“Today I will multiply my value a hundredfold.” - from The Scroll Marked VIII, The Greatest Salesman In the World by Og Mandino

What do you do when you’ve accomplished a goal? Hopefully, you take some time to bask in the warm glow of accomplishment…but not for too long. Hopefully, you also set your sights on something higher and start working on it immediately. Resting on your laurels and past acheivments will never get you where you want to go.

Success is like a muscle; stretch it and work it and eventually it rises to the occassion. If your goal is to be able to lift 200 pounds 10 times in a row, you can get there even if you start off lifting less than 100. When you hit your goal though, a funny thing happens: you plateau. The muscle stops growing because it’s no longer challenged. Step your goal up to 300, and you kick the growth cycle off again.

It’s the same with your personal growth. Once you reach a goal, you run the risk of stagnation if you stop there. Human beings have an amazing potential for growth that sometimes gets hampered because we’re unwilling to push ourselves to grow. Why? Growth is painful. It’s uncomfortable and scary. We set up all kinds of elaborate, unconscious schemes to avoid the pain of growth, and we seriously limit the results we can acheive in the process.

What if instead we were willing to shake off the self-imposed limitations of our pre-conceived ideas and hand-me-down beliefs? What if we were able to get beyond the fear and set impossible goals, continually stretching beyond our prior capacity? What then? Michaelangelo advised that “the greater danger is not that our goals are too lofty and we fail to achieve them, but that they are too small and we do.” Do you really want to look back on your life and wish you’d only tried a little harder? Neither do I.

The Scroll Marked VIII says that we’re like a grain of wheat; a single grain of wheat has the potential, when properly cared for, to grow into a stalk of wheat with a head full of grains. Each of those grains, in turn, has the potential to be planted and produce many more. Given the proper conditions, a single grain of wheat can produce millions of tons of wheat. And you are like that grain of wheat: you contain unlimited potential.

The Scroll points out one difference between you and the grain of wheat, though: whereas the wheat has no say in whether it’s planted and propogated, you get to decide whether your potential is realized or wasted. It’s a sobering thought, isn’t it? It means you get to take full responsibility for your success or failure in life. You don’t get to point to your circumstances or your parents or your government…only you have the power to decide your fate.

And how will you do it? How will “multiply your value a hundredfold”? The Scroll advises:

“First I will set goals for the day, the week, the month, the year, and my life. Just as the rain must fall before the wheat will crack its shield and sprout, so must I have objectives before my life will crystallize. In setting my goals I will consider my best performance of the past and multiply it a hundredfold. This will be the standard by which I will live in the future. Never will I be of concern that my goals are too high for is it not better to aim my spear at the moon and strike only an eagle than to aim my spear at the eagle and strike only a rock?”

The message is clear: continue to aim high, to stretch yourself, to strive to exceed your past performance. If you do, you’ll never stop growing, your value will increase every day, and you’ll be considered by those who know you to be the greatest salesperson in the world!

“And when it is done I will do it again, and again, and there will be astonishment and wonder at my greatness as the words of these scrolls are fulfilled in me.”

As the name of this blog indicates, I believe that proper motivation is one of the fundamental building blocks of a successful life.  In sales (a category which includes all you entrepreneurs and small business owners, whether you like to admit it or not), motivation is the key distinction between success and failure.  It’s a simple formula: having the right motivation keeps you moving and in action.  Without it, you stop.  Over the past several days, I’ve shared five techniques that will help you stay motivated, no matter what is going on in the world around you.  Let’s do a quick recap.

The first step was to start asking yourself the power question: “Why?”  Why do you want to acheive a particular goal, a certain level of income or anything else?  Asking “Why?” helps you identify the emotional component of your goals, which in turn engages your unconscious mind to help move you closer to their accomplishment.  So stop asking yourself “How am I going to do that?” and start asking yourself “Why do I want to?”  You’ll find the results much more satisfying.

Second, we talked about shutting off the news to create your own National News Free Week.  This step will help you avoid distraction and stay focused on doing the activities that are in harmony with your purpose.  While news overload can create anxiety, worry and despair, living a news-free life is liberating.  You are far less susceptible to negativity and far more open to possibility and gratitude.

The third topic centered around the need for passion, enthsiasm and excitement for your work.  Instead of being among the 87% of Americans who hate their jobs, finding passion for what you do puts you in the happy minority of people who actually enjoy thir work, even considering it to be a form of play.  And if you can’t find passion for what you are doing now, remember: you are always free to pursue something that you are passionate and enthusiastic about.

The fourth post discussed the need to win the battle between your ears by choosing optimism.  Despite what many people think, optimism is a choice.  In fact, it’s a choice you have to make every minute of every day for the rest of your life.  Let’s face it: sometimes life throws you a curveball; chossing optimism allows you to keep swinging.

The fifth and final step was to get moving.  While a success mindset and positive mental attitude are critical to your success, without the action to support them they are nothing more than pleasant thoughts that will eventually lead you to frustration.  Action is the final step in the chain that brings all your energy together in support of your dreams.

As you might have figured out by now, I have a real passion for helping people find and keep their motivation in order to help them unlock their true potential.  I discuss each of the preceding five steps in greater detail in my new audio program, so feel free to check it out if you like.  

Know this, though: whatever you want to acheive, you have the power and ability to do it.  In fact, you have more power than you give yourself credit for.  I want you and every other person on the planet to use that power for your higher good.  That is the mission of this blog: to be a source of information to help you stay motivated and inspired.  I hope you enjoy what you read here, and I hope you’ll engage in discussions about the content through your comments here and in your interactions with others throughout the day.  

