The Ultimate Power of Gratitude!

The Ancient Egyptians lived life to the fullest. At festivals and parties, they feasted and drank and were entertained by singers, dancers, and musicians. Children played out in the sun, while adults enjoyed hunting, fishing, and board games.

Egyptians held feasts to celebrate births, marriages, and religious festivals, or simply to entertain friends. The wealthy enjoyed holding dinner parties, where cooks would prepare huge meals flavored with imported herbs and spices. Dressed in their best clothes, guests sat on chairs or on cushions on the floor, eating and drinking large quantities of wine.

Oprah Winfrey once said, “The more you praise and celebrate your life, the more there is in life to celebrate.”

Most people miss the joy of life. They immerse themselves in fear or pessimism to such a degree that they forget to celebrate even their smallest accomplishments. Life has good moments and bad moments. In the bad moments, we need to shore up our strength, keep our courage, and strive to move forward. In the good moments, we need to learn the art of celebration.

Life has a lot to offer and the more you appreciate that, the more you will bring joy and happiness to your life. While scientific proof might not be crystal clear, it is obvious that the universe responds to you the way you see it or expect it to. As Oprah said, the more you praise and celebrate your life, the more there is in life to celebrate!

Train your eyes to recognize the light and beauty of life. Celebrate even the trivial achievements. Make it a habit to see the good and maximize it, and to see the bad—but minimize it. I suggest that you celebrate, every day, the very fact that you are alive! You must celebrate daily the fact that you have a new chance to live your dreams, grow, learn, and prosper.

Think of all the magnificent things in your daily life. Imagine the glorious sunrise, a lush garden, a vast blue sky, mountains thick with towering trees, fragrant forests, a mother’s kiss, a baby’s smile! Don’t deprive yourself of the beauty that surrounds you. Don’t take these everyday miracles for granted. Appreciating miracles is as easy as breathing―and even your breathing is a miracle!

Think about it. Ordinary people, the ones who see only the dark side of life, live lives of fear, insecurity, and continuous pain. But YOU―you who aspire to be a successful, happy person―YOU must see the light in your life, the bowl of succulent cherries that awaits you when you open your eyes every morning. And you must develop a sense of gratitude for everything you are blessed with.

Are you happy living a painful life, even when there is simply no reason to? What would happen if you chose to alter your attitude today and to see the magical power of GRATITUDE? What have you got to lose?

Be grateful for what you have. Most people only look at the dark side of their lives. They don't see the ocean of blessings that they live in. Being healthy is a treasure in itself. Think of all the good things that you have in your life―and I challenge you to find them anything but endless!

The gratitude attitude is the best thing you can ever develop. When you analyze your life fairly, you’ll discover that you have more blessings than suffering. You have so many more good things to be happy about, compared to the small challenges that you might face throughout your life journey. We just got used to focusing on the negative and magnifying it. Just look at your own body—the blessing of having an eye to see, an ear to hear, a tongue to taste, and a heart to feel. You will never be able to count the miracles and blessings that surround you.

Start the good habit of keeping a gratitude journal. Every day before you go to sleep, write down one thing that you’re grateful for that day. And believe me, once you begin taking stock of the good things in your life, more good things will be attracted to you. It’s as if life rewards you for your gratefulness. Gratitude will open the doors of joy and prosperity in ways you can never imagine. Even if you’re in the midst of catastrophe, just think of something you’re grateful for and see how the power of gratitude can change everything. Even if doing so may not change your outside circumstances, it will surely change your inner world—your thoughts and attitude—and therefore leave you with total inner peace and satisfaction.

Think about this: nothing can compare to a moment of total gratitude and inner peace. Nothing can compare to those special seconds when you feel that you’re in complete harmony with the universe.

The true joy in life is hidden in the things you can’t measure—a baby’s smile, the beauty of nature, breathing in pure, fresh air. Those things are what represent the true value of life.

Focusing on collecting money and material goods is an exhausting endeavor. You can be the richest man in the world, but when you’re on your death bed, you’ll find that the little things you overlooked in your life are what matter to you most. Your value, your legacy, and what you have contributed to the world are the only things that will ensure that you pass out of this life with a big smile on your face!

