The old saying is that people rank the fear of public speaking higher than they rank the fear of death so people would rather be dead than speak in public.  While this statement is obviously an exaggeration, it does bring up the point that people are often afraid of speaking in public.

If you have this kind of fear, you are not unusual.  Fear grips many people who speak in public. Often this is simply a comfort zone issue.  If speaking is outside of your comfort zone you will naturally be fearful when you start doing it.  The same is true for anything outside of your comfort zone.

The good news is that your comfort zone expands with time. As you begin to speak in public you will start to feel more and more comfortable over time. Many people will eventually feel fully at ease with public speaking once they have expanded their comfort zone.  Admittedly, public speaking carries with it such a perception of being a fear-worthy event that some people carry a fear with them for some time.  Even for these people, more frequent speaking and better preparation helps to limit the effect of this fear.

Aside from experience, preparation is the most important ingredient in giving better speeches and in lowering fear levels. Simply taking the time to know and understand a few key things about your presentation can make you more effective and confident.

1. Know Your Objective

The first thing to understand is your objective for giving a presentation.  You need to know why you are speaking (and the answer can not be simply that your boss told you to).  Ask yourself, what is my desired outcome?  The outcome you are hoping for is your objective.  It is why you are giving the presentation.

There are many different reasons for a speech and they are tied directly to your outcome.  These include:

• debate – to defend and argue for a position, such as in politics
• inform – provide information such as a progress report on a project
• persuade – presenting a request for funding or making a sales presentation
• amuse – when your goal is to entertain or provide humor
• motivate – to inspire, encourage or challenge people into action

Any of these objectives are valid reasons to speak in public.  By knowing what your objective is you can focus in on how to accomplish your goal. You will be more effective and less distracted.  Make sure your speech sticks to your objective.  If your goal is to debate, don’t spend all your time providing basic information.  If your goal is to persuade don’t spend all your time trying to amuse.  Stick to your objective.

2. Know Your Audience

The second key is to know your audience. Your audience is who you are speaking to, directly and indirectly.  The direct audience will be people who are hearing your speech initially – likely those people who will be sitting directly in front of you.  The indirect audience will be people who will hear your speech later – perhaps through an audio recording, podcast, or published transcript.

You need to know who these people are.  Learn as much as you can about them. An effective teacher learns as much as she can about her students.  A pastor learns as much as he can about his congregation.  Professional speakers will also do significant research into the company that has hired them to present.  I have seen many professional speakers who are able to directly interact with the company that has hired them through the knowledge they have gained about the company, its products, and business.

If you are called on to give a presentation, take the time to do this research.  If you don’t know who the audience will be you need to ask:  Who are they, and what do they expect?  How many people will be in attendance?  Are they there because they choose to be, or because it is required?  What are they hoping to get out of the presentation?  Knowing these factors can go a long way to understanding your audience.

Once you understand your audience you are able to make your speech relevant. You can connect the presentation details to the people you are talking to.  The effective teacher will use what she has learned about her students to provide illustrations that the students can connect to.  For example, in one of the classes I teach there are a high proportion of student-athletes.  Because of this, I look for opportunities to use athletics as an example.  Tailor your speech to what you have learned about your audience.

3. Know Your Information

You also need to know your information.  This may be obvious, and yet far too often people think they can get by with a surface level understanding of their topic.  You need to take the time to learn so much about your topic that you could have a detailed conversation with someone about your information with no notes to guide you.

When you give your presentation you should use notes.  There are three levels you could use for how much to have written down when you start your speech.  On one end of the spectrum you could have every word written out in a manuscript. The other end of the spectrum is to have everything memorized with no notes.  There are excellent speakers who use each of these options.

For most, however, the third option is most effective.  This involves having a detailed outline of what you will say that you can refer to from time to time.  If you know your material very well you can use an outline to keep you on track but then speak from your memory and your knowledge base the rest of the time.

Your outline could be in many formats.  You may chose to use a regular piece of paper, index cards, or PowerPoint slides that you present to the audience.  To effectively use your outline include notes on the following:

• detailed introduction and main idea so you can start your presentation well
• the main points along with reminders about stories, illustrations, or important statistics
• your conclusion, including exactly what you want to say to finish your talk

So take the time to really understand your objective, your audience, and your information.  This knowledge will help you make more effective speeches and presentations.  Further, it will help ease the nerves you have as you will feel more prepared and ready for whatever comes at you.

