1. Steve Jobs said: “Innovation distinguishes between a leader and a follower.”

Innovation has no limits. The only limit is your imagination. It’s time for you to begin thinking out of the box. If you are involved in a growing industry, think of ways to become more efficient; more customer friendly; and easier to do business with. If you are involved in a shrinking industry – get out of it quick and change before you become obsolete; out of work; or out of business. And remember that procrastination is not an option here. Start innovating now!

2. Steve Jobs said: “Be a yardstick of quality. Some people aren’t used to an environment where excellence is expected.”

There is no shortcut to excellence. You will have to make the commitment to make excellence your priority. Use your talents, abilities, and skills in the best way possible and get ahead of others by giving that little extra. Live by a higher standard and pay attention to the details that really do make the difference. Excellence is not difficult – simply decide right now to give it your best shot – and you will be amazed with what life gives you back.

3. Steve Jobs said: “The only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle. As with all matters of the heart, you’ll know when you find it.”

I’ve got it down to four words: “Do what you love.” Seek out an occupation that gives you a sense of meaning, direction and satisfaction in life. Having a sense of purpose and striving towards goals gives life meaning, direction and satisfaction. It not only contributes to health and longevity, but also makes you feel better in difficult times. Do you jump out of bed on Monday mornings and look forward to the work week? If the answer is ‘no’ keep looking, you’ll know when you find it.

4. Steve Jobs said: “You know, we don’t grow most of the food we eat. We wear clothes other people make. We speak a language that other people developed. We use a mathematics that other people evolved… I mean, we’re constantly taking things. It’s a wonderful, ecstatic feeling to create something that puts it back in the pool of human experience and knowledge.”

Live in a way that is ethically responsible. Try to make a difference in this world and contribute to the higher good. You’ll find it gives more meaning to your life and it’s a great antidote to boredom. There is always so much to be done. And talk to others about what you are doing. Don’t preach or be self-righteous, or fanatical about it, that just puts people off, but at the same time, don’t be shy about setting an example, and use opportunities that arise to let others know what you are doing.

5. Steve Jobs said: “There’s a phrase in Buddhism, ‘Beginner’s mind.’ It’s wonderful to have a beginner’s mind.”

It is the kind of mind that can see things as they are, which step by step and in a flash can realize the original nature of everything. Beginner’s mind is Zen practice in action. It is the mind that is innocent of preconceptions and expectations, judgments and prejudices. Think of beginner’s mind as the mind that faces life like a small child, full of curiosity and wonder and amazement.

6. Steve Jobs said: “We think basically you watch television to turn your brain off, and you work on your computer when you want to turn your brain on.”

Reams of academic studies over the decades have amply confirmed television’s pernicious mental and moral influences. And most TV watchers know that their habit is mind-numbing and wasteful, but still spend most of their time in front of that box. So turn your TV off and save some brain cells. But be cautious, you can turn your brain off by using a computer also. Try and have an intelligent conversation with someone who plays first person shooters for 8 hours a day. Or auto race games, or role-playing games.

7. Steve Jobs said: “I’m the only person I know that’s lost a quarter of a billion dollars in one year…. It’s very character-building.”

Don’t equate making mistakes with being a mistake. There is no such thing as a successful person who has not failed or made mistakes, there are successful people who made mistakes and changed their lives or performance in response to them, and so got it right the next time. They viewed mistakes as warnings rather than signs of hopeless inadequacy. Never making a mistake means never living life to the full.

8. Steve Jobs said: “I would trade all of my technology for an afternoon with Socrates.”

Over the last decade, numerous books featuring lessons from historical figures have appeared on the shelves of bookstores around the world. And Socrates stands with Leonardo da Vinci, Nicholas Copernicus, Charles Darwin and Albert Einstein as a beacon of inspiration for independent thinkers. But he came first. Cicero said of Socrates that, “He called philosophy down from the skies and into the lives of men.” So use Socrates’ principles in your life, your work, your learning, and your relationships. It’s not about Socrates, it’s really about you, and how you can bring more truth, beauty and goodness into your life everyday.

9. Steve Jobs said: “We’re here to put a dent in the universe. Otherwise why else even be here?”

Did you know that you have big things to accomplish in life? And did you know that those big things are getting rather dusty while you pour yourself another cup of coffee, and decide to mull things over rather than do them? We were all born with a gift to give in life, one which informs all of our desires, interests, passions and curiosities. This gift is, in fact, our purpose. And you don’t need permission to decide your own purpose. No boss, teacher, parent, priest or other authority can decide this for you. Just find that unique purpose.