Don’t live in an ocean of negativity, grief, pain, and complaints. You’re NOT a victim. You can choose your thoughts. Develop the habit of gratefulness. Celebrate life. Learn the lessons from your failures, move forward, and celebrate success.

Remember that we create our own experiences. We have control, and the miracles are in our hands. So why don’t you create an experience of miracles, instead of adversity and pain?

Break through the blind spot, open your mind and heart, and develop the well-trained eyes that will allow you to see the miracles that already abound in your life.
Be grateful and open to the MIRACLE of life.

The ancient Egyptians lived life to the fullest. Follow the pharaohs’ code and live YOUR life to the fullest. Celebrate the opportunity you have with the light of every new day to live your dreams and craft your legacy. Live your life in a way that makes this world a place to celebrate and enjoy.

Dance with the music of life!

The Pharaohs Secret to Maximizing Your Productivity and Effectiveness

The scribes were the intellectuals of Ancient Egypt. They occupied the upper rungs of the social ladder and enjoyed recognition and respect accordingly.

The scribes were meticulous record keepers who wrote down every possible transaction. The precision with which they calculated quantities is impressive even by today’s standards. Scribes had to be good mathematicians, and their calculations of the labor and materials needed for major construction and building projects display a considerable degree of algebraic skill.

Scribes also worked for the government, recording numerous statistics about food production, harvests, and taxes for analysis and planning. Government officials were usually scribes who had worked their way up into higher government positions. By giving senior officials an overview of the country's total stocks, the scribes helped make possible their orderly distribution, the creation of reserves, and the planning for special projects.

Other documents from the scribe's pen included regulations issued by various governmental bodies, court proceedings, and records of private contracts dealing with sale and purchase, loans, hire, financial arrangements between spouses, inheritance, receipts, taxes, accounts, and so forth.

So what is the lesson here? The secret of productivity and effectiveness is to know your numbers! Studying your statistics is an important element for improving your results in life and business.

Most people walk through life without properly analyzing how they spend their time, money, and energy. That would be fine if they kept quiet and accepted their positions in life! But instead they complain that there just isn’t enough time to accomplish everything they want. Or they complain of not having enough money to buy the things they desire. Or they claim that they have limited energy and get exhausted quickly, and as a result they can’t spend leisure time with their family or friends.

Although you may have limited resources of time, money, and energy, you can still use them in the best way possible to achieve what is most important to you in your life. What you might be missing is the awareness of your daily habits and behaviors that would help you determine how you currently spend these resources. If you start calculating and keeping records of how you spend your time, money, and energy, you will be shocked by the huge amount of those resources being wasted on activities that are not important at all.

Statistics are not as complex as you might think. In this context, I use the word simply to mean keeping records and monitoring the trends of your daily activities to see how you spend your most valuable resources.

Practically speaking, I strongly advise you to keep LOGS of all your resources. The first should be a time log. For a period of one week, record every single activity you do. It might be difficult at the beginning, but keep it up. Come on, it’s just one week of commitment—and as a result you will experience a dramatic improvement in your productivity and effectiveness. You’ll learn a lot about yourself and your behavior. You’ll know where your hours go, when they are wasted, and when they are well spent. Once you have this awareness, it will be possible to allocate and plan your time to perform your most important activities and focus more time on your goals. You’ll know exactly how to take control of your time and how to save it for your desired outcomes.

For your personal finances, keep a log of your income and expenses for one month. Record every monetary transaction and, at the end of the month, study the results. You will be surprised. I am sure you’ll find some expenses and credit card usage that weren’t necessary at all. You’ll have a better view on how to use your money more effectively. You’ll have more control over your finances and will be able to save money for what you really want and need. This awareness of where your money goes and where it comes from is essential for better money management and wealth creation. Warren Buffett says that the very first rule of investing is "Don't lose money."