Written by:
Danny Gamache

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Deadlines are an extremely valuable tool to use as you pursue your goals. As a college professor, I see this all too clearly.  If assignments didn’t have deadlines, most students wouldn’t complete them.  If you left every deadline until the end of the course, all of the work would be done at the end of the course.  Deadlines naturally spur people, pushing them to complete the project at hand.

The same phenomenon can be seen when you are preparing to go on a vacation.  Have you ever noticed how much more work you get done on the day before you leave? It is because you have a firm deadline looming, and tasks that need to get done before you leave.

This phenomenon can be used as you pursue your goals.  Having a deadline will force you to move forward. You will need to work hard to reach your goal by the deadline, and as the deadline gets near it will inspire you focus hard and get the project done.

Here is how to make use of deadlines to help you reach your goals more quickly:

1. Make a deadline for every major goal that you are pursuing.

Every major goal you have needs an accompanying deadline.  If the goal is important enough for you to set and pursue then it is important enough to have a deadline for completing it. If you set the deadline for the major goal, you can then break down the goal into monthly and weekly components that will help you stay on the right timeline.

Some of your life goals may be continual, or ongoing, goals.  These might better considered habits that you are working to create.  For me, these include things such as working out five times a week, writing five days a week etc.  While they don’t need to have an extra deadline, you should do a weekly review of all of these goals to ensure that you are making progress.  By doing this you are able to create a weekly deadline to have completed that task the number of times you want.  So, for example, my workout goal has a weekly deadline; to reach it I need to have worked out five times by the end of the week.

2. Make the deadlines external

The best deadlines are deadlines that are set for you by someone else. For students the deadline for handing in an assignment often helps them have the surge in energy needed to finish.  For you it might be the tax filing deadline that creates action as you drop other things to get your taxes done.  Both of these are examples of external deadlines.

As you set personal deadlines for achieving goals, you need to hold yourself to them like an external deadline. You can do this by putting some form of external pressure on your internal goals.  You can do this by:

• sharing the deadline with many people around you so that they hold you accountable and apply peer pressure
• placing your deadline around an existing external deadline, such as a vacation, holiday or special event (ie. making your goal to complete your project before you leave for an Easter weekend trip)
• giving yourself a significant reward, but only if you complete your goal before a set deadline
• committing to someone else that you will complete something by a certain time so that they can take the next step in the project
• having a partner that you work with and both share the same deadline

Any of these methods can help increase the power of your deadline by applying external pressure.

3. Make the deadlines firm

Many times people who are pursing a goal will set a deadline only to continually be pushing back the deadline because they aren’t going to reach the goal.  You need to make the deadline firm. There cannot be any extensions.  You simply need to get it done.  If you get in the habit of giving yourself extensions you will start to rely on them.  Eventually you will get in the habit of never reaching the deadlines that you set for yourself.

4. Make the deadlines appropriate

You deadline needs to be appropriate.  This means that the deadline cannot be too easy to reach, or too hard. If it is too easy, you simply won’t get started because you will always believe you have all the time in the world to complete your goal.  After all, you believe the goal is really easy to achieve by the deadline.  Unfortunately when this happens the time will fly by and you may not think about the deadline again until it is too late.  You need a deadline that will cause you to get started right away.

The deadline also can not be too hard.  If the deadline looks like it cannot be met, you will quickly become discouraged and stop pursuing the deadline; you will give up, because you don’t believe you can succeed in time.

Instead, make the deadline challenging, but reachable. In order to do that you will need to learn your tendencies.  Do you tend to overestimate what you can accomplish with your time, or underestimate your ability?  I tend to overestimate how much work I can get done with my time.  Because of this, I need to make the deadline a little easier to reach than I would first expect.  If I expect that I can get a project done in two weeks, I better give myself a deadline of three or four weeks to be more realistic.  Some people work the opposite and always think a project will take longer than it really does.  If you fit into that category, set the deadline for a shorter period of time than you might first expect.

5. Complete, Celebrate, Commence

These three Cs are the cycle for achieving goals with a deadline.  The first C is to complete the project you are working on.  Work really hard towards a goal with the focus on completing it. If you are like me, you likely have the tendency to have a number of project lying around that are started, perhaps even near completion and yet not finished.  One place I notice this in my life is how many books I have partially read.  Often I find myself part way through several books, but not completing any of them. To break this trend, focus on completing the project.  You can set a new deadline for completing the project if you are nearly done well before the original deadline.

