Guest post by Mr. Achievement – Stanley F. Bronstein

The Journey Of A Thousand Miles Begins With A Single Step
- (Lao Tzu)

I recently saw an excellent movie called Rabbit-Proof Fence. The movie is based upon the true story of 3 young Australian aborigine girls who were removed from their families because they were of mixed heritage (their father’s were white and their mothers were aborigines). These girls were taken over a thousand miles from their home to the other side of Australia. They were to live in a camp where they would be trained, based upon the goals of a government bureaucrat who thought he knew what was best for them.

These girls missed their families so much and hated the camp so much, that they ran away and walked over 1000 miles home. They had no roadmap. No GPS systems. Instead, they followed a simple barbed wire fence designed to keep out rabbits. They were told this fence ran the entire length of Australia and they knew part of the fence was in their village. Demonstrating an incredible amount of courage and cleverness, they walked home, all the way, simply by following the fence. 2 of the 3 girls were able to elude bounty hunters who were sent out to recapture them. It was an amazing story.

When the government eventually recaptured these girls from their home and took them back to the camp, they walked away again and walked all the way home. These girls were incredible.

The point of their story is that they never gave up. No matter how far they had to go; no matter how long their journey; they simply kept going. They followed the only roadmap they had (the fence) and they kept going. One foot after another, they kept going. If they hit a roadblock, they dealt with it and found a way around it. Eventually they reached their destination. When they hit the ultimate roadblock (being recaptured and taken back to the camp), they simply started walking again until they reached their destination.

As you embark on your personal re-creation process, you are going to have to do the same thing. You are going to have to come up with your own roadmap and you are going to have to keep walking until you reach your destination. You may be able to find shortcuts along the way and you may find a way to drive a “speedy sportscar” (instead of walking), but you are still going to have to start and you are going to have to keep going until you reach your destination.

By reading this article, you have taken the first step upon your journey; your personal re-creation process. Now it’s time to come up with a roadmap (i.e. your “rabbit-proof fence”).

Stanley Bronstein is an attorney, CPA, author and professional motivational speaker.

If you want to read more Achievement oriented articles posted by Stanley F. Bronstein, check out the links below.

Stanley Bronstein’s Achievement IQ Blog

• Stanley Bronstein’s Articles on SelfGrowth.com
• You can also subscribe to his daily RSS feed for his blog or subscribe to his email feed for his blog (by clicking here) that will send you my new blog postings daily directly to your email.
• Also, if you subscribe to his weekly newsletter, you will immediately receive a link to download his latest free e-book called Re-Create Yourself Now. It’s full of great ideas to help you get started.

It’s been quite a while since I’ve updated my blog, but a lot of that has to do with how extremely busy I and the rest of UBD have been over the past month.

I want you to introduce you to a new friend of mine, Stanley Bronstein.

Stanley is not just a successful attorney and CPA, but also a professional motivational speaker and published author. Widely known as “Mr. Achievement,” Stanley’s mission is helping people position themselves for success. He is about to release his third book on achieving success, “Achievement IQ: The Laws of Positioning.”

Stanley recently started his blog on personal development in the hopes of connecting with people online to help them achieve more success in their lives and careers.

Some of Stanley’s best posts so far have been:

• Laws of Positioning – What Are They About?
• 100 Laws of Positioning
• Stanley Bronstein’s Purpose In Life

For his new book, “Achievement IQ: The Laws of Positioning,” Stanley drove around the country to interview some very successful and remarkable people. He chronicled his journey through dozens of hours of audio and video, with much of the current material being available for free on his website.

What are the Laws of Positioning?

The premise behind the Laws of Positioning states that:

The most successful people and organizations tend to have four traits in common:

VISION – They recognize details and opportunities that most others do not see, thus putting themselves in a position of readiness;

ATTRACTION – They put themselves in a position to attract opportunities;

READINESS – They put themselves in a position to be ready to take advantage of those opportunities once they do come their way; and

ACTION – They take action upon those details and opportunities in a manner that most others would not, thus putting themselves in a position to be more successful than most.

Stanley has only been blogging since February, but he has already managed to crank out almost 60 posts. I highly recommend that you check out Stanley’s blog if you are interested in learning how to position yourself for success in both your personal and professional lives. Visit Stanley Bronstein here.

More posts coming soon…

One of the hardest things to do with any time-consuming enterprise is take a break. As most of you know, I haven’t blogged very much over the past 3 months. This is not due to my disinterest in blogging, but only my new obsession with business development. I have always been kind of an all-or-nothing type person and it’s always been hard for me to balance work/play and taking time for myself. I feel like I keep learning the lesson to balance life in order to be the most productive.

Since the inception of UBD (last August), Matt, Josh, and I have been working 7 days/week and 12-15 hours/day to build the business. It has been both incredibly fun and stressful at times. Stressful not because I don’t enjoy the work, only because I have cut out all other distractions in my life. This includes saying GOODBYE to partying, working out, watching TV, and any other type of non-business activity.

Have I regretted any of it? Not for one second. These past few months culminating with BWE have been some of the most exciting times of my life. I wouldn’t trade it for anything. That being said, there are a lot of ways I could have managed my lifestyle better and that includes taking more time for myself.

What do I classify as taking time for myself? Working out is a great example. Sitting in the same space for 8-hour shifts is something that most people want to quit their jobs so they can stop doing, but the fact is that working for yourself oftentimes means spending WAY more time in front of the computer. That makes it that much more important to get physical activity.

It is uncommon for Matt, Josh and me to spend less than 12 hours a day working on the computer – and that means not reading Digg, playing computer games, surfing the net, or any other type of non-work behavior. Just sitting and working.

