there are certain patterns that people do who succeed and certain patterns that people do who are frustrated or overwhelmed and i want to share with you what those patterns are because this is not about just giving you some little time planner because that's not going to change your life normal piece of software what will change your life is learning how to control and direct your own mind and emotions and doing it in a way that really gives you what you want versus what maybe your environment may be demanding from you right now i hope that sounds like a journey that's enticing to you because if it is i think that the skills you're going to get here will give you a lot more than what you expected when you signed up for this course by the way you signed up for a program here called more time and yet you know there isn't any more so why would you sign up for a course like that well probably because inside of you you know that there's more time for what matters for you if you restructured your life a little bit you may not know how to do that but a part of you knows that that's really possible or you wouldn't even take in a program like this in fact i got a really important question for you and that is what is time i mean think about it what is it what would you say if somebody said what is time well people have all kinds of interesting answers though it's a calendar it's it's it's a measure of activity some people say but i would say to you that time is nothing but emotion time is a feeling and we forget that and that's why we get stressed because we don't think about our feelings we create to-do lists and we focus on activities and very often we get all of our to-do lists done we cross off all the activities but we're still not fulfilled and many times we've got a bunch of movement but we really don't have any achievement much less these good feelings that we're pursuing i mean think about it time you've had experiences in your life where time flew right where hours may have felt like minutes especially if you're with somebody you love or you're doing something that really juiced you as a person something you're really passionate about so you and i got to get clear that if we're going to have more time really have to have is more of the emotions we deserve that we're going to learn how to direct and shape our own lives in a new way and by the way the promise that's been given to us throughout the years was that technology was going to give us more time right how's that work for you so far i don't know about you but i found that as my life became somewhat more successful it actually became much more stressful and with technology instead of that freeing me on some ways and it's my own fault that technology almost became the master of my life i found myself limiting and living a life that felt limited by all these reactions i was having what i mean by that is work no longer was something i did at the office worked with something that followed me on my belt with my beeper it showed up in emails wherever i was in the world and it showed up on my cellular telephone and i was constantly reacting and then wondering why gosh i have all this activity and i have no time and gosh i'm not really feeling very happy even though i'm doing some good things the reason is because there is one thing and it's not technology that'll change your life and you know what's great about this one thing is it's one of the most powerful forces in your life and the good news is this force this power is something you've been using your whole life and that is the power of focus just by changing what we focus on we change literally what we feel what you focus on to a great extent determines whether you're succeeding or whether you're failing in your business in your career with your children in your intimate relationships as well so focus really determines the quality of our lives whether or not you're fulfilled or whether or not you just feel stressed is really a matter of focus and ultimately your achievement level is clearly directed on where do you focus where do you put your energy your emotion your time but the challenge is that most of us don't direct it consciously in fact a lot of us are incredibly stressed because we don't consciously direct our focus extraordinary people who produce extraordinary results have a different way of thinking opa is a different way of thinking it models what it is i've learned from being around several million people some famous some not so famous but maybe more profound in what they've done for the world and for themselves i think wow in business and in life the way you focus your mind will determine your success or failure now here's the challenge most of us don't direct our focus because we're in reaction to environmental stimulus what that means in technical terms made simple is there's three things in our life that tends to grab our focus and make us react rather than really live our life on our own terms what first gets your focus things that have the potential to give you pain things that you kind of worry about things that you are challenged by things that you think could be a real problem that tends to get our focus and we tend to call that worry worry is an achiever word for fear we're fearful that something bad is going to happen so we put a lot of attention into it and sometimes at the expense of things that are much more important like our family or our health sometimes we worry about things that will never happen i think what happens for most of us is fear gets our focus and it's natural it's our survival instinct to avoid pain but we've got to break out of it if we want an extraordinary quality of life and think differently and i'm going to show you some ways that you can do that for yourself the second thing that tends to get our focus is things that can give us pleasure especially immediate pleasure why well think about it we're stressed a lot of the time we want to get out of that stress so we look for something to make ourselves feel good because that'll happen real quick and very often we pick things that make us feel good for the moment but don't really make our life better long term very often what you'll do to feel good is go clean off your desk right i used to do this all the time i got all these projects to do i don't know where to start i'm overwhelmed oh my desk is messed up let me just arrange everything here because you know what i can complete all that and feel really good about myself because truthfully self-esteem and i hate that term because it's so overused but a person's sense of identity our sense of certainty about our lives our sense of worth is tied directly to our feeling that we control events not events control us we feel like events are controlling us our self-esteem drops our level of stress increases so a lot of us do is try and get control of it by doing little things or by doing something we're really good at you know let's say you spend a lot of time in your work and you don't spend much time with your kids because at work you feel like you're