Jeremy JohnsonHigher Learning For Success

I’m excited to share with you my very first video. It’s about making change in your life right now. If you like pie, then the taste of this video should satisfy your appetite. You’ll be able to quickly examine your life and find the areas that you can ‘slice’ into and replace with meaningful, soul driven activities.

Learn what stops you from making any significant changes in your life. Find out why many talk about their ideas, but few take the time to do them. Learn how to be someone who achieves and makes time for the more important things in life, like exercise, and the soul driven activities that you know you want to do.

image by Lillou Merlin

Who are you? Why are you alive? Are you aware of everyone who is alive on the earth? The population approaches 7 billion (as of 2010). What do you do when you are roughly 0.000000014 % of an entire whole? I don’t know about you, but that’s a very microscopic percent. Are you wondering what one person can possibly do?

I know many of you reading this have something you want to do. You want to write that children’s book. You want to find some kind of meaning. You want to stop feeling trapped by debt. You wonder how you can make a difference. You wonder if your marriage is going to work. You wonder if you’ll ever find a better job. You wonder if you will ever be happy. You wonder if you can make any of your ideas work.

That’s a whole lot of wondering. It is my personal mission – no my undying quest to assist individuals in starting their ideas and goals, making progress on them, and seeing them through to completion. I know there are things you know you should do. But what happens? You make an excuse not to do it. Crazy excuses too. Anything to prevent you from making progress. I’ve done it too! Do any of these sound familiar?

• I’ll eat better tomorrow, but this (insert junk food) tastes so good right now.
• This (insert book, business, website, etc… idea) would be so cool! Fast forward years later, rinse and repeat.
• I think I’ll play the stock market! Fast forward years later, rinse and repeat.
• I’ll workout soon, I just need the right time to do it. Fast forward years later, rinse and repeat.
• I can’t seem to lose the weight. I guess I’m just genetically challenged.
• It’s (insert person, group, government here)’s fault! They’re the problem.
• I’m too tired today. Maybe I’ll try tomorrow.
• I just don’t have enough time in the day to exercise.

I believe part of the problem to be self worth and significance. If you don’t think highly of yourself, why would you not eat that candy bar or down those potato chips constantly? Why wouldn’t you just settle for working an unfulfilling job? Why wouldn’t you just settle for a marriage that continually goes down hill? Why wouldn’t you just settle for a life where your objective is finding as much comfort as you can?

Evaluate what your feelings about yourself are. If you can be audited for taxes, then why not do a self audit. Examine every area of your life. This doesn’t take long – I am sure that you already know the areas you can improve in. But the barriers and resistance may still be there. What you want may not be important enough to you. You will make it important by repetition and doing it – by making it a part of your life.

If you believe you do not have enough time for something, I urge you to reconsider. Everyone is busy – you are no exception. But there are those who make time for important things. Maybe it’s getting up at 6:00 AM. Maybe it’s staying up from 10:00 PM until 2:00 AM. Sound crazy? There is time if you make time, period. It’s just a matter of you believing it is important enough.

Solutions to this problem

One article is not enough to discuss solutions to the problem of not acting on ideas and seeing them through to completion. Who you are and your place in the world is entirely up to you to decide. If you choose to watch TV 3 hours a day, that is your place. If you choose to work from 10:00 PM until 2:00 AM on your passion, then your place shall be in accordance.

One thing you can start doing (if you already are not), is slicing into your ‘bored’ or ‘leisure’ time with 10 minutes where you sit and write what you want. If you are married, talk it over with your spouse. Or find some friends or family to talk to. Or go online and look for like minded people (I.P.W. is a good place to start). Have these discussions with people until you are clear about what you want. Once you are clear, you can begin discovering what it takes to make it happen.

A look at the world and individual significance

You’ve probably thought, “What can I do, I’m just one person?” I don’t need to elaborate on this, it’s been said over and over again by others. There’s billions of people in the world, what is your place in it? What is your destiny? Blah blah blah I say. What really matters is one thing – “Are you doing everything in your life right now to feel completely happy and fulfilled?”

