major change for the better—and listening to my webinars instead. Whatever it is, you need to add structure to your life to make success actions a habit in your daily life.

Any successful person who excels in anything will tell you that they practice and spend time working on whatever particular skill. Success is no different. Success is something you practice, something you mold in your life on a daily basis. Often, success comes in limited packages because you limit it by your lack of structure, your lack of ability to be able to see what the maximum level of your success can really be. By adding structure you’re adding a time commitment and adding a ritual around what you do each and every day.

Focus and grid variance

If you are not focused, if you’re constantly looking at different areas of investment or different ways to make money here or there, or are easily distracted, you’re not going to be successful, are you? Grid variance analysis is having a structure and a framework around which you can really concentrate and achieve direct outcomes.

We as humans are very solution based, and when we start focusing on a desired outcome, our whole body, our thought process, our actions, our intentions, our peripheral visuals, everything homes in to achieving a desired outcome. Consequently, we achieve that outcome; we solve that problem that we have been focused on. So when we add structure, we also need to have a very clear outcome in mind and then set the intention to get a result.

I do this every day. Before I sit down at a computer to achieve something, I write out what I’m going to do. I write down what it is I want; “I’m going to look for cash cows in a certain area, find a certain type of property with certain characteristics and a certain yield”, so I go out with the idea in mind of achieving that goal.

Structure is also about time management. When you get up in the morning to go to the gym, you have set amount of time to get done there what you need to do. This concept should carry on your entire day.

Have a purpose as your anchor

It’s all very well to put a certain financial strategy in place. But ask yourself “why.” Ask yourself what your biggest purpose is. What’s your purpose anchor?

Let’s say that you want to establish a $20,000 level of passive income. What is the purpose behind that goal? Is it just because you want it? Or is it because it will allow you to pay you children’s school fees? Work one day less each week?

Know why it is that you want to achieve your goal. Get behind the feeling and understand the link behind purpose and benefit. It’s about the connection between success and the result of success. What happens after you’ve reached your goal? What is the result behind it or what comes from it? Always anchor your goals down with the reasons why.

Monitor your performance regularly

Too often we get very enthused and caught up in making something happen without the follow through that is necessary to achieve it. Everybody knows that gym memberships skyrocket in the beginning of January, don’t they? They’re going to get fit, lose weight, or whatever. But by the end of January, how many people are still with their program? Do they have a call to action to monitor how often they’ve gone to the gym or the results? Or have they quit already?

Now let’s relate that to money, to a certain process to achieve a goal. Let’s say you want a chunk deal, to gain a $100,000 profit in six months’ time. Write the parameters there at the top of the paper and allow a certain amount of time for it to happen. Break down clearly what you need to do to achieve your deal. And make it realistic.

Decide how much time you really need to get the deal done. Will you need six weeks to find a property? How many telephone calls it will take to find the deal you want? How long it will take to obtain finance—at least six weeks, right? Then, how long will you need to say, rehab the property or put a needed addition on it, and then get renters in it? Do you see what I mean?

You need to put into place a framework for success so that you are truly able to accomplish the task. Map the process of the deal out and then have a monitoring system in place to keep you on schedule.

How do you keep yourself on schedule? Know what you need to be doing each day and each week. There are all kinds of ways to do that. I use notebooks, visual aids, ‘to do’ lists on my desk, sticky notes on my computer and alarms on my phone. You can use apps on your smart phone or whatever works for you to keep you on your schedule. The key is to organize yourself to keep you on track!

More on this next time…