in control and gosh kids are a challenging thing they're so different they're so unique you think you get all handled and they surprise you with something new right so very often we try to focus on those things we feel good about sometimes it's the expense of the overall value of our life and again we're reacting still the third area that tends to get our focus if we don't put the stakes in the ground up front and say here's what i'm gonna focus on here's what i want for my life and sure enough we get tend to get caught up in other people's demands and then our life becomes about responding to other people's urgencies and reacting you might say but tony you know my supervisor is going to do that or my boss is going to do that yes but i think you're going to find when you learn this opa system you're going to be able to get your boss to get results they never had before you're going to be able to do more for them than they've ever seen before and you'll be able to literally help them to manage you and themselves more effectively if you have a supervisor if you're in charge quote unquote and i think you're going to find that there's going to be a great deal of fulfillment and you won't be responding to everybody's demands there either does that sound like it might be useful i can tell you something as long as you're responding to the things that concern you the potential for pain or worry as long as you're trying to get a quick fix of feeling good as long as you're responding to people's demands you're living a life of reaction and you won't get the level of fulfillment much less the results that you really deserve so how do we turn that around well first of all you can understand the price of focusing on what you fear and i'll give you a fun simple example years ago i had i took up a fun sport which is auto racing and when i first went to this racing school the very first time you get there here's what they do with you they put you in a car and they say we're going to show you what an automobile is capable of and what you can do so you get next to this race car driver and they take you through this course and they're going 140 miles an hour straight at a wall in a corkscrew turn and your heart's beating out of you and they do it and by the end of this thing they look at you and say you know in four days you're going to be able to do this and you think to yourself you're joking there's just no way this is going to happen but they say let me tell you the secret the reason you're scared right now is you don't know what you do if you got out of control you don't know what you do if you got caught up in a spin and i said so before you ever learn to drive the most important skill that you got to develop is learning how to come out of a spin quickly and when the man was telling me this i thought god what a great metaphor for life because we all do really well when things are going well it's when we go into a spin when things aren't working out well when things that are stressful happen that we kind of get lose control of the direction of our lives and start reacting and pretty soon our fear tends to cause us to end up on the rocks or in the wall so to speak so i said okay well what's the secret he said it's really simple tony here's how it works here's how you come out of a spin focus on where you want to go like this left hand turn we're going to need to make don't focus on the wall in front of you if you focus on what you fear the wall guess what happens the minute you focus on it you steer in the direction of what you focus on and your life or your car moves that direction if you focus on what you want you will automatically steer everything in the direction of what you want he said you ever hear about you know somebody driving down like a desert highway and there's like a telephone pole every quarter of a mile and this guy is driving his porsche 100 miles an hour and it's the telephone pole and i said yeah it goes that happens all the time he said you know why as soon as people start to feel after out of control they focus on what they're afraid of hitting and they drive right into it i thought that's a great metaphor for life he said so all you got to do is don't get scared even if you do get scared you will even though you're fearful focus on what you want not what you fear i said no problem i teach this stuff how do you think i did not very good because what happened was he was smart he got me driving for a while and i was concentrating and i was waiting i knew any moment he's going to do this but see life doesn't give things to you it doesn't give you challenges when you're ready for them it's like just when everything's going great that's when life comes by and gives you a little test that's like when our creator says it's time for you to grow and you're not ready for it so you're going to grow the most right now and so sure enough i'm driving for 10 or 15 minutes i'm waiting for us to push the button after a while i kind of just get caught up in the rhythm stuff you know kind of like getting caught up in your life and all sudden he pushes the button we start spinning at control what do you think the first place my brain goes wham right at the wall i'm driving right into it he is smart though he wants to save our lives he grabs my head and forces me to look in the direction we need to turn and i'm fighting because i want to see myself die fortunately keeps holding my head now as i turn and focus on where i want to go without realizing what do i instantly do i turn in the direction of what i want i got a question for you though do you think the minute you turn and you do the right thing because now i'm doing the right thing i'm turning the right direction do you immediately get rewarded for that see we have a thing called momentum that's still going on we're in what we call lag time right now where we're doing the right things but we're not getting the reward because of the old momentum it's kind of like you ate like heck for 30 years and now you've eaten well for two days and you go gosh i'm not getting the result yet keep focusing keep eating the right way and it'll turn but you got to keep the faith you can't look back at the wall because that's what you want to do you want to look back and go it's not working i want to see the failure i want to see the crash fortunately keeps holding my head and what happens sure enough we turn and a few seconds later the wheels catch and we turn and we missed the wall by about two or three feet my heart is beating out of me he goes did you learn i learned that i learned no took three or four more times of doing this of him forcing my head where i finally got it down i got a very important question for you though if you focus on where you want to go are you guaranteed not to have problems guaranteed not to hit the wall the answer is no you could still hit the wall let me ask you alternative question if you focus on what you fear if you focus on the problem if you focus on the challenge ahead of you and you drive yourself into that are you going to crash