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-