For your energy, keep a one-week log of your energy levels! This concept might be new to you, so let me explain. Every day, keep a log of the hours in which you were fully alert and active and those in which you were lazy or tired. Draw two lines on a sheet of paper, one vertical and one horizontal. On the horizontal axis, write the hours of the day from the moment you wake up in the morning until you go to sleep at night. On the vertical axis, write the numbers from 0 to 10. These numbers represent your energy level, with 10 meaning fully active and 0 meaning fully exhausted.

Now, for every hour on the horizontal axis (which represents the current hour in your day), put a mark next to the number from 0 to 10 that represents your energy level for that hour. At the end of the day, draw a curve by connecting the points you marked. This curve will show you your energy level throughout the day. Repeat this process every day so that you can recognize the pattern of your average energy curve. This way you will know your general active hours and lazy hours.

You may ask, “What is the purpose of knowing my energy level curve?” Simply by scheduling your most important tasks of the day— those that need a lot of effort and concentration—during your most active hours, you will become ultra-productive. Save the easy or unimportant tasks for the lazy hours when your energy and concentration are low. Do you see how this can make you ultra-productive? How often have you spent your most active moments doing routine or easy tasks, essentially wasting those productive hours on activities that require minimum effort and concentration? And then, when the time comes to do heavy tasks, you find yourself exhausted. That’s when you start to procrastinate and perform low-quality work.

Do you see how your statistics can be turned into massive success?

These examples can be applied to business as well, especially the money log. You should monitor your profits, income, and expenses. You should study your accounting figures and your balance sheets.

I have a story for you that will illustrate how knowing your numbers and recording your statistics can result in a profit boost without acquiring more customers or selling more products!

I have a friend who works in stationery distribution. Every year he used to purchase a huge stock of stationery and keep it in his inventory. His yearly profits were low, but he settled for them because at least his business was profitable. One day he decided to hire an accounting firm to record his finances and cash flow and provide a report of his financial position at the end of the year—and that’s when he got quite a shock! The accounting firm confirmed that the year had been very profitable. “Oh, that’s good!” my friend said. But wait—it wasn’t that good.

The accounting firm told my friend that he has an excess of money held hostage in the form of unused inventory. Almost 50% of his inventory stock is not used at all! So, for the next year, they advised him to buy only 50-60% of the amount of stock he used to buy every year. And guess what the result was? That’s right—50% of his wasted money in unused inventory will go directly into his profits for the new year!

Can you see how knowing your numbers and recording your stats can result in dramatic improvements in your life and business?

Starting today, keep logs of your time, money, and energy. The information you learn will allow you to have more control over the way you use your resources. You’ll achieve better results and you’ll experience a dramatic acceleration of success.

The pharaohs realized this secret thousands of years ago, and they made sure to dedicate their most intellectual human resources to doing their record keeping and statistical analysis. Now it’s time for you to follow the pharaohs’ code to maximize your productivity and effectiveness and turn your statistics into massive success.

How to Systemize Your Way to Success!

Beginning with the reign of Snefru, the first pharaoh of Egypt's 4th Dynasty, entire towns were associated with each of Egypt’s pyramids. These towns were full of people employed solely for the purpose of maintaining the king’s afterlife. New villages and agricultural estates were founded specifically to supply the pyramid cults and those who worked for them.

To build and maintain the pyramids an enormous support system must have existed. There would have been great need for facilities for production, building materials, pottery, supplies, and food, as well as storage depots and housing for the workmen and all those responsible for servicing the pyramid temples. In fact, evidence of sewage systems has been uncovered along with the oldest known paved street, complete with drainage facilities.

What is the lesson here?

When you have a big dream or goal, you need to create an equally big support system to help you achieve it. The purpose of any system in general is to create a set of well-defined actions that lead to CONSISTENT results 99% of the time. Of course, there will always be that 1% of special cases because no system is ideal.

There are two types of systems: Operating Systems and Support Systems.

An operating system is comprised of a set of actions that lead to certain results that are directly related to the goal you want to achieve. It provides a way of structuring the day-to-day operations of every person and every activity involved in that goal.

A support system takes care of the personal or operational needs and provides the optimal environment for you and all those who are working to achieve the goal.