the answer is 100 yes so there's no guarantee in life but if we focus on what we want our outcome which is what opa stands for the first o and oppa is outcome what do i really want if we focus on that our chances increase geometrically if we focus on our fear we got a real problem so the obvious question becomes okay well then how do i control my focus tony do i just think positive well let me give you a clue i don't believe in positive thinking i don't believe you should go to your garden and say there's no weeds there's no weeds there's no weeds and do a bunch of affirmations i got news for you the weeds will take your garden i believe in something really simple i believe in seeing life as it really is but not worse than it is see most people say well i'm just a skeptical person i'm just a pessimistic person what they're really saying is i'm fearful i don't want to get my hopes up i don't want to be disappointed again but i'm here to tell you in life you got to see what it is and not worse than it is you can't try and protect yourself or you protect yourself from success you protect yourself from joy you got to get your hopes up to make life work so see it as it is but not worse than it is second you have to see it better than it is otherwise there's no drive to make things better you got to get a vision for what you want what's the outcome what's the vision for your life otherwise you'll get caught up in the to do's of daily living and you'll say gosh you know i don't know what it is but i feel like my life's about making a living instead of really experiencing life so if you get a view of what your outcome is of what you really want wow the game changes for you and then once you know how it is and then you have a vision for how you want it to be then the obvious third step to succeeding is you got to make it the way you want it and what we're going to show you with opal planning is how to do that now from a practical perspective how do you actually change your focus in a second well the way you and i do it is by asking questions you see when we say we're thinking what we're really doing is asking and answering questions in our mind on a consistent basis that's all thinking is thinking is the process of asking and answering questions and if you ask a lousy question what are you gonna get a lousy answer so if your question is how come i can never lose weight your brain gives you an answer because you're a pig or if you say how come i can never pull this off your brain says ah cause you're a schmuck because you're you're not ready because you came from a dysfunctional family or whatever lousy answer comes to a lousy question what would be a better question around this idea of losing weight well you could say well instead of how come i can't lose weight you could say how could i lose weight challenge that question is a little better but you'll probably say i go on a diet and diets are painful so you probably don't want to do that what would be a better question how about how can they lose weight and really enjoy the process that's a different outcome a different result than just losing weight it's losing it and enjoying it now if you ask how can i lose weight and enjoy the process your brain will give you a different answer because you're asking a better question now i might say you know what i've always wanted to learn a horseback ride or play polo or whatever it is you love to do now maybe i'll go do that i love to play basketball what if i could play basketball i'm not even thinking about losing weight it'll happen automatically if you want a better answer for your life you get asked better questions if you want a better plan then you better ask better questions and by the way this is true of some of the most riveting aspects of our life because all human beings lives are driven by the questions they have some people succeed in life and they ask the question you know what's wrong with me they wonder why they feel depressed all the time or why can't i figure things out we have to be very careful about the questions we ask ourselves does this make sense i hope it does whether it's a martin luther king asking a question about his dream and how we can have equality or whether it's a fun quote or a powerful quote or whether it's a question of a leader like robert kennedy who we know the famous quote said some people see things that are done and they ask why i look at things that were never done and ask why not if you want to change your life you got to change your questions and if you want to change the experience of planning you got to stop asking that silly question that everybody asks when they're going to plan something i used to do this all the time what is the question we all ask we're going to plan something what do i need to do that is the wrong question so why is that a lousy question why do we not want to start out or trying to plan our day or a week or a month or a life by saying what do i need to do because you don't know the answer of what you need to do until you decide what it is you want what is it you're looking for in your life i mean if you think about it we've seen all these new time management systems come out and i've used them all and they all added some value to my life but none of them really helped me to achieve at the level i now achieve and they certainly didn't help me to really be fulfilled they were about making up my to-do list of all things i needed to do and i found myself at the end of the day even when i crossed everything off very often still not feeling fulfilled because a lot of times i got everything done but i didn't really achieve anything and i've learned in my life not to mistake movement for achievement see 100 years ago 200 years ago maybe it's okay to make a to-do list because life wasn't that complex thing today is you're the mom you're the dad you're the husband you're the wife you're the lover you're the community activist you're the top performance athlete you're the marketing manager for the company you're part of the the coach of the little league team and what you need to do it depends on you being a mom right now or you being a business person are you being a lover or you've been a best friend are you being a daughter who you being so and we can't just try and manage all these roles also of our lives and expect we're gonna have a life that's fulfilling when there's so much going on we need a simple system that will help us before we try to design a plan for our time to really design a plan for our life and that's what you're going to do starting today and it's not perfect and it isn't something that's rigid it gives you all kinds of flexibility but it allows you to decide hey these are the areas of my life i'm really going to focus on i'm going to make sure i put a certain amount of my time and focus right here in my family right here in my physical body so i have the energy i want right here in my emotional well-being right here as being a marketing manager right here in my business and empowering the people that i work with so that we have