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By [http://ezinearticles.com/?expert=Capri_Jones]Capri Jones

It is never too late to make your own personal development plan. No, a personal development plan is not just for people who are still trying to get their careers on the road. It doesn’t matter if you are already about to reach the retirement age, a good personal development plan can still make a lot of difference in your life. Always remember that personal development is not just for people who are expected to climb the corporate ladder.

Formulating Your Plan

There are a few things that you need to consider when formulating your personal development plan. First you need to set short term, medium term and long term goals. Setting attainable goals is very important. Never set your goals to high or too low. Too high goals can lead to frustrations while too low goals may make you mediocre.

Second, you need to determine the steps that you need to take in order to reach your goals.

Third, you need to learn for other peoples’ experience.

Fourth, be prepared to embrace changes. Always remember that if you want to improve your life, you need to be more open to changes and take full responsibility of all the consequences of these changes in your life. Yes, it is never easy to embrace changes, especially big changes, but changes are essential if you want to get somewhere so you need to be ready for anything.

You may need to give up some things in your life to get somewhere. Hopefully you will find that what you gave up has been replaced by something even better.

To insure that your [http://www.thriving.blognetworkmarketing.com]personal development plan leads to the success that you desire, visit my blog [http://www.thriving.blognetworkmarketing.com]Thriving in Life for more information on creating a successful lifestyle.

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By [http://ezinearticles.com/?expert=Don_Dewsnap]Don Dewsnap

People who have not studied the principles of quality often think of quality as a goal to be achieved, and get discouraged because it seems so difficult to achieve. This idea is unfortunate, because it shuts the door on success. In any endeavor, from parenting to playing pool to getting a job or a promotion, using quality as a tool will lead to success, inevitably and by definition.

To make or do something better is to increase quality. Making and doing things better is a mark of success. A simple conclusion follows: to increase quality is to achieve success. The best part of this is that everyone can do it. This tool never gets dull, never gets lost, and always works. The only time it doesn’t work is when it isn’t used.

The first major principle of quality is this: Quality is an Attitude. This can be interpreted a lot of different ways, but all it means is that a person believes that making something better is a good idea and a good direction to travel. Sadly, not everyone believes this. People who want things to stay the same, or who get some perverse satisfaction from failure, do not have a quality attitude. They are not using the tool of quality, and for them, success is out of reach.

So the first step to using quality as a tool toward success is to decide that better is a good direction. This comes before any thought of how to make things better. It is just a decision, or you could even say, a recognition of truth. Better is preferable to the same or worse.

The second major principle of quality is this: Quality Leads to Opposition. This principle is the main reason people lose their grip on the first principle. The good student gets ridiculed as a bookworm or teacher’s pet. The productive office worker is called a brown-noser. The entrepreneur is told by friends and family he is risking too much. The perfectionist meets impatience, and the closet author is bombarded by statistics of failure. Even the best parents get criticized by people who have different opinions on raising children.

So expect negative feedback when you do something better, and ignore it. Arguing with criticism or insults does no good at all. You can laugh at them if you want.

The third major principle of quality is this: Quality Takes Time. Please understand this one. The time involved can be seconds, minutes, or years, depending on what you are doing. It might take two extra seconds to make sure you are filing a folder in the right place, or twenty years to become a chess champion. Glancing over an email for any obvious errors before you send it might cost you half a minute. Take the time.

In order to make or do something better, first you have to actually make or do something, so most of the time is already spent. In comparison, making or doing it better only adds a small fraction to the total time, but leads to much greater accomplishment. For one thing, you will find that you make fewer errors which would cost much more time to correct.

Keep in mind also that improvements accumulate. Small improvements add up. Small successes and minor achievements add up. Just keep making them, and after a while, the results will be large. If it seems like it is taking too long, just compare where you are now with where you were earlier, before you started applying the quality tool on a regular basis.

Beyond the major principles, there are four applied principles and a number of specific actions, but the three major principles of quality are a good starting point, and will take you far. Apply them to your work. Apply them to relationships. Apply them in school. Apply them to anything and everything you do. You will find, almost immediately, that your life will begin to be better, and your future will look brighter.

