By Dr. John Demartini
- Confidence Trap
When your mind is not busy, it tends to conjure up all kinds of doubts, insecurities and fears. Such dead time can become an energy and confidence trap. Any time or space that’s not filled with high priorities can automatically become filled with low priorities and if you don’t know your high priorities, you’ll fall into the lows.
Have you noticed that when you’re busy you often accomplish and create much more? The more intensely you’re focused and active and the longer you maintain such a focus the faster your accomplishments (time multiplied by intensity equals results). Time spent on doubt, fear or low-priority actions slows down your accomplishment process. When you take your mind off your focus all you see are obstacles. When your mind is focused on your dreams you don’t have time for the many self-doubts that block them.
- Raise Your Standard
Anything you do consumes time. To maximize the value of your time, prioritize your interactions. People who are less busy and want to consume your time may think you’re being rude when you say no to their invitations. However, busy people understand immediately that you’re just choosing to prioritize and wisely manage your time.
People who don’t value their own time want to take up yours with small talk. If you keep associating with people who talk small, you could end up with a small life. You’ll find out what kind of people they are by putting a fee on your time and raising that fee regularly. If people really value your skills and time, they’ll pay for it.
- Efficiency and Effectiveness
Often when you perform a service for less than you feel you deserve you lower your worth and enthusiasm and slow your business. Even though you may be working like a dog, it’s neither efficient nor effective.
Any aspect of your work that pays less than you truly feel you deserve can become the weak link in your business. In addition to undermining your motivation, inefficiency and ineffectiveness can also reduce profit margins. When you or your employees take effective actions in an inefficient way, ineffective actions in an efficient way, or ineffective actions in an inefficient way, your business becomes diminished. Business masters are those who love what they do, do what they love and work efficiently and effectively. They delegate everything else to those who desire to do the same.
How can you streamline the actions you take in your business? Ask yourself, “What can I delegate?” You’ll be far more productive, energized, and inspired at the end of the day when you can stick to high-priority actions. Unless you value your time, neither will the world.
The following six questions will help you weed out unnecessary activities:
- What am I doing that I can stop doing right now? What is superfluous? When you discover things that aren’t necessities – let them go.
- What can I redistribute? Maximize your employees’ skills by making sure they’re all doing what they’re best at.
- Can I standardize and mass produce this?
- What am I doing excessively and what am I doing deficiently?
- What am I not confronting?
- What products can I produce in the shortest time period to provide the greatest profit? Once you identify what they are, focus on them.
- Desperation vs. Inspiration
When you hire don’t rescue desperation. Anyone who says, “I’ll do anything, you can pay me whatever you like” is desperate and if you hire desperation, you’ll breed it in your business.
Many skills you can train, but inspiration isn’t easy to develop and actually takes a bit of work. Take the time to evaluate the whole person and not just their resume.
- Busy-ness
When you have fewer demands you become more easily distracted and/or anxious. When your employees have fewer demands, they become less productive. It’s up to you to manage them and yourself to keep your employees busy, focused and inspired. If you’d love to have your employees be productive, give them just a bit more than they think they can do and they’ll do more than they ever thought possible.
- Working on Your Business
Business fulfillment doesn’t automatically result from hard work; working smart is just as important. Part of that is raising your fees. Knowing all the details and costs of your business is vital if you’re to have clarity and certainty. Knowing where you stand financially tells you how flexible or firm you can be and prevents you from making unwise business decisions. Take the time to work out all of your costs and put a true value on yourself and the many portions of your business. It will pay handsomely in the long run, saving you years of undervalued work. By spending just one day examining every cost and profit you have over a year you’ll see where you’re doing things that have low effectiveness, where you’re undercharging and overpaying, what your profit margin is and where the greatest profits are possible. Know your Dollar value or you’ll sell yourself short.
—————————————————————————————————————-
Dr. John Demartini, a native of Houston, is a world renowned human behavior specialist, success consultant, educator and internationally published author. He is the founder of the Demartini Institute, a private research and education organization headquartered in Houston with a curriculum of over 72 different courses covering multiple aspects of human development. For more information and to download a free Value Determination Process Workbook, please visit www.DrDemartini.com.
