More Joy, Peace, Happiness, Abundance, Love, and Freedom

If you want to experience more of something in your life (joy, peace, happiness, abundance, gratitude, love, freedom, etc.), the key is to focus on it.

“Great, Curtis, but how do I do that?”

I will share the most powerful tool in guiding your focus and revealing unseen opportunities or blocks, a tool you’ve been using (whether you knew it or not) your whole life: Questions.

Questions are difficult to ignore. If you’ve ever been nagged by a child asking the same question over and over again, then you know what I mean. Questions create a space that your mind wants (almost needs) to fill. In other words, questions beg answers.

Here’s a list of 10 questions you can start with to consciously create more of the experiences you desire in life. I’ve used “play” in the example, but you can substitute anything else you might want to experience more of, like joy, peace, happiness, etc.

(Note that in these questions, you’re personifying the experience to shift your perspective. It may feel different at first, but that’s the point.)

1. What’s most important to Play?
2. What’s unimportant to Play?
3. What environments does Play feel most comfortable in?
4. What environments does Play feel most uncomfortable in?
5. What does Play believe?
6. What words does Play use when it speaks?
7. What words would Play never use?
8. Where in your body does Play feel most at home?
9. What scares Play?
10. What inspires Play?

You can take your answers to these questions and use them to make some new choices. For example, if Play likes being outside and doesn’t like being inside, you can now use this insight to schedule more time for yourself outside.

I invite you to share your answers, insights, and experiences by commenting below.

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Learning to focus on what’s most important to you is one of the key steps in effective and peaceful productivity. If you tend to feel stressed and overwhelmed, you’re spending too much of your time on things that are not important.

Tim Ferriss, author of The 4-Hour Work Week and The 4-Hour Body has achieved tremendous happiness and success living by this fundamental principle: “I have more than enough time to do everything that’s truly important.”

If you’d like to learn a simple and effective 6-step planning process that keeps you focused on what’s most important, click here. Trade your stress for success!

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Use “Ethical Bribes” to Get What You Want

My cousin, Carleigh, is an actor. Several years ago, after an amazing performance, she told me about her acting technique. In every scene, no matter what the scene was about, she focused on what her character WANTED.

She told me that every character in every scene wants something. It may be obvious or it may be subtle. Actors who remember this fact create characters that feel real to us.

Now in real life we don’t ALWAYS want something from the people we interact with. But much of the time we do. And wanting, especially frustrated wanting, can be a big obstacle to Peaceful Productivity.

So I’m going to outline 3 steps to help you get what you want in a way that serves the highest and best good for all involved.

STEP 1: RESPECT

Understand that people are not a means to an end. They are human beings, just like you. They may or may not choose to give you what you want. And you must respect them enough to let them make that choice without judging them if you don’t like what they choose.

Respect includes listening to them, understanding what THEY want, and respecting that. As Stephen Covey puts it, seek first to understand, then to be understood.

Without respect, you are using that person. And no one likes to be used.

STEP 2: ENROLL

You might know for a fact that what you want is truly in the best interest of the other person. But if they don’t know that, if they don’t FEEL that, then they’re likely to say no.

Enrolling is giving someone an exciting vision of what’s possible. It’s in those feelings of excitement and possibility that people love to say yes.

When a person is enrolled, saying yes to you will feel natural to them. When they are not enrolled, your question will feel like pressure to them. And no one likes to feel pressured.

STEP 3: BRIBE

Bribe is a word with negative associations. What makes a bribe “ethical” are the first two steps. Without respect and without enrollment, your bribe becomes manipulative. Another way to describe the ethical bribe is “sweetening the offer.”

Even when someone knows and feels that a choice is in their best interest, even when they feel respected and excited by the possibility, they still might say no. Why? Habit.

We are so bombarded by people asking us for things, whether it’s personal favors or telemarketing calls, that we build up a resistance. We say no first, regardless of the situation.

The ethical bribe gives a person an excuse to say yes to something that’s good for them.

EXAMPLE

Let me use my Peaceful Productivity Group coaching program as an example:

Respect

First, I show respect by letting my prospects know up front that THEY get to choose if the program is right for them or not. My job is to provide as much information as I can to help them make the best choice for them.

I do this by introducing them to Peaceful Productivity in a free teleseminar called “Productivity & Peace of Mind: You Don’t Have to Sacrifice One for the Other.” I also outline exactly what the program includes so there are no surprises. I also give them my personal phone number to call me if they have questions.

And I even offer a no-hassle guarantee so if they join and find out it was a mistake, they’re not trapped and they don’t lose a penny.

And beyond all that, I offer to help them find a DIFFERENT program or coach that fits them better, if they’re not happy with me and my program.

Enroll

I enroll people in the excitement and possibility of the Peaceful Productivity Group by giving them a powerful EXPERIENCE in the free teleseminar.

