As we look forward to another weekend, we have a question for you. Actually, a series of them. But the first question is…

Are you rich?

We’ll come back to that one. Before you answer, ask yourself:

Assuming you can see, what is your sight worth?
Take a minute and think about all the things you see in a day.
Nature in all its beauty.
A work of art. A photo.
The joy you see reflected on the face of a close friend or family member.

If you can hear, what value do you place on that ability?
Music.
Birds.
The voice of a loved one.
Even silence.

What about your sense of smell? Is it worth anything?
Flowers as you pass by them.
Food as it cooks.
You can often even smell danger, which triggers your survival instinct.

How about your taste?
You know what sweet means. And sour.
Spicy has meaning for you.
You know when something has no taste. Or tastes bad.

What would you trade for your experiences?
Think about how much you’ve grown over time.
For just a few seconds, think about a low time and how much you learned.
Remind yourself of your highest highs.

How much would you take to give up the people in your life?
If you’re married, your spouse. If you’re attached, your significant other.
What about your children, if you have them?
How about your parents?
Even if they have passed, what are the memories of them worth?
What would you exchange for all of this?

Are they worth $10,000? $100,000? $1,000,000? Much, much more?

So we return to our original question:

Are you rich?

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BIGG goal-getters know that it’s wise to be happy, but not content. It means thinking about four realities.

Listen to this post! Click a player to hear George & Mary-Lynn on The BIGG Success Show Podcast.


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We almost didn’t include this one. The past is the past. Who cares, right?

But it is important to think about your past REALITY.

Our experiences are clouded. They’re clouded by our perceptions. They’re clouded by our emotions at the time. They are clouded by a number of things.

Make sure you’re seeing things as they truly were. Only then will you extract the right lessons.

Once you’ve done that, it’s time to move past the past.

In an ideal world, we could talk about the next two simultaneously. Since we can’t, we’ll keep it chronological.

Your current reality

It begins with an honest assessment of where you’re at. Are you happy now?

You can be.

You just have to know where you want to go. Then do all you can do today to move a little bit closer to it.

Sounds so simple, doesn’t it? And it is.

But life gets in the way. Obligations. Things-to-do. The unexpected.

Next thing you know, you haven’t taken a single step to the life of your dreams.

But we’re getting ahead of ourselves. Form a realistic opinion of where you’re at right now. What are you happy about? What don’t you like about your current reality?

Your future reality

We didn’t come up with this term. But we sure do like it. We like the certainty of it.

It’s not a wish. It’s not just a hope. It’s more than dream. It is what will be. And you will make it happen.

What does your future look like? Visualize it. Get a clear picture in your mind.

But don’t stop there. Use all your senses to experience it right now. Live it as if it were real.

Because it will be. It’s only a matter of time!

As you think about your future, be careful. You may make one of two mistakes:

• Projecting the present into the future
  

This will keep you from reaching your full potential.

• Escaping into the future
  

  You may project the unattainable. You have to believe it can be done if you stretch yourself quite a bit. That’s a good vision.
  

Now we’re ready for the fourth reality – and we may have you stumped. We’ve talked about the past, present, and future. What’s left?

Only the most important reality of all…

Your NEXT reality

What’s the next thing you need to do to move from your current reality to your future reality? That’s your next reality.

You’re a BIGG goal-getter. So you’ll focus all your time, energy, effort, and attention toward achieving your next reality.

Stick your next out! It leads to BIGG success!

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It’s 11.11.11. So we thought we’d share 11 + 11 + 11 = 33 ways to be a BIGG success.

11 terms

BIGG success is life on your own terms. Here are 11 terms that help you take control to build the life that fits you perfectly.

1) Believe:
Belief is hope internalized. Believe you will reach BIGG success. Then let your mind go to work to help you get there.

2) Design: Your purpose is the place where your passions, proficiencies, and preferences all intersect with opportunity. Find your reason for being.

3) Live: Always remember that your career is part of your life, not the other way around. Your career is what you do, not who you are. Work to live!

