Category: Personal Development

Personal growth, personal development, work-life balance for small business owners, freelancers, and entrepreneurs

Quote of the Week: Dream Big, Work Hard

Dream Big: Motivation for Entrepreneurs

This week’s quote is great advice from Brian Tracy:

All successful men and women are big dreamers. They imagine what their future could be, ideal in every respect, and then they work every day toward their distant vision, that goal or purpose.

It’s easy to have big dreams or big goals…the difficult task is to commit to working hard every day to reach those goals or dreams.

So how do we stay focused and committed when inevitable challenges arise?

  • Break your big dreams down into smaller, short-term goals.
  • Share your dreams and goals with a (positive) support group: family, friends, colleagues or peers.
  • Measure and track your progress along the way: weekly/monthly/quarterly goals and results.
  • Put an accountability system in place: share your progress (and challenges) with a positive support group: online communities, tribes and groups make this a very simple thing to do.
  • Celebrate milestones and give yourself a reward for reaching them.

And as Brian Tracy’s quote suggests, keep the dream alive and visualize yourself reaching it.

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Top Photo Credit (derived from): Camdiluv ? via Compfight cc

What Motivates You to Succeed

 

We took this picture of my daughter at Clearwater Beach last summer. She’s been dancing for about 12 years now and I think this quote describes her desire to succeed at dance quite well.

terryleague.com

It also applies to our desire for success with a home business or a big goal: we all need “something to hold on to, something to motivate you, something to inspire you…”.  What makes you want to succeed?

How Much Have You Grown?

How Have You Grown? MotivationAs we come to the end of the first month of 2012, my question is: how much have you grown in the past 31 days? Have you grown in personal development (learned something new; felt inspired by reading a new book)? Has your business moved forward?

If you are like me, you started out the New Year with brand new goals – yearly goals, monthly goals, weekly goals… And if you are like me, you probably had some unexpected “life” situations come up in the last 31 days that may have caused you to get a little sidetracked on some (or all) of those goals. (My unexpected situation in January was getting sick for 2 weeks.)

It’s at this point, when “life gets in the way”, that a lot of us get disillusioned with some of our ambitious goals and decide to just give up. I saw a great quote that puts it all into perspective:

“Be not afraid of growing slowly; be afraid only of standing still.” Chinese Proverb

My motivation from this quote is: Don’t give up! As long as we keep moving forward and growing, we are going to be better next year than we are today. Maybe this first month your goals got off to shaky start, but next month you could double your planned results – who knows?

The important point is to keep moving, to keep growing, to keep working…which brings me a second great quote for the week:

“All growth depends upon activity. There is no development physically or intellectually without effort, and effort means work.” Calvin Coolidge

We set goals at the beginning of each month; my advice is to measure our growth at the end of each month. Look back on the month and ask yourself: “What have I learned? How have I grown in the past month?”

I plan to keep track of my business and personal growth this year. At the end of each month, I’m going to write down the ways in which I’ve grown: new skills I’ve learned, new books I’ve read, new milestones in my business. Even if I have not met all the goals I set at the beginning of the month, I’ll have a list of my accomplishments that will motivate me to continue growing, no matter what the pace.

How about you? Do you have any tips for growing or moving forward?