For example, a sales system is a type of operating system that is directly related to the business goal of generating profits. A human resources system is a support system put in place to support the management and to provide employees with the basic needs necessary to help them perform at their best.

If your major goal or dream is related to your career, then developing a system for your personal growth would be a type of operating system because investing in yourself is directly related to your goal. Having a loving family, on the other hand, is a kind of support system that provides you with love and support and creates the relaxing environment you need to help you move forward with your dream.

After this long introduction, you’ve probably started to understand a BIG trap that most people and businesses fall into. Guess what it is?

Usually, the major focus is put on the operating system—and most people see support systems as a luxury. BIG MISTAKE! You can’t build a skyscraper without a very strong foundation, so laying that foundation is the first step you need to accomplish before you attempt to execute the rest of the blueprint. Don’t spend your time writing plans and taking action before you lay the foundation of success.

For example, when employee performance decreases, the boss may put more management pressure on the staff to increase performance—but the core problem is that the employees are not getting the rewarding salary they need to satisfy their basic needs and those of their families. Management didn’t provide them with a good support system and therefore their performance decreased.

On a personal level, when you focus solely on your career and ignore your family, you destroy one of the most important support systems in your life. You think that spending time with your family and nurturing your relationships with them is a waste of time, and that your time would be better spent pursuing your career goals. But as time goes by, you’ll lose the security and comfort of a blessed home and you’ll get steamed up by the stress and tension of your workaholic lifestyle. So don’t ever overlook the importance of developing good support systems in both your life and your business.

The first support system that you must develop is the “Basic Needs System” that will provide you with food and shelter. No one can achieve a big dream if he is starving or shivering out in the cold! Once you establish a good support system that CONSISTENTLY provides you with your basic needs, then you can build on that and start developing the operating system that will put you on the first step toward your ultimate goal.

The second support system is the “Sewage System”, which works consistently to get rid of the waste in your life and business—all those activities that exhaust your time, effort, and money but don’t lead to significant results. You can’t imagine how dramatically you can improve your life and business if you simply get rid of those fruitless activities.

Another useful support system is the “Storage System”, which provides a way to store any kind of information or materials that you might need in your operating system. For example, you can create what I call the “ideas treasure box” to store powerful ideas that you think could dramatically improve your life and business if you implement them now or in the future. In this age of information overload, this is a brilliant support system for organizing your ideas and thoughts. Instead of forgetting ideas or falling into the trap of implementing dozens of them at the same time—which would stretch you to the limit—you can just write them down and store them in a file. Then, when the time is right, you can simply take out your “ideas treasure box” and pick one idea that you can implement now—just one at a time!—and see the immediate improvements it creates.

When I started “The Success Avalanche” project, one of my aims was to create an “ideas treasure box” for people just like you. I recorded interviews with over one hundred successful people that led to over forty-five hours full of success stories, insights, and wisdom that you can use any time you need motivation or a new idea to take your life and business to the next level.

Yet another powerful support system is the “Paving System”—or, the “Problem-Solving System”—which eliminates the obstacles and resolves the conflicts that hinder you from smoothly achieving your goals. One of the main steps or actions that you MUST include in your problem-solving (paving) system is “finding a solution.” The biggest mistake people make when it comes to problem solving is that they spend endless hours focusing on or defining the problem itself, which actually shouldn’t take more than 10% of the time. Then 80% of your effort should focus on answering one important question: “What is the solution?” The remaining 10% should focus on answering the question “How can we prevent this problem from happening in the future?”

As a leader you must remember that your number-one role is to build either an operating or support system, or even both. As Stephen R. Covey has said, “Management works IN the system; leadership works ON the system.” Develop systems that even a fool can follow because the role of a system is to simplify, not to complicate. The role of a system is to provide clarity and well-defined actions that lead to consistent results 99% of the time.

When you develop systems for your life or business, work first on the support systems. Because without them, you will be subject to failure or total breakdown.

I shared with you some examples of powerful support systems for you to consider. Now I want you to think thoroughly about your specific situation in life and ask yourself, “What kind of support systems am I missing or can I develop to take my life or business to the next level?”