a great environment that we don't just get results but we have fun so we're going to show you a system for how to do that and once you have the plan for your life then your planning will not start with that silly question what do i need to do that's a lousy question you're gonna ask a different question you're gonna ask three of them in a very specific order and i'll just tell you up front it's really simple the opa word stands for the three questions before i tell you the three questions let me tell you what anyone who succeeds knows you find anyone who's successful in any area of life business finance emotion they're happy they're fulfilled here's what they know number one they know what they really want most people don't know what they really want they don't know what we call their outcome their result and when you don't know what your outcome is when you don't know what you really want life can be really frustrating life becomes a bunch of things you have to do and it doesn't give you any juice you don't have a clear direction for your life and without a clear direction very often you end up on the rocks of life it's just you just don't have the guidance so you don't have that sense of that my life has some kind of meaning the second thing that people succeed know is not only what they want but why they want it because the reasons are what drive us as human beings that sense of purpose that's where the emotion is that's what the juice is not just getting a target but knowing why we want that target that's what will get you to have the energy to actually follow through and then the third question they know is what do i need to do to make that happen and people that know what they really want and know why they want it can usually figure out how to make it happen because they got enough drive and enough clarity about what they want so opa stands for those three questions in a very specific way let me tell you what opa gives you freedom because what happens in life is most of us think our to-do list has to get done many times you don't have to do your whole to-do list most of us know that 20 of what you do gives you 80 of your results in life doesn't it and so what we're going to show you how to do is to have more flexibility have a lot more choices and get more results with more fulfillment by taking it through these three questions and i want to point something out oppa is not a time planner again it isn't a book if you open this book you go it's got a calendar and it's got an a through z and so do all these other programs or here's a nice piece of software that's not open open is a simple system of thinking that will change your focus which will immediately change how you feel it'll change the direction you're heading it'll turn you in a different direction and it'll get you a different set of results not only is it a simple system of thinking that changes direction and results but it'll also make you feel fulfilled because think of it the only difference between work and play is your purpose a lot of people when they're playing do things that are really actually hard work but they don't call it hard work because they say it's fun because they decided i want to do this this is a cool thing this is competitive or this is creative or this is strong and everyone i know who succeeds their work has become play for them they have really found a way to enjoy what they do because they found an empowering purpose activity without purpose is the drain to your life it's a drain to fulfillment it's a drain to achievement so we're going to get these little simple questions and we're going to show you how to use them in a practical way this book will guide you to get greater results and greater fulfillment that's the whole process of what oppa is really about part of what oprah's going to do is you're going to put the stakes in the ground and say these are the most important things in my life and i'm going to focus on them daily and you're going to start noticing things that will bring you closer to what it is you really want if you focus on a to-do list guess what you get more to-do lists more lack of fulfillment more things they have to do i don't want your life to be about being a human doing i want to be about a human being where you experience what you really deserve and what you really want this is a chance to really get fulfilled to change the emotions i mean would you like to feel more joy on a daily basis more passion more excitement a greater sense of confidence and certainty that comes from knowing that you're in control of the events not the events are in control of you i want you to have a system that is your system your life management system that's what oprah really is so i want to invite you to join me now come on this journey decide right now you're going to do whatever it takes to master this because i can tell you that in my own life i feel so many great privileges and i'm sure some of it must be luck there's luck in anything but a huge part of it i can tell you honestly has been focused i focused on what i knew was most important in my life and i've created what i want for my life which may be different for you but i want you to have what you want to have not what the environment is demanding from you not what your next email is requesting but what your heart and soul deserves and desires so to do that let's start with an opa so get started you know the outcome the outcome is really simple right now you got to decide if i'm committed to mastering a system for managing all my life so my personal life and my professional life work together so nothing has to suffer and i believe that's not only possible i'm committed to that result the next question is why why are you going to become not just good at this but outstanding what's your reason that's what we ask you to do right now and i want to thank you for letting me dump so much on you in a short period of time here i'm looking forward to hopefully meeting you someday soon but for right now let's get focused and let's get this life management system called oppa in your life now and begin the journey towards a life of incredible results in extraordinary fulfillment you know we're living in a time in what stress seems to be almost epidemic especially for achievers everybody talks about being stressed especially those people are really trying to do something meaningful really accomplish something i want to make sure that your drive for success or to make a difference really leads to the joy and the fulfillment the excitement the passion and the pride that you're really looking for in order to do that whether or not you're feeling fulfilled or whether you're feeling frustrated to a great extent has to do with where do you spend your time what zone what dimension of mind emotion and focus do you spend your time in for example do you spend a lot of your time really looking for distraction looking for a way to escape the stresses that are already there in your life or do you spend more of your time getting seduced by things that really aren't