It’s not a teaser. It’s a stand-alone interactive teleseminar full of valuable and actionable advice and information.

At the end of it, they can choose to take that experience and go off and never talk to me again. But when I explain that what they are feeling at that moment is something they can feel again and again each week in the Peaceful Productivity Group, my intention is that they will be so excited by that possibility, they will join.

Bribe

Finally, I sweeten the offer by including ALL of my products and services in the group membership. You can see the full list of extras here:

http://www.PeacefulProductivityNow.com

And I’ve just added a few more ethical bribes:

If you complete and submit the group program application, you get a downloadable recording of my “Productive Planning” teleclass, whether or not you join the group. In this teleclass I outline a 6-step planning process that’s perfect for when you have too much to do and not enough time.

If you submit the program application within 24 hours of requesting it, you get an mp3 of a song I recently wrote and recorded called “Where I Want to Be.” Know that I have no aspirations to be a professional musician. This is just something fun that I hope you’ll enjoy. 🙂

And finally, if you join the Peaceful Productivity Group by midnight on Thursday, you get one month of one-on-one coaching from me (a $358 value). My minimum coaching term is normally 6 months, so this is something you cannot get unless you join this group.

ACTION STEPS

• How will you put this 3-step process of Respect, Enroll, and Bribe into practice in your business or personal life?

I’d love to hear your ideas, comments, and questions.

Always remember the first two steps. Even if you’re not comfortable with the ethical bribe, the more you treat people with respect, and the more you enroll them in your vision, the more they will want to do for you.

As long as they feel empowered to choose what and when, people LOVE to give.

©2008 Curtis G. Schmitt

The REAL Reason to Plan

Listen to a short podcast on the purpose of planning:

[ Or, download this podcast. ]

The REAL Reason to Plan

There’s a saying, if you want to make God laugh, tell him your plans. So then, why plan?

Most people think the purpose of planning is to achieve the specific results that you’re planning for. And that seems to make a lot of sense. If you want a certain result, you create a plan to get it. So that must be why you plan, right?

But hasn’t it been your experience that no matter how carefully you plan for something, your actual path to your goal is at least a little different than your plan?

If that’s true, if things rarely go exactly according to plan, then that can’t be the purpose of planning. Think of that as the motivation for planning—the result you want is what motivates you to plan, but it’s not the purpose. So what is the purpose?

The primary purpose for creating a plan is so that when the unexpected happens—when something new comes up—you can refer to that plan to help you make the best choice possible.

The real value and advantage to having a plan is that it gives you the ability to adapt quickly to changing circumstances and unexpected events.

For example, you create a plan for the week. It includes all of your appointments and top priorities and tasks for the week. At 11 AM on Tuesday, your boss tells you to drop everything to prepare a report for her by the end of the day. Dealing with that task now becomes your new top priority.

Because you already had a plan for the week, you can make informed and intelligent choices quickly about what to postpone, what to reschedule, and what to delegate so that you can deal with your changing priorities. Your plan empowers you to deal with those changes.

Imagine you didn’t have a plan for the week and your boss gave you that task. You’d be trying to juggle all of your existing appointments and priorities and tasks in your head as you dealt with this new emergency.

At best you’d feel stressed out. That new task would create a ripple effect in your brain as you tried to mentally make all of those adjustments.

At worst, your brain would shut down, mentally dropping everything but the new task. You’d start missing appointments, missing deadlines. Where’s the power in that?

Understand that time is fixed—we all have 24 hours a day, no more and no less. Your power is not in how much time you have. Your power is in how effectively you choose to use your time. And planning enhances your power to choose by giving you the context you need to figure out what to do when things change.

So let me repeat: The primary purpose for creating a plan is so that when the unexpected happens, you have the information you need to make the best choices possible.

©2008 Curtis G. Schmitt

Productive Planning: From Stress to Success

Learn a 6-step process that will make you an expert at completing your top priorities…no matter what else is thrown at you during your day. To find out more about this powerful teleclass, visit http://www.TurnOnToLife.com/teleclass/productive_planning.html

Goal Setting – Make SMART Goals SMARTER, Part 2

Last week I gave two examples illustrating how powerful it is to use the S.M.A.R.T. goal technique to clarify your goals and explode your productivity. [Download a free SMART Goals worksheet here.] But that technique alone does not directly address the daily pursuit of your goals — that is, how do you make sure you do what needs to be done each day to achieve your goals?

Goal Setting – Make SMART Goals SMARTER, Part 1

Defining Your Goals

One common, yet powerful technique in the field of productivity and goal-setting is creating S.M.A.R.T. goals. This involves clarifying and defining your goal according to the following criteria:

Specific
Measurable
Achievable
Results-oriented
Time-bound

[Download a free SMART Goals worksheet here.]

The best way to explain this process is by example.