10. Steve Jobs said: “Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma – which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of other’s opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.”

Are you tired of living someone else’s dream? No doubt, its your life and you have every right to spend it in your own individual way without any hurdles or barriers from others. Give yourself a chance to nurture your creative qualities in a fear-free and pressure-free climate. Live a life that YOU choose and be your own boss.

Each lesson might be difficult to integrate into your life at first, but if you ease your way into each lesson, one at a time, you’ll notice an immediate improvement in your overall performance. So go ahead, give them a try.

As New Jobless Claims Fall. Or Market Surges On Positive Comments From Buffett, Gates. Or even—for such is the depth of its cynicism—Market Surges As Dollar Snaps Losing Streak. You see, on a day when the market goes down, there is only one causality of which anyone can really be sure: that there were more sellers than buyers for whatever complex of global reasons on that particular day. (The converse is equally true on a day when the market rises.) So, on November 12th, weak oil demand may indeed have been a reason some institutions were net sellers. The optimistic comments of Buffett and Gates, falling jobless claims and Wal-Mart earnings may have been reasons that some were net buyers. We can’t know, and it doesn’t matter. All we can say for sure is that, on this particular meaningless day (for any one day is always meaningless), the sellers outnumbered the buyers.

This is the pure, unvarnished truth. Which is exactly why financial journalism can’t report it. Journalism isn’t in the truth business; it’s in the news business. And those are two entirely different things. The essential nature of truth is that it’s unchanged from day to day. But the twenty-third time that journalism repeated an unchanging truth—in this example, that the market went up or down because there was a surplus of sellers or buyers on that particular day—you would absorb that truth, and you’d stop needing to consume financial journalism. And this, above all else, is what journalism cannot allow to happen. So it will say anything: it will infer, and sell you, whatever illusory causality it chooses to make up that morning in order to create a market “news” narrative. The ultimate goal of financial journalism isn’t to help you become financially secure and independent. (It doesn’t know you, and cares even less.) It is to get you to buy more financial journalism. This is another critical distinction, and one which most investors miss, to their sorrow.

Financial independence is built over a lifetime by following a few simple rules—there probably can’t be more than about a couple of dozen of them. (Just to name five: thrift , regular investment, long-term perspective, focusing on your goals rather than on the markets and not getting scared out of equities.) Again, the constant reiteration of these truths would be suicidal for financial journalism, as they would inevitably lead you eventually to stop consulting it altogether. So it will headline, “Is this rally for real?” and try to get you to listen to (or read) four talking heads, two on either side of the question, then cut to a commercial. Aft er which it will headline, “Is it too late to jump into gold?” and come back with four more talking heads. For you see, journalism’s objectives aren’t just different from yours. They’re antithetical to yours. You need to think, plan and invest long-term. Journalism wants to keep your focus as short-term as is humanly possible—ideally, minute-to-minute—so you won’t dare turn off that television. You need to line up your savings and investing program with your most cherished lifetime (and even transgenerational) financial goals. Journalism wants you trading, chasing hot trends, and jumping in and out of the markets, so you won’t dare turn off that television. You need to maintain your basic, fundamental and above all American long-term optimism—which is just another word for realism—or else you’re in danger of getting scared out of the market. Journalism wants you petrified—of double digit unemployment, the “jobless recovery,” inflation, deflation, swine flu, or whatever apocalypse du jour they’re selling today … so you won’t dare to turn off that television. Turn off that television. Because financial journalism just isn’t your friend. If you’re really looking for a friend, go have a quiet cup of coffee with your financial advisor.

© 2009 Nick Murray. All rights reserved. Reprinted by permission.

I am sitting in a first class seat on a flight from New York to Los Angeles, a distance of some 2,600 miles. You are driving on the Long Island Expressway from its starting point in Queens to its end in Riverhead, New York – a distance of some 70 miles. Which of us is more likely to be killed before we reach our destination? And (for extra credit on the quiz) what is the mathematical relationship between the two probabilities?

The answer, of course, is that you are one thousand times more likely to buy the farm on your trip than I am on mine.

But it doesn’t feel that way, does it? A plane crash is everybody’s worst nightmare. On those exquisitely rare occasions that one happens, it will dominate TV news for days — unless, like the time the Concorde crashed, it’s on for weeks. A car wreck, psychologically, is something that happens to someone else. And, unless it’s particularly horrific, it won’t be covered in the media at all. So, because of its immediacy and terror, we intuitively regard death in a plane crash as being much more likely than in a car, when the opposite is overwhelmingly more probable.