Getting back to what I was originally saying, nothing burns off stress more than working out. I worked out for the first time in three months tonight and it felt damn awesome. We all used to be regular gym rats working out 5x/week, but again, since my new obsession with overworking, I have not worked out once.

It’s Tough To Break Away When In The Zone

Anyone truly dedicated towards a cause knows that it is especially difficult to break away from work when you are are on a roll, or “in the zone.” In other words, when working for any sustained period of time at a particular task, productivity increases exponentially over the work period. I notice I don’t reach my “in the zone” period until about 45 minutes into a task, but once I have reached that point, I can sustain my in the zone activity for several hours at a time.

Breaking away from what one feels as incredibly productive time is very difficult. Crossing A LOT of things off a to-do list is a great feeling, but what separates the almost successful from the really successful are those who manage their time more productively. Oftentimes, increased productivity comes not from working more, but from balance and managing time better.

If you were to spend all day doing one thing, would you want to be just “kind of” successful or extremely successful? I have done some interesting things, but real success is gauged over a long period of time, not a few months. I have been blogging consistently since January of this year and to me, that is a better indication of success than running a business for a just few months.

Taking Time For Myself: Trying To Get Back Into Blogging

Blogging is another task that can be incredibly fulfilling. After all, blogging is what got me where I am today. I would have never stopped working at my day job, developed relationships with fellow bloggers, and started UBD if it were not for consistent blogging since January of this year.

I have said time and time again that consistent and quality blogging can have tremendous effects on one’s life. My only wish is that I had spent more time blogging over the past three months. That is something that I plan on taking more seriously as we are starting to streamline many of the processes of our business.

I could never get burned out from doing what I most enjoy, but taking time for yourself in business is a valuable lesson that I have been trying to learn for a long time.

How about you guys? Do any of you workaholics feel like it is next to impossible to break away from your in-the-zone time? Golf, blogging, working out? What do you do when you take time away from business?

It’s been a while since I last posted my “Powerful Posts” series. These are some of the more interesting articles I have read around the blogosphere lately. I wish I had more time to comment on other people’s blogs, but I think linking to them is the next best thing.

The Gospel According to Rhys – 10 Black Sheep Bloggers
Rhys wrote a fascinating article about a few bloggers who manage to stand out from crowd.

Self Made Chick – How I Made $100,000 By Spending 25 Minutes and $0 On Marketing
Christine writes about how she created a successful copywriting business working smarter, not harder.

Dax Desai.com – 6 Things Businessmen Can Learn from Successful Bloggers
Dax talks about several important business concepts to learn from a few different bloggers.

Trai dot Name – There’s Gold in Them Thar Shovels
If you were in California during the time of the gold rush (1849), would you grab some shovels and start packing? Trai writes a great article about thinking outside the box when it comes to being entrepreneurial.

WhyDoWork.com – Which Blog Niche is Right for ME?
Great article about how to decide on what blog niche to focus on.

David Airey – Do you follow logo design trends?
David asks a great question about logo design trends.

EverybodyGoto – The Future of Applications is Customization
Great article about the future of applications.

Adii Freelancer – Call me the FireStarter
Adii writes a great post about the “premium theme” debate and whether premium themes should be free or cost a small fee.

Display Your Powerful Post Badge

If you would like to show people your post was selected as a “Powerful Post,” you can copy the following code and paste it at the bottom of your post:

<a href="http://natewhitehill.com/powerful-posts-september-28-2007/"><img src="http://natewhitehill.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/09/pp_badge0928.jpg" alt="Powerful Post Award - September 28, 2007" /></a>

This is what this post is all about. Your dream is your goal for the future, but what are your intentions in having that goal? Let’s say, for instance, that your dream is to make lots of money (a typical goal for just about everyone I know). What is the intention of that dream, the real reason you’re dreaming it? What do you think you will feel like when that dream becomes your “reality”?

Most people would say, Oh, when I make my billions, I’ll be happy, I’ll be financially safe, I’ll prove to the world that I’m worth something; I’ll get respect. I’ll make the people I care about really happy, and I’ll be able to contribute to all the causes I really believe in.

Let’s say you answered similarly. Most of us have the same intentions of wanting to be happy, to be successful, and to be secure. Here’s what you need to ask yourself next: What are the ways that you are happy, now? What are the ways in which you feel financially responsible right now? What are the ways that you feel you are worth something and are respected, now? What are you doing for the people and causes you care about, now?

Chances are that, far more than you typically acknowledge, you are, in fact, living a life that is very similar to what you dream of. Our dreams are usually only the material outcome of what we really intend and want. We often describe our dreams in terms of dollar amounts or specific material acquisitions, but in actuality we expect that if the dream comes true we’re going to feel the ways we want to feel.

The fact is, what you really want is all stuff that you probably already have, to some degree. Like most of us, you probably have many reasons to be happy, feel respected, relatively secure, and able to give. You may not feel that to the extent that your dream offers, but here’s the key:

We attract what we already have. Like attracts like. The Law of Attraction. It’s as simple that. Sometimes we experience that law as one of life’s injustices, like how you can’t get credit unless you’ve already got it. But perhaps it isn’t really an injustice, but a simple scientific truth: like attracts like.

Or, as Jane Austen says, “All things nourish that which is already strong.”

So, do you want more of your dream to be manifested? Then identify what is the intention of your dream. What do you hope to feel or have when your dream comes true?

Next, ask yourself, in what ways do you already have what you hope to have?

If you take time to acknowledge your intentions, and then acknowledge what you have right now, the law of attraction can do its work. Acknowledge what you have already, and watch how what you hope to have increasingly comes to you. Watch your dreams come true.

This post was sent to me by a Guest Blogger who wishes to remain anonymous.