Your "E vs. E" Ratio

What’s your Entertainment vs. Education ratio?  How many hours a week do you spend watching TV and listening to the radio and going to shows, concerts and sporting events?  How many hours a week do you spend learning by reading, listening to audio programs and audio books, or going to seminars and trainings?

Adjusting this ratio will likely improve your value to others and your earning ability.

Creating Value for Others

Yesterday we talked about getting what you deserve in the marketplace/economy.  What drives what we are worth out there?  

To answer this question, let’s say you are a consumer – a customer.  What would make you pay more or less?  How much value you get from a supplier of goods or services – right?  If what they provide is of more value to you, you’ll pay more.  If it’s of less value, and something you can get anywhere, you will pay less.

So that’s the answer. How much value we create for others drives what we are worth and deserve in the marketplace.

How much value are you creating?  How can you be more valuable?

You're getting what you deserve

Relative to success in the marketplace and economy, pretend you are getting what you deserve.

Sure some get a little less and some get a little more than they deserve for a time, but if we subscribe to the idea that life is unfair and we’ll never be able to improve because of this unfairness, then we may as well give up – and those that think that way often do.  So we must act as if life is mostly fair most of the time, and when it’s not, it will eventually change and catch up so that it is.

So if you are getting what you deserve now, what do you have to do to deserve more?

(Continued tomorrow)

Reframing tragedy

When something really bad happens, we feel devastated.  We can start to ask “Why did this happen to me?”, and live the tragedy over and over in our mind, and make it mean something to us.

I believe that everything happens for a reason, even if you don’t know what that reason is at the time. Moving past the bad luck, an accident, or misfortune, we can chose to become aware of the reason it happened to us, or not.

Consider this quote from Dorothy Parker – “And if my heart be scarred and burned, the safer, I, for all I learned.” 

Was it bad luck?  Or was it something that had to happen for us to grow?

Cause something better

Everything happens for a reason.  Change the reasons, and we change what happens.

Can you cause something different to happen in your life?

Getting smarter

Chances are, there is something we are still doing that we’ve done in the past that didn’t work.

What are you still doing that you know doesn’t get good results?

Behaviors, actions towards others, eating, drinking, watching, etc.

What should you be doing instead?

Desire = Possibility

If you don’t want something, it is not possible for you.  

But if you do desire something, it is an indication that it is possible.

What do you want?  How strongly?

Body, Mind and Soul

There are three motives we live for – body, mind and soul.

Can any one live a full life if either of the others is cut short of life or expression?

“Balance”?  Which of the three needs to be cared for most in your life right now? 

"Moving to the adjacent possible"

While we can’t make all the changes and get all the results we would ever want in life in a day, we can do something to move toward our ideal today.  

Pick an area of your life – something you are doing at work, a relationship, a big goal, something you want to invent – Given what you now know and what is now available, what step is possible and available now?

Why not take it?  Then see how there is a new “adjacent possibility”.

Controlling your thoughts and your destiny

If you put a movie screen in front of your face, what do you think about?  What’s on the screen, right?

If you hear a voice speaking, what do you think about?  What it is saying, right?

That’s how we control our thoughts, and controlling our thoughts builds our beliefs and leads to what action we take. What we learn controls our destiny.  

What do you listen to and watch each day?