The Six Ghosts of Fear

In his 1937 classic book (over 15 million copies sold), THINK and GROW RICH, Napoleon Hill set the stage for today’s motivational thinking, and offers specifics on “How to Outwit the Six Ghosts of Fear” that successful leaders in every walk of life continue to use even now as you are reading this.

What ARE the “Six Ghosts”?

1. The Fear of Poverty

2. The Fear of Criticism

3. The Fear of Ill Health

4. The Fear of Loss of Love

5. The Fear of Old Age

6. The Fear of Death

Worry is what unites and strengthens these negative emotions and, left unchecked, will ultimately cause them to materialize. Worry paralyzes reasoning and destroys self-confidence and initiative. It’s easy to say –as the calypso song encourages us–“Don’t worry!” but truth is our minds often work harder at making it a difficult choice instead of a simple  one.

Worry accomplishes NOTHING. It comes from being overly-focused on the future…on events that haven’t come yet and that may never come. It happens when we slip past “planning” and head toward expectations. It starts with disappointment and leads quickly to the most wasteful and harmful thinking that humans engage in.

It evolves from fantasy, not reality. It leads to businesses going under, negative thinking and neurosis taking over. It leads to illness, accidents and depression. It leads all too often to premature death.

The greatest single weapon against worry is to work tenaciously to keep your mind in the present here and now moment as often as you can possibly think of it during every hour of every day. Staying here and now, like a baby, like a puppy dog, like a naturalist in the wilds, like a mountain climber, opens the pathway for you to good health and happiness.

No one can be living in the present moment every single moment. (Just imagine an air traffic controller without a break.) But all of us are capable of maximizing our present moment attentiveness. Deep breathing helps. Regular exercise helps. Taking breaks helps. Eating right and sleeping right as much as possible helps.

You want to think and feel healthier? Have a happier existence? A stronger business? Start paying closer attention to keeping your mind from wandering too far astray from what’s right in front of your face right now at any given moment throughout the day, every day. It’s a choice, you know. Choose to set yourself up to not worry as much and you’ll be well on the way to defeating the six ghosts of fear!

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Input welcome anytime:

Hal@BusinessWorks.US  or comment below.

Thanks for visiting. 

Go for your goals, good night and God bless you! 

ARE YOU

BREATHING?

1-Minute private technique kills business stress

This 4-step, on-the-spot stress management technique is being used—right this minute, as you are reading this—by millions of healthcare, business, sports, entertainment, teaching, and homemaker professionals.  It works for every age and level of health.  

It will work for you too!

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Hal@BusinessWorks.US 

Thanks for visiting. Go for your goals! God Bless You!

“The price of freedom is eternal vigilance!” [Thomas Jefferson] 

Make today a GREAT day for someone! 

Gonna Chunk It? Then Chew It!

     If your current state of existence fits the last (“Discombobulated?”) post, and you’ve decided to try managing your time in chunks instead of clock ticks, be aware that you can’t just wolf down the chunks like my Golden Retriever. She rarely bothers to chew when she’s excited.

     You however are not a dog. At least, I must assume that you’re not. But just in case you ARE some blog-reading canine phenom, please call me immediately; we’ll make lots of money together. So the bottom line is that your digestive system simply doesn’t work well with chunks.

     Still with me here?We’re talking time management. Chunks. Chunking up time and activities is better than nonstop eating of the same (physical, mental, or emotional) food for eight hours a day. After all, even casino dealers work 20 minutes on and 20 minutes off.

     The guys who clean out the winery vats are basically AA candidates after just 15 minutes of vintage fermentation fumes (although that’s not such a bad way to go) and have to take mandated breaks.

     Imagine for a minute if the chiropractoradjusted every single bone in your body all in one visit. You’d be like Gumby. It’d take you a week simply to get off the table. Ah, then there’s the dentist and doing all the fillings and extractions and crowns and all the other rotten stuff dentists do all at one time. Whew! That one hurts even to think about.

     Start by breaking up your daily “To Do” list…little pieces work better (like outline the Narrative section of the business plan,” which could take a couple of hours). Little pieces are more attainable, and achieving each will motivate you a whole lot more than having “Write Business Plan” on your list, which could take months.

     In other words, after chunking, chew. After chewing, digest. Your body wasn’t made to take a pounding 16 waking hours a day. Neither was your mind, nor your emotions. The more you push and force yourself, the longer you’ll take to complete each task, and the more likely you will be to screw up each task, not to mention the indigestion, heartburn, and ulcers that you’ll be cultivating. 

