How environment impacts us
There was carried out an experiment. Two fishes of the same species were placed in different aquaria. One fish to a small one, which was slightly bigger than the fish itself. The other fish was put in a huge aquarium. The result was what one could expect: the fish in the small aquarium were few times smaller than the fish in the big aquarium. Fishes unlike people, don’t have ability to think and to affect their environment, but they are great at adapting.

However, people also are able to adapt to circumstances. If you don’t wear a suit, than after putting it on, getting up hairs, shaving and doing everything else to look perfectly, suddenly something happens. Mind changes. We start to like ourselves more, to be more self-confident. We feel some kind of expectations and we strive to fulfil them.

Human expectations, trust and beliefs
I guess that everyone of you have witnessed this type of event. Imagine, that John is an ordinary man. Nothing spectacular, but doing what needs to be done. One day a friend, colleague or supervisor projects to him trust: “John, I know that you’re working very good, but you should be in a better place, you can do more. In every part of your work I see efforts becoming quality”. Add some more people saying similar phrases and suddenly John changes. He works harder, faster and with more passion. Also, it takes him the same 8 hours a day. Of course, this doesn’t necessarily last a long time, but it is clear that other people expectations and trust impacts us a lot, as well as our own projected to ourselves.

In addition, you can do the same with friends, relatives or children. It’s not manipulation – you don’t need to lie. Just say some good words to a person – he must know that he are doing fine and that others value his work. This way he’ll start to do more and more, finally revealing his full potential.

So, if you try to accomplish small goals, then they look like big ones. This way you can’t accomplish anything solid, great or important. If, however, you try to do big things, meaningful goals, then everything is on the contrary – in your favour.

Change environment, and it will change you
Now that you have made sure that environment has quite large impact on us, we should use it for our own good. It’s very simple – imagine what you want to be. Then reflect this visualization to environment and change it accordingly.

I believe many of you have heard this expression „Fake it till you make it”. If you “pretend” to manage your time well, then you become time management expert. If you start being neat and tidy, then you become an orderly person.

Here are some basic things you should do: your job, house, car and everything else should be neat. You must be with dressed hairs, shaved and clean. On the walls hang sheets telling stories of your achievements and goals you’ve accomplished – principle of expectation – if you succeeded in the past, you’ll succeed again.

Conclusion
Fake you are, who you want to be, till you become it. Accordingly adjust environment, you live in. It’s easy, isn’t? Now, however, it’s easier and more pleasant to go towards your goals.

Procrastination is a disease
Procrastination is one of the mistakes, we can make on our they to success. By procrastinating we are just running from a full-rate life, which we can experience at this moment. Only the small amount of people are able not to postpone tasks every day – most of us are sick.

Why is it the disease? If human always procrastinates, he is just lying for himself. He is running from his wishes and his future. He is trying to stay in his past, to hold status unchanged. Maybe he is afraid of failure. It looks very familiar to psychological invalidity. No matter what it is, do you really want to have it in your life? Consider it – you can choose.

There is no procrastinated tasks
What is a delayed task? It is the task, which should be done tomorrow instead of now? But assignments of tomorrow don’t exist, because tomorrow hasn’t come yet.

What is procrastinating? It’s nothing. In the reality there are only completed and uncompleted tasks.

So, task is completed or not. Black and white. There isn’t a place for grey.

How to stop procrastinating

1. Read again the paragraph “Procrastination is a disease”. Do you really want to be sick with it? To stuck in one place? To achieve nothing? Always to be pity about yourself and say “tomorrow is the day I’m going to start doing X”.
2. Instead of “tomorrow” assign a concrete time, for example, Wednesday at 18:00. Commit yourself to it, brace yourself. Impose a reward for completing a task. And just do it.
3. Do you remember that pleasant feeling, that you’ve done something important? A project or a task is very large, elaborate. There isn’t enough information to understand how much work is needed to complete it. We always want to accomplish any task very well, so we procrastinate again and again. After a while we start to feel discomfort – the conscience is eating us from inside for our laziness. Finally, we do a small part of the task. We start to feel great, because the job is moving forward. Also, we understand that it was easier than we previously thought. It looks like it’s more fun and simple than we originally guessed. Remember the pleasant feeling.
4. Maybe you are postponing a concrete tasks. When ask yourself, whether you really want to do it. Why to do something, which deep inside of you looks like a stupid, unpleasant and unessential thing? Maybe somebody else is trying to make you to do it? In this case write down advantages of doing a task. If the list doesn’t reduce your wish to procrastinate to a minimum level, then just drop out this task and don’t do it.
5. It’s hard to complete a task with one attempt. Assign 30 minutes of your precious time for doing the task. After the time has passed, you can stop doing. This way you can avoid procrastination, which is caused by elaboration and size of the task. Also, we see that the task was easier than we thought. We get a pleasure of moving forward with the task and it motivates us to go further with it.
6. Understand that you are to much valuable to be always worried about things you need to do. When next time you’ll feel uncomfortable because of procrastinating, remember that people who loves themselves don’t hurt themselves like that.
7. It’s better to do something than to try to make it perfect at the very first time and have nothing tangible, nothing completed. So, just do something. You’ll have plenty of time to improve it.
8. If you’re going to start reading, start now. If you’re going to learn more in you profession field – begin now. The only time we have is the present. Yesterday is gone, tomorrow hasn’t come yet.

