Finding coaches and mentors is an important mission, and you will no doubt have several over the course of your life. It is critical that you choose them wisely. Your mentor is someone to whom you’ll be committing a great deal of time and attention, and who ideally will take a very focused interest in you as well.

The process of selecting a mentor begins, first of all, with a clear-sighted view of what your life’s goals are, both for your career and your personal life.

If you’re just starting out as an associate in a large law firm, you might choose one of the senior partners as your mentor, or perhaps a partner in another firm you’re familiar with. If you’re just starting a family, and you’re facing the lifestyle adjustments that kids require, your mentor could very likely be someone who is reaching the other end of this very exciting, but demanding, process. In any case, your mentors should be people whose experience can serve as a model for reaching your most significant goals in the most important areas of your life.

Selecting a mentor is not just a matter of finding someone you like or feel comfortable identifying with. Make sure that the mentors you choose have a genuine history of success. I’m continually amazed by the number of people who look to only superficially successful people as role models for achievement. Even experts can make conspicuous mistakes of judgment in this area. The next time you’re in a bookstore or library, take a look at the best-selling books on business and management from four or five years ago. There’s an excellent chance that some of the companies cited as models of efficiency are now out of business. I don’t bring this up to disparage anyone’s business expertise, but simply to point out the need for great care in selecting a coach whose success will stand the test of time.

In addition to selecting your coaches based on their ability to achieve goals similar to your own, choose mentors who in the process have overcome some of the same obstacles you’re facing. Ideally, a mentor really represents both what you want to become in a particular area of life and what you want to do. Seeing your mentors today is like seeing what you intend to be. The coach has arrived at or been to places similar to where you want to go.

Choosing a celebrity or public figure as a mentor is a very questionable decision. If at all possible, select a mentor with whom you can actually spend time and with whom you enjoy having conversations and exploring ideas.

Of course, you can have admired historical personages, authors, educators, or artists as role models. If you discover someone with whom you feel a special affinity, make an effort to obtain everything that person has written or said. Really become a student of the person’s work and life. Don’t just admire him or her; genuinely learn from him or her, as I have learned from the life and wisdom of Benjamin Franklin.

One of the most interesting aspects of selecting a mentor is the fact that one can rarely separate people’s tangible achievements from the qualities of their character. More than their bank accounts or their real estate holdings, role models prove by the conduct of their lives that they’re worth emulating.

—Denis Waitley

© 2011 Denis Waitley International.

Be willing to say to yourself, “I’m on the right road. I’m doing OK. I’m succeeding.” We too frequently become adept at pointing out our flaws and identifying failures. Become equally adept at citing your achievements. Identify things you are doing now that you weren’t doing one month ago… six months ago… a year ago. What habits have changed? Chart your progress.

Doing well once or twice is relatively easy. Continuously moving ahead is tough, in part, because we so easily revert to old habits and former lifestyles. Over the long run, you need to give yourself regular feedback to monitor your performance and reinforce yourself positively. Don’t wait for an award ceremony, promotion, friend or mentor to show appreciation for your work. Take pride in your own efforts on a daily basis.

—Denis Waitley

Engaging in genuine discipline requires that you develop the ability to take action. You don’t need to be hasty if it isn’t required, but you don’t want to lose much time either. Here’s the time to act: when the idea is hot and the emotion is strong.

Let’s say you would like to build your library. If that is a strong desire for you, what you’ve got to do is get the first book. Then get the second book. Take action as soon as possible, before the feeling passes and before the idea dims. If you don’t, here’s what happens…

You fall prey to the law of diminishing intent.

We intend to take action when the idea strikes us. We intend to do something when the emotion is high. But if we don’t translate that intention into action fairly soon, the urgency starts to diminish. A month from now the passion is cold. A year from now it can’t be found.