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Send your input anytime: Hal@TheWriterWorks.com (”Businessworks” in the subject line) or comment below. Thanks for visiting. Good night and God bless you! halalpiar              # # # 

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Discombobulated? 

     When overwhelm strikes, like a tsunami, and you dive under the nearest pillow or cannonball into your hot tub from the second floor deck, or run screaming down the hall that little chickens are falling from the sky, you may be on the cusp of committing to some daily psychotherapy explorations, but you’re probably normal. You may simply have spent too many years locked in your office.

     We all feed ourselves to the clock and occasionally become time-stricken. Great, you say, to hear so many others share this misery, but, you say, whassup with how to get out of the clock before it chews off my feet –or head, depending on how close it was able to get to me when the hickory-dickory docked?

     The answer, my friend, is not blowin’ in the wind. It’s in chunking up your day so you’re never in any one place mentally or physically or emotionally long enough to get gobbled up by Old Man Time. In other words, start planning your daily schedule by “CHUNKS” instead of by hours.

Motivational guru Brian Tracy suggests we ask ourselves, “What is the most valuable use of my time right now?” as many times as we are able to think of it, day after day.

He says that asking ourselves this question consistently makes us more productive and guarantees success.

     If you’re finding yourself lost in your work for days on end or corkscrewing yourself into a bottleneck of problem-solving, you may want to re-visit some of what you might have forgotten about the art of delegation, and you may want to simply start taking more breaks.

     Some of the world’s most UN-productive people are those who dedicate their efforts to their work so single-mindedly that they eat lunch at their desks, cannot relax around family or friends, injure themselves anytime they try some kind of exercise that takes them away from their jobs, and have to have it be a real effort…to smile ;<})

     When you can chunk up your work schedule, your exercise, family time, your goals, decision making, even travel, you will be happier, healthier, and more productive more often. Remind yourself that your body is not a machine, that you ARE your body.

     I mean imagine that carnivorous clock noted earlier eats your body, now what? What’s left? Don’t give me “heart and soul” stuff here. Think it through. You run a business. You know how to think. Do you know how to chunk it up? Give it a shot. What have you got to lose? More valueless time?    

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Open  Minds  Open  Doors

Many thanks for your visit and God Bless You.

Make today a GREAT day for someone!

Not sure of yourself?

You are breeding failure!

     Data fusion company Jigsaw says, “Sales success depends on sales rep productivity, management effectiveness, and the ability to collaborate…with customers, partners and colleagues.”  

     What’s the connection with self-doubt? Sales rep productivity, management effectiveness, and the ability to collaborate ALL depend on the ability to eliminate self-doubt. Consider the following which you’ve certainly heard, but probably don’t believe. Maybe you think it’s not important enough to actually addreess for more than ten seconds. But it is.

Everything in existence is in existence

only because it exists in your brain.

     If you think you’re not sure of yourself, or your ideas, or your abilities to pull off that big sale, or achieve that far-reaching goal, or dig yourself out of the hole you’re in, you can be sure you’ll succeed at not succeeding.

     Every single second that your mind drifts to doubtful feelings, you are pulling yourself deeper into defeat. Every second you can reverse that feeling counts for getting two seconds closer to success. How can you reverse a negative tide that’s sweeping through you, or under you, over or around you? The answer may sound trite, especially to those low on energy or willpower, but it is fact.

     You must start by learning and using every tidbit of information you can possibly know about you! You are the only person on Earth who knows what makes you tick, but you’ve probably set yourself up thousands of times to sweep what you know about the real you under your own rug!

     If you can know the thoughts, ideas, circumstances, people, environments, feelings, comments, memories, awarenesses, and emotions that weaken you, you are half-way to conquering self-doubt. Work at it. The most self-assured people in the world work at this nonstop for their lifetimes. Fears never go away, but the awareness of what triggers fear can be controlled.

     We’re not talking about simple rationalization here. You can’t read this and then go about your merry way being suddenly transformed and confident. You CAN, however, make a commitment to yourself that you will work at it and keep working at it because fear sucks! Because fear creates self-doubt and self-doubt will make a loser of you, and that itself is a fear to eliminate.

     How successful do you truly think you could be with both hands tied behind your back and a bag over your head? Yet, being afraid and choosing to set yourself up for self-doubt to keep creeping in is creating the same impossible, insurmountable degree of handicap. So the next step is to keep reminding yourself that the feelings that are holding you back, that are threatening to you are ones you somehow choose.