Conclusion
Don’t lie to yourself and don’t trick your conscience. Just do it. Start today, start now. The sooner you’ll start the sooner you’ll get the desired results. Don’t leave for tomorrow, what you can do today.

The interesting fact is that healthy people act as it is a must be and natural thing. Is it? Well, humans who don’t have it appreciate such “common” things and tries harder to cling to their lives.

I could tell many stories about men, which didn’t have something we feel like “must be and natural”. For example, a woman who was able to see only with an edge of one eye. She got two master’s degrees. She was forced to read holding a book 10 centimetres from her face! After 40 years, when the medicine improved, she regained the ability to see. The dish washing for her was a feast, because there are so many colours in the bubbles. And you still think you can’t get the science degree you want? Which probably would drastically change your life.

Or how about a child, who was born without ears. He was able to hear only when people were talking to his temple or were shouting very loudly – hearing through bones. He never gave up, studied in a standard school and university. When he was at the last semester at the university, there was invented deaf-aid, which was able to make him hear as a common person. He was inspired. He created two years plan, how to enlarge ability to sell devices to people, who need them. After coming with the plan to the owner of the company, which made deaf-aid, he was hired. He helped for a lot of people.

Do you still think that you a poor person? I suppose that you are an idler, procrastinator,  layabout or anybody else, but not a person, who lacks something. You are not a beggar, who need somebody’s mercy. Wake up from your own dream in which you are living and thinking that you are a victim. You have abilities to procure anything you want, live as you like, spend time with people you like, and do whatever you want. Deep inside you know it. Let it be on your conscience. Use your life privileges and talents. You are the master of your destiny.

Conclusion
These Henry’s Ford words perfectly illustrate what I want to tell you: “Whether You Believe You Can, Or You Can’t, You Are Right”. Process it, consider and apply.

Don’t stick in stage of planning
You can plan how you’ll accomplish your business idea many days. You can write, paint, draw diagrams, which looks like pieces of art. But the only thing which gets you closer to your goal is performing an action. Only act gives us some tangible result.

It’s better to start act than to be in a planning phase. Why? Firstly, you hardly can create a perfect plan. There always happens to be some inaccuracies and errors. Sometimes unexpected things happen and change your life and, of course, your schemes. However, you can’t take back the time you’ve spend planning. Secondly, the faster you start to perform concrete steps towards your goal, the faster you get feedback. Suddenly you’ll see that one thing or another must be done in different way or, that some things cannot be accomplished at all. The gained experience helps to upgrade plan and its execution.

Of course, I don’t deny benefit, which is provided by having a step by step plan and prioritization. But we can reach our goals only through performing actions. Actually, performing an action it the last thing in hierarchy of success, which comes after things like attitude, goals, strategies and other things. But only action gives as tangible result.

Experiment
If you think that you can become a person which perfectly masters his time or always sets and reaches goals by just reading a book or article, then I have bad news for you – life doesn’t work like that. The way to success is paved by mistakes and failures, because it makes us stronger and smarter. Try out things about which you’ve read and adjust them. One size doesn’t fit all. Also, information which isn’t used doesn’t provide any benefits, so why to bother gathering it? And the last thing about not using your gained knowledge is that the less you use it the higher probability to forget.

Now, let’s imagine, that a man created a manual how to achieve success. You’ve read it and applied, and now you’re a successful person. How would feel knowing that your success belongs to somebody else? That actually, you’ve achieved nothing? It would look like repeating brainless steps – no befit or fun. The worst thing is that there would be no failures, difficult situations and others things, which are necessary for personal development and further success.

