You always know when you are in the company of positive people because they give off ‘positive vibes’.   They are a pleasure to be around.

It’s much more appealing to be with someone who brings a smile to your face and has a happy disposition rather than be stuck with somebody who seems to always be under a black cloud; regularly moaning, whingeing and finding fault. 

Negative people generally feel sorry for themselves and can always find something or someone to blame for whatever their problems may be.

Positive people however, take personal responsibility for their lives and don’t look for excuses.

But above all positive people take positive action!

The major difference between ‘winners and losers’ is that winners don’t procrastinate and keep putting things off.

They have developed the ‘Do it now’ habit. 

Frankly you know full well, that half the time you kid yourself that you are working, you are probably involved in doing things you enjoy doing, or find easy to do, rather than tackling more important tasks that are more difficult and require more effort.

Failure to overcome inertia is the main reason people fail.

It’s unlikely that to improve your performance you need to learn new skills, it’s much more likely you simply need to use the skills and knowledge you already have more often and more purposefully.

So why do so many people keep putting things off?  Habit!

And the only way to get rid of a bad habit is to replace it with a good habit.

If you really want to take a giant step forward in your life and change things for the better you’ll have to change yourself first. That doesn’t mean changing your personality other than working on becoming a more positive person. But it does mean changing your behaviour. 

We all behave in the way we currently do because we have formed the habit of doing so. Let’s not bother about how these habits were formed because it’s of little consequence. What really matters is changing habits that are undesirable.

So, for example, if you are a ‘fault finder’ you need to develop the habit of being a ‘good finder’. If you ‘fly off the handle’ and lose your temper easily you need to learn the habit of self control.

And if you are a procrastinator you have to develop a ‘Do it now’ approach.

The good news is that it only takes a short period of time to change a bad habit into a good one. It just requires concentrated and deliberate effort for about twenty consecutive days for a new behaviour to become a habit.

So where getting things done is concerned here’s what I strongly suggest:

• Look at and read the goals you have written down every morning as soon as you get up and again every evening at the end of your day.  You need only do this for the first few weeks and then once or twice a week is perfectly adequate

• But here’s something you must always do. Before finishing work and relaxing, it’s vital that you write a ‘things to do list’ for the next day. Put at the top of the list anything that was on today’s list that never got done

• Time management experts will tell you to prioritise your list by using a variety of techniques including colour coding or using A’s B’s C’s etc to denote the degree of importance. Frankly I think that’s a load of baloney and rather patronising……….because you know what the important things are!  Just get stuck into the things that are important.

• Start the day an hour earlier.  If you think you need the sleep and couldn’t possibly get up an hour before you normally do then go to bed earlier!  You’ll be amazed at how much you can do with some concentrated effort first thing in the morning.  Do the thing, or things, that require the most attention and effort. Don’t under any circumstances start your day reading emails or surfing the internet.  Use that first hour every day to GET THINGS DONE.

If you earnestly practice this for just a few weeks you will have made a quantum leap in your life and you’ll develop a lifelong habit that will enable you to achieve all your goals and then more!

To be continued…