Mine 2 Shine

Day-57-101 Day reading challenge -Who will cry when you Die  Find Your Six Degrees of Separation In John Guare’s play Six Degrees of Separation, the character Ouisa has a conversation with her daughter Tess in which she offers the following insight: I read somewhere that everybody on this planet is separated by only six people. Six degrees of separation. Between us and everybody else on this planet. The president of the United States. A gondolier in Venice. Fill in the names. I find that a) tremendously comforting that we’re so close and b) like Chinese water torture that we’re so close. Because you have to find the right six people to make the connection. It’s a profound thought how every person is a new door, opening up into other worlds. Six degrees of separation between me and everyone else on this planet. But to find the right six people. Ousia was right. It is profound to think that you and I are separated from all the other people living on this planet by at most...

  Day-56- 101 day Reading Challenge- a Mine2Shine initiative-9789186428   Become a Volunteer I find a great deal of wisdom in the ancient Persian proverb “I wept because I had no shoes until I saw a man who had no feet.” It is so easy to magnify our problems and lose sight of the many blessings we all have to be so very grateful for. Giving the gift of your time by volunteering to serve those who have less than you is an excellent way to remind yourself on a regular basis of the abundance that exists in your life. After a keynote speech on leadership I delivered to the sales team of a large insurance company, a man came up to me and told me he was one of the firm’s top producers. One of the reasons for his success, he said, was his habit of spending a few hours a week helping those less fortunate than he was. “Seeing what others don’t have keeps me awake to all the good things I do have. It prevents me from taking things for granted and,even more importantly, helps me make...

    Day-55- 101 day Reading Challenge- a Mine2Shine initiative-9789186428   Take a Mini Vacation While you cannot go on a major vacation every week, you certainly can go on a minor one. A mini – vacation begins with closing the door of your office, holding all calls and relaxing in your chair. Then close your eyes and begin taking deep breaths. Once you feel deeply at peace, begin to imagine you are at your favorite vacation spot. Vividly see the colors, hear the sounds and feel the emotions that this special place evokes. After only a few minutes of this mental escape, you will be rejuvenated, ready for the rest of the day ahead. When I take my mini – vacations, I picture myself walking through a mountain meadow. I visualize my feet on the dewy grass and savor the splendor of the snow – capped mountains that frame this ideal scene. In the background, I hear the sound of water from a water – fall and imagine what the flowers that fill this field smell like. Our minds ...

      Day-54- 101 day Reading Challenge- a Mine2Shine initiative-9789186428   Get a Coach One of the most effective ways to improve your personal and professional effectiveness and to rise to a new level of excellence is to find a mentor to coach you. Success in business and in life is a “connect the dots.” Process. All you need to do is find out the habits, disciplines and strategies that others have used to obtain their results and connect the dots by duplicating their actions. Once you follow the steps they have taken, in the order they have taken them in, you are bound to get the same results. A personal coach can illuminate your path, encourage you when times get tough and shave years off your learning curve. In my own life, I have been blessed with many mentors, people who have shown me the fundamentals of effective living and guided me in the right direction when I reached a crossroad. I found most of these special advisers by asking people whom I admi...

              Day-53- 101 day Reading Challenge- a Mine2Shine initiative-9789186428   Walk in the Woods You will never go wrong by spending time enjoying nature. There is something particularly special about walking in the woods. Your steps will feel lighter, a deep sense of inner quiet will flood your entire body and your creativity will flood your entire body and your creativity will flourish. As the famed Italian architect and painter Leonardo da Vinci said, “Through the window of the eye, the soul regards the world’s beauty… Who would believe that a small scene of nature could contain the images of the universe?” My favorite time of year is autumn. The leaves on the trees reflect the brilliant colors of the season and it’s the perfect time for long walks in the woods. Away from the noise of the city, the values I hold dearest grow clearer and I can contemplate some of life’s larger questions, questions that never seem to get answered in th...

            Day-52- 101 day Reading Challenge- a Mine2Shine initiative-9789186428   Create a Pure Environment One of the timeless truths of successful living can be stated simply: your thoughts from your world. What you focus on in your life grows, what you think about expands and what you dwell on determines your destiny. Life is a self – fulfilling prophecy – it gives you just about what you expect form it. As Helen Keller said, “No pessimist ever discovered the secrets of the stars, or sailed to an uncharted land, or opened a new heaven to the human spirit.” Given this principle, the first step to becoming a happier, more serene person is to manage your thoughts and purify your thinking. One of the best ways to begin this inner work is to improve the quality of your personal environment. After a speech I gave to a large gathering in San Francisco, an elderly woman slowly walked up to me and held my hand, as people in their golden years often do. Loo...