important but they appear to be urgent and you kind of delude yourself and saying well i got to do this right now and really truly you don't have to do it right now but you add that additional stress or do you spend your time in drama where you're doing things that really are important and they're really urgent you've got all these deadlines have to be met right now maybe some of the deadlines that are stressing you out now because things weren't handled earlier on or have you managed to spend the majority of your time in your life in what i call the zone the zone of fulfillment that dimension where you're doing things that are really important but not really urgent and as a result you tend to be at your best because you've taken away the stress take a look at what i call time targets let's start on the outside as this assembles now the outside circle here is really where most people spend their time it's in escape in fact it's doing things that are not urgent and they're not important i call this the dimension of distraction or for short you can just call it the escape dimension this is what happens for most people they have all these goals and desires they don't know how to manage them all so they look to escape how drink some alcohol go hang out go watch television do something that for the moment is escape now is that all bad and all wrong the answer is no but if you spend the majority of your time there you won't be fulfilled as a person and your stress will actually increase now the next circle closer into the target is that area that we call the dimension of delusion that's because this is the area where you start doing things that are urgent this is where you spend your time but they're really not that important and what fits in this category emails i mean these days all somebody's going to type something and they can send it to 50 people with one keystroke so a lot of us end up with a lot of emails that don't really they they beg us to respond immediately but would you agree with me a lot of it is just things that seem important but really aren't important at all they're just urgent because there's this demand that says handle me i'm here on your screen the more classic example is the telephone i mean the phone rings and you're in the middle of something really important and now you run to grab it and break the pattern of your focus and your feelings now if we go to the third ring the one closest to the bullseye that's urgent and important items that's the dimension of demand that's where something says we got to do this right now you're going to have to spend time there and a good portion of your life if you're an achiever is spent there but if you spend too much area too much time too much focus too much emotion in the area called demand in that dimension you're gonna be one stress character so you've got to have a certain percentage of time here but not more than you need and life will give you plenty of urgent and important things to deal with without you not doing your part where do you want to spend the majority of your time you want to hit the bullseye as often as possible that bullseye is the dimension of fulfillment that's when you're doing things that are really important but they're not urgent right now now what fits in that category your health most people wait till they have a health problem to try and deal with it and very often it's too late we got to make that something that even though it's not urgent we make important we make that the time we spend no matter what we spend time and what's important so one of the secrets here is to identify where do you spend your time are you spending 20 of your time in the zone 60 of your time in urgent and important called the dimension of demand and then 5 and 10 or whatever in the other two are you spending 50 of your time in the zone let's do some time accounting of last week go for it let's do it right now so what did you discover where are you spending your time the optimum time the goal is to spend close to 50 of your time doing things that are important but not urgent at least 40 percent of the time if you're in that 10 or 20 i know you're going to be stressed and you're not going to be as effective as you could possibly be does that make sense people my company will tell you i believe that anything we really want to get done if we're committed there's a way to do it there's some form of leverage someone else could speed it up for us someone else we could trade with we could do something with we can make it happen boy if you could do that your life would feel more fulfilled singing a dance class walking on the beach time alone time with a friend i don't know what it is but what is it for you maybe write those down guess what will bring you to the zone day after day after day oppa when you ask that question what's the most important outcome to me it'll cause you to focus on what's most important to you not just what's urgent but what will bring you there is this life management system and this focus on outcomes so have i sold you yet you've got to make sure you focus on spending as much time as possible doing what's important and not urgent get yourself into that 40 50 60 percentile there and you're in for a great time with a lot less stress and an amazing amount of joy [Music] thank you i'll bet i know where you want to spend the rest of your life in the zone right well for me this is the zone what is it for you now let's go back to tony in fiji and he's going to show you just as he's shown me how to create the life plan that will place you in the zone shall i proceed [Music] now we're going to talk about categories of improvement what we're really talking about is creating a life plan for you now if you don't have a plan you fall onto somebody else's plan it's the old thing of if you fail the plan you plan to fail it's an old overused phrase but it's really true without a plan your focus goes to what you fear something that could give you pain or it goes to something that gave you pleasure for the moment so you can get out of the stress or it goes to something that someone's demanding for you we want you right now to begin to create a life plan in order to have a life plan you got to have something you can manage think of this as a life management system if you're going to manage your life you've got to look at what are the areas of your life that you really need to manage in order to succeed and be fulfilled we call these areas obviously areas of management there's only two primary areas of life you really have to manage area one is obviously your personal life and we're going to take a look at what are the areas that you need to focus on on a regular basis in your personal life in order for you to not only be fulfilled but have a life that really works in your professional life there are a lot of different things you got to look at if you try to think about all of them at once it's a bit overwhelming but virtually everything you do in your business life or career can fit into four five six or a dozen categories think of it