Personal development is a key to success. By reading this blog, you are demonstrating that you are committed to personal growth. Often people realize the importance of personal growth, but don’t do anything deliberate on a daily basis to provide for opportunities to grow. It is important that you commit to doing some form of personal development daily. This will ensure that you are always improving and moving towards your goals. Unfortunately, personal development is often one of the first areas that people let slip when they get busy. That is because it is never urgent, and it appears that it can always wait. While it may not be urgent, it is certainly important and in fact can be one of the most important activities you can pursue.

One way to ensure that you continue to pursue growth is to commit to a daily time of personal development. Many find that 20 minutes a day is an ideal number. It is not a long commitment. You can squeeze in 20 minutes even on a busy day. But 20 minutes is long enough to make a difference; to charge you up, and help you learn something important for your life.

So what do you do with 20 minutes to ensure growth? Here are six ways you can grow each day, and all of them can be valuable in just 20 minutes each day.

1. Read A Book – You should always be reading. Reading opens your mind to new ways of thinking and to new ideas. As you read you’ll be inspired, encouraged, and challenged. Chances are that no matter what goal you are pursuing, or what problem you are facing, that someone has faced a similar issue before and has written about it. By reading from them, you are able to avoid making mistakes that others have already made. If you don’t like to read, then make sure you get audio books. Audio books not only are valuable if you don’t like to read, but allow you to listen while you drive or exercise.

2. Pick a Few Blogs to Follow – There are many wonderful personal development blogs. By picking a few blogs and keeping up with them daily, you can continue to pursue growth with the blog’s author serving as your mentor or coach. Certainly, it is easy to get overwhelmed by trying to follow too many blogs. Eventually your list of unread posts grows and the list just overwhelms you; when that occurs you end up not reading any. By sticking with a few favorites, and subscribing by RSS, you can focus on picking up a few ideas each day.

3. Listen to Audio Trainings or Podcast – Listening to audio presentations can be another inspiring method of personal growth. You can listen to traditional training material from experts such as Jim Rohn, Zig Ziglar, or Tony Robbins. There are also dozens of other motivational speakers, trainers, and experts who offer free podcasts for you to download. Another example of the audio presentations available by podcast are sermons. You can listen to top preachers from around the world on a weekly basis.

4. Learn a Language – Learning a new language is a powerful form of personal growth. It helps to increase your creativity as you learn to thinking in a different language. It also prepares you to be more competitive in today’s workforce and business world. Further, it gives you greater flexibility in your ability to travel. You can learn a language at home through programs like the Rosetta Stone, through many other audio training programs or taking a local course.

5. Take a College Course – Another powerful form of personal growth is to take a course at your local college or university. Pick a topic that you would like to learn, whether that is just for your personal pleasure or to learn a new practical skill. After graduating, I have continued to take extra courses including a course in Racket Sports (to improve my tennis and learn a few other sports), a course in preaching, and a history course. All of these were valuable in my personal growth.

6. Hire a personal coach – A final way to ensure consistent personal growth is to hire a personal coach. Personal coaches are equipped to help you set and achieve goals in many areas of life. A good personal coach will help you to set goals, develop a plan, and become more effective as you move towards their achievement. A coach can help you in multiple areas of your life, by becoming a source of accountability as you live out your plan.

You certainly don’t need to do all of these things. Pick the one or two that you are most interested in and that fit best into your lifestyle. Commit to twenty minutes each day and start putting these activities into action.

Now readers it’s your turn. What are your favorite ways of personal development?

The Success Professor – Danny Gamache

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The Olympic Flame on a Smog-free Day in Beijing

One of the most remarkable parts of my Olympic experience was to see the drastic changes that have taken place in Beijing – many even over the past year. When I arrived in Beijing for the Olympics it was only 13 months since my previous visit, and yet in many ways it was a very different city. These changes show the results that can come from having a clear goal, a deadline and strong motivation.  There were many significant changes to be seen.

Changes in Beijing

• New Airport Terminal – $3.5 billion terminal, bigger than the city currently needs, and complete with a full-time attendant/cleaner in each restroom.