So take action. Set up a discipline when the emotions are high and the idea is strong, clear, and powerful. If somebody talks about good health and you’re motivated by it, you need to get a book on nutrition. Get the book before the idea passes, before the emotion gets cold. Begin the process. Fall on the floor and do some push-ups. You’ve got to take action; otherwise the wisdom is wasted. The emotion soon passes unless you apply it to a disciplined activity. Discipline enables you to capture the emotion and the wisdom and translate them into action. The key is to increase your motivation by quickly setting up the disciplines. By doing so, you’ve started a whole new life process.

Here is the greatest value of discipline: self-worth, also known as self-esteem. Many people who are teaching self-esteem these days don’t connect it to discipline. But once we sense the least lack of discipline within ourselves, it starts to erode our psyche. One of the greatest temptations is to just ease up a little bit. Instead of doing your best, you allow yourself to do just a little less than your best. Sure enough, you’ve started in the slightest way to decrease your sense of self-worth.

There is a problem with even a little bit of neglect. Neglect starts as an infection. If you don’t take care of it, it becomes a disease. And one neglect leads to another. Worst of all, when neglect starts, it diminishes our self-worth.

Once this has happened, how can you regain your self-respect? All you have to do is act now! Start with the smallest discipline that corresponds to your own philosophy. Make the commitment: “I will discipline myself to achieve my goals so that in the years ahead I can celebrate my successes.”

Guy Kawasaki on the Art of Enchantment http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/219456

“If you’re not willing to accept your own discipline, you’re not going to accomplish 2 percent of what you could—and you’re going to miss out on 98 percent of the good things you could have.” —Tom Hopkins

“The truth of the matter is that you always know the right thing to do. The hard part is doing it.”
—General H. Norman Schwarzkopf

“The most important quality in the development of human character is, and always has been, self-discipline.”
—Brian Tracy

“Talent is cheaper than table salt. What separates the talented individual from the successful one is a lot of hard work.” —Stephen King

“Discipline is the bridge between goals and accomplishment.” —Jim Rohn

“Without discipline, there is no life at all.” —Katharine Hepburn

“You can’t have the fruits without the roots. It’s the principle of sequencing: Private Victories precede Public Victories. Self-mastery and self-discipline are the foundation of good relationships with others.”
—Stephen Covey

“Discipline is the refining fire by which talent becomes ability.” —Roy L. Smith

“I’ve never known a man worth his salt who in the long run, deep down in his heart, didn’t appreciate the grind, the discipline…. I firmly believe that any man’s finest hour—this greatest fulfillment to all he holds dear—is that moment when he has worked his heart out in a good cause and lies exhausted on the field of battle, victorious.”
—Vince Lombardi

“Success comes when people turn what they’ve learned into the daily habits that breed success.” —Tony Jeary

“Self-respect is the root of discipline: The sense of dignity grows with the ability to say no to oneself.”
—Abraham Joshua Heschel

“Discipline is doing within, while you do without.” —Denis Waitley

Alan Mulally had a revolutionary idea that was deemed unwise to “seasoned critics.” His perseverance led to the resurgence of the Ford car company. Write one idea that you feel could be revolutionary and each day brainstorm for five minutes on how to accomplish that goal.

Growth

“Few things help an individual more than to place responsibility upon him, and to let him know that you trust him.” —Booker T. Washington

“A person will not buy from you until he is convinced that you are a friend and are acting in his best interest. You must make this clear.” —Brian Tracy

“You can’t shake hands with a clenched fist.” —Indira Gandhi

“You may be deceived if you trust too much, but you will live in torment if you don’t trust enough.” —Frank Crane

“One must be fond of people and trust them if one is not to make a mess of life.” —E. M. Forster

“A man who doesn’t trust himself can never really trust anyone else.” —Cardinal De Retz

“I think we may safely trust a good deal more than we do.” —Henry David Thoreau

“Trust men and they will be true to you; treat them greatly and they will show themselves great.” —Ralph Waldo Emerson

Conducting a Personal Inventory of Your

“Knowledge Resources” by Denis Waitley

Self-knowledge has always been the key to preparing for competition. Knowledge of your attributes, abilities, interests, strengths, weaknesses, and traits is essential to riding the front end of the wave of change into the new century. To fully assess your own talents, realize that studies confirm that what we love and do well as children continues as our latent or manifest talent as adults.

