When you come to a point of time in your life, when you feel that it is time for you to take that big step forward and you muster the courage to start your journey,  you need to be clear and decide what it is specifically that you want for your life.

It may be a personal journey with another person you want to spend your life with. Or perhaps deciding to get an education that will provide opportunities for your future work and career. Or it may be a dream or an aspiration to start your own business.

Once you reach this point, you are stepping onto your path, your journey to FULFILLMENT.

It may mean that your whole life will change and it is certainly going to be one of your life-defining events. My own personal experience is that the experience you learn and gain on your journey, step-by-step, is shaping you to what you will become. The big picture of life is more about what you become.  This is, in and of itself, very fulfilling.

When I was young I decided that I wanted to go and live in another country, which I believed was a land of milk and honey, and where I could have a more fulfilling life than in my mother country. I arrived with $20, my entire wealth.  I bought my first business at 20 years old, my first apartment house at 21 years old and rented beds.  I had two businesses and three houses by the time I was 24 years old.

As the years have rolled by, and I accomplish many things, life is more about what I have become, in my desire to help many people to have a better quality of life, than about what I have achieved.  I often wonder how this 18-year-old youth from humble beginnings did what he did as I look back.

I feel more fulfilled about those early achievements, than the bigger and better things, I accomplished in later life.

On life’s path there are many obstacles, ups and downs, sharp bends in the road, new things to challenge and a lot of hard work.  For me, they have brought tremendous fulfillment, as I have challenged myself to be the best I can be, with a daily mantra of ‘I’m going to do it better today, than I did it yesterday.'

How about you?  Are you ready to start your journey, step on your path?

Maybe you are already on your way?  Hang in there, don’t give up.  ‘Every day, in every way, you are getting better, better and better.’

With experience eventually comes wisdom. Believe in yourself, and my warmest wishes for you to have a fulfilling life.

What's your happy thought?

My happy thought is a photo of my eldest granddaughter, cuddling her dog.

Another one is my youngest granddaughter swimming on Granddad’s back. The look on this little lady’s face is sheer joy. Is she having any fun?  Oh yeah, believe it!

I carry these two photos and show them to the managers I train when I talk about about the need to lighten up, and that they can achieve as much if not MORE by making them and their employees have more fun while working.

Of course, the two photos of my granddaughters are engraved in my mind. Your brain is like a very powerful muscle, we need to exercise it.

So take a few moments and think about something or someone who gives you a happy, wonderful feeling when you think about it or them. This can be your Happy Thought.

For me, I used the photos to begin with, because it was something symbolic. By keeping on using them, it just became part of my thinking when I was not comfortable with my negative thoughts. Today, I have very few negative thoughts.

Leaders of the future should be helped to increase their opportunities.  Bring people up through the ranks as quickly as possible, however do make sure that they are trained and equipped to take bigger positions. 

Waiting in line to be promoted is a thing of the past, people need to be given opportunities for advancement for filling bigger and better jobs.  

When good proven leaders are becoming close to retirement age and have been proven to be a great leader, they should work as a mentor and coach.  Older people too, need and want to have a purpose so that their life has satisfaction and there is nothing more fulfilling than helping people to grow and develop.  Do this and you will get a strong increase in people’s performance.

I always remember in the multinational firm where I was country manager of Japan, New Zealand, and then all of the Asian countries, that at performance evaluation time we had to fill in a performance evaluation on people who worked for us, and we had to list strengths and weaknesses. I know from my own performance evaluation reviews that minimal time was spent on the strengths and a tremendous amount of time was spent on correcting weakness, even if we had created extremely good results.

Human beings seem to have a love of focusing on the negative rather than the positives. Over the last several years of working with many thousands of people in our workshops and coaching, I have realized to get the best out of people is to let them focus on the strengths and support their weaknesses. I was delighted when I read a book called “First, Break all the Rules” by Marcus Buckingham and Curt Coffman and published by Simon & Schuster business books, which supported what I have learnt. Gallup polls, which interviewed over 1 million employees and 80,000 managers, clearly showed that allowing people to focus on their strengths instead of their weakness let them create outstanding results and improved performance.

I want you to think about, and write down, what your top five strengths are. These are the unique gifts that you have developed during your lifetime, that have assisted you in achieving what you've done so far. I encourage you to use them, and focus on them, and stop worrying about the things that you don't do well. I will never know how to fix a car, and I don't intend to spend my life worrying about it. There are thousands of people who love fixing cars, and who are extremely good at it. If something goes wrong with my car I let those people fix it.

In other words:

“Do what you love to do”

“Self-righteousness”. This behaviour results in people giving their own point of view more credence than the viewpoints that others express. And this is not necessarily a “bad” thing! But where it leads to problems is where the essential balance between the viewpoints of ourselves and others isn’t maintained. Then we become “captured” by the “rightness” of our own viewpoint, and give it more weight than is healthy for our relationships with those around us. People who are very knowledgeable are particularly at risk for self-righteous behaviour. Self-righteousness is about our unwillingness or inability to accommodate anyone else’s viewpoint. It’s fairly obvious that this damages our relationship with the people who hold those other viewpoints, and this in turn damages our ability to secure and maintain their support for our goals.

Self-righteousness is therefore self-defeating.

If you’re busy being right all the time, then it’s time to realise that the damage this is doing to your relationships isn’t worth it, and that it’s time for a personal shake-up. It’s also time to realise that any damage to your relationships is damage to your accomplishment.

WRITTEN BY BRIAN MARTIN