That’s it! Do you get offended when people ask you if you are happy? If so, we’ve found a clue. This is the enormous challenge I am on a quest to solve – why do you – or anyone else, have ideas, hopes, dreams, and desires that seldom get acted upon? And if they do get acted upon, why are they not seen through to completion? Yes, life is about the journey and enjoying it – but you cannot enjoy it if you never complete the steps to get there.

I believe the soul is the compass for your life

You need only spend some time searching inward to find what your soul is telling you. What are you afraid of? Where do you find your strongest opinions? What do you find yourself seeking most often? What conversation topics interest you most? What television programming do you watch? What are you favorite movies? What has made you the most happy in your life?

If you haven’t read my article about taking life’s hits, go read it. From small inconveniences to big challenges, life will attempt to deter you from pursuing what your soul is telling you. It’s true. As I type every letter right here and now, life is telling me that it can’t be done. Jeremy, you are one man. You work full time and have a family. There’s just too many smart and successful people for you to compete against.

And before you rule yourself out – whether it be because you lack faith in yourself, or get discouraged, or whatever it may be. Realize that most of you can get up, walk around, think and dream, move your bodies, use a computer, and write. And that is well enough to get started listening to and FOLLOWING what your soul is telling you!

In closing, I would add that my advice is to search long and hard for your passion and go for it full steam – and do it until they day you die. I am Jeremy Johnson – a passionate father, husband, relentless seeker of getting people to take action and complete their ideas, author, and one who enjoys life every step of the way. I will relentlessly work and force my ideas into the ether. The rest is up to the universe. With that, who are you?

Here are two videos that I think will help give you perspective. They are of smart, active, and accomplished individuals.

Gary Vaynerchuk – do what you love – some strong language in the video below, but it’s well worth watching

Seth Godin – everyone is creative – but few people finish what they start or think about

image by fofurasfelinas

Are you married with kids? Are you single with kids? Do you work a job where you come home tired? Are you ever tired? Do you find it hard to get going on projects you want to do? If any of these apply to you, I’m going to show you how to kick yourself in gear in minutes!

You’re kids (if you have them) will get a kick out of the video too!

The above video is there to help get you energized. When you have finished reading what to do here, click it (make sure your volume is WAY up), and then do the things I am about to tell you. Got another video that gets you going? I’d like to hear about it for sure!

Say, “Ok, I’m going to take 5 minutes and get in gear!”

That’s right, just say this phrase to yourself a few times. You are getting in gear. You are excited. You are ready to accomplish great things. You are a leader, someone who makes a difference. You are ready to take action.

Visualize one awesome task you will accomplish

That’s right, just one thing you are going to do. Keep it simple. What is one thing you can focus on right now that you need to do? You just need to focus on it. You will focus on this throughout the entire play length of the video. Do not deviate from it. It is yours and you will do it. What will you visualize?

Start clapping your hands

What, start clapping my hands? You bet – get yourself moving and start clapping your hands. Pretend you are about to run an extremely important race against other runners. Pretend Brad Pitt has his shirt off (if you’re a girl) or if you’re a guy, pretend that you’re about to meet Hillary Clinton (ok that’s random – find someone exciting and pick them). Clap your hands more. You are about to do something amazing.

Play the above video

Get ready to play the video above. Before you do, when the video starts, get ready to dance like it’s 1985 or 1995, I guess I am getting older now, so let’s bump it up 10 years. You don’t have to know how to dance – you will just jump up and down, clap your hands, and scream. You must move and enjoy it! Don’t say, “This is dumb, I don’t wanna.” No! Enjoy it :) You will enjoy yourself through the whole video. Now play the video! When you are done, you should be breathing hard and ready to go to town.

How did this feel? Does it feel good to move around and at the same time visualize what you are going to accomplish? I promise if you do this daily, you will have no trouble being consistent in the goals you are trying to achieve. Let me hear how your dancing went.

Update – a few more videos for you to try

image by lulemon athletica

The goal (pun intended) of this article is for YOU to put in writing a few simple things you know you want to do and then come up with some simple strategies you will use to accomplish them. Then finally, take action and follow through fully with them. Do this, and you will have succeeded.