Examination of your weekend or evening interests might reveal a gem of potential you can apply to your vocation. I strongly suggest you don’t unthinkingly relegate what you love to do for yourself solely to hobbies. You might make it, or at least integrate it into your life’s work.

The acquisition of knowledge, which is the new global power, is a life-long experience, not a collection of facts or skills. Not long ago, what you learned in school was largely all you needed to learn to secure a career. With knowledge expanding exponentially, this is no longer true. Hundreds of scientific papers are published daily.

Every thirty seconds, some new technological company produces yet another innovation. Your formal education has a very short shelf life. Life-long learning, once a luxury for the few, has become absolutely vital to continued success. Continue gaining expertise and avoid thinking like an expert.

Action Idea: An excellent benchmarking exercise is to spend a weekend with key associates or family members and dust off your childhood memories. Remember what you really enjoyed and wanted to do most as a child. The next activity in assessing your interests is considering your current ones. What do you most enjoy after work? What do you most want to do on weekends and vacations? What are your hobbies? Can you bring more of what you enjoy into your business life?

Action Step – Increase Your Reading, Writing and Vocabulary Proficiency. One of the most important qualities of successful leaders is an ability to express thoughts and knowledge. Research by management and human resource experts confirms that no matter what the field of employment, people with large vocabularies – those able to speak clearly and concisely, using simple as well as descriptive words – are best at accomplishing their goals. Well chosen, carefully considered words can close the sale, negotiate the raise, enhance relationships, and change destinies.

In a world of e-mail, fax dispersal, voice mail, sound bites, concise reports, business plans, and meeting briefs, the individuals who can articulate their goals, substantiate their claims, and support their visions, will own the future. In the 21st Century, literacy will be the major difference between the haves and have-nots.

Why do fewer than 10 percent of the public buy and read nonfiction books? One reason is that many would rather get home than get ahead. They are motivated to get by and get pulled along by the company, the economy, or the government.

Another reason is that many individuals believe that information found in books, computer programs, and training sessions has no value in the business world. How self-deluding!

As the new tools of productivity become the Internet, the Digital Versatile Disc, direct digital download of text, audio and video, and the combination of the interactive computer with telecommunications, the people who know how to control the new technologies will acquire power, while those who thought that education ends with the diploma are destined for low-paying, low-satisfaction jobs. In almost the blink of an eye, our society has passed from the industrial age to the knowledge era.

Increase your reading by 100 percent. Decrease your television watching, and that of any children in your family by 50 percent. Surf the Internet and subscribe to book summaries, or download free chapters from different sources. By reading book summaries, you can gain the essence of all the top business books in a very brief period of time.

Action Idea: Read at least one book each month, and listen to at least one additional audio book during commute or down time. One of the best sources for business audio books online is MP3audiobooks.com.

All kinds of reading and listening to fiction and non-fiction will increase your vocabulary, writing and presentation skills. Incredibly, a mere 3,500 words separate the average person from those with superior vocabularies.

Keep a dictionary beside you when you read and look up every word you don’t fully understand. Doing that on the spot helps make the word part of your vocabulary forever. And don’t depend on your computer’s spellchecker for your spelling. Not all e-mail service includes spell check. Also, you may be called upon to write longhand notes, memos, or information on white boards or blackboards at meetings. You not only want to use the right words. You also will want to spell them correctly.

A great way to increase your literacy is to engage in Internet conferences and to read summaries on the web from services like Amazon.com, Barnes and Noble and other booksellers. The more interactive you become in communications and the less you indulge in prime-time television, the more successful you’ll become in all areas of your life. Knowledge is the new power. And literacy is the door to knowledge.  Hopefully, attending this “Winning for Life” program will be one of the keys that will open the door to your future for you.