1) Raise Your EQ: Emotional Intelligence: How well do you understand and manage your emotions and how good are you at understanding others? Can you motivate yourself? Inspire others? Persuade, influence, and negotiate win/win outcomes that create lasting, mutually beneficial relationships? To get help achieving your goals, it helps to be known for helping others achieve theirs.
2) Make Every Moment Count: Time is a precious resource, invest it wisely! Start by turning off your TV and find productive, meaningful activities that broaden and enrich your life.
3) Choose Your Friends Mindfully: Birds of a Feather Flock Together, a man is known by the company he keeps! The companions you choose to go through life with will powerfully impact your journey. Do your associates strengthen you? Challenge you? Help you grow? Call out to your best self? Lift you? If they are not helping you move forward, they are holding you back.
4) Read with Purpose: A love of learning together with a relish for reading is an unbeatable combination. A well written book distills the lessons of a life for you to absorb; books are also an excellent source of daily inspiration.
5) Focus on working smarter, not just harder: Learn Critical Thinking skills, practice being able to pick out the key variables in every situation, understand how they change over time. “Thinking is the hardest work there is which is why so few people do it.” – Henry Ford
6) Make a List: Lists focus your energy; help you prioritize, plan your day, and work your plan. Plans are useless (Plans never survive contact with reality) but planning is invaluable (Having thought it through in advance, you will be much better prepared to respond).
7) Get out there! Take calculated risks and always have a plan B. Don’t wait for your ship, swim out to it. Don’t wait for opportunity to knock, go seek it. The squeaky wheel gets the grease, Faint Heart Never Won Fair Lady, Ask and it shall be Given, Seek and you shall Find.
8) Boost Your Energy: For maximum performance, treat your body like a temple. Proper nutrition, exercise, and a good night’s sleep increase productivity and stamina, giving you the power to pursue your passions.
9) Live an Examined Life! Self-awareness is a vital key to effectively and efficiently focus your talents and energy, turbo charging your efforts. Regular journaling is highly beneficial as is having written goals and action plans for achieving them in all your major roles in life.
As always, I share what I most want/need to learn. – Nathan S. Collier