• Trees, Trees and Trees – planted millions of trees, particularly lining important roads

• Lots of fresh paint – almost every apartment building was painted

• Walls around ugly areas – walls were built surrounding construction sights and slum areas

• Beautiful new venues – the Bird’s Nest Stadium and the Water Cube set the new standard for architecture in sports venues

• New subways – a number of brand new subways were completed including an airport express subway

• More public washrooms

• Better translations – removed much of the “chinglish” and corrected it with proper English translations

• Line ups – instead of pushing to get on buses, subways etc. people were trained to stand in line

• Reduced spitting and public urination – two habits common in Beijing just a year ago, were drastically reduced

• Traffic limitations to reduce smog – cars were only permitted to drive every second day leading up to and during the Olympics. It took some time for the smog to clear but the reduced traffic was a benefit in itself

Olympic Stadium - aka The Bird's Nest

Certainly Beijing had some advantages in their preparation for the games. With China being a communist country the government could do things that couldn’t be done (as easily) in a free market economy; they forced people to move, used significant levels of cheap labour, and made laws that would never fly in Western countries. For the purpose of this article I’m not going to debate whether these decisions are right or wrong. Instead, we’ll consider that China was simply using the resources at its disposal to reach its goal. So how did China do it?

How China Did It

1. Clear goal – China’s goal was to put on the best show and make a grand re-entrance onto the World’s stage. The Olympic was its showcase. The goal was clear and everyone in the country knew this was the goal.
2. Deadline – The Olympics had a built in deadline for the changes to be completed: 08-08-08, the date of the opening ceremonies. A goal with a deadline is much more powerful than an undated goal. You are more likely to take action and less likely to procrastinate when the deadline is clear.
3. Motivation – Your motivation is the reason behind your goal. It is the core point that will drive you. In China that motivation was national pride and the desire to impress others. It is hard for an outsider to understand the level of national pride that exists amongst the Chinese people. Westerners might think that a reduced level of individual freedom would potentially lower the levels of national pride, but that is not the case. Almost everyone in China was excited about the games and wanted the country to look its best while the world was watching. They wanted to impress others.
4. Massive Action – The amount of work put into making these changes in Beijing was massive. Every resource was put into making the games the showcase to the world that China wanted. Massive action is needed to move towards any goal.

In light of the example of Beijing there are several questions you should ask yourself:

• What is your goal?
• Is it clear?
• Do you and your team have a clear understanding about what you want to go and how you are going to get there?
• What is your deadline?
• Is it firm and written down?
• What is the reason behind your goal?
• Will you allow this to motivate you?
• Are you willing to take massive action?

The start of the month provides a perfect opportunity to set some goals and begin to move towards those goals. This list of questions can serve as starting point (or reminder) towards achievement of your goals. If you follow these steps by setting clear goals, establishing a deadlines, understanding your motivation and taking massive action, you will achieve your goals!

The Success Professor – Danny Gamache

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When you combine a burning passion with a clear goal and add in a strong level of persistence, you will be able to achieve almost any goal you set.

My Olympic experience was a clear example of this. And surprisingly, it was not watching the amazing athletes move towards their goals (although these points would certainly be evidenced in many of their stories) rather it was the pursuit of a goal that my friends and I set out to achieve.

The event I most wanted to see at the Olympics occurred on the very first day of competition: The Cycling Men’s Road Race. The race contains the top professional cyclists, most of whom have just completed the Tour de France. At the Athens Olympics, the Road Race took place through the streets of downtown Athens past the Acropolis and other historic sites. The race had been sixteen laps so my friends and I wondered the course watching the athletes go past at a variety of key places and making sure we ended up at the finish line for the final lap. Athens was perfect for spectators as the race was very easy to watch.

