The Recipe For Success – In Work and In Life

Author: Craig Lock
Source: free-articles

We hope that the following short extract from my new manuscript on sport psychology, called THE WINNING MIND may be informative and helpful to your e-zine readers, or on your web site. You have permission to publish this piece (formatted to 60 characters, approx) electronically or in print.

“We share what we know, so that others may grow”

THE RECIPE FOR SUCCESS — IN WORK AND IN LIFE

by Craig Lock

* Self-imposed limitations impose a ceiling above you, so look to extend yourself to your full potential. The human mind is an amazing thing which can be expanded. Like a telescope!

* Use your imagination.

* Self discipline is an acquired habit. Teach your children this habit (and other good habits … but not point one!) when they are young.

* Establish other good habits. Start your day early. Use your most productive time and especially, your first hour wisely – when you are most alert (if ever?).

* BE ENTHUSIASTIC and AVOID DISTRACTIONS. I think enthusiasm is a vital key to success. You have to enjoy what you are doing and not merely “go through the motions”.

We all have choices in the way in which we are going to live our lives. We can also choose the attitudes we are going to take: whether we are going to hold a positive or a negative outlook on life. Far more on this intriguing and complex subject later; but it is critical to whether you achieve success or not.

So make DAILY AFFIRMATIONS or short positive statements to yourself, eg. say, “I am on the right track”, or “I can do it”. These positive thoughts encourage you, especially if they are repeated frequently. The effects of daily affirmations are that they imprint upon our deeper consciousness, which reflects in the way we function. They make you feel better about yourself and in so doing enhance your confidence.

“A pessimist is one who sees a difficulty in every opportunity. An optimist is one who sees an opportunity in every difficulty…” – anon.

It is best to have a positive self expectancy by looking at “the bright side of life”. Mexican wisecracking golfer, Lee Trevino is one of the world’s greatest optimists. He visualizes each shot having the best possible outcome – dropping in the hole; whereas the weekend “hackers” in all spheres of life often think what can go wrong with each shot. And it often does!

It doesn’t happen every time that Lee gets the ball in the hole, but it happens a lot more than most others. Time for a book on sports psychology, perhaps!

Many successful sportsmen and even ordinary happy people EXPECT success and happiness. And they get it ….

It’s all in ONE’S ATTITUDE TO LIFE.

Always bear in mind … “the greatest pleasure in life is doing what people say you cannot do.”

- Walter Bagehot

“Do not let what you cannot do interfere with what you can do.” – John Wooten

Whatever you do, be enthusiastic and avoid distractions. Focus totally on your task at hand. American President Franklin Roosevelt said … “the only thing we have to fear is fear itself”.

Are your fears holding you back? Don’t be afraid to make mistakes. Take the blame and the credit for your position in life honestly and openly. You alone are responsible for it.

Break your routines:

Remember,

“If you always do what you’ve always done, you will always get what you’ve always got”. Make sense?

Spend 30 minutes alone each day to meditate. Contemplate your life and where you’re heading.

Seek and talk to a person who currently is doing what you want to do most and doing it well. It doesn’t matter how humble or famous they are or what it is they do: acting, singing, or merely being a good parent … or just a hard “plodder”. Get advice from the “experts”. When we talk of success we usually think of winning: the topic of the next section. Not that we all can be winners in every aspect of our lives.

Who and what are winners?

* Winners take responsibility for themselves. They know what they want and set realistic goals for themselves.

* Winners make it happen, losers let it happen (but then losers I believe are only misguided winners). “Losers” probably lack only a right attitude, maybe a bit of knowledge or perhaps motivation or direction at crucial times.

* Winners have a positive self image. They read biographies of famous people. They watch educational and inspirational cassette tapes for self improvement, as well as stimulating television programmes in general. Winners have a quest to gain knowledge and make the most of themselves – they know their time is limited and precious and so they make the most of it.

It is easy for you to become a winner too. You can read positive books and other inspirational works. Like this one. You can listen to motivational tapes, which can also serve to improve one’s attitude to life. At first I was very skeptical, but they definitely do work if you allow them to sink in through repetition (it is not brainwashing, but controlled learning). I feel I am learning something new every day. There is such a great amount of truth and knowledge to be found in books.

Feed your mind continually with positive thoughts.

Remember to take time out to relax and unwind. Before the mind can be relaxed, the muscles must be. A relaxed body makes for a healthy mind, which can absorb information more easily. So you can watch the “soapies”, if that gives you enjoyment and relaxes you! But DO EXERCISE as well. I definitely don’t get enough of that. Winners visualize success and positive outcomes to their endeavours and they know when to relax. Remember how and what you think determines the way your life will turn out; because our thoughts determine our attitudes.