Quality is a tool, not a goal or a way to describe something. If you treat quality as a goal, you had better hope you never achieve it, because then you will stop trying to make things better, and when that happens, things start to get worse. There are no upper limits on quality, or on making things better. Thus there are no limits on success.

Don Dewsnap has spent years studying quality and its principles and applications. Now he has put his knowledge into a readable, useable book: Anyone Can Improve His or Her Life: The Principles of Quality. Read more about and buy the book in paperback or as an e-book at [http://www.principles-of-quality.com]Principles-of-Quality.com or as a paperback at [http://www.bn.com]Barnes & Noble.

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By [http://ezinearticles.com/?expert=Andrew_Wertheim]Andrew Wertheim

What does success mean to you? Maybe it means getting to watch your kids graduate from college, or finishing first-place in a marathon you trained hard for. Maybe it is becoming financially comfortable, or wealthy, or even becoming a millionaire. The word means many things to many people, but in general, success can best be defined as the point in time when a specific goal is achieved.

As young children your goals are limitless. You aspire to become President, to make a million dollars, to become a lion tamer at the circus, or to become an astronaut and land on the moon. Over time, your goals tend to change for many reasons. What is important, however, is to always remind yourself of the things you want to accomplish.

The first step in achieving your goals is to set them. Take out a couple sheets of paper. On the left side at the very top, write today’s date. On the top right-hand side write you age (don’t worry, you will be the only one who sees this). In the very middle, write in big, vibrant colors, the words “(your name)’s Goals”. Now… begin writing. Write everything that comes to mind, no matter how crazy, hard, unbelievable, impossible or ridiculous it might seem. Take as much time as you need and write down 100 personal goals. The trick is, don’t stop writing. Just let the ideas flow right off your head.

You might find it easiest during the first five or so minutes. After that, it might get a little harder to come up with things, but the secret is, your most important goals wont come out until you get towards the end of this exercise. Congratulations. You have taken the first step towards a brighter future.

Now, with your list of 100 goals written on the left, take a few minutes and read through each of them. Picture each one as vividly as you can in your mind. If, for example, one of your goals is to build a strong relationship with your family, picture yourself sitting around the dinner table sharing laughs with one-another. If you want to buy a home of your own, picture exactly what that house looks like as you drive up the driveway, and what it smells like as you walk through the front door for the first time. Give it sound and feeling. Imagining your goals in detail is very important. The more vivid and intense you imagine them, the easier it will become to achieve them.

Your mind works in amazing ways. When you visualize a situation, even one that is not reality, your subconscious tries to figure out different ways to get there. Essentially it is like tricking your mind into believing something to be real. Keep your list in your purse or wallet. Read it at least twice a day; once when you wake up and again before you go to sleep. Try to picture each goal and what it feels like to accomplish it. You are training your mind to accept this outcome as reality and in turn your subconscious will continue to find ways to make it happen.

As you read through each goal, make a decision. Ask yourself one question: If I only had six months to live, is this something I would absolutely have to do? Out of your list of 100 goals, you may find 10 to 15 things you with-out-a-doubt must do before you die. Write these 10 or so down on the right half of the paper. These are your most desired aspirations. They are the things you should give top priority to and devote most of your time accomplishing them at all costs. This side is called your “bucket list”. Things to do before you “kick the bucket”.

It’s amazing how many people don’t actually do this exercise. Even though they claim to have many goals in life, they’ve never taken the time to write them down. After a while, what may have been a deep desire at one point in your life can fade away. Writing your goals down enables you to read them over and over again helping to remind you where you are heading and keeping you focused. In fact, writing them down is the first major step in actually achieving them.

There’s no time like the present. Go out and get started on your goals. Ask yourself what success means to you. Take the time to invest in your future. With a little time and some effort, you can do anything you put your mind to. Thanks for reading and don’t forget; You’re going to have a great life!

