The Difference Maker- attitude- John Maxwell notes

 Bismillah.

I'm reading The Difference Maker by John Maxwell with one of my teammates. See below for notes from the book. I believe John Maxwell's reflection below is the best summary of the book-. Maxwell advises the importance of leveraging a positive attitude and explains how to deal with 5 Attitude obstacles in this book.   

"Attitude is important. It is so important that is truly is the difference maker. It isn't everything, but it on thing that can make a difference in your life."

How to make your attitude your greatest asset:

1. Take responsibility for your attitude
2. Evaluate your present attitude
3. Develop the desire to change
4. Change your attitude by changing your thoughts
5. Develop good habits
6. Manage your attitude daily

Dealing effectively with discouragement-->

1. Get the right perspective
2. See the right people
3. Say the right words
4. Have the right expectations
5. make the right decisions

  Get the right perspective (remember discouragement is temporary)

• take a good look  at the whole picture
• take a short look at the problem (focus on solutions)
• take a close look at yourself
• take a long look at successful people
• take wide look at the possibilities

Change

1. you must make a commitment to pay the price for change
2. change must happen within you before it can happen around you, and
3. its never too late to change

Problems:

Perspective on problems:

• problems are everywhere, and everyone has some
• our prespective on the problem, not problem itself, usually determines our success or failure
• there is a difference between problem spotting and problem solving
• the size of the person is more important than the size of the problem
• problems, responded to correctly, can actually advance us forward

Fear:

• Fear breeds more dear
• Fear causes inaction
• Fear weakens us
• Fear wastes energy
• Fear keeps us and other from reaching our potential

How to handle fear?

1. Admit your fears
2. Discover the source of your fears
3. Realize your fears can limit you
4. Accept normal fear as the price of progress
5. Convert fear into desire (Roger Babson, "If things go wrong, don't go with them")
6. Focus on things you can control
7. Give today your attention- not yesterday or tomorrow
8. Feed the right emotion and starve the wrong one

Failure: 

How to profit from failure?

1. Change your attitude
2. Change your vocabulary (failure isn't failure if you do better the next time)
3. Pay little attention to the odds
4. Let failure point you to success
5. Hold on to your sense of humor
6. Learn from your mistakes
7. Don't lose your perspective
8. Don't become too familiar with failure
9. Make failure a gauge for growth
10. Never give up

"Success each day should be judged by the seeds sown, not the harvest reaped." - John Maxwell

Making the most of our evenings

Bismillah.

I am a morning person and thus I tend to focus my energies on trying to make my morning productive. Over this past few weeks, I have noticed that my evenings haven't been that productive or fufilling. This morning, I started researching afternoon/evening habits that can I hope to incorporate in the upcoming days/weeks, iA.

As an aside, I am reading  The Miracle Morning: The Not-So-Obvious Secret Guaranteed to Transform Your Life (Before 8AM) by Hal Elrod with one of my teammates. I will plan to share some of lessons learned from this book in the a few days.

Going back to making better use of afternoon/evenings, I didn't see any books that popped up easily with my initial Google searches. I did find some of articles and will share some those links below.
John Rampton from Entrepreuner.com wrote the following piece: 11 Afternoon and Evening Routines That Will Make You Much More Productive Tomorrow. 

His list of routines include the following:

1. Stop while you are ahead
2. Get up and Move
3. Take a micro nap
4. Save the easy stuff for last
5. End your workday on a high note
6. Chillax when you get home
7. Do one more thing that you love
8. Eliminate negativity and reflect
9. Prepare for tomorrow
10. What good did I do today?
11. Turn your bedroom into a cave

Thomas Oppong from medium.com wrote the following article:  8 Powerful Evening Habits That Will Prepare You For a Better Tomorrow. He included the following habits:

1. Get ready for tomorrow today
2. Create a shutdown ritual
3. Establish a restorative place to unwind
4. Make time to reflect
5. Focus on mastery experiences
6. Read something you enjoy
7. Cut out the blue light
8. And prioritize sleep

I  haven't really been as structured on my evening habits. I plan to try some of the aforementioned routines and see how that changes my evenings. Feel free to leave a comment below if you have figured out to make the most of your evenings and/or are working to making your evenings more productive.

Take advantage of 5

 Bismillah.

The Prophet (S) says, "Take advantage of five things before 5 others.. 

1. your youth before you become old; 
2. your health, before you fall sick; 
3. your wealth, before you become poor, 
4. your free time before you become preoccupied, 
5. and your life, before your death."

This is an excellent reminder to prioritize life's blessings before they are gone or diminished. 

John Maxell says in his book, Today Matters, "You will never change your life until you change something you do daily."

Lets always be proactive in the way we approach life and our daily challenges.

Have a wonderful and productive Friday- 

Fail or Succeed Quickly

 Bismillah.

Failing or (succeeding) quickly allows us to test hypothesis or potential solutions efficiently. I am a believer in executing on your vision or idea as quickly as possible so that you can either build on your idea and/or move on to your next contribution to the world. 

John Maxwell writes in his book, Failing Forward, "The difference between average people and achieving people is their perception of and response to failure."

