This is one of my favorite times of the year… When we take time to reflect on what and who we are thankful for no matter how chaotic it may be.

I invite you today to take a moment and reflect with me on what we have to be thankful for. It may be different for each one of us, non the less, I encourage you to spend some time today and think of those things.

I am so grateful and blessed to have such a beautiful wife and happy / healthy daughter with another baby on the way!

I am thankful that you are taking the time to read my blog and I wish you a very happy, memorable and safe Thanksgiving!!

ENJOY YOUR THANKSGIVING WEEKEND!

Learn to Be Thankful for What You Already Have by Jim Rohn

Is thankfulness a survival skill? Perhaps most of you would respond with, “No, Jim, thankfulness is not a key to survival,” and I would tend to agree with you. Most of us have probably already solved the necessary problems of survival, gone beyond that and are now working to achieve our desires. But let me give you this key phrase, “Learn to be thankful for what you already have, while you pursue all that you want.” I believe one of the greatest and perhaps one of the simplest lessons we can learn in life is to be thankful for what we have already received and accomplished.

Both the years and the experiences have brought me to where I stand today, but it is the thankfulness that opened the windows of opportunities, of blessings, of unique experiences to flow my way. My gratitude starts with my parents who raised me, gave me an incredible foundation that has lasted me all of these years and continues with the mentors that I’ve met along the way who absolutely changed and revolutionized my life, my income, my bank account, my future. I am also very thankful for the people, the associations, the ideas, the chance to work and labor, and to produce results; all of that has brought me to this place, to this weekend. I’m grateful for it all.

What a unique opportunity each one of you here has, so many of us; representing different countries, nations and cultures, to appreciate the uniqueness of our own experiences that has brought us all here, together, for these three days to learn new skills and sharpen old ones. For the countries we represent, we have freedom and liberty. These are extraordinary times, about 11 years ago the walls came tumbling down, in Germany, and it started a wave of democracy and freedom like the world has never seen. We as a country and as a world have so much to be thankful for. Always start with thanksgiving; be thankful for what you already have and see the miracles that come from this one simple act.

Now thankfulness is just the beginning; next, you’ve got to challenge yourself to produce. Produce more ideas than you need for yourself so you can share and give your ideas away. That is called fruitfulness and abundance. Here’s what I think fruitfulness and abundance mean: to go to work on producing more than you need or yourself so you can begin blessing others, blessing your nation and blessing your enterprise. Once abundance starts to come, once someone becomes incredibly productive, it’s amazing what the numbers turn out to be. But to begin this incredible process of blessing, it often starts with the act of thanksgiving and gratitude, being thankful for what you already have and for what you’ve already done. Begin the act of thanksgiving today, and watch the miracles flow your way.

You are an accumulation of your habits. From how you get out of bed, how you shower, how you dress, how you walk, sit, and talk, how you respond to the world, how you act in front of others, and how you think; you’re living out your habits.

Habits are necessary. They free up your mind so you can concentrate on how to survive day to day. You don’t have to think about how to drive your car so you can be on the lookout for danger while you are driving. You don’t have to think about how to walk so you can concentrate on where you’re going.

Unfortunately, habits can also keep you locked in self-destructive patterns, which will limit your success. To become successful, you will need to drop bad habits and develop new ones that are in line with the life you want to live.

People don’t suddenly appear in the life they want to live… their habits determine their outcome!

What are the habits you have that are keeping you from achieving your goals?

Really be honest with yourself here… Are you always running late? Do you return phone calls within 24 hours? Do you get enough sleep? Do you follow through on your promises? Do you plan out your day?

Imagine what your life would be like if all your habits were their productive counterparts!

What would your life be like if you ate healthy meals, exercised and got enough sleep?

What if you saved your money, stopped using credit cards and paid cash for everything?

What if you stopped procrastinating, overcame your fears, and began networking with people in your field?

Would your life be different? I bet it would!

So, my suggested action step for you is to write down some productive habits you could adopt and visualize in your life, step two is to ‘act as if’ you were living these new habits right now!

I’d like to help you get moving toward creating more successful habits, so I’d recommend you develop four of your new success habits each year, one for each quarter.

Once you pick the new habit you’re ready to adopt, next you’ll want to create a method that will support your new habit.

Here are some ideas… You could write it down on a card that you keep with you and read several times a day. You could make it a part of your daily visualization. You could also enlist the help of an accountability partner who has habits to change, or work with a personal coach who can keep you on track.