Goals with strategies will give you an edge in life that few people have. Most people are pretty good talkers when it comes to starting a business, getting in good health, or achieving great wealth. And it sure is fun to talk about isn’t it? Just dreaming about it all can make you tingly enough to almost float above the ground. But lets get to reality.

Goals with strategies puts you ahead because it gives a clear picture of what your success requires. Otherwise, how will you know if you are achieving success if you have no measure of it?

Goals give you the opportunity to take some action instead of talking – this means they put you in check to see if you are simply just talking a good game. Goals with strategies are wonderful. And if you start simple, you will feel good knowing you can accomplish them.

What are some of your own simple goals right now?

My first simple goals are listed below, including strategies I will use to accomplish them. In some cases, part of the goal is to figure out the strategy to use. Your goals should be relative to what you want to accomplish. In my case, there are a few things I want to accomplish with my website.

Please note, I am not creating goals for my short term, medium term, and long term life. I am not trying to figure out everything today. I am not going into why I am setting these goals. I am just trying to get started, which is where most people fail. I am not putting a set ‘date’ on when I will accomplish these goals. However, I will be working with sheer relentlessness to accomplish them. I believe if you work in this manner, that ‘dates’ will take care of themselves.

Here are my first set of goals. Goals are a tremendous way to measure success. These are nothing fancy, just simple goals I know I can achieve – it’s important to be realistic with your goals.

• Goal 1: Get that Alexa website ranking under 10 million. It’s at 20 million as of right now (2/10/2010).
  Strategy: That’s okay, I’ve not done any traffic building steps yet. So I will create quality content that actually helps people. Guest post on popular and well written blogs; submit to Google; tell friends about the website via social networking; create an announcement on all my other websites. Also, come up with more ways to generate traffic and list them here. Figure out more ways to increase my traffic.
• Goal 2: Create 10 posts of valuable content before I start the launch of the website.
  Strategy: Come up with 10 topics I know that people struggle with and are seeking answers for. Then create posts about it including what I’ve learned, what others have had to say, and product/service recommendations that will help further solve the issue.
• Goal 3: Guest post on 1 well known blog.
  Strategy: Find some well known blogs through searching the internet. I will ask around and be resourceful. I already know some of them. Then contact their webmaster AFTER I’ve written my first 10 content posts, and ask if I could guest post.
• Goal 4: Create a live chat room where people can be assigned a key to join the room (this one may be a little ambitious, but I want it).
  Strategy: The most lofty of my goals here. I am going to research open source chat tools and see if I can use my programming skills to customize the chat so users of this site can talk to each other quickly and effectively. In the future, with enough traffic, I’ll create a forum as well.
• Goal 5: Launch the website by notifying on all my websites about it, notifying about it on Twitter and Facebook, and submitting the site to Google.
  Strategy: My most simple goal. It just requires me doing the first four and I’ll consider the website launched. When this happens, I will be moving these goals to a goal topic where I will consistently make my goals known.

I now have a simple measure of success. If I achieve these goals, I will consider myself successful. But when that happens, it’s time to upgrade to new and more challenging goals. But not until I achieve the simple ones. If I can’t get simple things down, there’s no point in thinking big.

What are five simple goals you can accomplish right now and what strategies will you use?

As I said before, it’s fun to talk about starting a business, exercising, or having lots of money. It’s another to start making a list of things to do to get there. And it’s even further still to start researching the best strategies to get there. I’m new at this, but I’m going to get better. There’ll be a history of my goals and how I accomplished them here to view on my website. I look forward to this challenge!

What strategies should you use? Start with what you know how to do. Then find people who are successful in the area(s) you are trying to achieve in. Find out what they are doing and look to them for advice. More than that is beyond the simple scope of this article.

Finally, how will this radically change your life? Because you will be taking action. As you do this, you will shift from a talker to a doer. And you may not succeed every time, but that is ok. You will begin to condition yourself to take action as you do it more and more. This is where the radical change will take place.

What do you think about this? What is your experience with goals and more particularly strategies. You’ve read all of this right? Now it’s time to take your favorite writing/typing device and get down those few simple things you can start doing right now. Get the strategies of how you will accomplish them, and get going! Talk to me about what you plan to do so you have some accountability.