It’s like my teacher James Ray always says: “Energy flows where attention goes!”  Place your attention and focus on finding and keeping your motivation, and watch what the inspirational energy you tap into will do for you.  Thanks for reading!

Question: What have you done this week to move yourself closer to your goals? Do you have a clearly defined, written plan to get you where you want to be? If not, what are you waiting for?!

We’ve all heard that what gets written down gets done, yet the majority of us don’t do it. It really amazes me how many salespeople I talk to who have no idea what they need to accomplish on a daily, weekly, monthly and annual basis to help them achieve their goals; in fact, I still encounter many people who have no idea what their goals are! I only have one question: if you don’t know where you’re going, how will you know when you’ve arrived? More importantly, how will you even know if you’re on the right course to get there?

Specific written goals are vital to your success. You know that. If you haven’t written out your goals for this year, stop reading and go do it now. Don’t come back until you’re done, because what I’m going to suggest next will require you to have your written goals in front of you. This is a powerful tool that will help you achieve any goal you set, and it is actually very easy to do. Unfortunately, anything that’s easy to do is also easy not to to do, so I want you to make a commitment, here and now, to try this method out for the next seven days. If it doesn’t work for you, you can stop; but you have to try it for at least seven consecutive days before passing judgment. Ready?

Looking at your list of goals, I want you to think of the six most important things you could do tomorrow to move you closer to their accomplishment. Limit your list to only six things, the six most critical. Now, prioritize the list in order of highest impact; in other words, the most impactful thing you could do becomes number one and so on. Now comes the hard part.

Tomorrow morning, start your day with task number one from your list. Don’t do anything else until you have completely finished task number one and can cross it off the list. Next, move on to task number two, again not moving on until it is completely finished and can be crossed off. Do the same for the rest of the tasks on the list. If you get to the end of the day and haven’t completed all the tasks, those left unfinished move to the top of tomorrow’s list. Do this for seven days, and you’ll be amazed at what you’ve accomplished.

How do I know this works? When I first read about this technique in James Arthur Ray’s new book Harmonic Wealth I decided to give it a try. You wouldn’t believe the impact this habit has had on my effectiveness every day since! Knowing what you need to be doing now and what comes next is truly one of the most powerful methods I’ve ever used to get more done.

It’s like my friend Tibor Shanto of Renbor Sales Solutions said in his blog the other day: taking daily action is the key.  If you’re not in action every day, you’ll find your motivation beginning to wane.  You can have grand plans, but without action you’ll also have massive frustration when those plans don’t materialize.  

So, no excuses now! Get out your day planner and make your “Must Do” list for tomorrow; repeat this practice every day for the next seven, then let me know what you think. I look forward to reading all your comments.

Are you as tired as I am of all the bad news being offered up by the national media? If so, please join me in a special campaign this week. I’m officially designating it National News Free Week.

This is the critical second step in staying motivated to accomplish your goals: the ability to stay focused and avoid distraction!  So I’m issuing a challenge to as many people as I can reach to turn off the news for one solid week. That’s right: no TV, radio or internet news for seven full days.

“But Jerry!” you ask, “How will I know what’s going on in the world?”

Good question, and the answer may shock you. Listen closely: it doesn’t matter! Yes, you read that right…it just doesn’t matter what’s happening in the world around you. The only thing that truly matters is what’s happening in the world inside of you.

I wonder how many people realize that by obsessing about which corporations are filing for bankruptcy this week and what the Dow is doing this minute, they are actually giving up the only power they have: the power to direct their own thoughts and actions. They are allowing the circumstances of the world around them to dictate their actions. What an incredibly dangerous way to live!

And yet, that’s how the vast majority of people structure their lives. They decide how they’ll act and what they’ll think based on what they see and hear going on around them instead of listening to the voice inside of them that tells them what they should be doing.

What does this have to do with sales and motivation? Just this: if you have been sucked into all the drama, I can almost guarantee that it’s had a negative impact on your sales activity. It has de-motivated you. Honestly, how motivated do you feel to get up early and stay out late when the news is convincing you that no one has any money to spend anyways?

So this is a call to action! Starting at 12:01 am on the day you read this, turn off the news and don’t turn it back on until 11:59 pm seven days later (the really adventurous might want to make it all TV, but that’s up to you). In place of the news, read a good book or listen to an audio program or sales podcast that will motivate you to get into activity mode. If something really important happens in the world, I promise that you’ll hear about it.

This one act is going to help you take your power back. Instead of feeling like a victim of the economic crisis, you’ll begin to realize that you have the privilege, as a small business owner, entrepreneur or salesperson, of being a part of the solution to said crisis! You’ve heard that nothing happens until something gets sold, and that’s never been more true than it is now. We need to restore the confidence of the average consumer to resume consuming. If we don’t, who will?

Do I mean to say that you should be out selling things to people that they don’t need or can’t afford? Absolutely not! That kind of behavior has been one of the big causes of the current situation. At the same time, you need to be working hard to match up your products and services to your customers’ needs and help them to realize that it’s okay to buy!

Are you with me? If so, pass this challenge along to everyone in your network and let’s make this week the most productive one so far this year.

I look forward to hearing your feedback and, hopefully, your success stories as well. Leave a comment and until next time, happy sales to you!