It is said that winners have only 5% of the available talent, but have 95 per cent of the drive. Usually there is not such a great difference between the world’s top sportsmen, in terms of pure talent. Much of what distinguishes the winners amongst them comes from the mind … thinking positively that you are a winner and handling pressure. Think of the sportsmen who got to the top through sheer hard work, far more than their natural talent. I often think of a small man, like South African golfer Gary Player. A man not physically endowed (sounds rude!), who was out-driven metres and metres by the far larger American golfers. He was always at his best when the “chips were down”. Not French fries.

Remember, on your journey to the top (if that’s what you want … and it’s not for everyone), sheer hard work and DETERMINATION is just as important as your intelligence and ability. It is probably the single most important step on your stairway to success.

To be successful yourself, associate with winners – not because they are successful people whose coat-tails you want to hang onto. Rather, because they are positive people who have achieved something in life, no matter how small it may be. They do not have to be rich and famous – as long as you enjoy their company … and them yours. There’s nothing wrong with admiring or envying them as role models.

Ask yourself: Would I like to “fly with the eagles, or scratch with the turkeys”?

Remember:

“Success comes from 90% perspiration and 10% inspiration.” – famous American inventor, Thomas Edison and one of the men who has had the most impact on the world in the twentieth century.

*

THE FORMULA TO SUCCESS:

As I see it…

CONCEIVE + BELIEVE = ACHIEVE

VISUALIZE + INTERNALIZE = REALIZE

SUMMARY:

THE STEPS TO SUCCESS

There are a number of important factors that make people successful in achieving their personal goals … and I believe goal-setting is the key ingredient to success. These, I believe, are the crucial ingredients:

* Have a VISION of what you’d like to be. What thoughts would you like to change? Where do you want to go?

* Belief in oneself and the ability to succeed.

* Good self esteem, ie. a healthy self image – being comfortable with who you are.

* Self confidence.

* Self discipline.

* A burning desire to achieve your pre-set goals.

* NB: Personal integrity and good ethics. This is of absolute importance … because once you lose your integrity, you’ve lost everything.

* A desire to give something back to society and to invest in people – a very worthwhile life mission. If you help people get what they want and achieve their full potential in life, so will you.

* Having worthy goals which benefit oneself and others.

* Consistency and commitment.

* An ability to avoid distractions.

* Affirming oneself daily.

* An ability to take calculated risks.

* An ability to learn from your mistakes and overcome the fear of making them.

* An ability to handle stress well. Most important in today’s fast-paced and ever-changing world.

* Exercise.

* Relaxation.

* Self motivation.

* Try looking at yourself through other’s eyes.

* Talk yourself and others up (through self-affirmations).

Project a positive self image as often as you can. It’s not always possible though, as we all feel discouraged from time to time. It’s perfectly natural. The difference is that winners can pick themselves up when down.

Remember always: the only limits to your accomplishments in life are self imposed.

* NB: Have a winning focus and a positive attitude. At least as often as you can.

Stay positive and determined, even when “the chips are down”.

Concentrate and contemplate.

Practice and be patient.

Keep pen and paper handy (to write down new and better thoughts and ideas). I keep them by my bedside. Not the thoughts, but pen and paper; then try to decipher my atrocious scrawl, when I wake up in the morning!

Try to understand your unique personality make-up.

Be COMMITTED and PERSEVERE.

Draw on and develop the courage that is within every one of us.

Finally, continually keep your eyes fixed on your ultimate goal, your grand purpose in life. What are you trying to do with it? You can yet achieve it, no matter how far you are down the track of life. I sincerely believe that.

Then have absolute FAITH in yourself and in a Higher Power … and His (or Her)

plan for your life (which is God, the “Great Designer” speaking to you through imagination and inspiration).

* * *

To end off, a few quotations which help inspire me often in my personal journey ….

“Be bold and unseen and mighty forces come to your aid”

“The greatest risk in life is to risk NOTHING … The person who risks nothing, does nothing, has nothing, is nothing, and becomes nothing ….”

- Norman Vincent Peale.

“Only the person who risks is truly free. A man’s conquest of himself dwarfs the conquest of Mount Everest”.

- N.V.Peale (again).

The key lies in FINDING YOUR PASSION: what drives you and presses your “hot buttons” …

“A passion for anything will ensure success, for the desire of the end will point out the means.” – William Hazlitt

“Whatever you do, or dream you can do, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it”. – Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

Whatever you want or desire in life, remember Hamlet’s words written by the great English playwright, William Shakespeare:

“To thine own self be true.”

Just remember,

You are launched on a great journey

and …

“Make no little plans, they have no magic to stir the blood to action, make big plans, aim high in work and hope.”