Check out my site at http://www.simplesuccesssecrets.blogspot.com for more tips on how to succeed in anything you do. And don’t forget, you can sign up for automatic updates to this site through the RSS feed or with the [http://www.feedburner.com/fb/a/emailverify]Email Subscription Service Thanks for reading and don’t forget; You’re going to have a great life!

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By [http://ezinearticles.com/?expert=Louise_Brookes]Louise Brookes

Fierce resolve is something that cannot be beaten. Some people seem to be born with it. They know exactly what they want to do and they then spend their lives single mindedly doing it. Then there are those of us who admire them from the sidelines in wonder. While we are dithering, prevaricating and worrying about worrying – they have sailed around the world, climbed the highest mountain, dug wells in Africa, gone too space and won the Open at Wimbledon. All while we stood before two items in a shop wondering whether to get the one with the higher back or not!

Single-mindedness does not belong solely to the realms of athletes and A-students, it is an attitude that can be cultivated and you could call it magic, for it is the art of moulding reality to take the form of our dreams.

Reality can and does bend at our will. This is where the phrase fierce resolve clarifies itself. When you are firmly decided upon a goal, you cultivate the resolution to achieve. You don’t do this half-heartedly. Whether your desire is to be wealthier or healthier, you do it with every ounce of your being in total accord with your destination. If it is wealth you want – you eat, sleep and breathe that feeling of wealthiness that you want to realise – you live off that anticipation, and then you do everything you can to get there. Everything that pops into your mind that seems possible to do, you do, you exhaust it as an avenue of possibility. It either works or it doesn’t work. The point is you’ve done it and ruled it out and learned.

When I say ‘fierce’ I mean fierce. When you wake up you remind yourself of the presence of your enemy – ‘Yourself, your negativity, your doubt, your disbelief, your lassitude’ for here they are all present and correct whether you invite them or not, whether you recognise them or not. Any obstacle that arises and obscures your goal is your enemy. Often it is subtle. It is the insistent voice in your head that says ‘Someone else has probably done this already’ or ‘Are you sure this is what you want’ or ‘You’ll never be good enough’ and these are the enemies you have to fight, even though sometimes you forget that they are there, and they slip up like samurai – but then a moment of distraction occurs and you remember ‘Didn’t I want to sail on a Tall Ship’ or ‘Go to Mexico’ or ‘Learn Salsa’. Something, something that nags you and is like a gaping hole of unfulfilment gnawing at you. Perhaps you hide in a bag of chips, or a pint of beer; when what you should be doing is fighting. Teeth bared, snarling, claws at the ready to pounce on the next unsuspecting doubt that threatens your precious ambition. And it is precious, it is your life – it is your beautiful goodness. The adventurous spirit in you. That vein of insight that only you have and nobody else on the entire planet can do or be it like you can. They cannot turn that piece of wood like you can – and they haven’t those exact words that you so easily use to put ease in someone’s heart when they most need it.

It’s funny, I have known so many people over the years and all of them delighted me in some way that was their way and their way alone. They had a way of being themselves that I loved and that they weren’t even aware of. Oh, but it’s a beautiful thing and you all know what I am talking about

So this fierce resolve has to come about, sometimes, only after we’ve reached rock bottom. We don’t have to, but often it’s in our psyche to have to go there first before we are able to find the belief we need in ourselves to reach for ‘impossible heights’ Then it’s up to us to remember, at all times of day, the reaches of passion; because sometimes our passion is quiet, buried beneath something perfunctory and we’re in a bit of a daze -busy doing but not seeming to get anywhere and time’s just passing and we’re wondering where our lives have gone. It is in those moments that we snap at someone close to us, or drive up the curb or trip over our toes, because we’re not there – we’re not in our blood. we could be anyone in that moment, any Jo.

You probably want to be healthy and you probably want to be wealthy but have you thought about being wise. Being wise and not tripping up over your toes. Doing everything you can to get to your goal. Your dream is there, in you, there’s a simple picture that you hold somewhere; a way of being, a quiet moment, some warmth, an emotion, something physical, a new car, cheaper insurance or a long cherished dream. Whatever it is don’t continue relegating it so that it remains a dream. Live by it as though it is about to happen and do everything you can to be there. You want to be comfortably out of your comfort zone; don’t forget to live this life now in it’s best possible way – don’t over-exert yourself, but be kind.

