Successful people are productive people. Part of being productive is taking control over those areas where you can exert some control. Here are 10 areas of your personal and professional life over which you can exert some control:

1. What you wear. I’m assuming that if you are reading this article, you are an adult. So you get to choose what you wear.

2. What you think. Exert the executive control that is part of the mature human’s brain. You are not a goldfish.

3. Those with whom you associate. We are defined partly by those with whom we associate. It has been said that others know who we are if they know who we “hang out” with. Associate with the best. If you want to grow and be successful, be around others who are growing and being successful. Duds hang out with duds.

4. How you spend your time. You have 168 hours each week…just like everyone else. It’s the great equalizer. What makes the difference is how you spend (or invest) that time.

5. What you do with your money. You get to decide where your money goes. Really.

6. Where you work. If you find yourself complaining day after day, week after week, month after month, or (heaven forbid) year after year about your job, your boss, your profession, then make a change. You choose.

7. Your responses to others. You can control whether you allow others to offend you, make you mad, give you joy, insult you, inform you, edify you, build you up, support you, or…

8. Your attitude. As an adult, you get to decide whether you are positive or negative, open or closed, and so on. Take a good look at your attitude and see if you think it is the attitude of someone who is successful.

9. Portions of your environment. Take control over the aspects of your environment that you can (lighting, colors, clutter, etc.)

10. What you ingest, including food and drink. By the time you are out of your teens, you have a pretty decent sense of what food and beverages work for you and which ones don’t. Have more of the ones that work for you and less of the ones that do not. No one is forcing you to do any differently. It’s under your control.

My belief is that we all have more control than we think we do…at least over those items that I’ve listed above. Be thankful for the control you have and use it in a productive manner.

I was listening to a teleseminar the other day with Melanie Benson Strick and she made a statement that I wanted to share with all of you.  When she was starting out, she would say, “I run a mulitimillion dollar business.  My bank account just hasn’t caught up yet.”

Then, I was listening to one by Ali Brown and she was talking about getting yourself set up to run a million dollar business…and she would ask herself (at the beginning and now), “Am I doing the things that a million-dollar business owner would do?” 

Keep these in mind…especially the second one.  It will allow you to add some things to what you do and delete some things…

Posted by Meggin | 1/28/08