This is simply the most obvious example of a systematic mental lapse that the psychologist who postulated it – the late Amos Tversky – called the availability heuristic. (A “heuristic,” in the jargon of behavioral psychology, is a consistent misapprehension of probability by a significant percentage of the population. For instance, if we flip a coin ten times and it comes up heads every time, we are strongly inclined to the belief that that the odds are overwhelming that it will come up tails on the eleventh flip. Instead, every flip is 50-50.) For purposes of this discussion, since neither of us is a Ph.D. in psychology, I wonder if we might just call it “the availability fallacy.”

The availability fallacy is very powerfully at work in people’s perceptions of financial risk. For instance, all of us have seen a one-day, 23% decline in the S&P 500, on October 19, 1987. But none of us has ever seen a one-day – or even a one-year – 23% increase in the Consumer Price Index. (Even in highly inflationary periods since WWII, that’s taken two years.) Market volatility is, by its nature, sharp, sudden and terrifying. Erosion of purchasing power is slow, insidious, constant…and all but invisible on any given day.

For this and myriad other reasons, Americans vastly overestimate the probability that equities will cause them to suffer catastrophic principal loss. And they even more abysmally underestimate the probability that, over three decades of retirement, erosion of purchasing power will grind down their lifestyle. This is the availability fallacy at its most dangerous.

The wise investor will constantly remind himself of this. One way is to remember that markets can and do go down suddenly and significantly…but they’ve never stayed down. There have, in fact, been three howling bear markets since the 1987 event – in 1990-91, 1998, and the great-grandfather of all postwar bears in 2000-20002. Yet the S&P is today about seven times higher than it was at the end of the 1987 decline. The effect of the declines has been negligible to nonexistent, in the career of the long-term investor.

By the same token, inflation very rarely goes up much in any one year…but it virtually never stops going up. The cumulative effect of this observation may clearly be seen, if you simply juxtapose a 15-cent first-class U.S. postage stamp issued to celebrate the 1980 summer Olympics with a brand new Frank Sinatra commemorative 42-cent stamp.

In 1980, again in 1987, and again in 2008: the long-term, planning-oriented investor was and is well advised to worry much less about loss of principal than about erosion of purchasing power. The availability fallacy causes most people to do the opposite. Don’t be one of them.

© 2009 Nick Murray. All rights reserved. Used with permission.

If you’ve ever fantasized about quitting your job and starting a business, you’re certainly not alone. However, it’s definitely not something to do on a whim – you’ll need time and good advice.

A business startup requires parallel planning in advance for your business and personal finances. That’s because business owners – even those who are acquiring ongoing businesses or starting their own companies on the cheap – quickly find their business and personal finances are inextricably linked.

That means that before you plan the business, plan your finances first. Here are some basic steps to consider right now:

Get some advice first:
You need not one, but two sets of financial advice when starting a business. The first involves the viability of your business concept. You should understand your business idea inside and out before you launch and what your new company’s immediate and long-term cash needs will be. The second set of advice involves your own finances and how prepared you are for what will surely be a major lifestyle transition. Because new business owners frequently underestimate their new business’s expenses starting out, they can find themselves funding those business needs out-of-pocket. That means less money for day-to-day living expenses as well as long-term planning for retirement. That’s why it’s critical to consult a tax and financial expert such as a CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER™ professional at the outset.

Get rid of your debts:
With the possible exception of mortgage debt, there’s very little “good debt” in the life of a businessperson. So while you’re researching your business concept and putting together your own financial plan, start cutting back and erasing as much credit card and adjustable-rate debt from your personal life as possible. The credit crisis is making it tough for any business owner – even experienced ones – to borrow money at attractive rates.  You’ll have the most flexibility when you owe as little as possible.

Work on your emergency fund:
While it’s wise for everyone to have 3-6 months of cash set aside for basic living expenses in case they lose their job or face a medical emergency, emergency funds are particularly necessary for new business owners. Startups can be particularly expensive, and most businesses are not profitable from day one. Plan a more extensive emergency fund for yourself and for the business as well.

Start thinking about your legal business structure:
Your personal financial situation and the kind of business you’re starting should determine the legal designation of your company.
Before choosing a business structure, such as a sole proprietorship, S or C corporation, partnership, Limited Liability Partnership (LLP), or Limited Liability Company (LLC), owners should reflect on their business in the context of their overall financial life and ask themselves a series of questions:

• Is the business going to be your primary source of personal wealth and daily cash flow?
• Is it a side business?
• Do you expect the business to pay for your retirement?
• Do you want it to provide other financial benefits?
• Do you want to pass it on to family members or sell it to existing employees or outside buyers?

