How Successful People Think: Change Your Thinking, Change Your Life pdfdrive com

I Can’t Go Everywhere
Every conference speaker and author has to travel a lot. Before I began doing
much speaking, that seemed like a glamorous life. But after logging several
million miles, I know what kind of a toll it can take. Ironically, I still love
traveling for pleasure with my wife, Margaret. It’s one of our great joys. She and
I could take ten vacations a year and enjoy every one of them. Yet we can’t,
because so much of my time is consumed doing what I was called to do: help
people to grow personally and to develop as leaders.

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I Can’t Be Well-Rounded
Being focused also keeps me from being well-rounded. I tell people, “Ninety-
nine percent of everything in life I don’t need to know about.” I try to focus on
the one percent that gives the highest return. And of the remaining ninety-nine,
Margaret keeps me aware of whatever I need to know. It’s one of the ways I keep
from getting totally out of balance in my life.
Being willing to give up some of the things you love in order to focus on
what has the greatest impact isn’t an easy lesson to learn. But the earlier
you embrace it, the sooner you can dedicate yourself to excellence in what
matters most.
Thinking Question
Am I dedicated to removing distractions and mental clutter so that I
can concentrate with clarity on the real issue?

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Harness Creative Thinking
“The joy is in creating, not maintaining.”
—V
INCE
L
OMBARDI
, NFL H
ALL OF
F
AME
C
OACH
Creativity is pure gold, no matter what you do for a living. Annette Moser-
Wellman, author of 
The Five Faces of Genius
, asserts, “
The most valuable
resource you bring to your work and to your firm is your creativity.
More than
what you get done, more than the role you play, more than your title, more than
your ‘output’—it’s your ideas that matter.” 
3
 
Despite the importance of a person’s
ability to think with creativity, few people seem to possess the skill in
abundance.
If you’re not as creative as you would like to be, you can change your way of
thinking. Creative thinking isn’t necessarily original thinking. In fact, I think
people mythologize original thought. Most often, creative thinking is a
composite of other thoughts discovered along the way. Even the great artists,
whom we consider highly original, learned from their masters, modeled their
work on that of others, and brought together a host of ideas and styles to create
their own work. Study art, and you will see threads that run through the work of
all artists and artistic movements, connecting them to other artists who went
before them.

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