John Maxwell also cites a Thomas Edison quote, "Many of life's failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up."

I haven't read the full book, Failing Forward, but Maxwell's main thesis to redefine how we look at failure and treat it as a stepping stone towards success.

notes from today matters by John Maxwell

 Bismillah.

I'm reading Today Matters 12 Daily Practices to guarantee tomorrow's success by John Maxwell with one of my teammates.

I listed some quotes from chapter one that resonating with me. In terms of reflection, John Maxwell’s main point is to take full advantage of today, don’t stress about what happened yesterday, and don’t push off something worthwhile to start tomorrow. 

Hope some of the notes below inspire you to make the best use of today. I’ll try to add more reflection in future posts IA.

"Real, sustainable change doesn't happen in a moment. It's a process."

"Growth comes from making decisions and following though on them."

"The secret of your success is determined by your daily agenda...Successful people make right decision early and mange those decisions daily."

 "One today is worth two tomorrows; what I am to be, I am now becoming." Benjamin Franklin

Today can become a masterpiece

The only adequate preparation for tomorrow is the right use of today.

Today's Priorities give me Focus

Devoting a little of yourself to everything means committing a great deal of yourself to nothing." Michael LeBoef

Ralph Waldo Emerson advised, "Guard well your spare moments. They are like uncut diamonds. Discard them and their value will never be known. Improve them and they will become the brightest gems in a useful life."

Priorities help us to choose wisely. Author Rober J. Mckain says, " The reason most goals are not achieved is that we spend our time doing second things first."

John Maxwell recommends asking yourself three questions when determining your priorities:

1. What is required of me?
2. What give the greatest return?
3. What gives me the greatest reward?

Today's Health Gives me strength

Successful people make the major decision in their life early and mange them daily.

Today's family gives me stability

Decide on your philosophy

1. Commitment to God
2. Continual growth
3. Common experiences
4. Confidence-- in God, Ourselves, and others
5. Contributions to Life

Today's thinking give me an Advantage

1. Big Picture Thinking
2. Focused Thinking
3. Creative Thinking
4. Realistic Thinking
5. Strategic Thinking
6. Possibility Thinking
7. Reflective Thinking
8. Questioning Popular Thinking
9. Shared Thinking
10. Unselfish Thinking
11. Bottom-Line Thinking

Today's Commitment Give me Tenacity:

Today's Finances Give Me Options

Today's Faith Give me Peace:

Self Evaluation 

1. Attitude: Choose and display the right attitude daily
2. Priorities: Determine and act on important priorities daily
3. Health: Know and follow health guidelines daily
4. Family: Communicate with and care for my family daily
5. Thinking: Practice and develop good thinking daily
6. Commitment; Make and keep properly commitments daily
7. Finances: Earn and properly manage finances daily
8. Faith: Deepen and live out my faith daily
9. Relationships: Initiate and invest in solid relationships daily
10. Generosity: Plan for and model generosity daily
11. Values: Embrace and practice good values daily
12. Growth: Desire and experience improvements daily. 

Some notes from 7 Habits from Highly Effective People- Stephen Covey

 Bismilah. 

I'm going to try and be consistent on this blog again. I listened to a talk from Seth Godin recently and he spoke of the benefits of writing/blogging every day.

I am currently reading a few books with my team members at Altenew. I will share some of the lessons/takeaways that are in my mind from two of the books today.

The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People- by Stephen Covey

Stephen Covey discusses the concept of P/PC balance. P stands for production of desired results and PC stands for production capability. He gives an example of a goose that lays golden eggs. Golden Egg in this example would be the P and the goose itself would be the PC. Covey makes the case to nurture both P and PC to be most effective. Focusing on just one of these concepts isn't optimal.

See below for Covey's own words:

Effectiveness lies in the balance. Excessive focus on P results in ruined health, worn-out machines, depleted bank accounts, and broken relationships. Too much focus on PC is like a person who runs three or fours hours a day, bragging about the extra ten years of life it creates, unaware he’s spending them running. Or a person endlessly going to school, never producing, living on other people’s golden eggs-- the eternal student syndrome

The P/PC concept instilled a stronger initiative in me to produce more results  (i.e. share my own golden eggs with the world). Sometimes it is easy to get caught up in reading and learning, and not spending enough time in executing and contributing to the world. I agree with Covey that there needs to be a balance between developing skills and achieving results. 

For those of you that are not aware of 7 Habits that Covey illustrates as fundamental are listed below:

1. Be Proactive
2. Begin with the End in Mind
3. Put First Thing First
4. Think Win-Win
5. Seek First to Understand Then to Be Understood
6. Synergize
7. Sharpen the Saw

The 21 Indispensable Qualities of a Leader by John Maxwell 

Out of the 21 qualities of a leader highlighted by John Maxwell, the one on Vision probably made me reflect the most.  Maxwell discusses the importance of vision in guiding a leader and helping them provide a pathway for their team. 

On a personal note, I plan on outlining a vision statement for Altenew, my family and personally in the upcoming days. Let me know if you want to compare notes and if you want to hold each other accountable.

Hoping these thoughts sparked something in you to contribute a bit more today, inshAllah- NR