Spirituality and business might seem pretty disconnected at first glance. However, if you dig a little deeper, it’s possible to find threads that connect these two realms. Business success relies on hard work, determination, ambition, and motivation. On the other hand, spirituality is about believing in higher powers and utilizing them to get the desired outcome. Here are some ways that will show you how to use spirituality and become successful in business.
What does the word “leader” mean to you?
For me, leaders are visionary, big-picture thinkers with the passion and charisma to inspire others to bring their vision to life. I believe that leaders aren’t born, they’re made – and that anyone can become a leader if they put in the time to cultivate the right skills and mindset.
Throughout my four-plus decades of working as an internationally renowned leader in personal development, I have connected and collaborated with thousands of business owners who have turned to me for advice on how to take their businesses to the next level.
Many of these entrepreneurs have been graduates of my popular Train the Trainer program, and are eager to start attracting clients and grow a business as a certified Canfield Success Principles coach.
The brain is a goal-seeking organism. Experts on the science of success know that whatever goal you give to your subconscious mind, it will work night and day to achieve.
But all goals are not created equal. Some goals will give you specific results, while others will give you vague goals with minimal results.
If you have big dreams for your career or business — or you’re feeling “stuck” and are looking for a way to find the happiness and fulfillment you desire — then a professional development plan is what you need to make your career or business goals a reality!
Are you a manager… or are you a leader? An organization needs both types of people to be successful.
Leaders are visionary, big picture thinkers with the passion and charisma to inspire others to help them bring their vision to life.
Managers have analytic minds and organizational skills required to keep everything running smoothly and ensure that their team has what they need to succeed.
When it comes to leaders vs. managers, oftentimes, people are both.
The best managers tend to have great leadership skills and are able to empower and inspire their team to aim higher, dream bigger, and strive to get better results.
And many great leaders, having climbed the rungs of management to get where they are now, still have an innate sense of how to manage resources, and implement processes to ensure everything runs smoothly and that people have what they need to do their best work.
You don’t have to be a great leader to be an effective manager – but it certainly helps, especially if you dream of making a bigger impact on the world and on the lives of other people.
I want to help you develop your leadership skills and grow your understanding of how leadership and management compare and differ from each other. That’s why I’ve written this article!
When you encounter a setback in life, how do you react?
Do you complain about it or succumb to frustration and anger and allow it to derail your progress?
Do you see it as a sign from the universe to quit or use it as an excuse to give up on your goals?
Or do you treat it like the valuable learning opportunity it is?
Today I’d like to teach you how to “fail forward” in life and transform every failure you experience into a powerful launchpad that catapults you even closer to your dreams.
See, this is the thing about failures.
All our lives, we’ve been told that they’re bad and something to avoid or be ashamed of.
The idea of failure has been built up to be so catastrophically terrible that most people choose not to take any risks at all, rather than risk even a small chance of failure.
And that is a huge problem — because if you don’t take risks, you can’t grow as a person.
You see, growth only happens when you leave your comfort zone. It requires you to venture into unknown territory and try something different. That’s how we learn the new skills and knowledge we need to become the kind of person who is capable of taking our lives to the next level.
Growth requires risk. And if you’re so scared of failure that you refuse to take risks, then you’ll always remain right where you are.
We all have heard over and over again that ‘mindset is everything’. What exactly is mindset? The dictionary defines it as ‘an established set of attitudes held by someone.’
In her awesome book, Carol Dweck talks about 2 different types of mindset: a growth mindset and a fixed mindset. Mindset: The New Psychology of Success explains how we take a set of ideas, or what I would call beliefs, into our experiences and interactions on a daily basis, and our actions are a reflection of those ideas or beliefs. Open or closed, positive or negative, fixed and set in stone or growth oriented and expansive.
A fixed mindset assumes that: I have what I have - skills, talents and knowledge and those are set in stone. None of it can or will change. A growth mindset translates into knowing that we can learn, grow and stretch our abilities so that challenges turn into opportunities for expansion.
Here are 5 powerful mindset principles that will support you in cultivating a winning mindset no matter what is going on around you, or in the world.
How would you like to learn a success strategy that will double your chances of achieving your goals?
I’m talking about the power of accountability, and today I’d like to give you some tips on how to put it to work in your life so that you do a better job of achieving the goals you’ve set for yourself this year.
We’ll also talk about accountability vs. responsibility and the differences between the two so you can better understand how each strategy will empower you to accomplish more, faster, in the months ahead.
Stephen R. Covey says that “accountability breeds response-ability.”
He’s the author of the bestselling book, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, in case you don’t know him.