The pharaohs developed huge support systems to build the magnificent pyramids. Follow the pharaohs’ code and develop even bigger support systems to build your magnificent dream—and to build your own legacy. And remember that “systems” mean consistency, simplicity, and clarity.

Go systemize your way to success!

What Is The #1 Success Strategy?

Farming and agriculture were central to the ancient Egyptian society and, with the exception of royalty, nobility, and the scribes, most of the population was directly involved with farming in one aspect or another. Members of the nobility were involved on the economic side, as they often owned the farmland and supervised the farming process.

The farmers were quite busy most of the year because the growing season lasted between eight to nine months. However, unless a farmer was called up into army service or public works, he did have a period of respite during the flood season. At the height of the floods, usually around mid-August, each farmer would row a small boat around his land and close the vents in the surrounding dykes. Once the Nile subsided, the water would slowly run off, leaving behind all the fertile mud and silt which then soaked down deep into the soil.

The routine of this ancient way of life was perfectly normal—after all, what else should a country with excellent weather, perfect soil, and the legendary Nile River focus on if not agriculture?

So, what is the lesson here?

Leverage your natural forces! If you leverage your strengths, your weaknesses will dissolve. That means finding a position in life where you can maximize your strengths and thereby minimize your weaknesses.

Imagine a man who was born with a natural gift for writing, but one day he decides he wants to become a public speaker instead. Unfortunately, he has problems with the tone and clarity of his voice, and he stutters. So what does he do? He enrolls in a voice training class to improve his speaking voice and works with a speech therapist to overcome his lifelong stutter—not to mention to overcome his natural shyness!

But the result of all this training is that he ends up being just an average speaker!

If this man had instead followed another strategy in which he developed his natural writing talent and strengthened his expertise in that field, the result would have been completely different. And who knows—if he had leveraged his innate gift for writing, he may have won a Nobel prize some day!

Think about the wise words of Benjamin Franklin: “Hide not your talents. They for use were made. What's a sundial in the shade?”

Each one of us has at least one special talent that corresponds to our true purpose in life. Don’t even think about working on your weaknesses until you master your strengths and position yourself where they can be fully utilized. The moment we try to become someone else just to please others or get attention is the moment we lose our personal power.

Instead, apply the #1 SUCCESS STRATEGY which is to STRENGTHEN YOUR STRENGTHS!

You can do that by putting the 80/20 principle into action. The 80/20 principle states that 80% of your results come from 20% of your efforts. Your VERY SPECIAL talents and innate gifts constitute 20% of your overall personal skills and traits. So the practical application of the 80/20 principle implies that you need to spend 80% of your effort and time on developing and maximizing your 20% special talents and strengths, because from them you’ll achieve maximum results. Leveraging what you already have is the natural and most logical approach to making it BIG in life.

If your weakness is an issue, then try to find someone to help you with it. For example, English is not my native language and I find it difficult to give life to and draw pictures with my writing. Instead of spending thousands of hours trying to develop my writing skills, I focused on strengthening my expertise and writing down my thoughts as they come to me. Then I found an amazing and PASSIONATE editor to work with me and edit every article I write. She gives my writing its solid structure and beautiful rhythm. Together we form a very strong team because each one of us is leveraging his or her own strengths. I have a passion for success wisdom and she has a passion for editing. So we work great together—I get my thoughts on paper and she gives them life and power! And the results speak for themselves.

You can’t be EXCELLENT at everything. You can only be excellent at the few talents that were planted within you to help you fulfill your purpose in life. If you believe that you were born ready to succeed and fulfill your purpose—that you are already VERY WELL equipped with the talents you need to do so—then you will be able to release the ultimate power of YOU.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe once said, “A really great talent finds its happiness in execution.”

Find your talents and nurture them, then put them to use. Position yourself in a way that allows you to leverage the natural forces of your environment and trends of the time and follow the path of least resistance to get where you want to go. If you execute your talents, you’ll find that you will reap faster and better results, and happiness will follow.

The Pharaohs leveraged the natural forces of their environment to build the longest lasting civilization in history. And that is the key to everlasting success, too.

STRENGTHEN YOUR STRENGTHS!