     Take some deep breaths http://halalpiar.com/?page_id=35 and collect yourself and remind yourself that no one knows more than you about you and the ways you do the things you do, so no one else can make choices for you. Choose to rise above it all. Choose to make it work. Choose to make it easy. Choose to be the success you are capable of being. Choose to appreciate your SELF! 

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      . . . I’m open to your input anytime: Hal@TheWriterWorks.com (”Businessworks” in the subject line) or comment below. Thank you for visiting. Good night and God bless you! halalpiar  # # # 

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“I am me. In all the world,

there is no one else

 exactly like me. 

I am OK!”

–Virginia Satir

     Run your own business? Post these 18 words on your dashboard, mirror and refridgerator . . . Why? Because even entrepreneurs need reassurance, and especially when economic uncertainties have a way of making us all feel like too many things–often including our selves–are sometimes NOT okay.

     Have you ever felt like that, or am I just imagining it? Have you felt like that more in recent times than in the past? Do you sometimes think maybe the news media is trying to sink your ship by heaping negative economy stories on your already overburdened shoulders?

     Does it start to feel suffocating? Do you step back every once in a while and start to question your own self-worth? Get out of it! Rattle your cage! Change the channel! Shut down the news!

     Do you really need to take the murders, muggings, accidents, freaky and bizarre incidents and people, and the incessant dwelling on negativity to bed with you every night? Do you really need to wake up with it every morning? 

     What would happen if you shut it all down for a few days and used the time instead to relax your brain and remind yourself how truly special and unique you are? Do you really think you would miss much? If you have doubts, take a quick trip to the library or on Google through past newspaper headlines.

     Go back 20, 50, 100 years! Surprise! The names and locations change, but the stories are mostly the same. It will be like missing a week of All My Children and General Hospital. Nothing new goes on.

     As a sort of sports version of the old expression to do reality checks by pinching yourself, I don’t recommend the method former baseball slugger Bobby Bonilla used to practice, but the idea worked for him; every at-bat, he hit himself on his helmet with his bat just before stepping up to the plate. You can be sure it helped him focus his attention.

     SOMEthing that only you know about can be a “focus trigger” for you. Take a minute and think about that one thing. What snaps your awareness back when your mind starts to drift? Figure it out and use it more. Snap your brain back to the reality that YOU ARE UNIQUE. That awareness, and following the path of reality that it conjures up, is The Ultimate Small Business Stimulus Package.

     In other words, get yourself cranked up, and keep yourself cranked up. It’s catching, and others –internal customers (like associates, employees and vendors) as well as external customers will respond in ways that bring you more business. Remember that what you love doing best is what you do best, and appreciating your self more will help you succeed at doing what you do best. Now THAT’s a stimulus package!       Good Night and God Bless You – halalpiar

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HAPPY FIRST BLOGBIRTHDAY!

For those of you who have been with this from the beginning (April 24, 2008), and those who have joined and visited along the way, thank you so very much! I hope you will continue to visit and comment and subscribe, and urge your business, personal, and professional growth-minded friends and associates to stop by. I am always open to your ideas and suggestions. Please comment or email me anytime: Hal@TheWriterWorks.com (“Businessworks” in the subject line).

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Give Your SELF A Chance!

     Well, unless you’re a major bank or automaker, you’re probably not going to see much of any meaningful stimulus plan benefits coming your way anytime soon. So, here’s how to make your own: “Your Own Personal Stimulus Plan” requires three things.

     All three are FREE (How about that? Not a bad start, huh?).

     Okay, the first of these, which you will need in order to make the most of the other two, is best summed up by staying on this same site, different page, and clicking here: http://halalpiar.com/?page_id=35 (sorry I haven’t yet mastered the little techie trick of consolidating this link into one word).

     Anyway, you need only to spend 60 seconds on this link page to get it. And–on top of everything else–I guarantee that if you treat the exercise seriously and do it faithfully just 1-3 times a day (for a minute each, even while doing something else!)–in just one week!–you will feel and be happier, healthier, more productive, and have a stronger sense of self-control. You will be more personally stimulated and better equipped to rally your own economy! 

What have you got to lose besides stress and upset feelings? I know. Right! And FREE! What more could you ask for? How can I be so sure? Because it’s worked for 20,000 out of 20,000 people I’ve taught it to who have treated it seriously and who have done it faithfully.