I like this saying because it suggests that accountability and responsibility are different from each other — and it highlights the fact that being held accountable increases your ability to respond, which means taking action.
When you are responsible for something, it is your duty to respond and take action.
When you are accountable, you are responsible for reporting the actions you have taken and providing an account of the results.
Responsibility is task-oriented. You are responsible for accomplishing the tasks required to achieve your goals.
Accountability, on the other hand, is results-oriented. When you are being held accountable for something, it is your duty to take stock of what you’ve done and report on the outcomes of your actions.
Both of these duties are key to your success.
What Is Cosmic Ordering?
The person who introduced me to cosmic ordering was Ellen Watts. Ellen explains that essentially, cosmic ordering is asking the Universe for what you want – and it arrives. It’s not something she has created all by herself either; rather, it’s been around forever. You’ll even find cosmic ordering in the Bible, where it is referred to as ‘miracles.’
Ellen shared with me her cosmic ordering technique, which is to say: “What I really want is X” and finish by saying “For the good of all concerned.” Ellen stresses that it is very important to finish each cosmic order with that final sentence as it ensures that no one should ever lose out in order for you to gain. This is very important to her when she places her orders, especially orders relating to money, as she doesn’t want anyone to die in order to leave money to her.
It is important to remember that you must never wish for anything bad on someone else as that is just a way to create bad karma for yourself. In fact, orders asking for something bad to happen to someone else will never be delivered. Cosmic orders are about you – specifically what you want for yourself – and are therefore delivered to you. It’s similar to when you go to a restaurant and place an order for your food. You order what you want to eat for yourself (pizza with a side order of chips) – not anyone else.
All good leaders must lead by example, that is a given. Being a powerful woman in Sales and Leadership is no different - you MUST walk your talk. Through actions which are aligned with what you say, you become a Goddess who others want to follow, mirror and do business with. When leaders say one thing but do another they erode trust, a critical element of effective leadership and successful sales. Remember behaviors speak louder than words. When trust is allowed to build, a leader will always have a supportive team, ongoing loyal clients and friends who are there to cheer her on.
Here are the keys to being a Powerful Sales Goddess:
Are you making the kind of money you want to be making in your current job? Chances are, your answer is no. But when you know how to get a raise, everything can change.
If you feel like you should be making more — but don’t want to have to apply for new positions at different companies and start all over somewhere else — getting a raise can be the answer.
Today I’d like to share my top tips on how to make more money where you are right now and propel your career in the direction you want to go.
My first tip is to create and add more value to the company.
What can you do to help the company make or save more money? How can your efforts help to boost the organization’s results or reputation, or fulfill the company’s mission or objectives? What can you do to make your manager’s or coworkers’ lives easier?
Look for needs that aren’t being met — either within the organization or your clients’ or customers’ needs — and meet those needs to add more value wherever possible. That’s the first, and biggest step you can take to make yourself more deserving of a higher paycheck.
Everybody wants to enjoy a certain level of wealth and success in life. But so few of us actually manage to create the life of ease and abundance that we long for.
So why is that? Well, one big reason is that we don’t cultivate a healthy relationship with money. We develop beliefs, attitudes and habits about money in our youth that hold us back from being able to generate wealth and enjoy the financial freedom we desire.
But the good news is, once you’re able to identify these “money roadblocks” in your own habits and behaviors, you’ll be able to overcome them once and for all — and finally be able to make more than enough money to create the life of your dreams.
So today I’d like to talk about five big obstacles that are keeping you from experiencing the wealth and success you deserve and the solutions to overcoming them.
If you were to ask someone like Mark Zuckerberg, Oprah Winfrey, or Elon Musk why they have managed to create such incredible success in life, they would probably credit their achievements to one thing: their ability to FOCUS.
Today I’d like to teach you some of the best tips for focusing that I’ve learned from the highly focused and successful people I’ve met and worked with, so you can put their methods to work in your life – and achieve your goals much faster and much more efficiently.
Being able to focus on the task in front of you and get it done, no matter what is happening around you, is like a modern-day superpower. Most of us aren’t able to do this.
We lose countless hours of aimlessly surfing on social media. We check our phone hundreds of times a day and allow ourselves to get pulled into online conversations that take us away from the more important things we should be doing.
We spend our evenings and weekends bingeing on the latest popular HBO or Netflix series, and then we wonder why we haven’t gotten any closer to accomplishing our goals!
Face it: we all experience lack of focus from time to time.
Once you begin to take action on a project or a goal, you’ll start getting feedback about whether you’re doing the right thing. You’ll get data, advice, help, suggestions, direction – and even criticism – that will help you constantly adjust and move forward, while continually enhancing your knowledge, abilities, attitudes and relationships.