          Day-51- 101 day Reading Challenge- a Mine2Shine initiative-9789186428   Drink Fresh Fruit Juice The foods you consume affects your moods as well as the clarity of your thinking. This is why the ancient sages ate only light foods. They knew that anything more would disturb the perfectly peaceful minds they had worked so hard to cultivate and disrupt their meditations on the true meaning of life. If you owned an expensive Formula One race car, you wouldn’t think of fueling it with anything less than premium – grade gas. Anything else would reduce its performance. So why would you put anything less than the best foods into your body, which is an even more valuable performance vehicle? Eating the wrong foods, in large quantities, will reduce your energy level, affect your health and prevent your mind from serving you to its fullest capacity. Realizing that for every greasy lunch you have, you will suffer a corresponding reduction in your level of mo...

        Day-50- 101 day Reading Challenge- a Mine2Shine initiative-9789186428   Day-50-Practice Forgiveness Forgiving someone who has wronged you is actually a selfish act rather than a selfless one. Letting go of the hostility and hatred that you may have allowed to bottle up inside you is actually something you do for yourself rather than for the benefit of the other person. As I teach in my life – coaching programs, when you bear a grudge against someone, it is almost as if you carry that person around on your back with you. He drains you of your energy, enthusiasm and peace of mind. But the moment you forgive him, you get him off your back and you can move on with the rest of the world. Mark Twain wrote that, “Forgiveness is the fragrance that the violet sheds on the heal that crushed it.” Forgiveness is a great act of spirit and personal courage. It is also one of the best ways to elevate the quality of your life. I have discovered that every minute y...

      Day-49- 101 day Reading Challenge- a Mine2Shine initiative-9789186428   Remember the Rule of 21 As I wrote in The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari, it takes about 21 days to develop a new habit. Yet most people give up on creating a positive life change after only the first few days when they experience the stress and pain that is always associated with replacing old behaviors with new ones. New habits are much like a new pair of shoes: for the first few days, they will feel uncomfortable. But if you break them in for about three weeks, they will fit a second skin. As human beings, we are genetically programmed to resist change and maintain a state of equilibrium. The condition, known as homeostasis , evolved naturally over time as a means by which our ancestors could survive constantly changing conditions. The problem is that the mechanism works to keep things as they are even when more favorable possibilities exist. And that is why we have such difficulty adop...

      Day-48- 101 day Reading Challenge- a Mine2Shine initiative-9789186428   Get Serious About Setting Goals Many speakers and authors encourage you to set goals but most have never explained why this is such a powerful discipline beyond saying something like “Something magical happens when you write down your goals on paper.” In my opinion, setting clearly defined goals for all the areas of your life works for three reasons. First, it restores a sense of focus in your world, a world that has become complicated by too many options. In this age we live in, there are simply far too many things to do at any given time. There are too many distractions that compete for our attention. Goals clarify our desires and, in doing so, help us to focus on only those activities that will lead us to what we want. Setting clearly defined goals provides you with a frame – work for smarter choices. If you know precisely where you are going, it becomes far easier to select those ...

      Day-47- 101 day Reading Challenge- a Mine2Shine initiative-9789186428   Go on a News Fast Negative news sells. In our society, more people will choose to watch the criminal trial of a celebrity rather than the biography of a truly great human being. A newspaper with a headline revealing the latest tragedy will sellmore copies than one announcing the latest scientific breakthrough. The real problem is that it is easy to getaddicted to reading and watching negative news. I know so many people who begin their days by reading less than uplifting newspaper stories and who end them by catching up on the latest crimes, accidents and scandals on the late – night news. I am not against newspapers or television by any stretch of the imagination. As a matter of fact, I find excellent information in many newspapers and have learned much from the intelligent TV programs I have watched over the years. My point is simply this: become more selective in the news you expose ...

      Day-46- 101 day Reading Challenge- a Mine2Shine initiative-9789186428   Use Your Commute Time If you commute to the office for thirty minutes each way every day, after one year you will have spent the equivalent of six weeks of eight – hour days in your car. Given this, can you really afford to spend all your timestaring out the window and daydreaming while the negative news blares from the car radio? So many of the highly successful and enlightened people I know share a common habit: they listen to audiocassettes in their cars. In doing so, they transform their driving time into learning time and make their automobiles moving universities. Turning your car into a “college on wheels” will be one of the best investments you will ever make. Rather than arriving at work tired, frustrated and dispirited, listening to educational audiocassettes will make your commute fun and keep your inspired, focused and alert to the endless opportunities around you. The bes...

      Day-45- 101 day Reading Challenge- a Mine2Shine initiative-9789186428   Connect with Nature We live in an age of seemingly limitless information. The weekday edition of the New York Times contains more information than the average person was exposed to during an entire lifetime in seventeenth – centuryEngland. Over the years, I have found that spending time alone in natural surroundings connects me to the larger universe around me and restores my spirit in this hurried age. After a busy week of speaking engagements, book signings and media appearances, the simple act of sitting in a wooded park and listening to the wind move through the leaves fills me with a sense of quite and peace. My priorities become clearer, my obligations seem less pressing and my mind grows still. Communing with nature is also an excellent way to unlock your creativity and generate new ideas. Newton formulated the laws of gravity while relaxing under an apple tree. Likewise Swiss de...