as areas you're going to focus on the reason we call them categories is we don't want to just focus on them these are areas that we want to continuously focus on and do things to improve them now if you don't come up with an area and actually define it life tends to grab your focus so for example in your personal life what would be an area that you would need to continuously focus on and continuously improve if your life's going to work well one area of your life would have to be your physical vitality and health if you don't take care of that if you don't focus on it does it get better automatically you and i both know the answer is no you have to put focus in it and you also have to measure it the same thing is true of your finances finances don't get better by just hoping finances don't get better without focusing on it if we don't focus on our finances tend to stay where they are get worse same thing is true of friendships relationships same thing is true with your family same thing is true of your spirituality if you don't put a focus on what you believe spiritually and making sure you're measuring that you're really aligning yourself with your creator or whatever you believe then you don't feel that same level of fulfillment in that area of your life so we're going to put the stakes on the ground and say you know what i'm going to have a life plan that's going to require me to continuously measure my progress in each of these areas and i'm going to set specific goals in each of these areas and when i go to plan my day instead of saying what do i need to do i'm going to say what's most important for me to achieve because unless you come up with those categories your focus will go to the urgencies of the moment and you'll be pulled out of the zone and you won't get the results or the film that you deserve think of it this way you cannot manage what you can't measure so you got to stop and measure and say this is what it's going to be and this is how i'm going to achieve it in fact and a good metaphor for it is this a little wheel of life it's just a simple thing and let's have you watch us do it and then do it for yourself like for example in this person's case we'd say where is this person in these six areas their physical body where are they compared to where they want to be if the dot in the middle here is zero and the edge of the wheel is 100 of where they want to be where are you are you 100 are you at 10 physically or you're five or a three or a seven as i say this person says well i'm about 70 of what i'd like to be ideally okay well let's figure out about 70 of the distance and draw a mark right now just like we look at emotional life for a second where are you emotionally compared to where you want to be emotion means how much joy how much passion how much excitement it's probably about 30 of where i want it to be well then draw a line of it's approximately 30 percent like we're doing here and let's look at the next year let's say your financial life where is it converted you want it to be well i have very big goals i'm about 10 of where i want to be there someone else may say no i'm 90 of where i want to be okay we'll mark that [Music] let's look at your family life what's that like you go now that's really good i'm really happy with that that's about 80 where's your spiritual life i'd say if i was honest with myself that's about a 50 of where i really think it needs to be and lastly say what about your career you say well my career is doing pretty good i give that 90 connect each one of these sections so they become a continuous outline forming a shape right now look at the shape we've got here if this was the tire on the car called your life how would your car drive well for most people it would be a rough ride the categories of improvement having these areas you're not just going to focus on continuously but you're going to constantly improve have specific goals foreign plans for and that your life revolves around will not only take you out of overwhelm but it'll give you the power of balance because for most people to think of balance as a passive thing balance gives you this well-roundedness that allows that tire to go stronger and faster and produce greater and greater results while being more and more fulfilled we have two areas of management what are they they're of course our personal life and then our professional life let's just take one of them let's take your personal life and let's come up with what are the areas of your personal life you're going to continuously focus on and improve do you get the idea okay you don't do this perfectly and you can change this it'll only take you two or three minutes go ahead and do this right now now that was pretty easy wasn't it i mean it doesn't have to be perfect but you'll tend to notice that most people in their personal life have very similar categories because there aren't that many areas of our life that we really need to focus on for our life to be fulfilled and to be successful and for to be balanced our professional lives tend to vary a little bit more because it depends on your profession so now we're going to make that set of categories you know making sure i constantly improve my skills as a manager or as a salesperson or a marketer as an accountant or as a lawyer as a doctor this is an area i've got to constantly improve to be happy to be fulfilled to be successful that's an area i've got to constantly focus on i can't just improve it once in a while i've got to think about it and measure my improvement so i continue to have a competitive advantage and so i feel good about my life we want to keep that tire of your life round and strong so like a snowball it not only moves smoothly and rapidly but it gets bigger and bigger so let's decide what you're going to focus on in your professional life which are going to constantly improve so this part of your life is as fulfilling as your personal life as well so let's get started why don't you go ahead and start right now [Music] so how'd you do i'm sure not perfectly i know i was far from perfect making my first list of professional categories but you can make it better you're getting a start here roles are the places the way you think about yourself i guess i should say as you're working in this area so for example if you go i got to work on my finances it's different than you say you know i need to work on being my financial genius today because when you're feeling a financial genius it makes you smile it puts you in a different place in these areas of your life these categories of improvement let's juice them up let's say and the area of your physical body maybe you'll put a word or two there like world-class fitness and then we want to create two or three roles or maybe more who are you you're an athlete you're maybe an adonis right something humorous something that'll juice you up something will make you smile something will say wow when i think about that i want to go there i want to spend time in that particular area of my life i'm a pilot for example saying my pilot