I like Larry Winget. He said, “If your life sucks it’s because you suck!”

Larry is known as the pitbull of personal development. He’s an extremely in-demand speaker and his books and writing are some of the best around.

Here are Larry’s Ten Rules for Business Success:-

1. A deal is a deal.

2. Do what you said you would do, when you said you would do it, the way you said you would do it.

3. Do the right thing every time. Not the cheap thing or the easy thing - the right thing.

4. Be the person others can count on to get things done.

5. Work hard on your job and work harder on yourself.

6. Never tolerate poor performance in yourself or others.

7. Focus on accomplishment - not activity.

8. Work faster, smarter and harder.

9. You are paid to work. You aren’t paid to play, socialise, be happy or like your job.

10. Manage priorities, not time.

How many are you living in your life and business?

In April this year, I signed up to a free service from Living Jain that sends subscribers daily wisdom in the form of a quote (and sometimes commentary) to help on the path to freedom. What came in my inbox this morning was pretty inspiring for me:-

“When you plant lettuce, if it does not grow well, you don’t blame the lettuce. You look into the reasons it is not doing well. It may need fertilizer, or more water, or less sun. You never blame the lettuce. Yet if we have problems with our friends or our family, we blame the other person. But if we know how to take care of them, they will grow well, like lettuce. Blaming has no positive effect at all, nor does trying to persuade using reason and arguments. That is my experience. No blame, no reasoning, no argument, just understanding. If you understand, and you show that you understand, you can love, and the situation will change.”

- Thich Nhat Hanh

What do you think?

People in America are celebrating Thanksgiving today. It’s a time for families to get together, spend some quality time with each other and reflect on the last year as they share their gratitude with everyone.

It’s amazing to see how big a day it is with people all over the world also taking note and making it a day of gratitude. For many, it’s also provides a time to take a moment and remember our brothers and sisters that we are separated from in space, but not in heart.

I’m grateful for my family, friends and colleagues. I’m thankful for the gifts of the divine that I have been given and am blessed on every hand with happiness and fulfillment.

I’m grateful that my passion is fuelling within me and I will continue to be creative and consistent in my values and beliefs. There is power in being uncomfortable, and I am grateful for those moments I am presented with.

Of course, living in England and a football fan, I must also be grateful that Steve McLaren has been sacked from his job as England Head Coach, but he has become aware of his failure and will learn from it. That must be the biggest gift for him.

So, as a final note, thanks to the readers of my blogs, my newsletters and my ebooks.

Be thankful for the blessings in your life. I know I am.

P.S. Be sure to read Arvind’s articles on Thanksgiving.

Working on GetALife2008.com with Arvind over the last two months and seeing it come to fruition is definitely one of the most exciting achievements of 2007 for me.

It all started and continued, every single day, with a mind map. The best way to plan and build any project from writing a blog post to starting a new business, creating your travel plans to organising your finances, creating a product to planning your personal goals, is to use the mind mapping technique.

I mindmap nearly every day and I do it all in my journal using pen and paper. You may want to do it on your PC and if that’s the case, I recommend Mindjet as one I have used before.

Here are my steps to creating a simple and effective mind map:-

• Start in the centre of a blank piece of paper with the main theme you’re mapping out.

• Start creating the major branches with the KEY subject words around that theme. Try to keep these to just one words that represent the main branches.

• Then for each KEY word you have identified, break that down further only focusing on that term as the subject. What other things are related to that particular KEY subject?

The lines linking them together make the association between ideas as clear as possible. Typically lines will be thicker at the centre and thinner further out. The structure that should develop will be a ‘radiant hierarchy’, with ideas radiating out from your central themesand main branches.

I like to keep my mind mapping techniques simple, so that’s all that I do. Others may prefer to use images, different colours for different meanings, etc. Either way works just as well.

How often do you mindmap and how effective is it for you?

The new book by Joe Vitale and Dr. Ihaleakala Hew Len titled Zero Limits is all about the ancient Hawaiian technique of Ho’oponopono, which I have written about before. Ho’oponopono is used for problem solving and removing the subconscious blocks, internal barriers, and mental obstacles preventing happiness, peace, health, wealth, etc. from flowing easily into our lives.

The four key phrases are “Thank you, I’m sorry, I forgive you, I love you.” It can be used as an affirmation, as the basis for meditation and even for japa (chanting). The following forms my understanding and wisdom from the tecnique.

We all have a choice to be clean. When we are clear, inspiration will flow more easily and we have the ability to act on it. Acting on our inspiration without thinking is the purest form of being. If we begin to think on the inspiration that has flowed, we begin to draw comparisons with our inspiration and something else.

I remember talking with Sol over a lovely Chinese dinner a few months ago and he asked me the question, “How do you get clear? How do you clear your mind?”

Although I gave him a couple of answers then, I want to share here the answer of Ho’oponopono. And in essence, it is very simple.

“Keep saying ‘I love you.’ ”

The power of ‘I love you’ is perhaps bigger than anything else in our world. Dr Len says it has three components to it - gratitude, reverence and transmutation.

“The phrases I say are like the magic words that open the combination lock to the universe. When I recite the phrases, which come out like a poem, I am opening myself to the Divine cleaning me and erasing all the programs preventing me from being here now.”