But asking for feedback is really only the first part of the equation. Once you receive feedback you have to be willing to embrace it and respond to it.
Positive or Negative … it’s ALL good!
There are two kinds of feedback you might encounter, negative and positive. We tend to prefer the positive: results, money, praise, promotion, raise, awards, happiness, inner peace, etc. It feels better. It tells us we are on course and doing the right thing.
We tend not to like negative feedback: lack of results, little or no money, criticism, poor evaluations, complaints, unhappiness, inner conflict, pain, etc.
However, there is as much useful data in negative feedback as there is in positive feedback. It tells us that we are off course, headed in the wrong direction, and doing the wrong thing. This is priceless information!
When you stay focused on your goals, productivity comes naturally.
Of course, then those pesky distractions come in to mess up your workflow and throw off your schedule.
If your day is anything like mine, you’re probably constantly being thrown distractions that limit the amount of work you are able to get done.
After all, you only have 24 hours in a day and no matter how you try to stretch them, they always add up to the same amount of time.
Learning how to tackle your problem head-on by limiting your distractions, can help you focus on what’s important—your goals.
Start with these six ways to stay focused on your goals and streamline your attention right this minute.
I am blessed to know many brilliant people and one of them is my friend Sam Horn, CEO of the Intrigue Agency and bestselling author. Sam created a process of Review-Preview questions so you can reflect on the highlights of the previous year and clarify what you’re looking for in the coming year/decade and I’m excited to share this with you as we end the year and begin a new decade.
Sam used to host Review-Preview salons at the National Press Club. Every December, they would gather to share highlights and lessons-learned from the previous year – and what they’re looking forward to in the coming year.
Many people told her they appreciated these opportunities to “connect and reflect” on highlights, intentions, what really impacted them – and why.
One participant said, “This is kind of like a verbal vision board party, isn’t it? I’ve done vision boards in the past. It’s uncanny how many of the things I put on my board came true.”
You are welcome to use these 10 Review Questions and 10 Preview questions to facilitate a fascinating conversation that adds value for all involved.
If we can see how positive inner states lead to positive life experiences, then we can also see that negative inner states must attract negative results. Shedding light on this dark cycle will help us bring an end to it as a source of self-compromise.
Suppose someone walks into your office and drops the bomb that your company has unannounced plans to lay off several employees, and that no one knows who these unfortunates are going to be. Without higher principles to meet this unexpected moment, the fear would surely take control of you and the moment. In no time, you would be the victim of your own self-compromising plans for revenge on an insensitive company, or some such enemy.
Of course, at first glance, feeling scared and getting angry in an event like this seems like it makes sense. But a closer look clearly shows how it betrays. We can't have fear without anxiety. Anxiety can't exist without unconsciously comparing what we hoped would happen, to our new fears that it won't. And connected to this spreading fear our expectations won't be realized is our growing resentment of the situation, or person, we blame for wiping out our hoped-for happiness. So bitterness spreads. And as it does, it whispers to us that since we've already lost our future, why should we do anything more, for anyone, in the present? Now defiance has the reins, and in no time, self-righteous anger courses through our veins.
It's impossible to have one sad or sour state without another. But there's still much for us to see. Negativity, like all forms of thought, is actually physical in nature. All things physical, all forms of matter, have mass. And any mass in motion has momentum. Now, with these facts in mind, let's go back into our illustrative story and see what the momentum of this negative state has to ultimately attract.
So now the boss walks into your office -- or you see him at lunch -- and he asks you to do some extra work. But with the feeling of being betrayed still fresh in your heart, you can't help but meet him and his request with a full-blown negative state. The impression you make on him is indelible. Later on, at a time unknown to you, this same superior starts to review who he's going to keep on and who to let go. And he chooses to release you. Why? Because among other items weighted in his decision process, he recalls your barely masked aggression and obvious resistance to his request.
Do you need to stop complaining?
It’s well understood that complaining never accomplishes anything positive, but did you know that complaining can have some very real, negative effects on your brain as well?
Complaining can actually rewire your brain over time and set you up for failure, time and time again, without you even knowing it.Research has shown that, on average, people complain about once a minute during a typical conversation.
As with any task that we instruct our minds to repeat over and over again, it doesn’t take long for your brain to pick up on the pattern and develop neural pathways specifically dedicated to complaining.
Just like a musician will develop neural pathways dedicated to the specific movements and thoughts associated with playing their instrument, people who frequently complain will do the same for the act of complaining.