is interesting when i go you know i'm a licensed source of passion that makes me laugh that makes me smile that male allows me to share that feeling with other people in a different way let me give you some specific examples of how this could affect you i had a woman who came to one of my seminars here for more time and she was really frustrated really depressed and she raised her hand and she goes what if you got categories but you don't want to make any categories because you hate your job i said well you know let's talk about that for a second what's your job she goes well i'm a school teacher and the look on her face made you know that she wasn't too terribly thrilled about it so i said well what do you associate to being a schoolteacher what are your roles as a school teacher because when you have an idea of who you are you come up with these beliefs about what you are she goes well i'm a disciplinarian she goes i'm in i'm basically the enforcer of the state's will i'm a babysitter because their parents never took care of these kids and so i have to constantly discipline and babysit them and she was rather harsh i said ma'am i understand how you feel but can i ask you a question why did you originally become a school teacher you obviously wanted to be that at one time well i don't know i thought i could make a difference i said what did you really want to be what did it being a school teacher mean to you back then what was the role of that and she said i guess i wanted to be a developer of the human spirit and you watch your whole face just all of a sudden change i said then why don't you just do that why don't you be a developer the human spirit and she said well i said if you were a developer of the human spirit versus a teacher what would the rules of the game be who would you be what would you do she goes well i was a developer of the human spirit i'd have to love every child in my class and her face changed she started to smile i said if you were developing human spirit what else would you have to do she goes well i i'd have to make learning fun i'd have to get to know the parents and not make them wrong and help them understand their own children and what's happening in their lives and she went on and on and she just i said so how do you feel about your job she goes i got a career it was that second of shift that happens when we change what something means words have power they change our biochemistry you ever had somebody call you a particular word and felt the change in your body words have power the right words they change what things mean to us give you one other quick example a woman comes to one of our seminars very frustrated stressed out hates your job what is you i'm a stockbroker on wall street well what do you do as a stock broker you got to go cold call a bunch of people trying to give them give your money and then then you got to follow up all the time and i just hate it i said okay well you can change the job but before you do you know what the problem with changing jobs is you take you with you you always think if the company's the problem and you go to a new job it feels okay for a while but pretty soon you're back to the same problems i said what we got to do is change your mentality your psychology i said did you ever enjoy this she goes well in the beginning i was kind of excited about it i said let me ask you a question what are you really being what would be a role a way of describing what you do that would make you grin from ear to ear what do you really want to be she goes well i want to be a mover and shaker and i said well you're on wall street you work for one of the biggest firms in the world you're doing quite well i said maybe that's what you are and i'll send you smile and she goes damn right i am i said what else are you when you're making cold calls forget that who do you want to be when you communicate with people on the phone she said a treasure hunter she said i want to search for treasure i want to help people i want to get them to give me some money and go use it to find treasure for them and help them expand their treasure and she's just her entire psychology changed so what i want you right now is i want you to take each of these categories you have both in your personal life and professional life and i want you to juice them up maybe make the name of the area a little bit more juicy but most importantly come up with two or three rolls that make it fun to be there little things make a big difference let me tell you what opa is going to do for you almost the stuff you know but maybe you have your own words for it or maybe at times you do this and other times you don't all i'm doing is giving you a set of words a system that you probably already do at times but by knowing what it is you can do it consistently and i hope some of the time you feel good and sometimes you don't if you're heading in this direction right here and we make a little 10 degree shift with oppa that seems like nothing but we take that out a week from now a month from now six months from now you're in a totally different destination in your life radically different difference and language and identity you're a big part of that but start this process right now i'm juicing up your life by figuring out what are the roles you're going to play in these areas that are so important your life called categories improvement let's do it right now so we've got to ask those questions so now the big question is how do we turn this into a system well a big part of the system of being able to manage something besides knowing the outcome knowing why and the action item is creating a visual chunking system now what the heck does that mean a visual chunking system well let me give you an example when we are given tons of information really quickly and we get this little bit of information this and this this and this and this and this pretty soon a human being gets un overwhelmed but if we find a way to connect various things through a period of time we can find a shape and pretty soon all of these items might become three things i'm gonna get the idea of what i mean by this so instead of all these individual items making crazy chunking is grouping together individual items resources ideas or thoughts so that by grouping them together they become more useful and part of what makes it more useful is by collecting together you're able to focus on them and not become overwhelmed how many follow that thought say aye so i'll give you an example and let's test your chunking ability real fast i'm going to show you a series of letters and what i'd like you to do when i show you those letters is i want you to immediately chunk those letters what i mean is i'm going to show you very briefly the camera should only look straight on here when i go to show you and i want you to write them down what you remember i'm going to give you a very brief time to look at it okay you look it up on the screen will probably be the easiest way here we go okay write it down raise your hand if you're finished raise your hand