- D. Burnham

Craig Lock

http://www.craiglock.com

The “original” Online Creative Writing Course http://www.nzenterprise.com/writer/creative.html

This short extract is from my new manuscript on sport psychology. THE WINNING MIND and Craig’s other books are available at: http://www.bridgeniche.com/CLOCK/zaniestbooks.htm

THIS ARTICLE MAY BE FREELY PUBLISHED

The Gaian Paradigm Part 3 – Cooperative Life-Long Self-Learning

Author: Bill Ellis
Source: articleage.com

A COMMUNITY LIFE-LONG LEARNING SYSTEM
The potential for a new global governance rooted in civil society 9Paart 2) is
only one example of the emergence of spontaneous self-ordered complex
networks. Another interesting example of self organization on the edge of chaos
is the emergence of Cooperative Community Life-Long Leaning Centers (CCL-
LLCs).
Early American schools were strict disciplinary centers in which students sat
stiffly at their desks in abject obedience while stern teachers taught them the three
Rs by rote memory. It’s purpose, at least during this century, has been to prepare
workers for an industrial culture. It worked well. Laborers in American mills and
factories surpassed all others in bringing wealth to our nation.
An increasing number of educational critics, like 1991 New York teacher of the
year, John Taylor Gatto in Dumbing us Down, have decried the schooling system.
They contend that it is the form of schooling that is teaching the wrong lessons.
The monopoly state schools restrict the individual’s natural curiosity and desire to
learn. They teach authoritarianism, self-repression, and strict obedience to the
clock. The teacher, under controls set by the state and now the national
government, determines what is to be learned. The clock and the calendar
determine when and how long a child can learn it. Much of this criticism of
schooling has been reflected in a report to the president, A Nation at Risk.
Well before the current attacks on schooling and educating, John Dewey and
other philosophers assailed this concept of education with their creeds of “learning
by doing” and “child centered education.” Although the philosophy of education
changed the form didn’t. Twenty or more children are still gathered in one school
room, each one trying to do his or her own thing. The result is that neither teaching
nor learning is possible. Many schoolrooms become centers of confusion.
Education is now at the edge of of chaos, ripe for a radical transformation.
The organization of the new learning system is somewhat difference than the
self-organization of local GROs into a Global Civil Society. For the example we
examined above, organization came from moving from chaos, a disordered
conglomeration of disjoint new organiztional cells, through the borderland of the
edge of chaos into order. GlobaL Civil Society, like democracy before it, is self-
organizing itself where nothing, or little, existed before. For the learning system
reorganization is happening, in part at least, from the failure and disintegration of a
too rigidly ordered system.
One element of the reorganization of learning started two decades ago when
some families started taking corrective actions one family at a time. It was called
homeschooling. These actions grew in concert with Paul Goodman’s urging that
schools make more use of community facilities and issues, with Ivan Illich’s seminal
book Deschooling Society, and with John Holt’s Instead of Education (1976), and
Growing Without Schooling (1977) on how children learn.
In the beginning, only a couple of decades ago, homeschools were
autonomous family units, each one setting it own curriculum, and providing its own
supplies and services. As homeschooling grew in the 1970s and 1980s
practitioners began forming associations primarily to exchange information and to
confront state laws that limited their rights. There are now some 700
homeschooling associations in the United States. About 50 of these have a nation-
wide constituency.
Most of the services provided to homeschoolers, like Growing Without
Schooling, or Home Education Press, are primarily publications emphasizing
exchanges among homeschoolers. Others like the Clonlara School Home-Based
Education Center provide a by-mail service with curricula, tests, and diplomas for
homeschoolers. Still others are newsletters written and exchanged by
homeschoolers themselves. A few like Home Schoolers Defense Organization help
homeschoolers with legal and legislative matters. One or two have books,
equipment and other material for loans to homeschoolers. Some like ????? and
Aerogram are publications condemning the authoritarian, monopolistic state school
systems and supporting alternative educational systems.
Closely associated with the home schooling movement are a broad variety of
alternative schools which are moving in the direction of child-centered education.
Jerry Mintz in his Handbook of Alternative Education lists 2500 Montessori schools,
100 Waldorf schools, and 60 Quaker schools as well as the 700 homeschools
programs. 9
In additions to these is a growing number of Folk schools patterned after the
Folk Schools of Denmark, “schools-without walls,” “Open Universities” and learning
centers which do not fall within the province of being substitutes for the K-12
governmental schools. It is this later group of learning facilities with which this
paper is interested.
In the last two or three years local homeschooling networks have started
providing themselves with a new form of learning social institution. They don’t yet
even have a universal name. To start examining them I will cvall call them
“Cooperative Community Life-Long Learning Centers (CCL-LLCs).” These
community centers are cooperatively owned and controlled by the member families
they serve. They provide counseling, mentoring, supplies, facilities, workshops and
classes. They serve everyone in the community regardless of age or past learning.
They use all aspects of the community as learning facilities. Libraries, YMCAs,
