Advice for setting and keeping your New Year resolutions . . .

A new study shows belly fat is different from other fat, and doubles the risk of premature death.

I recently received the following note:

Dear Kevin,

Warren Buffett, one of the smartest and most successful businessmen of our time, was recently asked what he thought was the best investment anyone could make in these difficult times.

His answer was fast and simple …

“The most important investment you can make is in yourself.”

That could very well be the best advice Mr. Buffett has ever offered. If ever there was a time to take control of your future, it’s now.

Never before have we faced such perilous times.

A free-falling stock market is jeopardizing the comfortable retirement of millions. Once rock-solid, mainstay companies are struggling to survive. Millions of blue and white-collar jobs are on the line. In fact, a just-released government report talks about 533,000 jobs lost in November alone — the most in a single month in 34 years.

And a lot of experts agree — the worst is yet to come.

I don’t know what the future holds, but regardless of what lies ahead the advice offered by Warren Buffet is sterling. The best investment that you can ever make is in yourself.

What does that mean for you?

We all have have different skill sets, different personalities, different hopes and dreams. It is for that reason that you are be best person to decide how to invest in yourself. It would be nice if you could simply read a book, or listen to a CD and come up with the answer. However, you must search your heart and do serious self-reflection to put together the best self-development plan for yourself.

No one can help you with the answer, but there is help to walk you through the process. If you find yourself in this situation I suggest that you start with
Strengthsfinder 2.0. It comes complete with an online assessment to help you discover your strengths and leverage them for success.

* * *

DO YOU HAVE THE OPPORTUNITY TO DO WHAT YOU DO BEST EVERY DAY?

Chances are, you don’t. All too often, our natural talents go untapped. From the cradle to the cubicle, we devote more time to fixing our shortcomings than to developing our strengths.

To help people uncover their talents, Gallup introduced the first version of its online assessment, StrengthsFinder, in the 2001 management book Now, Discover Your Strengths. The book spent more than five years on the bestseller lists and ignited a global conversation, while StrengthsFinder helped millions to discover their top five talents.

In its latest national bestseller, StrengthsFinder 2.0, Gallup unveils the new and improved version of its popular assessment, language of 34 themes, and much more (see below for details). While you can read this book in one sitting, you’ll use it as a reference for decades.

Loaded with hundreds of strategies for applying your strengths, this new book and accompanying website will change the way you look at yourself — and the world around you — forever.

AVAILABLE EXCLUSIVELY IN THE NEW & UPGRADED EDITION OF STRENGTHSFINDER 2.0
(using the unique access code included with each book)

* A new and upgraded edition of the StrengthsFinder assessment

* A personalized Strengths Discovery and Action-Planning Guide for applying your strengths in the next week, month, and year

* A more customized version of your top five theme report

* 50 Ideas for Action (10 strategies for building on each of your top five themes)

* The more user-friendly StrengthsFinder 2.0 companion website, with a strengths community area, library of downloadable discussion guides and activities, a strengths screensaver, and a program for creating display cards of your top five themes

* * *

* * *

STRENGTHS: THE NEXT GENERATION

Q&A with author Tom Rath

(From the Gallup Management Journal; interviewed by Jennifer Robison)

Last month, StrengthsFinder 2.0 hit the bookstores. Book browsers, no doubt, had many questions, and among them was probably “Didn’t I already read a book about this?”

Well, actually, yes. But the topic was worth revisiting for two reasons. In the six years since the release of Now, Discover Your Strengths, more than 2 million people have taken the Clifton StrengthsFinder assessment, which means billions of people have not yet had the opportunity. The second reason is that Gallup researchers just haven’t been able to let the topic rest. Over the past decade, they’ve done more surveys, more interviews, and more studies; they’ve prodded and poked and analyzed. And they realized that there’s a lot more to understanding human talent than most people know. Those who are familiar with the StrengthsFinder assessment know that it is designed to uncover certain key talents — patterns of thought, feeling, and behavior that can be productively applied. These patterns are categorized into 34 broad themes — such as Achiever, Ideation, and Relator — and those themes indicate and predict one’s innate and unique talents. Those talents, when multiplied by the investment of time spent practicing, developing skills, and building knowledge, can become strengths. Some of this is just common sense; it seems intuitive that your performance will be better if you’re doing what you naturally do well. But some of it seems counterintuitive and runs directly against conventional wisdom: No amount of training will help you excel in your areas of weakness. You can’t do anything you want to do — or be anything you want to be — because you’re just not going to be good at everything. But if you work with your talents, you can be extraordinary. StrengthsFinder has resonated with the business community because there’s a direct link between talent development and performance. In this interview, Tom Rath, author of StrengthsFinder 2.0, discusses what Gallup scientists have learned since the publication of the first book, what more there is to discover about your talents, and why it’s bad to focus on your employees’ weaknesses, but simply cruel to ignore them completely.

