Many people may know that I started my career by being a broke and busted nightclub singer. What people may not know is how I developed and used specific life principles helped me become one of the top speakers in the world and build a successful business.
More importantly though, these are the principles I used to build a successful life! They have helped me build a marriage where we continue to be like newlyweds, even after 30 years, with no arguments, in over 25 years.
I have used these principles to help me sleep well every night…and to live well every day:
- Be Positive – You must make a commitment to be positive, even in negative and challenging situations. Choose to be positive! Every day you have a choice whether you are going to be an optimist or a pessimist.
- Be Purposeful – Make a decision to be purposeful in your actions. Don’t just be busy to be busy! Life is busy! And if you are busy, be busy with a purpose. Have clarity of purpose and don’t waste time on things that have no purpose in helping you achieve your goals.
- Plan and Set Goals – Nothing great was built without a plan; a game plan, a war plan or a building plan. You need to have a plan and set goals. Goals help you focus your energies. Yet many people have not set goals because they don’t know how. We have created a page on my website specifically designed to help you set your goals for the year. Visit my Gold Medals Goals page at www.jolleyu.com/gold
- Don’t’ Panic! – Once you start on your plan you will have setbacks, not maybe, you will! So when you do have setbacks, don’t panic! When life goes crazy, don’t go crazy with it. Whatever you do, make a point to stay calm, and think your way through the problem!
- Only Quality People – Who you hang out with is who you will become; so only hang with quality people. If you hang out with 9 idiots, you will become #10! So, hang out only with positive people. Don’t spend time with people who talk only about other people and mindless things! Hang with people who talk about ideas and your successful ideas will grow!
- Be Persistent – If you are going to reach your goals it is critical that you persist. Persistence is the action of continuing to try! When you first started walking, you fell down but kept getting back up, and you learned to walk, then to run. The key was you kept trying! Imagine if you had stopped trying the first time you fell down. You must keep trying! You must persist!
- Have Perseverance – Many think persistence and perseverance are the same thing, but they are quite different. Persistence is an action while perseverance is an attitude. It is an attitude where you make up your mind that you will not give up or give in and you will hold, hang on and endure to the end! It is a mindset where you refuse to throw in the towel.
- Develop Impatient Patience – Anything that must grow will take time, and therefore will take patience. It is called the principle of Seed, Time & Harvest. Yet, you can have impatience with that which takes patience by helping the process. You can water, fertilize and build a shelter around that which you are trying to grow, so that you can grow it much more rapidly than others think is possible!
- Be Passionate! – I am passionate about life, about love and about everything I do. I am even passionate about riding my bicycle and playing tennis. Whatever I decide to spend time on, I also bring passion to it. Make the decision to enjoy life fully and be passionate about it!
- Learn to have Purposeful Prayers – Purposeful prayers are prayers that are clear and focused. When I tore my Achilles” heel playing tennis, the doctors said it would take 3 months to heal. I went to prayer, and asked my friends to pray for my foot being healed. And six weeks later, I was healed and back playing tennis! I learned there is power in purposeful prayers!