if you're finished okay great so i'll turn around now and then see how accurate you were how many got them all accurately in order let me show you hands keep your hands up so we got less than five percent of the room probably three percent of the room how many got well how many letters are there i think there's eleven one two three four five six seven eight nine ten eleven how many got uh of the 11 letters you got at least seven or more of them accurately okay how many got less than five accurately how many got less than less than five okay good so what if i said to you now how did you try to figure this out how did you try to remember this somebody someone who succeeded and did it sir did you get them all okay tell me how you now what i want to see is how he chunked it now what is chunking me he didn't try to get the whole thing at once he grouped it in some way i'd be willing to bet that's why he was able to retain it so how did you chunk this um e b q e l and u b q e l and then q r a w o u okay so he jumped he chunked it into three chunks okay and that helped him to remember it okay give me a hand nice job yes tony i didn't write him down i just flashed on it and i know what the word is you know what the word was yeah okay what's the word albuquerque that's correct what if i wrote it this way how many of you would have been able to write it down can you see it how many of you have wrote it out that way you would have been able to write it down immediately unless you see a show of hands sure because you recognize albuquerque because albuquerque is one chunk for most of you but it was all these things that were random most of you weren't able to get it many of you tried and failed let's see why you did now are you from albuquerque do you know anybody in albuquerque i'm uh i live about 100 miles from there why would he be able to see that when it looks nothing like albuquerque because when something becomes part of your focus like when you buy a certain car or you buy a certain outfit and also you see that car outfit everywhere well once you do that all that information was always around you but it's become important so part of your brain sees anything that would relate to it that's also what happens when you have a clear outcome when you have a clear outcome suddenly you start seeing albuquerque with other people seeing nothing but a mixture of stuff you start seeing with your outcome how to achieve it where no one else can figure it out because you have a clear outcome i did this once in a seminar a couple of years ago and the lady said i noticed it's albuquerque and i said do you live in albuquerque she said no ever lived now she said no i said you have a lover in albuquerque don't you and she went no i don't and everybody saw her face she was in this grocery store she goes well i do have a lover how do you know how to love her because i know the person either had a proximity or something they had an emotional association to to unscramble something with no help and a matter of i gave it to you for five seconds when you became emotionally associated to something or you have clarity of something being important your brain figures the whole thing out that's what the value of outcomes are is that pretty powerful now how many could have gotten it here come on how many could've got albuquerque here if i did it this way you could written down the letters and say i because it would be drunk differently so who else got it though this way has more than one yes how did you chunk it i made it you killed crow uh e u b b u she chunked it how many times three times and she chunked it auditorily instead of visually how many see that by the way do you see a pattern both these people succeeded chunked it three times somebody else i sort of started off by just doing what this dude did back there did which is just sort of like one at a time i sort of put e u b q e l and then just the grouse sort of seemed to work so i probably just threw that down so you still chunks two and then chunking in threes is most common for most people someone showed this one the other day chunking they chunk like this one two three many when you get beyond three for most people it's many so three is usually and if you try to chunk it as one unless you have the reference for albuquerque you are in bad shape who did not get it who did terribly honestly because you did terrible there's nothing wrong with you it's just that your strategy for chunking was not effective so sir how did you try to chunk it i tried to chunk it e e-u-b-q-e-l except all this is one no i tried to do it in three but the in my language rules you always follows q and so i i got all confused about halfway through it okay so what happened is he tried to chunk it with three but he let his belief systems he calls his rules determined that this couldn't be and that fried his brain so what you have to understand is if you're gonna get a job done if you're going to take a dream and turn to reality you're going to have to chunk it into a bite size not so small you're overwhelmed and can't remember it and not so big that you're overwhelmed and so what opa is is a visual chunking system i'll give you one more let's see what you've learned i'll give you one more example real quick here are you ready this one's easy ready put your pens down i want you to remember this in your head this is a chunking thing here we go how many got it let me use your hands okay how many did not get it okay those who got it raise your hand tell me how you chunked it yes ma'am i read it out loud to myself i said that says terraporini three syllables three chunks she used auditory three chunks give her hand nice job oh come on give her a real hand who else got it [Applause] yes ma'am how did you do it um i'm a linguist so i tend to look for the word that i know in any of the languages that i've studied in this case um t-e-r-r-u is like earth oh that's interesting and i i kept it in my mind and the perennials in france so i kept the mountain so the point is the ideal chunking system is three if you have no reference if you have a reference for something you can chunk it in a larger chunk for example driving your car your stick shift now is one chunk for most of you in the beginning it would have been useful if you could have said okay there's the things i do with my feet there's things i do with my eyes and things i do with my hands what happens for most people they go what i'm gonna do i gotta put this and i'm gonna do this and this they have no chunking system in the very beginning so they're overwhelmed but very quickly unconsciously your brain begins to chunk three things and eventually when you're familiar enough it becomes one thing it's like it all come together in your head and you'll be able to do things no one else can do how many follow so what i did with the human brain is chunk the entire psychology of what makes a human being do what they do so that's what you can now do with your life as well through this process [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] do [Music] you