GMJ: Why the new book?

Tom Rath: StrengthsFinder 2.0 is an effort to get the core message and language out to a much broader audience. We had no idea how well received the first strengths book would be by general readers — it was oriented more toward managers — or that the energy and excitement would continue to grow. More than two million people have taken the StrengthsFinder assessment, and each month, the number of people learning about their talents goes up. But readers keep asking us: “Now that I know about my strengths, what do I do next?” So we went back and surveyed hundreds of them and asked them how they apply their talents. Then we whittled their suggestions down to the ten best ideas for each theme. We also added more than five thousand Strengths Insights to version 2.0 that allow us to offer more individualized theme descriptions than we could before. So, instead of general descriptions of your top five talent themes, in 2.0, you get a talent profile so unique that you’re unlikely to share even a sentence with someone else. And as I said, the first book was really written for a business audience. People have had trouble retrofitting the theme descriptions if they are in non-management roles, but they’ve tried. This book helps readers apply strengths theory to any type of role and gives them ideas to help them apply their talents in their daily life.

GMJ: It’s been six years since the first book was published, and Gallup has done hundreds of thousands more interviews. Have you discovered anything new about talents and strengths? Have you altered your original premise?

Rath: No, but we’ve seen more and more evidence that demonstrates that focusing on your talents is important. We did a survey in 2004 that examined what happens when your manager ignores you, focuses on your strengths, or focuses on your weaknesses. We found that if your manager focuses on your strengths, your chances of being actively disengaged go down to one in one hundred. However, if your manager primarily focuses on your weaknesses, your chances of being actively disengaged are 22%, and if your manager ignores you, that percentage rises to 40%.

GMJ: Why such a high rate of disengagement among those who are ignored?

Rath: It basically mirrors the psychology of raising kids — being completely ignored is the worst possible psychological state. You would actually feel better if your manager went from ignoring you to focusing on what you do wrong all the time, because then at least she’s paying attention to you.

GMJ: Did your new research turn up anything that surprised you?

Rath: We’ve talked a lot about how strengths can help you be more of who you are, and you get more out of your best players, and all of that. But in the last ten years, we’ve also found that it’s a good strategy just to wipe out the extreme negativity in the workplace. I get this question almost every time I talk to a group: “What do I do about that one person who just drags everyone down every day?” My glib answer was to get rid of the person. I always thought there were some people who were just destined to be disengaged in their jobs because that was their personality, and no matter how hard managers tried, there wasn’t much they could do with some of those people. But the data from the last five years would suggest that much of that epidemic of disengagement is fixable. More than I ever would have guessed, it helps tremendously if a manager starts by focusing on someone’s strengths. You may not take someone who’s actively disengaged and make him into your most engaged employee, but it will help get him out of that mindset where he’s scaring off colleagues and customers.

GMJ: So is that the business case to be made for putting people in roles that play to their strengths? Rath: I think it’s the secondary business case. The main business case is that people have a lot more fun and get a lot more done if they’re able to spend time in areas where they have some natural talent. I think that’s a fundamental principle that hasn’t changed much at all. The one thing that we were clear about in StrengthsFinder 2.0 is that the American dream ideal that “You can be anything you want if you just try hard enough” is detrimental. This is especially true when people buy into it hook, line, and sinker. You may not be able to be anything you want to be, but you can be a lot more of who you already are. [Taking] StrengthsFinder is just a starting point; it’s step one of a hundred in figuring out the areas where you have the most potential for growth. GMJ: What is the most challenging aspect of your ongoing strengths research?

Rath: While hundreds of people in our organization continue to research this topic each year, our greatest challenge might be incorporating the new research while making the message even more succinct and applicable to a wider audience. So while we have hundreds of new case studies and meta-analyses about strengths — and about employee engagement and business outcomes — we tried to stay as close as we could to the basics.

GMJ: The Clifton StrengthsFinder assessment has always categorized talents into thirty-four themes. Have you ever considered adding or subtracting any, or refining them further?

Rath: Yes, we looked at that extensively as we started to review our plan for the updated version of the assessment. We found that so far, the thirty-four themes have done a good job of describing much of what we’ve learned since releasing the first version of the assessment. If enough people had made a case about a specific theme that didn’t exist, we were open to adding that theme. I think we probably will continue to investigate whether there are themes that emerge that we haven’t yet picked up on. But there wasn’t a real strong case for any additions at this time.

GMJ: What would you most like to accomplish with StrengthsFinder 2.0?

Rath: Our big goal and mission as a company is to help people do more of what they do well. We’ve topped two million completed StrengthsFinder assessments, and it’s not too hard to imagine that number getting to twenty million soon. An organization that exists to help people has a responsibility to get better and better. By reaching beyond our initial audience, we help people get the latest and greatest research. But we also hope it helps people live better lives.