The power of living with zero limits is to free yourself from the constraints of mental clutter so you don’t confine yourself within a certain amount of space. The point is not to resist your role.

“It is better to be first than it is to be better.” - Al Ries and Jack Trout

The principle of “Speed of Implementation” is all about getting out there and implementing what you’ve learnt right away. It’s how fast you can go from learning about something to actually implementing it and putting into practice.

Those who have a quick speed of implementation do much better than those who don’t. They’re usually the first to do what they’ve done and achieve more than those who wait around, take time to do something, striving to be better, but only to realise it’s too late or not effective anymore.

What have you learnt today or yesterday that you could implement right away?

Accountability is one of the most exciting concepts ever when it comes to personal success, GTD, and productivity.

What’s the point of setting a goal, or making a commitment if you have no intention of ever achieving or honoring it?

Gary Ryan Blair says “personal accountability is the glue that holds a goal or commitment in place. It serves as an insurance policy on your journey to success. If you’ve got a great goal or opportunity but no personal accountability, you really don’t have much!

“Unaccountable people make excuses, blame others, put things off, act confused and play helpless. They pretend to be ignorant, and often hide behind their computers, paperwork, and jargon. It’s a contagious disease, one that can sink abusiness, a family and a life if not cured.

“Your biggest concern in any goal setting initiative is not with your skill, ability, or intelligence—it’s your commitment. Unless you are committed, and hold yourself personally accountable for the results you promised there would be a sense of negligence to everything you do, not to mention a permanent stain on your character.”

Who have you been accountable to?

Who could you be accountable to next year?

GetALife2008.com is one option.

This is and always will be an inspirational story - how one family took the inspiration from their mother’s last moments and gained momentum to build a water pump and borehole in a village in Kenya called Machakos. They’re back now, but just check out these two videos to see what happened and how doing just a small bit can transform many lives.

Every year millions of people around the world unecessarily waste gallons of precious water. Every year millions of people around the world die from lack of nutritional, clean water. Next time you leave your tap running as you brush your teeth… Think.

Sparking a traditional fire in which you have to put the chippings and logs in with a match is quite extraordinary. The power of one small match can start fires right from your living room fireplace to massive forest fires. In all cases it’s usually the same process but just on a bigger scale.

When you spark a fire in your fireplace, you’ve got to keep it going. If you don’t keep an eye on it every so often, fuel it a bit with more chippings or logs and ensure it’s blazing away, then it will go out. If you don’t babysit it, so to speak, it will go out.

When you think about it, it’s the same as anything else in life really, isn’t it?

For example, if you start a peace march in your town, you’ve got to ensure you keep it going and follow through right through the end. You’ve got to put a bit more wood in it and get more people to join as you go along. If you don’t, the march will probably die down and lose its potential impact.

The same for starting a website like this blog, for example. If I don’t fuel it regularly with my thoughts, ideas and stories, then it’ll burn out. It’ll be gone. Nobody will ever read it. But if I keep at it, enjoy and improve my writing each day, more and more people will come across it and I’ll get to form more links.

Every fire you spark must have enough wood or passion to keep it going. If it doesn’t, the ultimate will happen sooner than you expect.

And guess what… it takes much more energy to start a cold fire than it does to sustain a current one. Many people make that mistake. They start something and have to re-start it because they forget about the sustaining bit.

Think about the top five things you’re really juiced about right now. Are you fueling it regularly or are you going to let it die down? What about things you’re doing but not passionate about - what are you going to do with them? I say you either you rekindle the passion or you let it go.

The bottom line: whenever you spark a fire, it’s easier to sustain it than to restart it so choose the right option for where you are.

The question of whether the chicken or the egg came first has been there forever. I don’t know whether it has an answer and I don’t have one either.

Taking the same sort of idea, you could also ask the question: which is first when planning a project - the what or the why. For that, I do have an answer and it’s one I share with Gary the Goals Guy who regularly speaks about it in his work.

The answer is that Why comes before What. Tony Robbins talks about having enough reasons behind your goal to make it happen. It’s true. With reasons that excite you and make you passionate, you become more alive to your goals.

Let’s take a metaphor. As many of my readers I know, I’m really into Forensic Science especially with my interest in genetics. Most people picture the TV program Crime Scene Investigation (CSI) when I bring this up. But that’s good for what I’m about to explain here; a metaphor for understanding the why and what idea which I heard from Gary.

Forensic experts get onto the crime scene. They can usually see what happened, but what they’re looking for to aid their research is motive. What was the motive behind the incident? It’s all about finding out why it happened, rather than what happened.

Let’s take Burma’s current peace protests and killing as another example. When it started, what came first from the monks: the act of walking non-violently, or the thought of ‘we need to get out there and walk non-violently and protest because our country needs us and we want to overthrow the military’? Indeed, the latter came first.

In the same sort of area, Mahatma Gandhi came up with his why before his what when he began his non-violent campaigns. First came the thinking, planning and understanding of what he was about to do. He knew the ‘why’. He knew it so much that he had hundreds of people following his words and action back then and millions still do today because of how strong his why was. The ‘what’ came second.

Why comes before what. Make it a priority in your projects too.