4) Love: Relationships are critical to a fulfilling life. Love is a verb. So actively show the people around you how much you care about them.

5) Innovate: Innovation is imagination in action. Don’t accept the status quo. Discover ways to make your corner of the world a better place.

6) Act: You won’t fulfill your purpose just by thinking. Action turns intangible thoughts into tangible results.

7) Learn: Action creates advantage. But only if you learn from the situation at hand. The future belongs to the learning, not the learned.

8) Adapt: The whole point of learning is to know when to adapt. In uncertain times, flexibility is critical to your BIGG success.

9) Endure: Most people fail because they give up too soon. Remember that the journey is part of the reward. Press on!

10) Experience: Try new things. Go to new places. Experiences make you more interesting to others and ramp up your creativity.

11) Give: Giving implies abundance. So tell your brain you have more than enough by sharing some of what you have.

11 Quotes

We love inspirational quotes. So here are eleven that resonated with us as we prepared this post.

1) “The greatest strength is gentleness.” ~ Iroquois Proverb

2) “Expecting the world to treat you fairly because you are good is like expecting the bull not to charge because you are a vegetarian.” ~ Dennis Wholey

3) “Opportunities multiply as they are seized.” ~ Sun Tzu

4) “Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans.” ~ John Lennon

5) “Do or do not. There is no try.” ~ Yoda

6) Only those who attempt the absurd can achieve the impossible. ~ M.C. Escher

7) “I have not failed; I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.” ~ Thomas Edison

8) “Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much.” ~ Oscar Wilde

9) “Not a shred of evidence exists in favor of the idea that life is serious.” ~ Brendan Gill

10) “You laugh at me because I am different, but I laugh at you because you are all the same.” ~ Author Unknown

11) “A person who knows how to laugh at himself will never cease to be amused.” ~ Shirley MacLaine

11 funny thoughts

We often try to be a little lighter with our posts on Friday. So below you’ll find the final third of our 11.11.11 installment. Hopefully, they’ll provide a chuckle or two.

1) Today is the tomorrow you worried about yesterday.

2) Warning: Dates in calendar are closer than they appear.

3) After all is said and done, more is said than done.

4) The sooner you fall behind, the more time you’ll have to catch up.

5) If you understand what you’re doing, you’re not learning anything.

6) The only job where you start at the top is digging a hole.

7) Some cause happiness wherever they go. Others whenever they go.

8) Never, under any conditions, take a sleeping pill and a laxative on the same night.

9) Even when you feel poor, you can still pay attention.

10) A smart man covers his ass. A wise man leaves his pants on.

11) Don’t sweat the petty things. And whatever you do, don’t pet the sweaty things.

Thanks so much for stopping by. Until next time, here’s to your BIGG success!

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On The BIGG Success Show recently, we talked about how to create your future, one simple step at a time. We want to add to that discussion in this post.

You can do three things today to be a BIGG success:

Give your all to what’s most important

BIGG success is life on your own terms. You have your vision of what that means?

What’s most important today to move you toward that vision? That’s what you need to do.

But just doing it isn’t enough if you want to be a BIGG success. You must give it everything you have. You’re too good to accept anything less.

Live in the moment

We know you’re busy. But take some time today to treasure what’s right in front of you. We believe that life comes down to two things: relationships and experiences.

Take some time today to enjoy the people in your life. Lift them up by listening to them. Let them know how much they mean to you.

Enjoy what you’re experiencing. Sure, it sucks sometimes. But can’t you find a kernel of gratitude for everything you do? If nothing else, be thankful that you have the mental and physical ability to do it!

Set up your future

We know you’re busy. But take some time today to create a better life for yourself down the road.

Don’t invest all your energy on today’s pressing issues. Keep some reserve for activities that will help build your future.

Make a new contact. Learn a new skill. Go exercise (that one’s for us!).

At the end of the day…

Yes, we hate the cliché, too. But in the case, we really mean it. At the end of the day, ask yourself:

Did I give my all to my most important things?

Did I take some time to live in the moment?

Did I do some advance work for my future?

