| by Dr. Jeffrey Lant Did you lay in bed this morning unwilling, unable to get up? Did every fibre of your body demand more time in the sack? Was it a struggle to open an eye... and get up? Sure enough, if today wasn't like this, some of your many tomorrows will be. You need to be prepared for such inevitabilities... because they can and will occur and can and will sabotage your ability to make money. Here are some suggestions that'll help you rise and shine... suggestions I use myself when getting up and getting going are most decidedly NOT my first priority! 1) Create a "to do" list before you go to bed. The key to making tomorrow organized, efficient, and profitable is what you do today. Make it a rule before you retire for the night to draw up a clear, clean, specific "to do" list. Write it, read it over, put it next to the bed... then turn off the lights. While you're sleeping your subconscious mind will be busily at work helping you organize and implement the items on your list. Even when your body is screaming for more sleep and all the creature comforts it can get, the brain -- and your crucial "to do" list -- will be helping you get up and at 'em. 2) Take a cold shower. The British empire, the largest the world has ever known, was practically built on a cascade of frigid water. Its young men, pillars of the imperium, were shipped off to prep schools and immediately subjected to the jarring temperatures which will work for you as well as it worked for them. Don't stand there and debate.... turn up the cold tap and plunge! You're about to be invigorated, rejuvenated, primed to run your empire. 3) Do some exercise. Are you huddling in a corner of your kitchen, hands gripping a cup of joe, comfy in your bunny slippers? Whoa! This isn't helping getting your act together. You need some brisk, bracing exercise... the kind guaranteed to send vital oxygen to that all- important brain. Put the steaming liquid down and kick up your heels... or quick-step around your back yard or up and down your street. With every step your brain will exult. The key isn't coffee... it's oxygen. Move bristly and infuse it where it must go for maximum good. 4) Give yourself an easy, immediate success. Don't feel like doing anything? Then give yourself an easy, immediate success. This should, of course, have been indicated on your "to do" list. Before you go to bed be sure to post on your list an easy thing, a thing that will start today's sequence of successes. Once begun, as we say in New England, is half done. What could this "easy" thing be? It could be calling a long-time customer to get a nice re-order or following up with a new customer to whom you've already sent a proposal and quote. One success engenders another. Even a small success is sufficient. Start successful, remain successful. It all begins when you least feel like it. 5) Put on your head phones and engage with some stirring music. Still need help getting into gear? Go to the play list on your computer and choose something rousing. What? You don't have such a play list? Start it today. I can assure you, you are going to need it. Here are some of my sure-fire upbeat selections, guaranteed to get you going: Wake up Little Suzie by the Everly Brothers (most appropriate, don't you think?) Think by Aretha Franklin. Natalie Cole's version of Pink Cadillac, and J.P. Rameau's always motivating Tambourins I-II from Dardanus. Your list may well be different from mine; the important thing is to have a list you can access at once. Turn up the sound... and move your body. Your uplifting selections are moving you towards another successful day. 6) Visualize what you'll get when you turn this day into a success. All too often we work without conceptualizing why. We work today because we worked yesterday. This is not nearly good enough. Remind yourself just why you're working and what special thing today's successes will help create. In my case, for instance, I have a pile of auction catalogs stacked high next to my computer. I motivate myself on days when such motivation is needed by looking at the things I want from auctions coming up quickly. Getting myself focused and together is a precondition for maximum acquisition. Visualize success; then do what's necessary to achieve it. 7) Still not alert and moving? Then take the day off formally and properly. Like most people these days, you are working more and longer than either your parents or grand parents. We are the most leisure-challenged generation ever. The plain fact is, you may be unable to get up and resolutely face the day because you're just worn out. If so, take the day off... sleep in, sleep properly, sleep, relax and goof off without guilt. You'll be the better tomorrow if you take what is necessary and do not regard it as an indulgence but physical need. Enjoy! |
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