You don’t need the newest mobile phone
Often people say or think that if they had a better program, faster internet, the newest mobile phone, when they would be more productive and more successful. And while they don’t have it, they can’t even take garbage out, because they don’t have an appliance, which would remind them, that they need to do it. Also, they would like to have a device, which wouldn’t let them to forget to make a reminder for taking garbage out But let’s take a close look to an article “Five best note taking tools” from a popular site lifehacker.com. The second place belongs to paper and a pen. The readers of the website are more productive and educated than an average person, but still insists that the simplest tool is the best.

So, the need for the newest technology is just another way for procrastination. Paper and a pen is all you need to get started. I agree that a smart phone could help you to remember things and to plan work day more effectively. However, it’s not a reason to postpone performing actions.

Conclusion
Despite the fact, that action takes the last place in hierarchy of success after things like attitude, problems approaching method, goals, strategy and other, but only it gives us concrete result, which takes us nearer to success. That’s why don’t stuck doing all other things, but performing actions. Without them even the perfect plan or the best attitude wouldn’t get you closer to success even by an eyelash.

Firstly – image of your ideal
If you want to use this method, you must describe the perfect you. Take a sheet of paper and write down who you want to be.

Describe, how your ideal takes decisions, how he acts under pressure, what his character is. Define the ideal so particularly that you could determine how he would act in one or other situation.

Act as your ideal
Don’t know what decision to make? It’s not a problem at all, because you know what your ideal would do. But maybe even he can not help you to decide, then at least search for solution as he would do: no crying or moaning, but deciding by counting all pluses and minuses and understanding that you can not influence all of the external factors, for example, the rain.

First example
I would like to illustrate this with a very simple example. Imagine, that you are in your kitchen and have just dropped a greasy morsel of meat on the floor. Now you are able to do the following things:
a) to pretend that it hasn’t happened and leave the meat on the floor;
b) to take and bin the meat, but leave the dirt on the floor;
c) to kick the meat under the fridge, and clean the floor with your slipper;
d) to bin the meat and do proper cleaning of the floor.
My ideal would choose d, what about yours?

It’s a very simple situation, but perfectly shows how having the ideal allows to take decisions easily. As I have written, every fortune starts with a simple and small step.

Second example
Now let’s visualize something more complicated. It’s a deep night, you’re going home and suddenly you see that three men are trying to take a girl away against her will. They are about 50 meters away and don’t see you. You can choose one of the following:
a) to pretend, that you don’t see anything suspicious (anyway it’s not my business);
b) to call the police and leave;
c) to attack one against three – I’m relative of Chuck Norris, so I’ll beat them easily even if they have guns ;
d) to call the police and try to make them to take note of your presence. That would create time for a girl to escape.
What your ideal would do this time? Mine would choose c, but until I haven’t required skills or gun, I would be forced to choose d. I’m quick and fast, at the worst case scenario I would win some time for the police to come.

It’s very simple to use these decision making principles in every day life. Do your ideal checks email every five minutes? Does he every free moment at work goes to facebook? Or maybe firstly accomplishes his tasks and later does important things? Does your ideal watch TV every day? Act as your ideal and become like him.

The ideal isn’t perfect
Firstly, I believe that all of you agree that the perfect human doesn’t exist. Also, we don’t need viceless people. You don’t need to be always the first, the right one, the best and so on. What is really important that you enjoy everyday life, get experience and learn from mistakes. Don’t forget to stop and smell roses, don’t run through your life as its purpose would be to finish it as fast as you can without noticing anything.

Who doesn’t lose, doesn’t win. It’s that simple. Do you think that successful people achieved their happiness with the first try? No, they are the people, who don’t stop after every failure, but continue until become winners.

Therefore, don’t imagine ideal as a perfect man. Often despite a lot of efforts we fail, but actually it’s a step forward. Every failure makes as stronger and smarter. So, don’t give up and you’ll get your fortune.

What is money?
In the olden days people used direct exchange of goods, for example, 10 kilos of salt for one sheep. Every item meant some kind of value. For exchange to occur, two persons needed to want to sell and buy the things of the same value.

Of course, the method wasn’t convenient. So, there came coins. Later they were changed by paper money, which hold the value of gold, which was secured in bank. Nowadays value of money depends on economical strength of country, human attitude and so on.