The answers to these questions figure importantly into the decision, along with other key factors such as what type of business you’re starting, its risk factors, current tax laws, and regulations such as workman’s compensation.

Plan your healthcare and other basic benefits:
Automatic benefits are the plus side of working for someone else. When you’re working for yourself, you become your own HR department and chances are you won’t be able to match your old employer’s buying power. If you support a family with these benefits or if you have particular health concerns, you need to price the out-of-pocket costs of such benefits before starting your own company – depending on the business and the cost of those benefits, you might want to rethink your plans.

Price disability coverage now:
You might have short-term disability coverage as part of your current employee benefits, but that will likely end once you quit your job. You should price long-term disability coverage based on your present working salary so you can qualify for the highest possible benefit. Disability coverage is critical for self-employed people since they’re their own support system.

By: Brian Tracy

To deal with change, perhaps the most valuable quality you can develop is flexibility. Form the habit of remaining open-minded and adaptable to new information and circumstances. When things go wrong, as they sometimes will, instead of becoming upset or frustrated, practice looking into the change or reversal for the opportunity or benefit it might contain.

Superior men and women are invariably those who remain calm and keep their wits about them in the midst of unexpected turbulence. They take a deep breath, they relax, and they assess the situation objectively. They keep themselves calm and unemotional by asking questions and seeking information when things don’t work out as they expected. For example, if someone doesn’t fulfill a commitment, or if a sale is canceled, or fails to go through, they keep their minds clear and steady by asking questions, such as “What exactly happened in this situation?” They deal with change by focusing on getting the facts before reacting. They develop the ability to cut through the confusion and ask questions such as “Why did this happen? How did it happen? How serious is it? Now that it has happened, what are the various things we can do?”

The critical issue in dealing with change is the subject of control. Most of your stress and unhappiness comes as a result of feeling out of control in a particular area of your life. If you think about the times or places where you feel the very best about yourself, you will notice that you have a high degree of control in those places. One of the reasons why you like to get home after a trip is that, after you walk through your front door, you feel completely in control of your environment. You know where everything is. You don’t have to answer to anyone. You can relax completely. You are back in control.

With a clear idea of where you’re going and what you want to accomplish, you develop resilience, which is the ability to bounce back rather than to break. You develop what is called the “hardy personality” and become the type of person who is resistant to the negative emotions that affect people who have no goals or direction.

The first step in dealing with any change is simply to accept the change as a reality. Acceptance is the opposite of rejection or resistance. Acceptance keeps your mind calm and positive. The minute you accept that a change has occurred, and that you can’t cry over spilled milk, you become more capable of dealing with the change and turning it to your advantage.

One of the best ways to deal with the worry that is often generated by unexpected changes is to sit down and answer, on paper, the question: “What exactly am I worrying about?”

In medicine, it is said that accurate diagnosis is half the cure. When you sit down and define a worry situation clearly on paper, it suddenly becomes less stressful to you, and it will often resolve itself. In any case, when it is clearly defined, you have diagnosed it, and you can now do something about it.

The second step is to ask yourself, “What is the worst possible thing that can happen in this worry situation?” Much worry and stress comes from the refusal to face what might happen as a result of your difficulty or problem. When you clearly define the worst possible outcome, and write it down next to the definition of the problem, you will find that, whatever it is, you can handle it. Often your worries will begin to evaporate as soon as you have clearly determined the worst that might happen as a result.

Now decide to accept the worst possible outcome should it occur. Mentally resolve that, even if the worst possible consequences ensue from this situation, it will not be the end of the world for you. You will accept it and carry on. In fact, it could probably be a lot worse. The very act of accepting the worst possible outcome completes the cycle of eliminating from your mind the stress and anxiety associated with the situation.

You are now ready for the third step in dealing with change, and that is to adjust your behaviors and actions to the new situation. Ask yourself, “What are all the things I can do to make sure that the worst possible outcome does not occur?” Sometimes we call this “damage control.” In the business schools, this is an important part of decision making, and it is called the “mini-max regret solution.” What can you do to minimize the maximum damage that can occur from an unexpected change or setback? As you begin thinking of all the things you can do, you are adjusting your mind to the new information and preparing to take steps to deal with the change effectively.

The final part of this four-step method for dealing with change is to improve on the existing situation. Often, a change signals that your plans are incomplete or that you might be heading in the wrong direction. Serious changes, which seemingly create real problems, are often signals that you are on the wrong track. There is an old saying, “Crisis is change trying to take place.” If, instead of resisting change, like a pine tree that snaps in a strong wind, you bend with change, like a willow tree, you will often find that the change is a healthy and positive step toward achieving your goals.

