Cathy Stucker - The Idea Lady

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Don’t Let the “Shoulds” Get You Down

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shoulds

Note from Cathy: This is a good time of the year to make assessments of your business and your life. Too often, though, those assessments focus only on what is wrong or what is missing and we miss the big picture. I love the approach taken in this article by Robert Middleton. It is published here (with his permission) so you can learn from it, too.

This Saturday I called my youngest sister to wish her happy birthday.

We spent some time catching up before the conversation drifted to the topic of her art business and how she felt bad that she procrastinated a lot, didn’t have goals and overall wasn’t a success.

So, of course, being a coach, I started asking her questions.

“Is it really true you’re not a success?” I asked her. “Yes, you don’t make as much money as you’d like, but does that mean you’re not a success?”
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13 Reasons You Are Not as Successful as You Should Be

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13-reasonsDo you think you deserve more success than you currently have? Most people do. Instead of blaming bad luck or a lack of connections, take a look at this list of 13 reasons you are not as successful as you should be by business consultant and author Jim Kukral.

Success isn’t something that is handed to you. It is something you earn. And you earn it not just by working hard–lots of people work hard and don’t become successful–but by working hard at the right things. That means having goals and working toward them, believing that you can and will be successful, wanting it enough to do what you have to do and working through failure.

One thing I think is missing from Jim’s list may ultimately be the most important reason for not being successful: [Read more…]

Do You Think Like a Billionaire?

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Before millionaires and billionaires became super successful, they were usually like everyone else. At least outwardly. But they had big dreams. People like Warren Buffet, Mark Zuckerberg and Bill Gates were ordinary individuals, seemingly no different from you and me.
One obstacle to becoming successful is believing that success just happens. That the people who get extraordinary results “got lucky.” However, as the saying goes, most people find that the harder they work, the luckier they get.

Success does not get handed to you on a platter. It requires hard work and perseverance. You also need a belief system that says not only that it is possible to achieve success beyond the wildest dreams of most people, but that you can achieve that level of success. That means having the mindset of a billionaire.

How do you think like a billionaire?
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If You Won’t Be, You Can’t Be

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This week’s Monday Morning Message from Wm. H. Danforth, founder of Ralston Purina:
What is the Monday Morning Message?

A sign hangs in the Club House of Bill Roper’s Princeton football squad:

“A team that won’t be beaten, can’t be beaten.”

You men who are putting your life behind Purina Checkerboard Chows just won’t be beaten—you can’t be beaten.

Hang up this motto.

One of the most memorable lines from the movie Apollo 13 is when flight director Gene Kranz announces that, “Failure is not an option.” Like many things in the movies, the line was written for the movie and did not come from real life. However, the attitude behind the line was definitely part of the culture of NASA’s Mission Control.

There is a quotation attributed to Henry Ford that goes something like, “Whether you believe you can do a thing or not, you are probably right.”

All three of these quotations have a common theme: Our belief systems play a big part in the results we achieve.

  • If we truly believe we can not lose, we will win.
  • If we believe failure is not an option, we will find a way to succeed.
  • If we believe we can do something, we will approach it with confidence and will keep trying until we do it. If we do not believe we can do it, we probably will not even try.

It is easy to take a negative position–that something is too hard or there is some reason that we can not do it. It is so easy that we may not even realize we are doing it.

Strongly asserting our belief in ourselves and what we can do is harder. But it pays off.

Do you ever say things such as:
“I never do anything right.”
“I don’t know how to do that.”
“Well, I’ll try, but…”

The next time you catch yourself voicing one of these (or other) defeatist thoughts, stop right then and change your attitude. Look for the way to succeed instead of accepting failure as an option.

Success Without Goal Setting

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Ditch goals and get the life you want today by living in the now. A guest post by Madisen Harper

Each year millions of people fail to achieve their dreams. 97 per cent abandon their commitment towards self improvement within 30 days of their New Year’s resolutions and Harvard Business School say goals get in the way of success. All in all it leaves people discouraged, frustrated, unmotivated and feeling like failures.

Why do people continue to set themselves up for disappointment year after year?  [Read more…]