Get Smart!: How to Think and Act Like the Most Successful and Highest-Paid People in Every Field
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- What-If Thinking
| Identify the Limiting Factor In each situation, your first job is to identify this limiting factor and then focus single-mindedly on alleviating it. This way of thinking and acting can move you toward your goals faster than almost anything else you can do. The 80/20 rule applies to constraints in your personal and business life. Fully 80 percent of the factors that are holding you back from achieving your most important goals are within yourself or within your business. Only percent are on the outside, external to you and your business. When you begin identifying and removing constraints, always start with yourself. Ask the key question, What is it in me (or in my business) that is holding me back from achieving my goal?” Remember, the natural tendency of most people is to blame their problems on external forces and other people. The hallmark of superior thinkers is that they accept complete responsibility for any problem or difficulty and then they look into themselves for what is setting the speed at which they achieve the goal they desire. What-If Thinking One of the most powerful questions you can ask in triggering creativity is, “What if Each time you ask this question, you break the bonds of limited thinking that may keep you working in a narrow area, and you open your mind to more and more possibilities. What-if thinking is considered the breakthrough concept that made Federal Express one of the most successful companies in the world. It started by asking, What if it was possible to deliver a letter overnight, anywhere in the country?” When Fred Smith, founder, chairman, president, and CEO of FedEx, suggested this idea in an undergraduate term paper at Yale, his professor gave him a C, saying that the idea was not very realistic. At that time, first- class mail in the United States took anywhere from three to five days, and sometimes longer, to reach its destination. The idea of overnight mail delivery seemed highly improbable. Download 0.86 Mb. Share with your friends:
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