The second C is to celebrate.  Once you have completed a major project or met a major goal you need to pause and celebrate.  Find a way to celebrate that is a true reward. For me, a steak dinner at my favorite restaurant is a great reward for completing a major project.  This has to be something you do rarely enough that it truly feels like a great celebration.  Your celebrations may change from goal to goal depending on what feels like a reward to you in the moment.  Bigger goals that took more time and effort to achieve should have a bigger celebration than small goals.

The final C is to commence.  After you have celebrated, you need to commence progress towards your next goal; set a deadline and get going.  Notice that this final C does not take place until after you have completed the previous goal and celebrated its achievement. If you start sooner, you’ll end up with too many projects to focus on.

Using deadlines that are firm, appropriate and have external pressure will help you make progress more rapidly towards your goal.  Set deadlines for all of your major goals and then follow the cycle of the four Cs to reach those goals.  You will quickly move onwards and upwards towards the success you desire.

Written by:

The Success Professor – Danny Gamache

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Hello everyone!

I’ve been taking care of a sick wife this week so I’ve been a little light on posts.  Thankfully my wife is feeling a lot better   and we should be back to a regular posting schedule this week.  I have come across a number of great articles lately so here are some articles for you to check out, as well as a couple of guest posts I had around the web.

1. CNN has an interesting article about entrepreneurs, featuring the inventor of the Segway and asking “when is it time to quit”.

2. Author Leo Babauta of Zen Habits has a great article called The Single Secret to Making 2009 Your Best Year Ever.

3. Pick the Brain shares the Foundations of Success.

4. Seth Godin challenges one aspect of Malcom Gladwell’s book Outliers (book link).

5. Mary Jaksch speaks to the way we use time in How to Make Life Spacious.
My guest posts:

At the blog Fresh Focus… On Productivity! I wrote about How to use RSS for Maximum Productivity

At Stepcase Lifehack, I write about How to Change Your Resume for a Great 2009.

Have a great week!

The Success Professor – Danny Gamache

Leo Babauta

Today you are in for a special treat. This week, I had the privilege of interviewing Leo Babauta, the author of the blog Zen Habits and of the new book (released today!) called “The Power of Less”.

In the interview below Babauta shares about his definition of success, how he got the book deal, and how to start of 2009 with purpose!

I encourage you to order his book and check out the  book’s website which has a wealth of resources including audio training and a free ebook.  Finally, if you purchase his book by January 1 you can enter this special contest.
For now, enjoy the interview:

1. What is your definition of success? How did you come to that definition?

I define success as happiness — doing the things and spending time
with the people that make you happy. That might be something as simple
as having a satisfying life with your children and spouse, or
achieving great things and helping people while doing something you’re
passionate about. Whatever makes you happy.

It took me awhile to figure out that wealth and the traditional
definitions of success — making a huge name for yourself, achieving
status in society, having a big house and cars, and so forth — didn’t
mean much if you weren’t happy. I tried to pursue those traditional
definitions of success at first, but after a time I realized that I
wasn’t spending time with my wife and children, I was working too
much, and the material things weren’t worth the sacrifices. I had to
rethink my view on life, and once I realized the true definition of
success I’ve never been happier.

2. What steps do you take to pursue personal growth?

I learned to focus on what I really love doing, and restructured my
life so I had time for those things. So today I make my living doing
something I’m passionate about, instead of making a living doing
something that makes money and waiting for the day when I had a chance
to do what I’m passionate about. This has lead to so much in my life
– not only happiness but greater accomplishments than ever before.
That’s a nice side benefit because the happiness is what really
matters.

3. What led you to start Zen Habits?

I’d been going through a series of positive personal changes –
quitting smoking, running, waking early, eating healthier, getting
organized and productive, and so forth — and I’d been learning a lot
while doing these things. I was so excited about all of it that I
decided to share what I’d been learning, as well as my failures, so
that others could benefit too.

4. Could you explain the meaning of the name Zen Habits?

It’s a combination of two ideas I’d been trying to implement — it
embodies my philosophy in two words. The first word, “Zen”, refers not
to my religion but to what I’d learned from reading about Zen and
doing some Zen meditation — learning to focus on the moment, on
whatever I was doing at the time. It’s a simplicity that I’ve learned
is very powerful in all areas of life.

The second word, “Habits”, refers to the series of habit changes that
I’d been making in my life, and my belief that simple but effective
habit change techniques can have a great impact on whatever we do. We
are our habits, after all.

