How do you think of your life? Do you respond or react to everything that comes your way?

I know people who do no planning, and I bet you know some of these people too. There are also people who detail-plan everything. The question here is, have you thought ahead to how you would respond or react to a possible situation?

How would you react if you got fired? Last week’s trivia question was about famous people who got fired. Do you think they thought about getting fired, or do you think it was a surprise when the firing took place? And how did they react to the firing?

You see, bad things happen to most of us in life. Do we prepare ourselves for the things that happen to us- someone we love dies, someone we know gets divorced, someone has an accident, the UCLA Bruins lose a football game. How do we see ourselves reacting to things we would rather not have happen to us?

I do not want you to put negative things in your mind, but if negative things happen, then how are you going to respond? If positive things happen, how are you going to respond?

Planning for how to react to different situations can make us be better at life.

This Monday I was asked to give an impromptu invocation at our rotary meeting. No problem, but I had to think of something quick. I had read a story about North Korea in the LA Times that morning, about how there was no personal freedom in that country and how the outside world is starting to infiltrate into closed societies like China. How long can a government keep freedom of information away from billions of people? When will information become so readily available that the minds of people collectively begin to see the differences in people and make us not be afraid?

Of course as we live in this world, our views of the world and our understanding of the world change. More of us continue to move forward and see progress. Many cannot cope with the world changing, so they turn to fundamentalism in politics, society, or religion. Fundamentalism may lean to the right or the left, it makes no difference. As the extremes move the rest of us along toward understanding the world is changing, ideas of the world are changing, and we need to change with the world if we are going to move forward in life.

Of course, that is the purpose of Life Motivations: to discover how to be more personally successful. How this is accomplished is to understand that the world is changing, the people in the world are changing, and that no amount of people working against change will stop it.

Georg Hegel the German Philosopher took a page out of Aristotle and talked about the dialectic of life, and how the left and the right, the up and down, all become the center at one time, and then the center becomes the left or the right or the up and down.

What are you? I myself am proud to be part of the free world where we can think and discover truths that change as we and the world get older.

Do you have a pleasing personality? Do you get more bees with honey rather than vinegar? Do you sometimes have a pleasing personality and sometimes not. Do you think more people would be around you if you had a pleasing personality? Are you even conscious of it? Try being nice, try not to be a knucklehead. Do you think it will help you get the things that you want? Try being pleasing for a week.

PS: Check out the recent Weekly Challenges as an introduction or to find a new success technique.

“Many of life’s failures are men who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.”

Have you ever used the negative response close? You have to be very careful with this type of close, but it can be very successful. The negative response close works like this: you can't have something so you want it. You can't have this car, so you will pay more for it to get it. "You can't qualify for this loan, but if I could somehow get this loan for you, would you want to..." You take something away, and then give it back. If you aren't honest with this close, people will see through you and you will lose credibility. But if you use the truth, this can be a very powerful close. Talk to your manager and see how you might be able to use the take-away close.

PS: See the recent Sales Tips of the Week from Step Jones

This boxing coach was one of the greatest coaches in boxing history. He worked with Ali, Foreman and Leonard. He developed punching combinations that were his own, and are still used today. Who was this great coach?

1. Lou Duva
2. Emanuel Steward
3. Gil Clancy
4. Angelo Dundee
5. Freddie Brown
6. Whitey Bimstein

Answer the question correctly and get a free MP3 download of Step Jones’s CD Help Yourself Be Better  from his upcoming new audio product Jump Start

The answer to last week’s trivia question is #5, All of the Above, got fired at one time or another.