     Let go of doubt, skepticism, dubiousness (now there’s a word!) and just allow yourself to be receptive for 60 seconds. 6 0  S E C O N D S !!! Your age and level of health have no bearing on effectiveness here. Give your SELF a chance to be and feel better every day.

     Okay, now comes the second and third things (you thought I forgot?). These may be even easier now that you’ve mastered the first. Here’s the “Personal Stimulus Plan” deal:

     Go find yourself some person who is younger than 7 years-old and spend an hour with her or him…listening, singing, dancing, playing, whatever floats this youngster’s boat. Get down on the floor (or at least eye level) and enjoy the company. Be sure to listen 80% of the time! Learn something from this child, and learn something about youself in the process.     

     Next (and this need not be the same day, but as soon as possible afterward): Go find yourself some person who is older than 80 years-old and spend an hour with him or her…listening, singing, dancing, playing, whatever floats this oldster’s boat. Ask questions. Listen. Get into her or his “head space” and enjoy what you experience as you learn something new and as you learn something new about you.

Take the new stimulated you to work and watch what happens. It’s not, btw, a bad idea to give this little plan legs every quarter, every month, even every week.

OPEN MINDS OPEN DOORS! Happy Entrepreneuring!

Good Night and God Bless You!  halalpiar     

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No, believe it or not,

the doctor is not God!

Having served many years counseling and consulting with doctors, and writing books for and about doctors, I was able to collect a wealth of insight about their personal lives and professional careers.

     Whether you’re a lawyer, insurance or investment broker, hospital executive, real estate agent, luxury car or boat representative, accountant, website development guru, upscale clothing marketer, hi-tech product marketer, quality restauranteur, travel agent, executive resort manager, pharmaceutical or medical product detail rep, If you market or sell to doctors, you can do a better job of it when you understand some of what I’m about to share with you. 

     Now I’m not talking about whatever you might think you know about doctors by watching ER or House or Gray’s Anatomy or old re-run episodes of Chicago Hope or Dr. Kildare for that matter. Those shows may look and feel authentic and realistic, but they’re not. They’re no more realistic than if you took your job and compressed all the highlights of the year into one maniacally-paced day!

     There’s nothing wrong with jam-packed storylines on TV as long as you don’t start believing that the other half actually lives as they’re portrayed. I mean I was a huge fan of “24” and Jack Bauer was the best, but in case you hadn’t noticed, he never slept or used the bathroom.

     No, I’m talking about down and dirty here. I’ve amassed tons of in-the-trenches input that I alone have had the unique opportunity to observe, listen, question and assimilate. Here’s some of what I learned:  

•      Most of the twelve hundred or so doctors I’ve known well and have worked closely with would rather be, or rather have been something other than a doctor. With stress driving average physician life expectancy closer to 60 than to 80, many doctors struggle with keeping their personal lives in check and their family lives in balance.
•      As definite and commited as most of us tend to think a physician’s career path might be, the truth is that many are not happy with shouldering the stressful burdens of professional medical practice. 
•      This conclusion is not to imply any lack of dedication. It is simply an indication that even those physicians who lack exceptional skills or bedside manners do not deserve to be begrudged for the money they make (and they’re making a whole lot less these days, besides).
•      So, what does this all have to do with selling to doctors? STOP thinking about selling your products and services to doctors. START thinking about how you can help doctors to save time. Time, to a physician, is money because she or he has no warehouse full of products.
•      His or her time is all there is that can be packaged with the skill, experience and training. And, right, a doctor can only sell one package at a time!
•      Having more time gives doctors more freedom to see more patients who need attention. Having more time lays the groundwork for doctors to strike a better balance with their families and gain increased control of their personal lives.
•      In the process, they become happier. Happier doctors practice better more effective healthcare. Your doctor sales assignment: Figure out how to save your doctor prospects and customers more time!  

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Open  Minds  Open  Doors

Make today a GREAT day for someone!

Hope Is NOT The Answer.

(Neither is government spending nor business borrowing!)

     The old business adage, “NOTHING HAPPENS ‘TIL THE SALE IS MADE” applies more today than ever! I have noted here often that budget slashing, and save-on-expenses mentalities end up digging an even deeper hole because they divert energy away from what needs to be done to put the economy on a rebound and growth track.

     Economic recovery can ONLY happen when more businesses decide to make it happen. We have to blow off mainstream media’s efforts to drag the public into the maelstrom they’re busy creating in their relentless quest to sell more print advertising space and more broadcast commercial time.