Not so in Beijing. Everything about the race made it difficult for spectators. To start with, the official Olympic website was very vague about the race. In fact even now, after the Olympics have been completed, the venue information on the website shows the race as TBD (To Be Determined)! Eventually in the weeks leading up to the games a prominent cycling website posted the map. The race, of 245 kilometers, would start off in downtown Beijing and end at the Great Wall with 7 laps of a finishing circuit. Getting to the Great Wall has some challenges and can be fairly expensive on a normal day, but in the Olympics and when an event is happening made it seem nearly impossible.

Our pursuit of the goal of seeing the Road Race began almost as soon as we arrived in Beijing. My friend and I went to work trying to figure out how to get from downtown to the Great Wall. Our goal was to see the start of the race and then move out to the Wall to catch the finishing laps from a position along the track. Our first option was to find a bus or train that could take us there. We knew this would be the cheapest way, and from the Lonely Planet travel book we knew that a bus was supposed to go from near our hotel to this particular location on the Great Wall for only about $3 a person. I went to the bus stop and after scrounging for someone who spoke enough English to understand me and waiting as several Chinese volunteers worked to find the information, I discovered that the busses would not be running during the race. My friend found out the same information about the train.

We were not completely surprised by this, so we started looking at other options. We naturally thought about a taxi, and while taxis in Beijing are very inexpensive they have a maximum capacity of four and our group had five people wanting to see the race. Instead we started making use of all of our local contacts to find another option. Until the day before the event we did not have an option that would work. Thankfully our hotel manager came through and was able to arrange a minivan and driver for us to hire. The cost was higher than we would have hoped, but there was little other choice. The government restriction on vehicles (each vehicle could only drive every other day) had lowered the supply available thus increasing costs.

The day of the Road Race came and the real adventure began. Sure we had to have persistence to arrange for the vehicle and driver, but that was nothing compared to what was to come. The driver first took us to the Start Line where we had hoped to see the start of the race. Leading up to the Olympics everything published about the race stated that it was a “free event with no ticket required”. When we got to the start line we quickly found out that to the surprise of everyone except about 200 locals they had placed a ticked section around the immediate start line. We were there in plenty of time so we showed the volunteers the Official Olympic Guide Book where is stated clearly that there were “no tickets required”. We were shuffled from one volunteer to another as they each tried to find someone in authority that could help us get in. No one was able to make a decision and so they all stuck with the rule as they understood it. We needed a ticket.

The start of the Men's Road Race

Thankfully, I eventually found a local willing to give me a free ticket to the starting area. The rest of my team settled for watching the race start from about 500 meters down the course. Getting in to the ticketed section was amazing. I was able to watch the cyclists getting ready and warming up. Seeing many of my heroes up close like this was awesome. The cyclists were eventually introduced one country at a time and came out and took their positions at the start line. It was neat being able to watch them interact with each other while they waited for the full field to be announced and the race to start (about 15 minutes of a wait for the first riders to be introduced).

After the race began my friends and I reconnected and found our driver. We set off to get to the Great Wall. We had hoped that we might get to the primary road to the Wall before the cyclists did so that we could beat the road closures. Unfortunately we missed them by only a few minutes. As we were being forced off the road by the blockade we actually saw most of the riders enter the road up ahead of us. The road to the Great Wall was about 70 kilometers which meant that it would take the cyclists most of two hours to get there. We spent those two hours in our rented minivan with our driver trying anything he could to get us closer to the wall. Unfortunately all the traffic normally going on that road was trying the same thing and so we spent as much time sitting in traffic as moving.

Eventually our driver persisted and found us a way to get passed one set of blockades and to the town nearest the finish line. Unfortunately at this point all the roads were closed except to local traffic (and no taxis). We saw that other foreigners were getting out of their hired vehicles and taxis at this point and starting to walk so we had no choice but to join in. We realized very quickly that the finish line was still 8 kilometers (or 5 miles) away so it would be a long walk.

What would you do in a foreign country, where almost no one speaks your language and you need to get 8 kilometers as quickly as possible? Stick out your thumb and hitch hike of course! Almost immediately a local picked us up. I don’t think she had any idea about what we were doing or where we wanted to go but she did drive us a short distance until another road block stopped her. We got out and continued walking. After going the wrong way for about 10 minutes we eventually found ourselves on the correct road. At least we assumed it was the correct road because of the scattering of other foreigners walking towards the supposed cycling course.

