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May 16, 2012 By 1 Comment

Awaken to the Value of Your Time

Tril­lions of dol­lars change hands around the world every­day. More items, ser­vices and goods are bought and sold each minute than you could pos­si­bly imag­ine. More cur­rency changes hands than you can pos­si­bly fathom.

Money, in other words, is vir­tu­ally lim­it­less. There’s more money in the world than you could ever need, want, acquire or imagine.

Your time, on the other hand, is lim­ited. We are on this earth for 80 to 100 years in the best-case sce­nario. Some of us are vis­it­ing this world for a much shorter period of time.

So why do we treat our time as if its “free” and unlim­ited, while we treat money as though it’s a pre­cious, lim­ited commodity?

That’s not a rhetor­i­cal ques­tion. I believe we treat our time as though it’s not worth any­thing because we haven’t awoken to the great­ness of our time. We’re unaware of how much we can cre­ate, and we don’t real­ize the pos­si­ble scope and mag­ni­tude of our con­tri­bu­tion to this world.

If we lack con­fi­dence, lack enthu­si­asm, and lack pur­pose, our time feels worth­less. We’ll frit­ter away pre­cious hours as though they’re free. We’ll channel-surf. We’ll devote hours to extreme coupon­ing. We’ll han­dle our own tasks rather than out­sourc­ing and delegating.

We learn to be fru­gal with our time, not our money, when we become aware of how valu­able our lives are. Time is more pre­cious than gold. Sup­plies are lim­ited. When our time is over — it’s sim­ply over. We can’t earn more.

So how can you awaken to the value of your time?

#1: Have a Purpose

Time feels worth­less if you’re not liv­ing for any­thing. Your pur­pose can be what­ever you want it to be. It can be work-related, home-related or any­thing else. Your pur­pose might be excelling at your job, or mak­ing money, or being a great par­ent, or being a won­der­ful com­mu­nity member.

#2: Limit Your Priorities

Stay focused on your pur­pose by con­cen­trat­ing in one or two areas of your life. Many peo­ple never achieve great­ness when their mind is “a mile wide and an inch deep.” Ruth­lessly cull your pri­or­i­ties so that you’re con­cen­trat­ing on your mission.

#3: Accept What You’re Good At

As chil­dren, we’re taught to focus on the areas in which we’re less nat­u­rally inclined. If we’re great at read­ing but poor at math­e­mat­ics, we’ll get tons of extra tutor­ing in math, while our nat­ural read­ing tal­ent holds steady.

As adults, we need to turn that around. Con­cen­trate on devel­op­ing the areas in which you have nat­ural skill and inter­est. Out­source the rest.

by Paula Pant

Filed Under: Jungle Writers, Personal Finance
May 13, 2012 By 8 Comments

Unleash Your Inner Superhero

You are in pos­ses­sion of some­thing pow­er­ful. Some­thing with the innate pos­si­bil­ity to change the world. You walk around with it every day, but sadly, you’re likely obliv­i­ous to its paradigm-shifting poten­tial. Don’t feel bad, how­ever, for even the most advanced air­port secu­rity scan­ners are com­pletely unable to detect its presence.

What is it?

Your great­ness.

That’s right, even Tony the Tiger would agree: You’re GREAT!  But I’m not talk­ing in generic, “you’re great, I’m great, everybody’s great and should get a tro­phy” terms here. I’m talk­ing about your inner superpower.

The tragedy is that this inner super­power is often under-appreciated and under-used, ren­der­ing it nearly powerless.

Your great­ness is made up of the activ­i­ties you are great at and most enjoy doing. The things that peo­ple mar­vel at, ask you to do, and thank you for. The things that come easy to you, the things you find most enjoyable.

The “easy” and “enjoy­able” aspects are the trap. They lead you to take your great­ness for granted. When some­thing comes easy to us, we assume it must be that way for every­one, so we don’t see any­thing spe­cial in it. And if it’s enjoy­able, we assume it’s not worth that much because any­thing worth hav­ing requires a lot of work, right?

Wrong!

This kind of think­ing is Kryp­tonite to our inner super­power. The truth is, the things that come easy to us and cre­ate enjoy­ment are the very gifts we were given to help change the world. Rather than toil­ing away at build­ing up our weak­nesses, we need to unleash our infi­nite poten­tial by focus­ing on our strengths. If you think about it, build­ing up our weak­nesses is our futile way of becom­ing self-reliant. But we were designed to be depen­dent on one another. Our job is to uti­lize the gifts of oth­ers while ruth­lessly shar­ing our own.

Write down a list of at least 10 things you are great at (shoot for 20!) Then make a sim­i­lar list of things you enjoy doing. Com­pare the lists and cir­cle the things that overlap.

That’s your great­ness. That’s your inner superpower.

Keep in mind, you don’t need to be the best in the world at any of those things to be great. The beauty is in the mix. Con­sider this quote from Dil­bert car­toon­ist Scott Adams:

I suc­ceeded as a car­toon­ist with neg­li­gi­ble art tal­ent, some basic writ­ing skills, an ordi­nary sense of humor and a bit of expe­ri­ence in the busi­ness world. The “Dil­bert” comic is a com­bi­na­tion of all four skills. The world has plenty of bet­ter artists, smarter writ­ers, fun­nier humorists and more expe­ri­enced busi­ness peo­ple. The rare part is that each of those mod­est skills is col­lected in one per­son. That’s how value is created.

You may not be the absolute best at any one thing on your list. (Not many peo­ple are.) But that’s no rea­son to dis­count them. Chances are that if every­one in the world com­pared their lists of 20 things they are great at and enjoyed doing, no two lists would be exactly the same.

I hope you will take some time to make your own list to uncover and ana­lyze your inner superpower.

I urge you to quit tak­ing your great­ness for grated.

I beg you to unleash it on the world.

We need you.

by Jason Kotecki

Filed Under: Fun/Recreation, Jungle Writers
May 10, 2012 By 3 Comments

How to Awaken Your Greatness When You Don’t Feel That Great

lantern

Tweet One of my coach­ing clients (let’s call her Sonia) recently went through a divorce. She has worked hard to get to a place where she can appre­ci­ate all the good that came from the rela­tion­ship. Her teen-aged daugh­ter is fore­most in her appre­ci­a­tion. But it is also in rela­tion to her daugh­ter that she […]

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Filed Under: Jungle Writers, Personal Growth and Spirituality
May 7, 2012 By 3 Comments

Awaken Career Greatness

Tweet To awaken to your great­ness in your career, you must love what you do…truly love it. You must see it as a craft… as an art… and your­self as an artist. This is the way to great­ness! Note: If you’re hav­ing trou­ble view­ing this, please click here. by John Spence

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Filed Under: Career, Jungle Writers
May 4, 2012 By 20 Comments

It’s Never Too Late To Be Great!

spring

Tweet Iron­i­cally, I sit down to write this arti­cle on the evening of my birth­day. Each pass­ing year I become a lit­tle more reflec­tive when May 1st comes around, per­haps because I am more aware of how quickly this car­ni­val ride of life starts spin­ning. At times, a deep sense of grat­i­tude pen­e­trates through memories […]

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Filed Under: Family and Social Life, Jungle Writers
May 1, 2012 By 16 Comments

Discovering Your Greatness

Laying On My "S"

Tweet There’s always tomor­row.  Have you ever thought or said that (or some­thing sim­i­lar)? See — when we’re cruis­ing through this thing called our life, and things are going as they nor­mally do (and often, even if they’re not all that nor­mal) — there’s this sense that tomor­row is always there. And tomor­row — leads […]

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Filed Under: Inspiration
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