     When businesses decide to focus on sales and entrepreneurial pursuits, we will see increased financial stability across the boards. Sounds simple, huh? Unfortunately, our own business-inexperienced government is essentially leading the blockade to progress on this front…token small business incentives don’t cut it!

     Add to the government’s misguided energy and maniacal spend and borrow and tax mentality the sad truth is that many business people have simply given up, and the saving-grace focus we’re talking about turns out to not be so simple after all. 

     Government spending and business borrowing? Digest this (following) quote made 5 days ago in a European Parliament speech by Daniel Hannon MEP who was targeting the English Prime Minister with some realistic advice:

You cannot spend your way out of recession,

or borrow your way out of debt!”

[See www.Hannon.co.uk for more.]

     If you are an entrepreneur or run your own business, you need to be resolute in your thoughts and actions. You need to be literally invulnerable in your convictions that hope may spring eternal, but it simply does NOT fuel or grow business in any way–never has, never will. ONLY sales do that.

     Like throwing two baseballs at equal velocity with both arms simultaneously, the most difficult task for any entrepreneur or business owner is to be running your business and selling your business at the same time. Yet that is what has to happen.

     This means, you must be willing and able to go the extra mile with customers, prospects, employees, vendors, your industry, your community, your family, and your own health and fitness. Dropping any one of these from the pursuit equation will collapse the energy around those that remain.

     Okay, HOW? you ask. By paying attention to having fun instead of feeling pressure (the feeling-pressure guys have already boarded up and left town). By paying more attention to exercise and eating and sleeping right, by laughing more, and by learning and using stress management techniques , by taking a yoga class, a jog, a walk, another walk, more walks. 

     As for help, what’s suggested here isn’t much, but–like everything else in life–suggestions are what you make of them. It’s always your choice about how to proceed. The rest of what happens is up to you.  

Good Night and God Bless You!  

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Happy St. Patrick‘s Day!

What happens for you on this day every year? Do you get up and put on green clothes? Pig out on corned beef and cabbage? (This “traditional” meal is an Americanism, by the way. Like pizza not coming from Italy, the Irish eat spareribs and sauerkraut on St. Patrick’s Day!)

     Maybe you eat green bagels (ah, many of these in New York, but positively not an Irish thing!) Can you even find a florist with any green carnations left? Do you get smashed on green beer and end up with a hangover on March 18th?

Or is today just a day like any other?

     Y’know what? I think that if you think this day is just like any other, you have a problem needs fixin’ because what you’re really saying is that everyday is just like every other one, that nothing much changes and that nothing much is special, except maybe Fridays at 5pm and your birthday, right?

     Well, hopefully this isn’t you we’re talking about, but maybe you know someone who fits that description? And if you do, maybe wish her or him Happy Birthday more often!

     The secret of a prosperous business is to practice the secret of a prosperous life. The trouble is that practically no people get this until they achieve AARP status. The secret, after all, of a prosperous life only comes with the hindsight and wisdom of age and the kinds of genuine appreciation and gratefulness that only come from deep, deep inside.

     To me, it’s a lot like learning the positive and productive life changes that come from discovering the simplicity, value, consciousness and energy flow that come from deep breathing.

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Click this link for a free, 60-second, 4-step “how to” that can change your life. No sales pitch. No gimmicks. Just a valuable “how to” that you’re likely to wish you’d learned long ago!       

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     What can we do to come to realizations like this sooner in life? Maybe nothing. Maybe we just need to be grateful to have finally grabbed the brass ring (whoops! showing my merry-go-round age again!). and we should just take it and run!

     Well, breathing and running can get us nowhere if we’re living on a treadmill and afraid to step off. Breathing and running won’t take us where we want to go if we don’t believe in ourselves. and believe that we have the ability to get there, wherever “there” is for each of us.      

The point is that EVERY day –St. Patrick’s Day and the day after St. Patrick’s Day included— is a new opportunity to be the best that we can be, to do the best that we can do!

It’s a new opportunity to move another step closer to the “there” that we want to get to, the “difference” we want to make.

     Making your life happen the way that you want it to happen is 100% in your mind. It is your CHOICE! When you find your brain falling out and weakening and upset feelings coming in, STOP! Take a deep breath, focus your mind on where you are and what you want and start going there.

     Dump the upset baggage and go forward. Make today and tomorrow and the next day, and the next, EACH the special day that you deserve to have. Choose it! Use it! STOP with the excuses! Do it!

God Bless You and

Happy St. Patrick’s Day

EVERY DAY! 

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Make today a GREAT day for someone!