March 7th 2017, My take on the famous Confucius teaching on Personal Excellence

   I've had this philosophy quote sitting in my list of blog topics for a while. The reason why I wrote this quote down in my list of possible topics is because of what it represents. Personal excellence is something that I want to achieve. I believe that we should all strive for personal excellence. So without further delay, let's dive into this quote.

   Some readers might not know the definition of the term personal excellence is. This term is really old yet it is not found in any dictionary. To find the definition we must break the term down and define its parts. The first part of the term is personal,  the definition of this word according to dictionary.com is... relating to, or coming as from a particular person; individual; private. The second part of the term is excellence, the definition of this word according to dictionary.com is... the fact or state of excelling; superiority; eminence.  By using the definition of it's parts we can define personal excellence as being the best at being ourselves. Sounds confusing doesn't it? In layman's terms it basically means doing your best no matter what the cost. As you can now probably see, this is something that is very important.

   This teaching from Confucius breaks down the three pillars that are essential in achieving personal excellence.  The three pillars are your willpower, your goals and your motivation.The will to win is your willpower, this plays an important role in defining us. Behind every person's success is a bunch of failures that they overcame. The game that we call life is the hardest game that we will ever play. Life hits hard but can you get up after being hit? Will power is essentially our ability to tough it through the hard times of life. The reason will power is so important in personal excellence is because it teaches us the price of success. Our will power helps us make it through what I like to call the grind phase. The grind phase is the part in your life when you are trying something new and giving it your all yet nothing seems to go your way. This phase of your life and or business is frustrating and many people quit because of it. Just so that a person can join a fraternity, the pledges must survive hell week. Many of the pledges drop out but those who see it through the end, reap all of the rewards.

   The next part of the teaching talks about our desire to succeed, which can be translated as our goals. The reason why it can be translated as our goals is because goals are our desires. Without goals we have no reason to try our very best. I remember one goal I had as a kid, my goal was to buy a game-boy color with my own money. Sounds like a small goal to you but for a nine year old it was like buying my first car. I saved every little dollar that I had, I didn't even buy ice cream from the ice cream truck. The sacrifices i made for my goal back then were not having the latest transformer toy and not buying junk food. It might sound funny to you, as I type this blog post I'm looking at my magenta game-boy color which I bough in 1998. Instead of going into great detail of goal setting, let me direct you to a previous post in which I covered the subject, here.

   The final pillar of personal excellence is the urge to reach or full potential, this is our motivation. A synonym for urge is encourage and motivation encourages us to succeed. One of the things I learned in network marketing was the power of positivity and motivation. Whenever I went to a big network marketing event they were constantly talking about our internal battery. This internal battery was a representation of our motivation levels, the purpose of the events was to recharge our batteries. Before you say that this is just some spiel that network marketing companies made up, just listen. "People often say that Motivation doesn't last. Well neither does bathing- that's why we recommend doing it daily" - Zig Ziglar. Motivation is important because it brings positivity into our lives. The world is filled with lots of negativity and the negativity constantly sucks the positivity from you little by little until you have run out of positivity. Why does the world suck out our positivity, it's because misery loves company. Like I said when talking about willpower, your life can get real bad before success. That is why you need motivation, you need it to lift you up in your time of need. If you want to listen to a powerful story that will help motivate you click here.

   Hopefully my break down of Confucius' teaching on personal excellence have helped you in some way. Feel free to comment down below about your favorite part of this post. If you would like to support the site in anyway please check out the links posted below. Like Always I'll catch you guys in the next one.

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April 19, 2016 Goal Setting

   "If you plan to fail, you are planning to fail" - Benjamin Franklin. This is a powerful quote which is the basis for today's discussion on goal setting. When most people hear the words goals they tend to associate it to dreams and aspirations. Goals and dreams are not the same at all. A dream is something that you wish for, whereas a goal is written down and has an action plan.

   Through my journey in network marketing I always heard about the importance of having a "goal statement". The "goal statement" was a paragraph on where we saw ourselves in a time span of three to five years. You would first write in detail how great everything had turned out and after that you would then describe what made that possible. In my personal opinion, I do not believe that this type of goal setting is fully effective. I prefer having my action plan set up like a chart that has two columns, one labeled 'Goal' and the other column labeled 'Actions to achieve goal'. By doing an action plan in this manner I can pin point what tasks directly affect my progression towards my goal. This in turn makes sure that I am doing the "right" things to achieve my goal (see April 3, 2016's post for "right" things). I am not saying that my way of goal setting is the one and only way to set goals. As long as you have an action plan you are already a head in the game we call Life.

   Just having a goal and/or action plan doesn't mean that you are done with goal setting. A big part of goal setting is visualizing your goals, because if you can "see" your goals it makes them more attainable. One thing that I learned in network marketing was to have a "Dream Board", which is filled with pictures of things that the maker wants to achieve. I literally hate the word dream, because dream means wishful thinking. Wishful thinking will not get you towards your goals so I am renaming the "Dream Board" to 'Goal Board'. By creating this board you are able to put as they often say a face to a name. Sounds a bit confusing but let me give you an example... " I want to be a millionaire" this is a statement that most people answer when asked what they want in life. This statement is too broad because it does not specify what they truly want from life. The Goal Board would break down this statement to something such as financial freedom, the ability to take multiple vacations per year or even owning a car collection. Other than breaking down goals to smaller attainable parts it also sets up a deadline for completing the goal. 

   By setting a deadline for your goal, you create a way to measure progression towards a goal. By measuring your progress you are able to determine if your actions are helping you succeed in obtaining your goal. This grants us the ability to adjust our actions in order to maximize our productivity towards goal attainment. Goal deadlines also create a sense of accountability. If you fail to achieve your goal then you are the only person to blame. Think about deadlines at work, your boss holds you accountable if the deadline is not met so why should it be different here.

   I now have a rather simple question to ask. After reading this post, do you have dreams or do you have goals? If you answered goals then I have one more question for you. Have you done goal setting? If you answered no then it is not a goal but rather it is a dream. But do not fret and worry because you now should know how to turn that dream into an attainable goal. If you follow your plan you will be successful.

                                                                                                        Thanks for reading,

                                                                                                                         Josh R.