Motivation - My Computer Wallpaper

[Old Hippie]

[Old Hippie]

Thirty plus years ago, as a computer technician going to school at night on his GI Bill -- I read a very popular motivational book called "Think and Grow Rich" by Napoleon Hill, who was a prodigy of Dale Carnage. It is a book that I give a lot of credit for what little success I might have had in life.

The two most important things I got from the book -- were to:

1. Keep a personal balance sheet of my abilities. A balance sheet in business is all of your assets in one group and all of your liabilities in another. You subtract the Liabilities from your Assets -- and that's your net worth. Hopefully it is positive and not negative. In a personal balance sheet you HONESTLY (and show it to no one) list your good qualities (good at math, good salesman,...) as your assets, and you list the things you might suck at (grammar/spelling, dress like a slob, ...) as liabilities. You then work on taking your worst liabilities, and one at a time turning them into you best assets.

2. Motivate yourself visually. Set a very high goals (Immediate, mid-range, and long term) to achieve -- and then promise yourself a reward when they're achieved. The key is to remind yourself many times daily (visually) of the reward. For instance, in 1992, I set the business goal of $100,000 a month in revenue. It had taken me six years to do it with my last business -- and I was determined to do it quicker this time. I told myself that I'd reward the achievement of that goal with a new Rolex Day/Date just with President band. I found a magazine ad of the watch and tacked it up on my cork board at my desk. On April 30, 1994, I closed the books at 5PM and hit 102K in revenue. The book tells you to quickly reward the achievement -- so I headed right to the galleria and bought the Rolex. I've worn it daily (swim and work on cars with it) for 15 years. Again, in 1996 I tried to sell my business for $8Million. I was offered $6.8Million and refused it. I then learned the difference in how you run a company to dump and how you run a company to keep -- and since I wanted to sell -- I had to change how I ran the business. To motivate myself to hit the goal of selling for $10million -- I put a photo of a diesel pusher motor coach, a nice lake house, and a Viper on my cork-board -- and promised myself those items if I score over $10Million for my business. Jun 15th 1998, I sold the business for $16,000,000 and rewarded myself those items.

Having the prize in front of me all day long -- motivated me to focus hard on the goal.

My goal for 2009 is that ring for NSS. With it as my background to motivate me -- I feel like I stand a better chance than just thinking it would be a nice goal. I found the visual reward of goals achieved concept to work well.