W. Clement Stone, the founder of Combined Insurance Company of America, is famous for his attitude of being an “inverse paranoid.” He is convinced that everything that happens is part of a conspiracy to help him to be more successful. Whenever something unexpected occurs, he immediately says, “That’s good!” and then looks into the situation to find out exactly what is good about it.

The mark of a superior person is what is called “tolerance for ambiguity.” This simply means that you have the capacity to deal effectively in a rapidly changing situation. The higher up you gothe greater your income and responsibilities, the higher your status and positionthe faster the rate of change will be around you. At every stage, it will be your ability to function with calmness, clarity and quiet assurance that will mark you as the kind of person who is going places in life. In the final analysis, your ability to perform effectively in a world of ongoing change is the true measure of how well developed a person you really are. And the keys are to accept change, to adjust to change, to improve upon change, and then to move on to the next situation. As you continue to do this, you will have such a wonderful feeling of self-control and self-determination that your whole life will be bright and positive, and so will your results.

About the author:

Brian Tracy is legendary in the fields of management, leadership, and sales.  He has produced more than 300 audio/video programs and has written 28 books, including his just-released book “The Psychology of Selling.” Special offer: To receive your free copy of “Crunch Time!, just visit www.briantracy.com and click on the Crunch Time! icon.  He can be reached at (858) 481-2977 or www.briantracy.com.

By Steve Martin, CMCT

Most people will happily agree to help a colleague out at work who has helped them out previously, take their turn to buy lunch when others have bought lunch before and remember to send a birthday card to the people who have sent them a card on their birthday.

The principle of reciprocity is a well accepted societal norm and has been extensively studied by social scientists. Its influence runs so deep that obligations can reach long and powerfully into the future (Cialdini 2001). But will people be just as likely to live up to the rule of reciprocity and return a favor in situations where nobody will ever know if the favor is returned?

Researchers Jerry Burger and his colleagues from the Department of Psychology at Santa Clara University tested this idea by setting up a study in which participants were asked to take part in a series of tasks to test “personality and perception skills”. In fact the “personality and perception” tests were a cover for the real study which involved certain participants being given a bottle of water by another study participant (the favor condition). The person who gave out this unexpected gift was actually a research assistant involved in the study. In a second condition the research assistant didn’t hand out bottles of water to anyone (the no-favor condition).

At the end of the test the researcher asked all the participants if they would be willing to complete a survey and return it a couple of days later. Half the people asked to complete the survey were led to believe that the person would be present when they returned the survey but the other half were told to leave the survey anonymously in a drop off box.

As you would expect, significantly more people who were given a bottle of water complied with the request to complete and return the survey compared with the group that were not given a bottle of water (30% v 5%). A good example of the reciprocity effect in action.

What is potentially more interesting is the fact that the people who believed their response would be anonymous were just as likely to live up to the rule of reciprocity and return the survey as those who believed that their act of repayment would be witnessed.

This means that even in situations where the giver of the original favor is unlikely to find out whether their favor has been reciprocated, they can be confident there is a good chance it will be.

This fact should be especially comforting for those working in certain business environments.

Leaders who employ large teams of people and manage them through groups of other managers, or managers who lead teams who work in different office locations (or even different countries) can be assured that even if they only rarely see their staff they should never fail to seek ways to employ the principle of reciprocity. Giving your time, trust, attention and providing useful information will be useful activities that teams will be likely to reciprocate even if you are not around to witness it.

Another situation where this study could provide useful insights is for those who do business online and as a result rarely, if ever, come face to face with their customers and consumers.

Given the increased anonymity of online environments and the fact that people are just as likely to live up to their obligations even when there are no witnesses, should mean that anything your business does to promote new custom (such as offering trial periods, newly published reports or exclusive software) should be an effective use of the societal rule of the ‘good old give and take’.

Either way, known or unknown, the principle of reciprocity continues to be a powerful force in persuading others.

Source:
Jerry M. Burger, Jackeline Sanchez, Jenny E. Imberi, & Lucia R. Grande. The norm of reciprocity as an internalized social norm: Returning favors even when no one finds out.

Social Influence 2008

America’s business leaders are old—and getting older. Though our culture relentlessly celebrates youth, in the corporate world, 80 is the new 50.

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The economic slowdown is making long-term woes—such as rising debt and slim pay raises—more acute for American consumers.

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This company churns out dozens of new items a month with no advertising, professional designers, sales force, or retail distribution. And it’s never produced a flop.

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