Well, money always means some kind of value. It can mean a pack of salt or sheep, or more subtle things, like gain, which was given to me by a man, who did something for me. I think my profit is 500$, so I pay him that sum of money. The whole world lives on the idea, that people creates value and gets reward in form of money. Later the reward is used to procure other kind of value, for example, food or journeys.

Is money worth to be sought?
Of course, not. Except cases when money is exactly what is needed. For example, a wish to have 10 000 $ in cash for a rainy day. Here money are good like the goal, because they hide seek of security, which means, that after some kind of accident a man could acquire some things. He currently doesn’t know the concrete purpose of money, that is why money is very good tool in this kind of situation. Money holds indeterminate value.

But to seek things, like to earn one million is disastrous. Firstly, money doesn’t inspire, doesn’t motivate, doesn’t  enchant, they are just simple paper. People are motivated by things, which can be bought for the money: houses, fancy cars, journeys and other pleasures. So, why to hide real goal in the shadow of money? It is easer to seek goal, when you exactly know, what you want and how happy you’ll be, when you’ll get it.

Secondly, money by themselves are nothing. And you can’t get the most precious things of life for them. Imagine, that you slaved ten years, saved every cent and finally you have your million. And what’s now? Probably you have some health problems, have small circle of friends and you hasn’t felt pleasure worth of 10 years of your life! I prefer to have only 10 000, but to do enjoyable work, be healthy, have great friends. To cut a long story, I would prefer wonderful live than suitcase filled with stupid papers.

Two true stories
I want to share with you two stories, which perfectly illustrate, what money is, what money can and what they don’t. I found these stories in a small ebook called „A Simple System to Achieve Your Goals” (www.yourfreebook.com).

What would you do, if you had a million..
One day, John decided that couch could help him to achieve his goals. So, he found a couch and there goes their talk:
C: What goal do you want to achieve most?
J: I want to be rich.
C: What do you mean by rich?
J: I want 1 000 000$ in my bank account.
C: And what would you do, if you had this amount of money?
J: Well.. um.. I would go fishing!
C: But you don’t need million dollars for that…

Well, it’s obvious that nowadays John often goes fishing and has started doing it, before earning a million. This story perfectly shows, that we want not money, but things we could buy for them.

To have a million, but actually to have nothing
This story is about a guy, which literally froze to death. This incident was announced in newspaper.

The police came to make sure that a man died not by crime, but on his own. They found something, what shocked them. No, he wasn’t killed, but really froze to death.

Neighbours told how poor the man was. He bought the cheapest food he could find, kept the lowest possible temperature. The temperature was so cold, that even if someone would wanted to come, he couldn’t. The man also was suspicious and paranoid.

While checking the apartment police noticed something odd about the mattress. After taking a better look, they discovered that it was filled with money. He had apparently saved every cent he earned.

The man froze to death while sleeping on over 1 000 000$ worth silver certificates.

As I said before, it’s better to have less money, but happy life.

Everyone encounters situations, when they need to accomplish a big project. Actually, it may look as the big task only to them. So, they postpone it, find other tasks to do before that, for example, to clean up a desk or room. Everyone knows, that you just postpone the task, which is the most important at the moment. Another problem is, that you want to do it perfectly at the very first try. Do you really think it happens? Well, even some adults believe in fairy-tales.

Also, most of us knows, that we need to accomplish only one small part of task at first. And it would break the ice. We can easily agree with ourselves to dedicate half an hour for doing anything towards accomplishing the task. Then set your alarm to ring after 30 minutes and start doing! After time runs out, stop and do whatever you like without excuses for yourself for doing nothing throughout days. This method allows to avoid tension, which comes by wrong attitude, which impacts that you must do a lot of work and perfectly.

I suggest to use this method for wider purposes. Why to use it only for one project? You can use it every day, for every small task, you want to complete. I offer this: everyday after dinner do a small task and think up a new task for the next day.

To make it even easier, do it only for 30 days. If you don’t like results, you’ll stop doing it. This flexibility allows to begin the series of small steps very easily, because it doesn’t forces to do it every time for long period.

To make it even more pleasant, you need to think up the reward for doing it every day for 30 days in a row. For example, to buy something you want.

It’s very simple and effective. Also, it improves self-esteem and upraises mood, because you know that yesterday, today and tomorrow you’re doing something which pushes your life more and more towards the right side.