churches, museums, local businesses, farms, government offices, the streets, and
the parks are all part of the learning system.
As Gene Lehman put it in one of his Luno broadsheets “life long learning relies
heavily on daily life activities, deep and variend interactions among people, contact
with nature , and a popular culture which is abundant, diverse, profound, and
cheaply accessible to all. Most importantly, a holistic approach to lifelong learning
relies on developing some kind of face-to-face community of friends and
neighhbors who co-operate in order to share the essendital burdens and delights of
life.”10
In 1998 Community Learning Centers became of governmental interest when
the Elementary and Secondary Education Act dedicated $40 million to expand after-
school programs. But this program was limited to school districts, and
administered by U.S. Department of Education. It’s goal was primarily to get the
kids off the streets, rather than to stimulate life-long or community learning. It was
thus directed more at saving a decaying schooling system than experimenting with
new futuristic systems of learning.
Cooperative Community Life-Long Learning Centers may be one of the most
seminal innovations of the past decade. They may be the seed for a deep
fundamental change in the education/learning system of the future. Community
Life-Long Learning Centers are to a large extent an outgrowth of the rapidly
growing homeschooling movement. It is conceivable that CLL-LLCs could
completely replace the state controlled schools.
Civil Society and Learning
The transition to a Community Life-Long Learning System is much more than a
change in educational practices. It is a transformation of the whole mind set of the
value of knowledge and the value of the person. “Teaching,” “educating,” and
“schooling” imply that society, or government, is acting on, controlling,
indoctrinating and forming some amorphous lesser beings. It is an hierarchical
system of control from the top down. It is inherent in the first phase of democracy
which accepted many of the tenets of rule from above, the divine right of kings and
its transition to the divine right of government. It is in harmony with the fading
worldview that the cosmos, and the Earth, are parts of the chain of being in which
man is a semi god controlling the Earth from above, and all lesser forms including
women, children, animals, plants and the Earth’s natural resources are but
resources for the use of man.
Every single word in”Cooperative,” “Community,” “Life-Long,” “Learning,” and
“System” carries a different important connotation. “Learning” is not something a
superior being does to a lesser one. Learning is an act of self-volition. It is a self-
actuated process of creating skills, discovering knowledge, and satisfying one’s
own natural curiosity. It is built on, and it teaches, the inherent right and
responsibility of every individual to set her is his own standards. It honors the
diversity of evolution. It is in harmony with the new Gaian worldview that
everything is interdependent with everything else. It respects the new
understanding that each of us “belongs” equally to Gaia.
“Belonging” in this sense is much more that merely “being a member of.”
Belonging is the scientific fact that we are all interdependent systems within
systems, or holons wthin holons if you wish to use the systems jargon. Each of us is
a whole made up of smaller wholes and imbedded in larger wholes. Gaia and the
Cosmos are among the larger wholes of which each individual is a smaller whole.
“Belonging” implies not only being a whole within wholes, but that we are subject to
downward causation, we are subject to natural laws. “Belonging” to Gaia means
belonging to the Earth and to one another. Belonging is an ethical proto-value
inherent in the New Science/Social paradigm. It says that each individual is an
integral part and responsible for the health and well being of the family, the
community, Gaia, and each of the larger systems of high he or she is a part.
Inherent in this scientific concept of belonging is much of the perennial wisdom of
the sages which have recognized that humanity cannot continue to exist on Earth
without laws of conduct which emphasise our responsibility to and for one another.
This transition from “educating” to “learning” is being recognized by a wide
variety of scholars. Management guru Peter Drucker in his “Post Capitalist Society”
writes of a society based on knowledge. One in which all society is an open life-
long learning system in which every person can enter any level at any time. From
the other end of the spectrum peace scholar Elise Boulding reports that a common
feature of the many “Imagine a World Without Weapons” workshops she has held
with people of all walks of life and all ages, was the vision of a “localist society,”
One in which communities were self-reliant and “Learning appears integrated into
other community activities. … everyone is a learner, and education is life long.” This
theme of the “Learning Community” is fully integrated with the growth of civil
society and all other aspects of the emerging Gaian Cultures.11
(1677 word on learning)
Bill Ellis, of Rangely, ME retired early from his working life
as a science policy consultant in agencies such as the National
Science Foundation, Unesco and The World Bank. For the last
30 years he has work voluntarily to promote the broad range of
social innovations that empower people at the grass roots and
promote community self-reliance. One of these is as General
Coordinator, of ‘A Coalition for Self-Learning. With which he
facilitated the drafting an online book, “Creating Learning
Communities,” and, the White Paper, “Life-Long Self-Learning,”
that promotes the recognition of the vast array of learning
modalities in addition to public schooling — e.g. learning
co-ops, public schools, private schools, unschooling, charter
schools. His mantra is “everyone should have the right, the
freedom, the resources and the opportunity to learn what
they want, when they want and how they want.