It’s important to make a 100% commitment to your new habit, so be specific about the steps that you’re willing to take in order to drop an old habit and adopt a new one. Don’t be vague about how you will change your habits. Spell it out for yourself so you can recognize situations that motivate you to act out your new habit.

Just developing four new habits a year will dramatically shift your life to be more in line with your vision. And the more in line it becomes, the easier the other habits are to replace because your perspective is shifting and you can see more clearly how your old habits aren’t serving you anymore.

Make the decision. Make the commitment. Then watch your new, positive life unfold!

Jack Canfield, America’s #1 Success Coach, is founder of the billion-dollar book brand Chicken Soup for the Soul© and a leading authority on Peak Performance and Life Success. If you’re ready to jump-start your life, make more money, and have more fun and joy in all that you do, get your FREE success tips from Jack Canfield now at: www.FreeSuccessStrategies.com

I am so blessed that I don’t have to fight traffic every day. I feel the pain of those who have long commutes to and from work each day. Especially in a major city. I experienced this pain for a year living in San Diego and it was not fun!

But working from home doesn’t seem to give me more time like you think it would. Between phone calls, emails, my blackberry buzzing, and my 9 month old daughter begging for my attention, my time quickly disappears. Leaving me with more emails and calls and play time to tend to at the end of the day! An endless cycle.

In these days of multi-tasking and endless work, it seems like we have less time to accomplish it all. As Denis Waitley says “Time is an equal opportunity employer. Each human being has exactly the same number of hours and minutes every day.”  We all have 24 hours and they go quick, but what do you do with them is the question.

I just read an excellent post by John C. Maxwell, an internationally recognized speaker, author of over 60 books and leadership expert, on how to work more “efficiently”. We all want that!

I have been reading Maxwell’s books since I was 18 and his tips have helped me develop my leadership skills through the years.

In this post gives some great tips on how to develop better time management:

• Keep a detailed time log of your work.
• Identify your major time wasters and work to eliminate them.
• Identify the activities you value.
• Use planning to gain time.
• Create systems to simplify.
• Become results-oriented.

You can allow each day to slip away from you, or you can use it to make things happen. The choice is yours.

Here is a direct link to the entire post on John Maxwell’s blog:  http://JohnMaxwellOnLeadership.com

Whether it’s driving while talking on my cell phone, sending e-mails while on the phone or the 10+ windows I always have open on my two computer screens, it seems multitasking has become a way of life. I am always doing more than one thing at a time to get more stuff done in less time and I am not the only one. These days most people are trying to get more done in less time. So, does multitasking really make you more efficient? Can it be detrimental, or even dangerous?

Here is a quick exercise to prove that point…

Rotate your foot in a clockwise direction and rotate your pointer finger in the other direction at the same time!!! Go ahead and try it! If I go very very slow and concentrate hard, I can do it, but no way doing it fast.

Our brain works hard to fool us into thinking it can do more than one thing at a time. It can’t. Recent MRI studies at Vanderbilt prove that the brain is not built for good multi-tasking. When trying to do two things at once, the brain temporarily shuts down one task while trying to do the other.

Can you relate with this funny video?

But if multitasking is bad, then how do we, in our fast paced society get more things done?  Alex Mandossian posted a great article: Why Multitasking Destroys Your Productivity. He talks about “Stacking” which is a productive use of time doing multiple things because only ONE of the tasks your doing requires mental effort. Stacking helps you to get more done, faster, better and with less mental effort.

Here are some other great articles on multitasking:

• Article in the NYTimes – While multitasking may seem to be saving time, psychologists, neuroscientists and others are finding that it can put us under a great deal of stress and actually make us less efficient.
• Article on ABCNews.com – The Grand Seduction of Multitasking – Put Away the BlackBerry, Stash the iPod: Our Brains Aren’t Built to Multitask.
• Sparp Brains – The Brain Fitness Authority attributes some Memory Problems to Multi-tasking.
• From an article on NPR.org – Don’t believe the multitasking hype, scientists say. New research shows that we humans aren’t as good as we think we are at doing several things at once.
• The American Psychological Association says that new scientific studies reveal the hidden costs of multitasking.

Also check out “Brain Rules” by John Medina and “The Myth of Multitasking” by Author, speaker and time management expert Dave Crenshaw.

Ask yourself this “How is my procutivity when I am multitasking?”.