If you can answer yes to these three questions, you were a BIGG success today!

 Image in this post from bredmaker

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Work – life (im)balance

We were talking about how we schedule ourselves. Work then play. If you’re like us, work – life balance means work and work and work and work. Life gets the remains.

We’ve told you before that this is one of the things we struggle with the most. We’re entrepreneurs; we love our work. Most of the time it feels like play. But it’s still important to live a full life.

We got to thinking – if bigg success is life on our own terms, maybe it’s counter-productive to schedule ourselves the way we do. Perhaps we could have a higher quality of life by doing things differently.

We realize that this won’t apply to everybody. However, it’s worth everyone’s time to think about what we’re about to say. We feel that it works particularly well for business owners and others who have more control of their time.

Flip work – life balance to life – work balance

So here’s our bigg idea …

Financial planners will tell you that, when it comes to managing your finances, you should “pay yourself first.” Our thought is that, when it comes to managing your work – life balance, you should “play yourself first!”

Instead of work – life balance, let’s make it life – work balance. Flip it 180 degrees.

Put life first. We call it flippin’ life. Go ahead … say it with some attitude. It’s fun!

Think about how you schedule your time. If you’re like us, we always put work appointments and tasks on our calendars. But we don’t always schedule our personal time.

So here’s what we’re going to do. We’re going to stop scheduling all of our work first and then fitting our personal lives around it. We’re going to schedule our play time first and then work around that! We’re flippin’ life!

We encourage you to join us. Let’s schedule our days, weeks and months so we put the right first things first.

Let’s flip it!

Let’s place health before wealth. Let’s focus on getting healthier. Making sure we eat properly. There are days when we get so caught up in our work that we forget to eat. It’s dinner time and we still haven’t had breakfast! No more!

We’ll also make sure we get that exercise we need. We’ll get plenty of sleep. We’ll nourish our minds and souls as well.

Flip it.

Let’s position people before profit. Let’s make relationship-building a priority. We’ll plan time with our family and friends. We’ll schedule time to meet new people. Sure this may help us at work as well, but that’s not our goal. We’re focused on the people, not the payoff.

Flip it.

Let’s put experiences before earnings. We want to have experiences, perhaps in synergy (the bigg idea behind bigg success) with improving our health and building relationships, which allow us to live a full life. Through these experiences, we’ll discover new things about ourselves and our world.

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Is this just a pipe dream?

We can hear you now. You think we’re flippin’ crazy!

We say, “Flippin’ no!”

Honestly, we don’t know if this will work. However, we’re going to give it our best shot because we have a suspicion …

By scheduling our play first, we’ll be more focused at work because we’ll have to be!

We’ll have to get just as much done, but we’ll have less time to do it. However, we think we’ll be even more productive. Why, you ask?

We think we will play more because we scheduled it first.

No flippin’ duh, you say. Okay, we understand your skepticisim, but here’s where it starts to get good …

We think, because we play more, we will have even more energy for our work when we work.

We also will know more people and have better relationships with the people we know. We’ll be more effective at finding the right people to work with when it’s in everybody’s best interest.

And because we will have more experiences to draw upon, we will find new solutions to old problems.

In short, it’s synergy! There’s that word again! The bigg idea behind bigg success!

If you want to get on board with us, here’s what we suggest …

Get out your Blackberry, your Planner or whatever you use for scheduling. Start making appointments for all those personal things you want to do. Then fit work into the remaining time instead of the other way around. You’re flippin’ life!

Putting life first. What a flippin’ concept! That’s definitely life on your own terms. That’s bigg success!

What do you think of this idea? Have you ever considered putting play first?

Share that with us by leaving a comment below, calling us at 888.455.BIGG (2444) or e-mailing us at bigginfo@biggsuccess.com.

Thanks so flippin’ much for reading our flippin’ post today! There’s it out of our flippin’ (oops) system now.

If you’re a business owner, there’s one cost-cutting measure that really costs you. Please join us next time when we discuss it. Until then, here’s to your bigg success!

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