* * *

By: Brian Tracy

The major mental obstacle to financial success is that some people believe that they don’t really deserve to be rich.

The Biggest Demotivator of All
They have been raised with a steady drumbeat of destructive criticism, as I was, that has led them to conclude, at an unconscious level, that they don’t really deserve to be successful and happy. The worst effect of negative experiences in childhood, which are all too common, is that when people actually do succeed as the result of hard work, they feel guilty. These guilt feelings then cause them to do things to get rid of the money, to throw it away. They spend it or invest it foolishly. They lend it, lose it or give it away. They engage in self-sabotage, in the form of overeating, excessive drinking, drug usage, marital infidelity and often dramatic personality changes. To change your results with money, you have to change your attitude toward it.

Treat Money With Care and Attention
The fact is that money is very much like a lover. It must be courted and coaxed and flattered and treated with care and attention. It gravitates toward people who respect it and value it and are capable of doing worthwhile things with it. It flows through the fingers and flees from people who do not understand it, or who do not take proper care of it.

Become Skilled With Money
Sometimes people say that they are not very good with money. But being good with money is a skill that anyone can learn through practice. Usually, saying that one is not very good with money is merely an excuse or a rationalization for the fact that the person is not very successful or disciplined with money. The person has not learned how to acquire it or to hold on to it.

Be A No-Limit Thinker
The starting point of accumulating money is for you to believe that you have an unlimited capacity to obtain all the money that you will ever need. Look upon yourself as a financial success just waiting for a place to happen. And see yourself as deserving all you can honestly acquire.

Open Any Door
Money is good. Money gives you choices and enables you to live your life the way you want to live it. Money opens doors for you that would have been closed in its absence. But just like anything, an obsession can be hurtful. If a person becomes so preoccupied with money that he loses sight of the fact that money is merely a tool that is to be used to acquire happiness, then money becomes a harmful thing.

Money is Neutral
The Bible says, “The love of money is the root of all evil.” It doesn’t say, “money is the root of all evil.” It says, “the love of money is the root of all evil.” It is the preoccupation with money, to the exclusion of the really important things in life that is the problem, not the money itself. Money is essential to our lives in society. It is also neutral. It is neither good nor bad. It is only the way that it is acquired and the uses to which it is put that determines whether it is helpful or hurtful.

Action Exercises
Here are two things you can do immediately to put these ideas into action:

First, recognize and accept that virtually everyone who has money today at one time was broke and probably broke for a long time. Then they learned the skills of accumulating money and they are now financially independent. Whatever they have done, you can probably do as well.

Second, become a student of money from this day forward. Study it, learn about it and apply the lessons you discover toward your own financial life until you begin to attract more and more money in your direction.

__________

What’s the next best thing to losing weight? Looking like you’ve lost weight. Here are a few ideas to help you appear to have lost weight…

Relationships don’t come easy, but too much bad advice does. Frequently, there is too much emphasis placed upon confrontation and negotiation in the counsel given. Looking for Biblical counsel on how to resolve conflicts? Consider this approach commended throughout Scripture:

“A man’s wisdom gives him patience; it is to his glory to overlook an offense” (Prov. 19:11; cf. 12:16; 15:18; 20:3).

“Starting a quarrel is like breaching a dam; so drop the matter before a dispute breaks out” (Prov. 17:14; cf. 26:17).

“Above all, love each other deeply, because love covers a multitude of sins” (1 Peter 4:8; cf. Prov. 10:12; 17:9)

“Be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in love” (Eph. 4:2).

“Bear with each other and forgive whatever grievances you may have against one another. Forgive as the Lord forgave you” (Col. 3:13; cf. Eph. 4:32).

The above passages were taken from The Peacemaker: A Biblical Guide to Resolving Personal ConflictThe Peacemaker: A Biblical Guide to Resolving Personal Conflict by Ken Sande, Updated Edition (Grand Rapids, Baker Books, 2003) p. 82.

If you could change your occupation, what would you do?

(Share your answers in the comments below.)

