A contributor to Forbes Magazine has interviewed over 200 billionaires, Olympians, straight-A students and entrepreneurs and found this out: NONE of them use “to-do” lists.

He lists three key reasons a to-do list is a fail:

1. TIME is not accounted for
2. It doesn’t distinguish between URGENT and IMPORTANT tasks
3. It contributes to STRESS

What people tend to do with these lists is cherry pick the easy items and never complete all the tasks.

So what do these highly successful (and Highly Effective) people do: THEY USE A CALENDAR. They actually schedule tasks into their day and let the calendar tell them what to do, rather than their mind & emotions when they look over a pile of tasks.

Here’s the article: Forbes Magazine article July, 10 2015

As Cooper says in the opening, mindfulness helps us get around the stresses of daily life. It means, “being aware of your thoughts, physical sensations, and surroundings”, as he puts it. This may sound trivial until you look carefully to the sentence. Most people are completely unaware of their thoughts, their true present-moment sensations (not just pains or emotions), and what is really happening in the present moment.

Cooper was very skeptical going in. He had a profound experience and said it has changed his life.

13-minute 60 Minutes video (watch in browser):

To put it simply, your mind and body are in this present moment, rather than lost somewhere else in distraction. The most common distraction being the incessant running commentary of thinking or problem solving. Why is that important? You can only ACT in the present moment. You cannot act in the story in the head, being lost in the past, future, or projections of the mind. That’s like trying to take action in a dream. Indeed, many people are stuck in their own dream rather than participating in this moment.

There are also three additional short video segments on the CBS site to view: http://www.cbsnews.com/news/mindfulness-anderson-cooper-60-minutes/

There are literally thousands of forms of meditation. What gives mindfulness the edge is that it’s been scientifically proven in countless studies over 40 years to eliminate depression, anxiety, and stress. Even medications typically just mask symptoms, create side effects, but still don’t eliminate the problem. Mindfulness is being taught at Google and other cutting-edge profitable corporations as well as taught in hospitals to cancer patients.

Mindfulness is something we can see at the highest levels of peak performance as well. Watch the Seattle Seahawks play football and you notice they’re a different kind of team. Pete Carroll, the head coach, has created a training system that has the players be mindful in the chaos of a big game.

If it works for all these people, maybe it will work for you to create a little more peace in your busy day? You are worth trying it out for yourself!

In a brief article on LinkedIn today, Bill Gates says:

“Not many people get to ask Warren Buffett for advice on a regular basis. I feel very lucky in that regard: The dialogue has been invaluable to me, and not only at Microsoft.”

Find out what wisdom Gates gets from Buffet here: http://linkd.in/11YPGWj

On this date, Bill Gates is the second richest billionaire on the planet at an estimated $67 billion. To get there, and make Microsoft so dominant, Bill must have a big ego. A big healthy ego (self-image) has him say, “I know what to do”. He’s really got to trust himself.

What most people don’t see in these “self-made” people is the team they surround themselves with. Typically, very successful people have mentors and coaches. The old term “self-made man” simply meant that his parents didn’t give him all his money. It didn’t mean he was alone in life. .

When Bill started Microsoft, Paul Allen, 3 years Bill’s senior, was not only his business partner but also a mentor and confidant. Steve Jobs looked for mentors, finding Suzuki Roshi (the great Zen teacher) and many other teachers. A big reason Jobs hired John Sculley, CEO of Pepsi, was so Sculley could mentor him and teach him about leadership.

What strikes me about Gates’ revealing statement above is that he asks “advice on a regular basis.” Who do YOU ask for advice on a regular basis or is your ego telling you, “I’ve got this. I need to do it all on my own to prove something”? Who do you check in with REGULARLY to play your best at everything? Who is your sounding board, your bullshit detector, so you aren’t a slave to your ego mind calling all the shots?

Great coaches and mentors, like Buffet, ask powerful questions. You’ll notice that in the Gates article. They help you ask the right questions rather than tell you exactly what to do. A spouse is often a great bullshit detector. They can’t hear the chatter in your mind so they can just ask you better questions that you can on your own. Talking to a therapist regularly can be a great journey to be happier and play a better game. You might find a business mentor that has built a big business already. It could be a one-on-one connection to a spiritual teacher where you can explore true fulfillment. If you are committed to happiness, you wont’ try to do it alone. That’s just the ego trying to make us suffer.

It wasn’t until the 1970s that top athletes thought of getting personal coaches. Sure, a team had a coach, but they thought that was just to push them and keep them from killing each other. But then tennis great Björn Borg showed up at a match with this “coach”. The other players were snickering at him saying, “what a loser, he needs a ‘coach’”. Well, Borg CRUSHED everyone on the court and they all ran out and hired coaches the next day. Sports haven’t been the same since. (BTW, I heard the story directly from a tennis player who got beat by Borg.)

This brings us to Eric Schmidt, the CEO of a little company called Google. Eric talks here in the interview about his coach and even shares his own earlier limiting thought about having a coach. So you see, everyone has the ego voice in their head that wants them to go it alone so they can suffer. But, the top players in the world get coaches, often several, to help them brainstorm, clarify their thoughts, see the big picture, and play bigger.

Maybe it’s time you got a coach? Or, you could just continue hanging out doing the same things over and over expecting different results? It’s 2012 twelve in just a couple days and maybe you’ll imagine making the commitment to actually achieve your New Years’ resolutions and transform your life? We’ll see…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yVfeezxmYcA

Well the truth is, most people don’t even know what passion is. How can you know when you’ve found something if you don’t know what you are looking for?

As a Neuro-Linguist, I typically start with the meaning of words. Words are the greatest power of humans as well as our greatest pain. The misunderstanding of words is the cause of many human sufferings.

What does the word “passion” mean to you? More specifically, what do you see, hear, and feel when you think of the word “passion”? That’s what it means to you. Most people actually make pictures of “enthusiasm”. They see, hear, and feel the idea of lovers, or a person “loving” what they do.

The problem is, “passion” doesn’t mean that! The English word “passion” actually comes from the 12th century when someone coined it from the Greek work in the Bible describing the “suffering” of Christ. The word actually means “suffering” or “enduring”. Oops! Don’t believe me? Look it up!

So, can you see why so many people have trouble with passion? Most people today are obsessed with comfort. They drink it, eat it, wear it, buy it. They expect it in their relationships and in their work life. If you seek comfort you can’t have passion, by definition. If you aren’t willing to suffer for a worthy ideal, you probably will never get it.

This reminds me of one of my favorite quotes:

“A man who won’t die for something is not fit to live.”

~ Martin Luther King Jr.

Remember, this doesn’t mean you MUST suffer. It means you must be WILLING to suffer. That your ideal for others is so joyful that some personal suffering is trivial in comparison. There’s a huge difference. Clearing up the language of your mind can have massive transformational effect on your life. I know, I do this work with people almost every day.