5. How did your book deal come about? What was the writing process like?

The book deal followed the success of Zen Habits — I’d grown to
20,000 or 30,000 subscribers and it was clear that a lot of people
were interested in the things I was writing about on Zen Habits. I was
contacted by an agent and some publishers and decided to do a book,
and received immediate interest.

The writing process was actually very difficult — first of all
because I was still trying to write for Zen Habits and start up
another blog and get married and train for a marathon and plan for my
honeymoon. It was too much, so I simplified and cleared my schedule
and focused entirely on the book until I got it done. It’s more proof
that the techniques in The Power of Less actually work!

The Power of Less

6. Could you explain the meaning of the name, “Power of Less”?

It refers to how we can achieve more by focusing on less — if we focus on the important things. It also talks about how starting small is better, as it leads to greater chances of success. It talks about simplifying, about the power of applying limits, and the power of doing one thing at a time. Concentrate your focus on smaller things and you’ll be much more effective.

7. What are your goals for the book?

The same as my goals for Zen Habits — help as many people as possible. I’m hoping to reach a wider audience through the book, to share some of my simple philosophy and effective techniques so that others can benefit from things I’ve learned. If it does well and I get another book deal out of it, even better!

8. Who are the biggest influences in your life?

There are so many! I’m influenced by philosophers and doers, such as
Gandhi, the Dalai Lama, Zen monk Thich Nhat Hanh, Zen and Taoist
philosophy, and many many writers. I’m influenced by my mom, Shannon
Murphy, my dad, Joe Babauta, my grandparents, my children, my wife
Eva. Many blogs and books have also helped shape who I am.

9. What inspires you?

I am inspired by others who are living their dreams, who have found
simplicity and happiness, who have learned to be compassionate, who
live in the moment. I love reading blogs and books and magazines about
these things, and of course I find people every day in my life — both
online and in the real world — who are doing amazing things and who
inspire me daily.

10. How do you recommend someone starts the new year?

By creating a new positive habit! Don’t create resolutions — they are
often vague and unactionable. Instead, use the habit-change techniques
in my book to create a new habit that will last much longer.

Go to thepowerofless.com to join The Power of Less New Year’s
Challenge — we’re going to help people create a new habit in 30 days,
using just 10 minutes a day!

Thanks Leo Babauta for the interview.  Everyone, check out his book today.

The Success Professor – Danny Gamache

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Hello everyone,
It has been a wonderful relaxing week with family, enjoying and celebrating Christmas.  I hope you have all had a great holiday season.  I’ve spent some enjoyable time browsing the net this week so here are a few of my favorite sites.

The blog Anywired shares about Origami Productivity.

Leadership expert John Maxwell writes an excellent article about perseverance.

Wired has a review of three different productivity books with one of my top 10 books coming out on top.

Pick The Brain compares life to a Jigsaw Puzzle.

Finally, Practical Hacks has 6 Simple Steps to Conquer Procrastination.
Have a great week!  Don’t forget to set goals for the week!

The Success Professor – Danny Gamache

Written by: The Success Professor – NEW: Follow me on TWITTER.

Last week, I wrote about momentum, and how it can be a leader’s best friend.  The focus in that article was creating momentum.  In that article you learned about creating forward progress, having a vision, applying the principle of massive action, and about following up one success immediately with another.  You can read the full article here.

In this article, you will learn how to maintain momentum.  While creating momentum takes the largest amount of effort, its benefits will be short lived if you don’t take some deliberate steps to maintain it.  All your hard work will be in vain and your momentum will disappear – much more quickly than it came about.

The good news is that maintaining momentum is much easier than creating it in the first place.

STEPS TO MAINTAIN MOMENTUM

1. Keep the vision and goals out front.

You need to have a burning vision, a reason why you are going to work your business, a reason why you are going to make the next approach and a reason why you will place that next ad for your web site or product.  Take this vision and keep it out front.  Keep it where you will see it every day, where it will always beyond your mind.  Write it down, visualize it and gather photos that remind you of your vision.

2. Remind team members about the vision.

Don’t just keep the vision in front of yourself, keep the vision out front of your whole team, so that everyone knows where they are going, and every knows WHY they are going in that direction.  Continually recasting the vision for your team will be an important part of your maintaining momentum.

3. Develop consistency in your efforts.

You need to be continuously moving.  Don’t get some momentum going and then think you can stop and your business will grow on its own.  You’ve clearly been doing something right to create momentum – so don’t stop doing those things.  Set your self a pace that you can keep consistently.  Determine what activities you need to do to reach your goals and commit to daily action on those activities.