“Excellence is not a skill. It is an attitude.”
– Ralph Marston, Author

“Anyone who stops learning is old, whether at twenty or eighty. Anyone who keeps learning stays young. The greatest thing in life is to keep your mind young.”
– Henry Ford, Industrialist

“My father taught me that reputation, not money, was the most important thing in the world.”
– William Rosenberg, Dunkin Donuts founder

“I think there’s a great beauty to having problems. That’s one of the ways we learn.”
– Herbie Hancock, musician

“Every time we’ve moved ahead in IBM, it was because someone was willing to take a chance, put his head on the block and try something new.”
– Thomas J. Watson, executive

“He who hesitates is poor.”
– Mel Brooks, director

“I think luck is the sense to recognize an opportunity and the ability to take advantage of it. The man who can smile at his breaks and grab his chances gets on.”
– Samuel Goldwyn, movie executive

“If I have seen farther than others, it is because I was standing on the shoulder of giants.”
– Isaac Newton, scientist

“Only he who keeps his eye fixed on the far horizon will find his right road.”
~ Dag Hammarskjold, statesman

“Your most unhappy customers are your greatest source of learning”
– Bill Gates, Microsoft Founder

“Some of us will do our jobs well and some will not, but we will and be judged by only one thing: the result.”
– Vince Lombardi, football coach

“We succeed only as we identify in life, or in war, or in anything else, a single overriding objective, and make all other considerations bend to that one objective.”
– Dwight Eisenhower, 34th U.S. president

“It’s no accident that things are more likely to go your way when you stop worrying about whether you’re going to win or lose, and focus all your full attention on what’s happening right at this moment.”
– Phil Jackson, basketball coach

“Investment decisions or personal decisions don’t wait for the picture to be clarified.”
– Andrew Grove, executive

“We are formed and molded by our thoughts. Those whose minds are shaped by selfless thoughts give joy when they speak or act. Joy follows them like a shadow that never leaves them.”
– Buddha

“Sometimes we stare so long at a door that is closing that we see too late the one that is open.”
– Alexander Graham Bell, Inventor

“Learning is not compulsory, but neither is survival.”
– W. Edwards Deming, quality expert

“If you have no confidence in self, you are twice defeated in the race of life. With confidence, you have won even before you have started.”
– Marcus Tullius Cicero, Roman Philosopher

“Each success only buys an admission ticket to a more difficult problem.”
– Henry Kissinger, secretary of state

“The one word that makes a good manager – decisiveness.”
– Lee Iacocca, Auto Executive

“The discipline you learn and character you build from setting and achieving a goal can be more valuable than the achievement of the goal itself.”
– Bo Bennett, Author

“Not being in tune with your customers is like living in an alternate reality; the way you think your customers feel about your product is not always the same as what your customers really think about your product.”
– Bo Bennett, Author

“I do not think there is any other quality so essential to success of any kind as the quality of perseverance. It overcomes almost everything, even nature.”
– John D. Rockefeller

“The greatest lesson of life is that you are responsible for your life.”
– Oprah Winfrey, talk show host

“I don’t believe in a fate that will fall on us no matter what we do. I do believe in a fate that will fall on us if we do nothing.”
– Ronald Reagan, 40th U.S. president

“It’s determination and commitment to an unrelenting pursuit of your goal that will enable you to attain the success you seek.”
– Mario Andretti, Race Car Driver

“I have failed over and over again in my life. And that’s precisely why I succeed.”
– Michael Jordan, basketball player

“If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with success unexpected in common hours.”
– Henry David Thoreau, Author

“I don’t know what your destiny will be, but one thing I know: The only ones among you who will be really happy are those who sought and found out how to serve.”
– Albert Schweitzer, Humanitarian

“Failure is nature’s plan to prepare you for great responsibilities.”
– Napolean Hill, Motivational Writer

“Any change, even a change for the better, is always accompanied by drawbacks and discomforts.”
– Arnold Bennett, Novelist

“A good plan is like a road map: It shows the final destination and usually the best way to get there.”
– H. Stanley Judd, Writer

“The best executive is one who has sense enough to pick good people to do what he wants them to do, and self-restraint enough to keep from meddling with them while they do it.”
– Theodore Roosevelt, 26th President of the United States

“Without a compelling cause, our employees are just putting in time. Their minds might be engaged, but their hearts are not. Meaning precedes motivation.”
– Lee J. Colan

“You make the world a better place by making yourself a better person.”
– Scott Sorrell

“You gain strength, courage, and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You are able to say to yourself, “I have lived through this horror. I can take the next thing that comes along.” . . . You must do the thing you think you cannot do.”
– Eleanor Roosevelt, Former First Lady

“In the absence of clearly-defined goals, we become strangely loyal to performing daily trivia until ultimately we become enslaved by it.”
– Robert Heinlein

“If you can give your son or daughter only one gift, let it be enthusiasm.”
– Bruce Barton, Author and Politician

“Thought is the original source of all wealth, all success, all material gain, all great discoveries and inventions, and of all achievement.”
– Claude M. Bristol, Author

“There is no remedy for love but to love more.”
– Henry David Thoreau, Author

“For time and the world do not stand still. Change is the law of life. And those who look only to the past or the present are certain to miss the future.”
– John F. Kennedy, 35 President of the United States

If you could change one thing about your personality, how would you be different?

(Share your answers in the comments below.)