Sharpen the Saw

You can’t cultivate success by adopting negativity. It’s imperative that all words spoken in your professional life have a purpose to promote you and your outcome. Many of us have clear goals relating to what we are seeking to accomplish. Under each of your goals you should have a list of what must take place to achieve or maintain those goals. Looking through your list of what must be accomplished you will not find “be a little more negative every day” or “focus on negativity”. There is good reason you will never find those items, they don’t promote growth.

If you find yourself at anytime focusing on negative thought or discussion the spirit of failure will be more present than the spirit of success.

You control your life and no one else can. You maintain balance, diets, focus and every other variable in your life. Positive thought will propel you into a universe of success and achievement.

Confidence is gained through diligent hard work and perseverance. You have the desire to be diligent and to work hard but as with all people discouragement can overshadow your success. For some the consistency of success creates the key to overcoming your discouragement; making discouragement non-existent. For others discouragement overshadows success because of your mind set; you control your own actions. Everyone has proven themselves in many walks of life. If you can remember what made you successful and practice it you will then contribute to what can make you successful. Create for yourself the opportunity to succeed.”

Only you have the power to create your worth. Only you can decide the outcome.

Take time everyday to reflect on how you can improve. This is illustrated by a foolish lumberjack whose mind wasn’t focused on the essentials of his profession.

He had for weeks been laboring to accomplish his assigned task of cutting down trees. He was talented and understood what hard work meant. In time the task began to be very difficult. He wasn’t producing at the capacity he believed he could. He was pressing forward and becoming weak; as his blade became duller he needed to work harder. He had maintained the struggle of pushing his blade back and forth and was weary from his labors. He felt that he could not stop as he would fall behind the others in production and lose the career he had worked so hard to achieve.

The lumberjack, after days of unsuccessful workmanship and struggle had discovered that the others were taking time out of their day to sharpen their saw. It hit him; he realized that he had not once taken the time to sharpen his saw. He had been focused on the thought that he could not lose one precious second of labor. He had not taken time to sharpen the saw. He had learned from his mistakes and he now began being more productive by taking time out of his busy schedule of cutting down trees to sharpen the saw.

Many of us become distracted and negative about our daily outcomes. The true measure of greatness will be your past performances and future endeavors but you must maintain the focus of positive reinforcement.

Take time to sharpen the saw; sit back and focus on what makes you successful. Devise a plan and follow through with it. You have been successful in the past, focus on how to accomplish that same level of success now. Focus on taking time to sharpen the saw.