If you are calling potential customers, determine a number of approach calls that you can make each day and determine a number of follow up calls you can make each day.  Then follow through on that commitment.  How often will you post to your blog?  How often will you work out?  Whatever area you have momentum in, determine the activities you need to do on a daily basis; Then don’t stop.  You won’t need to work as hard as you did when you were creating the momentum, but you will have to work much more consistently.

4. Beware of the sprint/stop syndrome.

One problem people often face when they create momentum is that they fall into the sprint/stop syndrome. This is when people go break neck speed towards their goals for short time and then stop.  This is acting like the hare from the “Tortoise and the Hare fable”.  In that fable the Tortoise wins the race by continually moving forward, beating out the Hare who does a sprint/stop style of race.

There are many motivations for this sort of attitude.  People may stop because they want to reward themselves, so they take a week off or go on a vacation; they may stop because they get stressed out and need a break; they may collapse from exhaustion; or they may get so many sales they have to spend a week catching up on paperwork that got behind.  All of these are equally dangerous.  In each case you have broken the consistency of action and put your momentum in jeopardy.  Sure it may seem like you are still acting, that paperwork needed to be done after all, right?  Even in this case you are moving away from action that moves your business forward and are focusing on action that only maintains the current position.

5. Creating balance in your life.

Working hard and consistent at your business, but don’t burn yourself out.  Creating balance will allow you to maintain your energy. Allow time for personal development; allow time for spiritual growth, and make sure you stay physically active.   Develop a pace to life, one that is aggressive and forward moving, but one that you can maintain for long periods of time without needing to collapse or take a significant rest.  It is good to rest, but take short rests,  take a little time here and there, at most a day here and a day there, but you shouldn’t need to be taking days off to recover from you pace – if you do, you’ve been working too hard.

Momentum can be your best friend as you work towards personal or business goals.  There are deliberate steps you can take towards building momentum and maintaining it.   Now get started!

Written by:
The Success Professor – Danny Gamache

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First, watch this 30 second video.

In order to succeed you must fail. Failure is an essential step towards success.  The more successful the individual the more failures they will have faced along the way.  These might be small failures such as being rejected by a prospect, or they may be larger failures such as a business failing.  These failures can propel you towards success.

Michael Jordan is a great example about success through failure.  There are many lessons that can be learned through his experiences.  Use these tips as an opportunity for self examination.  How do you respond to failure?

1. Take the Shots

In the commercial above, Michael Jordan talks about how many shots he missed.  He missed shots because he was willing to take them.  Are you willing to take the shots that will help you succeed in your goals?

2. Don’t Let Failure Stop You from Trying Again

A missed shot didn’t stop Michael Jordan.  If he had stopped shooting because of one miss, or not been willing to take the next game winning shot simply because he missed the last one, he would not have become the championship player he was. Is a past failure stopping you from moving towards your goals?

3. Don’t Let Failure Get You Down

Michael Jordan didn’t let a missed shot create discouragement.  You cannot dwell on your failures – you must move on.  It is hard to overestimate the importance of a positive attitude on life especially when you fail.  If you are able to keep a positive attitude when you fail, you’ll be able to be ready to try again more quickly.  Have you let failure get you down?

4. Learn Every Time You Fail

There is no doubt that Michael Jordan learned from his failures.  By learning from your failures you will gain more success.  Every lesson you take from failure can be used to help you succeed the next time.  Failure simply shows you what doesn’t work, allowing you to go do what does work the next time.    What can you learn from your most recent failure?

5. Know your Game Winning Shots

Your game winning shots are the activities which push you over the edge as you work towards your goals.  They are the things you can do that allow you to win.  Your game winning shot might be making sales calls to your top prospect list, or submitting another book proposal to a publisher.  You need to know these most important activities and look for opportunities to take shots. What are the game winning shots for your business?

6. Your Response to Failure Impacts Your Team

Not only was Michael Jordan a basketball superstar he was part of great teams. With Michael Jordon the Chicago Bulls won six NBA championships.  Similarly, you need a team to succeed.  Your team will follow you lead.  If you respond negatively to failure, your team will follow.  If you dismiss failure, learn from it, and quickly move on with a positive attitude your team will do likewise.  How is your response to failure impacting your team?