      Day-44- 101 day Reading Challenge- a Mine2Shine initiative-9789186428 Develop Your Talents Norman Cousins once noted that “The Tragedy of life is not death, but what we let die inside of us while we live.” In a similar vein, Ashley Montagu wrote that “The deepest personal defeat suffered by human beings is constituted by the difference between what one was capable of becoming and what one has in fact become.” There is a difference between simply existing and truly living. There is a distinction between simply surviving and really thriving. The sad thing is that most people have lost sight of the human gifts that lie within them and have resigned themselves to spending the best years of their lives watching television in a subdivision. In my speeches, I often use the following story drawn from ancient Indian mythology to remind the audience that there is an abundance of potential and ability just waiting to be awakened within us if we will only allow it to see ...

    Day-43- 101 day Reading Challenge- a Mine2Shine initiative-9789186428   Build a Library of Heroic Books Few things make me happier than meeting someone who has read my books or listened to my audiotapes and hearing something like, “I was so moved and inspired after going through your material that I went out and bought ten more life improvement books and read them all. And you know what, they have completely transformed me.” I not only write books on life leadership, I am a dedicated student of them. As I mentioned in an earlier lesson, I spend countless hours in large bookstores combing the shelves for the latest treasure that will enlighten and educate me. I also frequently used book ships where I have picked up some of my most valuable books for only a few dollars (as I write this paragraph, I have a “pre-owned” copy of Maxwell Maltz’s classic Psycho Cybernetics on my desk, which still bears the sticker price of $ 2.95. Also on my desk is a copy of Seneca’s Let...

  Day-42- 101 day Reading Challenge- a Mine2Shine initiative-9789186428 Look for the Higher Meaning of Your Work One of my favorite magazines is Fast Company, it provides a refreshingly human look at the new world of work. In a recent issue, Xerox PARC guru John Seely Brown said something that really made me think: “The job of leadership today is not just to make money, it’s to make meaning.” In the old days, most of us were content to have a job that simply paid the bills. But now, we crave so much more in our work. We want fulfillment, creative challenge, growth, joy and a sense that we are living for something more than ourselves. In a word, we seek meaning. One of the best ways to find the higher meaning in the work you do is to use the technique of creative questioning to become aware of the impact your work has on the world around you. Ask yourself questions like, Who ultimately benefits from the products and services my company offers? Or What difference do my services my co...

    Day-41- 101 day Reading Challenge- a Mine2Shine initiative-9789186428 Get Good at Asking “He who asks may be a fool for five minutes. He who doesn’t is a fool for a lifetime,” goes the wise Chinese Proverb. It makes me think of an ad I read in the classic fields recently that said, “To the beautiful woman in the brown suede coat at the drugstore at [street location provided] on Saturday, November 28 @ 4 p.m. You bumped into me in front of the magazine section. I would love to meet and chat.” The man who placed this ad then left his phone number. Destiny had given him an opportunity – possibly to meet the woman of his dreams – and he had squandered it. And now, after regretting the fact that he “did not ask,” he has had to resort to placing an ad in the newspaper in the desperate hope of finding this woman. The more you ask, the more you get, but it takes practice to get good at it. Success is a number game. As the Buddhist sag...

      Day-40- 101 day Reading Challenge- a Mine2Shine initiative-9789186428 Cure Your Monkey Mind To get the best from life, you must be completely present and mindful in every minute of every hour of every day. As Albert Camus wrote, “Real generosity towards the future consists in giving all to what is present.” Yet, on most days, our minds are in ten different places at any one time. Rather than enjoying the walk to work, we wonder what the boss will say to us when we get to the office or what we will have for lunch or how our children will do at school today. Our minds are like scampering puppies or, as they say in the East, like unchained monkeys, rushing from place to place without any pause for peace. By developing present moment awareness and an abundance of mental focus, you will not only feel much calmer in your life, you will also unlock the fullness of your mind’s potential. When too many distractions compete for your attention, the power ...

    Day-39- 101 day Reading Challenge- a Mine2Shine initiative-9789186428 Recruit a Board of Directors To succeed in these times of breakneck change, companies will often recruit a board of directors to help them make more effective decisions and lead them in the right direction during stormy times. By consulting men and women of wisdom these organizations reduce the number of mistakes they make, boost corporate effectiveness and increase their credibility in the marketplace. One client of mine has a difficult approach to the concept of having a board of directors. A seasoned entrepreneur and a participant in one of the monthly life coaching programs I conduct across the country, this woman told me that during her periods of silent contemplation, she sits in a room with a pen and pad of paper and writes down a problem that she is facing. Sometimes it involves a difficulty in a relationship, sometimes it concerns a money issue or at other times a struggle...