The day was hot (close to 100 degrees) and very humid, and the road was uphill so the walk seemed to take forever. Occasionally a car would pass us and we’d try to hitch a ride. Every car seemed to be either already filled with foreigners who they had picked up, or was an official Olympic vehicle that was in no way going to stop for anyone. After about 45 minutes of walking we were finally picked up by a local. She drove us rapidly towards the Great Wall. We quickly became very thankful for the ride as we realized that it would have taken at least another hour to walk that distance.

Even after arriving at the course things were difficult. The spectators were restricted to a small section of the course and were not allowed to walk the entire course as we had hoped. We didn’t care too much by this time. Our adventure had taken us by rented minivan, hitch hiking through a foreign country, and through a long walk. The section we were at was a great spot to watch the race come through and we made it just in time to see the second of the seven laps. We didn’t miss much and had an amazing adventure to go with it.

Looking up the course to the Great Wall

That night I reflected on what it took to achieve that goal. The day was a success but it didn’t come easily. In fact the adventure we went through became as important to us as the race itself. By the end of the Olympics we all chose that day as our highlight. Success truly was a journey more than just a destination.

The first key was that we had a clear goal. We knew exactly what we wanted to achieve. Not only did we have a goal but we had a high level of passion to achieve it. How passionate about your goal are you? If we didn’t have a strong passion to achieve our goal we could have given up at many points. Thirdly we committed ourselves to achieving the goal. After we spent the money on the car and driver we were committed. We had spent the money and were going to get our money’s worth – no matter what we had to do to get there. Finally we had persistence. We never gave up. We moved passed the each obstacle that was presented to us.

What is your goal? Take your goal and get clarity. Develop a deep passion to achieve your goal and you will do everything you can to achieve it.

Have a great day!

The Success Professor

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Here are the links to my photos from the Olympics. I’ve set them up in five different albums on Facebook. Anyone (even if you don’t use Facebook), can see them through these links. I’ll try to add some stories tomorrow!

Baseball, Tennis and Handball
http://www.new.facebook.com/album.php?aid=151442&l=9fde0&id=826085649

Cycling Road Race
http://www.new.facebook.com/album.php?aid=151442&l=9fde0&id=826085649

Track and Field, Basketball & Fencing
http://www.new.facebook.com/album.php?aid=151552&l=4ef59&id=826085649

People and Places
http://www.new.facebook.com/album.php?aid=151557&l=7171e&id=826085649

Great Wall
http://www.new.facebook.com/album.php?aid=151562&l=029c6&id=826085649

To your success,
The Success Professor

The start of the cycling road race

Hello everyone from Beijing.

The opening ceremonies are in a couple of hours. I’ve been in Beijing for a couple of days now, and it is like nothing I have seen before. Last year I was in Beijing for three days.  I have also been to the past three Olympics.  The combination of the Olympics in China is crazy.

In other Olympics the local people often avoid the games.  In Athens the locals left the city in droves preferring to stay away.  Not so in Beijing. Not only is everyone in Beijing excited but millions of people from surrounding provinces are here.  The city is swollen with people.  The Tiennamen square area is packed wall to wall with people.

So far my trip has involved a lot of exploration.  I’ve been learning the city, the subway system and where the venues are.  I’ve been doing the touristy things and that has been great.

Beijing has invested so much money in this Olympics – more than I’ve ever seen before.  The new airport terminal is larger than any US airport.  It cost over $3 Billion to build and is bigger than the city even needs at this time.  They have planted millions of trees, and flowers.   They have volunteers sitting around to stop locals from spitting on the street, from public urination and other unsightly habits that used to be common in Beijing.  The level of national pride is huge.

Cars are only allowed to run every second day and yet the smog is very dense.  (More on this in another update!).  For tomorrow we have rented a minivan and driver to help us follow the cycling Men’s Road Race.  We hope the roads will be open and we can get where we need to go.

Until next time!  Enjoy the games!

The Success Professor!