I don’t know why but now that I have started this journey – there really isn’t enough time in the day. I stay up till late, I wake up in the middle of the night with more ideas than I have the time to do them. I get stiff from sitting typing for too long, because of this thing called ‘fierce resolve’. It makes me labour without thinking about time or food, and sometimes it’s only thirst or the need for the loo that forces me to stop whatever I’m doing to tend ridiculously, to my basic needs. You can become a very unkind ‘potential’, potential successful business person, potential best selling author, potential world famous actor. Whatever your potential don’t let the realisation of it take away from something that is more important than anything else. The only human magic I think, ‘kindness’.

I remember watching the Princess Diana Concert along with about everyone whose got a TV on the planet – about 1 billion people. I remembered where I was when she died and how shocked I was, and also surprised about how much loss I felt for someone I didn’t even know. She had innate kindness and everyone loved her for being that and being beautiful, and being herself with all the vagaries and fragility that comes with being a human-not-hiding.

Subconsciously, Princess Diana had formed a hope in my mind, a hope I didn’t even know was there until she went, and with her my hope – or so I thought. Someone had been out there doing what I wanted to see being done; she tried to be truthful; which is so hard to be to yourself let alone to the whole world, and she took what power she had and gave it to people who had none saying kindly with her whole being – here use mine. She sincerely hoped it would help and sometimes that is the best we can do. The best we can manage is to hope; to live bravely with our fear that things won’t work, and to share what we can that’s simple and good.

During the program there were one billion people remembering Princess Diana. There were one billion people who weren’t fighting each other, who weren’t stealing someones’ lands, or possessions or life. There were so many people who were just sitting down watching the TV, sharing, each one with their own dreams, their own culture, each one very different from the next.

I felt a healing in a way, for something you don’t expect to need healing for, because it wasn’t my grief to have, not really. But nevertheless it was there and it was real; experience doesn’t lie. Yes, Princess Diana lives on through her sons and they carry that responsibility with so much integrity, but I wonder if she doesn’t now live on in all of us. Princess Diana was a ‘beacon light of a hope’ in Martin Luther King’ words; for something none of us could phrase; only translate into feeling and that after all is a far deeper communication.

She gave us with her passing her responsibility to share; to use what power we have, what ‘resolve’ we have and share it with those who do not have either our freedom, or our resources of health or wealth.

When I went grape picking last summer I worked with about twenty Moroccans, and upon meeting me they were trying to establish where I was from and I said ‘Je suis Anglaise’ and immediately one of them said delightedly ‘Ah Princess Diana’ and peered at me. I was a bit taken aback. Suddenly Diana had become a sort of passport in common understanding between me and these new people I had just met, whose culture and religion I didn’t have much of a clue about. We went on to commiserate with each other about her tragic fate, but I couldn’t help feeling a kind of delight that a door had been opened and I had had to do nothing to open it for it had already been done, and strangely enough it was Princess Diana that had done it, nine years after her death, she’s still working her magic. Her ‘fierce resolve’ may perhaps have gone further with her death than it would had she remained here with us. Her ’soul force’ is an inspiration, for soul force doesn’t die. It is something we all have and we should use it.

I am tired of violence and war. I am tired of political squabbling while vulnerable people are withering under the bullets and knives of men and women who are supposed to be protecting the unprotected not persecuting them. I think this tiredness is shared by many people and it is a statement that our soul force is now willing and able to meet physical force. ‘Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness’ are human words, they are words for ordinary people; they are precious words that stand as symbols for our peace and our well being. They are words that cross borders and boundaries, races, religions and creeds. Where they are outlawed and citizens of the world suffer unduly because of such neglect, then our human kindness is necessary, and our fierce resolve is necessary. ‘The majestic heights’ that Martin Luther King spoke of, of ‘meeting physical force with soul force’ apply to the whole world. ‘Their freedom is inextricably bound to our freedom, we cannot walk alone’ does not now apply only to the apartheid of the sixties but to the entire planet in the twenty first century.