Written by:
The Success Professor – Danny Gamache
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No matter what type of organization you lead, business you run, or what kind of personal goals you are pursuing, one of the keys that will determine the level of your success is momentum.  Momentum is defined as “the force of movement”.  It can help decide how high you will go and how quickly you will get there.  At the same time, momentum can often prove illusive; something that seems to be here today and yet is gone tomorrow.

WHAT DOES MOMENTUM LOOK LIKE

John Maxwell calls momentum “the big mo”.   In his book “The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership”, he says that “Momentum is really a leader’s best friend.  Sometimes it’s the only difference between winning and losing.”

You know you have momentum when you run over obstacles in your path like they were nothing.  Momentum is when things happen with ease, one success follows another and forward growth comes quickly.  Momentum allows leaders to move past mistakes quickly, and any kind of change is possible.  People throughout the organization are motivated to achieve more, and at a higher level. Momentum makes the leader look good, because success seems to happen easily.

If you’re in sales, momentum is when sales come easy, one after another.  In fact you are confident going into the next sales call that you will make the sale.  In your personal life momentum is when you are meeting your goals one after another.  It is when your life is in balance and everything is going right.  You get the idea – it’s like dominos once one thing falls, the rest follow suit.

HOW TO ACHIEVE MOMENTUM

1. Achieving momentum starts with creating forward progress.

Getting started is the most difficult part.  It’s like the law of inertia:  an object in motion tends to stay in motion, and an object at rest tends to stay at rest.  Momentum is what happens when you get moving.  Whatever your goal is take a step towards it now.  This is why I suggest starting your day with a power hour. Your power hour allows you to do something first off in the morning that gives you progress towards your goals right away.  You create success within the first hour of the day, helping you gain momentum.  Once you are in motion for the day you are more likely to stay in motion and continue on towards your goals.

2. You are responsible for the momentum of your team.

Momentum starts with the leader, and then moves outwards and impacts the entire team.  If you lead a team of people in any form then you are responsible for the momentum of your team, you can’t place the responsibility on anyone else. Team momentum starts with your personal momentum.  You need to be motivated yourself and moving forward, before you can motivate others.  Understanding this will allow you to help your team to follow these steps towards momentum.

3. Have a clear vision and goals for your future.

Develop a vision for where you want to go and keep that vision out front.  Continually remind yourself and your team about the vision you are pursing.  Your vision should be important, not just to yourself but some way of contributing to the world and the well being of others.  This kind of vision will inspire. Then starting from your vision set your goals.  Make your goals clear, concise and dated.  Develop ways to remind yourself about your goals and vision.  Review your goals list daily, and put photos around your workspace and home that remind you of your goals.  Use these reminders to inspire you to move forward.

4. Apply the principle of massive action.

In the Olympic 100m sprint, the most important part of the race is leaving the starting blocks.  Sprinters that have a quick reaction time and are able to leave the start with power are often able to get so much momentum that they can’t be caught later in the race.  In your business you need to leave the starting blocks fast.  Even if your business is established you can get out fast by restarting your business – do that today and go!  If you are looking for customers, make a massive amount of prospecting calls bringing in a large amount of new customers; if you’re promoting your web site, do massive amounts of promotion – whatever you do to grow your business or to achieve your personal goals, start creating momentum by doing massive amounts of what it takes to succeed.

5. Follow one success immediately with another.

When is the best time to try to set an appointment with a prospect?  The best time to make a new prospecting call is immediately after you just set an appointment.  When is the best time to do a sales presentation? It is immediately after you just made a sale.  Far too often people will stop and take a break after they meet some goal or objective.  They think they deserve a reward and they take a break.  I’m all in favor of rewarding yourself for success but if you do it immediately after a small success, you’re limiting the momentum you can achieve.  If you’ve just had success in a particular goal, whether its making a sale or meeting a deadline you have gained a tremendous amount of energy and confidence from that action – so take advantage of it and make the next step.  You are most motivated immediately following a success, make use of that motivation to continue the forward motion you’ve started.  Reward yourself later, keep moving forward now!

6. Create Wins for Your Team

Having seen your success, the motivation of your teammates will be rising.  You can capitalize on this by putting them in situations that allow them to see some wins in what they are doing.  Look for any way you can of helping them succeed.  The more wins they can have, the more confidence they will have and the more momentum they will be build.  Make sure you are not neglecting the massive personal action at this time as well.  You need to maintain personal activity while working with your team members at the same time.
Following these steps will help you create “the big mo”.  Hold on tight, because momentum can propel you and your business further towards your goals in a short time than you might even imagine.

The Success Professor – Danny Gamache
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