Success is a journey and along the way we need to correct our course by unlearning the behavior that derails us and invite in a new behavior to continue our success. If you feel you want to change your success, take a measure of your current key behaviors.

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Listening
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Listening is not a passive activity. It is unfair to the person who is speaking to have a person there in body but not in mind. Just because we are the person being quiet does not mean we are listening. As a listener we must be in the present and taking in the speakers message in the proper context. It's not the time to be thinking about what to have for lunch or your next witty comeback. Be fair to the speaker and have a clear and open mind.

Active listening requires us to set aside our own agenda, uses our best internal language skills, and takes present energy. The best gift to yourself and your speaker if the energy isn't available is to say so. Yet, due to the perception management masks we've learned from society, we don't usually provide this honest feedback. So, we passively listen, like pretending as a child to hear, and say something quick, something we think they want to hear, just so we can move on.

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Choice
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The Power of Choice is the energy we send out and is exactly what the Universe sends us back. No choice is a choice too. I believe that we are where we are today because of the accumulative effect of all our choices. We made thousands of choices each day and we control our lives by those choices. Having the ability to choose equals power. When we don't choose, you give someone else the ability to make choices for you, whatever they may be, and you give up any possible power with it. Once you realize you have the power of choice, life happens for you, not to you!

Feel your power. It is a powerful resource to success.

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Internal Dialogue
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All day long, everyday, we talk to ourselves. Sometimes we even talk to ourselves out loud. When we talk to ourselves what we are really doing is giving commands to our subconscious mind. The subconscious mind is a very powerful tool and it can carry out its orders efficiently and effectively.

We've been listening to ourselves talk for so long, we have just learned to hear past it. The noise of our inner dialogue can usually and only be hear if its screaming or if someone points it out.

This discussion is telling us what we need, how we want it, and what we will and will not do in order to get it. We assume, we don't know what we want, until we begin to listen. Until we begin to stop long enough to ask what it is that our internal dialogue wants or needs.

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Success Begins Here
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These are the three toughest keys to behaving our way to success. Are you listening to yourself? Are you listening to people who are already successful? All excellent questions to ponder on from time to time. To check in with our self frequently to see where we stand on them. They are keys that are continuously evolving as we mature and actually will not stop. They require gentle nudging, gentle understanding, gentleness all around.

(c) Copyright, Catherine Franz, 2003, 2004. All rights reserved.