I thought recently about how I imagined an old granny, upon realising she is in the company of a terrorist, going for him with her handbag. It was a really wonderful simplistic day dream, that made me full of glee because I could really see it, which means it’s possible. There are so many of us that know how to live together and do so, and then there are those that don’t yet know. When a person threatens another person in any way it’s so rude. Bombing is rude – it’s not just violent, it’s a total infringement of privacy and personal space. You might think I’m overlooking the real tragedy of such methods but I want to focus in on this infringement. Missiles, mortars, screaming fighter planes, bullets and the intention to do harm, are rude, and I resolve to say as much.

For us ordinary folk who just want to get on with our lives, to go about our work, grow food, watch TV, have the odd festivity; we have nothing to throw back at bombs that fall from the sky or on our streets. We don’t much understand them, we might think that bombing is a necessary evil, we might put up with them stoically or take to the streets in protest. We might get angry, upset and take vows of revenge or start our own jihad – some of us. But we are ordinary people and as such we don’t want war, we don’t like it and we go to it reluctantly.

In the past ordinary people have been capable of extraordinary feats and I think it’s about time ordinary people revealed their superhero not-so-softcentres; and said we are unwilling to put up with being ordinary. We are unwilling to put up with wars over wealth and resources, unwilling to stand idly by and quiet while others are suffering at the hands of those who use their power carelessly. Freedom, many of us have had won for us, some of us have not yet tasted it and some of us are having it taken away as I write. I am indignant over any rude infringement of anyone’s freedom on this earth and in my own way I will no longer stand for it, in my own way and for my own dignity and sensitivity I will ‘hew out of the mountain of dispair a stone of hope’. It might be in another’s country that they must win their own freedom as we have slowly done, but countries are no longer separate, this is at last, one world, whether we like it or not.

I am disturbed that Japan who gave up war and their own military after the second world war should be selling arms to Darfur now. China has done the same, but I was recently buoyed by their withdrawal of the arms ship going to Zimbabwe. I disapprove of this taking advantage of countries suffering instability. I’m unhappy that the British and US government intervene in one dictatorship and not another.

My words might fall harmlessly on the sand, but my soul force will not. My ‘fierce resolve’ is that everyone has at least one taste of freedom, a taste that lingers and can be savoured long after I’ve left the earth. I feel like by writing, I’m like that old granny – there’s not a lot that’s in my power to do. I haven’t got millions of pounds. I can’t send armies here there and everywhere or pay politicians to be under my sway, but I can wave my handbag around and give blood curdling yells of disapproval. I’m enjoying a special kind of peace, a costly one I think I have been privileged to know the value of and I’m not about to waste my life letting it amount to nothing.

Life is [http://poitiveimpactliving.blogspot.com]a beautiful thing and we should all of us get to see that; those who cause suffering and those who are suffering. ‘Their freedom is inextricably bound to our freedom – we cannot walk alone’ Martin Luther King, means just that -it means that ‘We are one person’, Pueblo Indian.

I’ve been an adventure sports instructor; teaching rock climbing, surfing, kayaking and abseiling. I’ve worked for some years as an apprentice of Tibetan Medicine at the Eden Medical Centre in London, learning and practising Herbal Medicine, Massage and Acupressure. I lived on a glacier in Iceland for several weeks when I was 16yrs old, with the British Schools Exploration Society and since then have gravitated towards Alpine Climbing – completing the Alpine Apprenticeship in Switzerland in ‘02 with the renowned Plas Y Brenin Mountain Outdoor Centre. I have a background in Ecological Living helping to set up a housing co-op and living in various fields (literally)implementing renewable energy, permaculture and living machines and planting a lot of trees.

When I was nine years old I had to attend a special school ‘Pilgrims’ because of crippling eczema and asthma, which I have overcome. I have also overcome M.E or Chronic Fatigue Syndrome which I contracted age eighteen after a bout of glandular fever. Presently I’m setting up a Homestudy Bushcraft course and writing a book.

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