How To Build Your Inner Culture Into A Culture Of Greatness

• Possess high aspirations and a desire to win: Cultivate a high performance mindset where good is never good enough. Always push to go farther, better, faster. In your mind you must develop the attitude you are not content with short term goals and short term performance. Start today to build something truly special and lasting.

• Know who you are: Know how you think and why you think as you do. Know what you think in both your conscious and subconscious mind. Work to change the kind of thinking causing you to settle for anything but excellence.

• External focus: People who live successful high performance lives with a successful inner culture focus their energies externally on delighting others, being cooperative, servicing the needs of others from a position of strength rather than from a position of weakness. Successful high performers care for the community of persons in which the person lives. Don’t get caught up in playing games to gain advantage at a cost to others. Don't spend time thinking about yourself, feeling sorry for yourself, or focusing your mental energies on yourself.

• Act like you own your life: The only person who can own your life is you. No matter what circumstances may come at you, you are the owner. As the owner, avoid self-destructive behaviors. Take personal responsibility for your overall performance. Own up to the end result of your actions. When your actions fall short, own up, and implement new actions. Find out what actions you have taken that were not sufficient. Then you must take measures to replace insufficient actions with sufficient behaviors. Strive to do the right thing all the time in every circumstance.

• Always be ready to take action: Become impatient to get things done. Become a doer rather than a talker. Keep an eye on where the value is in every decision and every action. Always strive to enhance every moment. Never slack off.

• Build your own potentialities support group. In the early part of the twentieth century, famed self-help writer Napoleon Hill recommended persons build what he called "Master Mind" groups. Individuals who team up with others to build a winning life end up winners. Winning people who possess a winning inner culture encourage others to be themselves and help others develop to their fullest potential. Likewise, being in a group of likeminded people who encourage each other in supportive ways brings us the ability to reach out for and attain our fullest potential. To have an inner winning culture means we must work together for shared goals, be open to others ideas, and work out differences for a common good while still maintaining our uniqueness.

• Go all out all the time with passion and energy: We must not hold back if we want to win. If we hold back we lose. We must go from doing what is adequate to doing what is exceptional in every moment in every endeavor. When we go from doing what is adequate to doing what is exceptional we give others the opportunity to participate in our infectious enthusiasm.

Know where you are going. If you don't know where you are going, you will end up going nowhere.

Know the location of the goal line. If you do not know where the goal line is located, you have no game.

Think ahead. If you try to take life as it comes, life will take you down. Use your power of intelligence and consider the consequences of your actions. Plan to generate good consequences as a result of your actions.

Use a playbook. Develop a series of "plays" or strategies to win. Without a playbook or set of strategies, you have little chance of winning by chance.

Others: You need other people in your life. You could survive on your own for a time but if you were the only person on earth, when you die then human life on earth dies with you. You need others. Others need you.

Equipment: You need to know what equipment (mental, physical, emotional, and spiritual) you have and what equipment you need. Old outdated equipment must be replaced.

Written Strategies: You need a written strategy to win

Goals: You need visible, tangible, measurable, written goals.

Small Victories: You need to score small victories every time the opportunity arises.

Backup Plans: You need a backup plan in case things go wrong.

Experts: You need outside experts for some issues, problems, or unfilled needs.

Organization: You need to organize and manage the various parts of life.

Sell: You need to sell yourself, sell your plans, sell your ideas, sell your concepts, and sell your strategies

Practice and Preparation: You need to practice and prepare for the future

Rules: You need to know the rules. You need to follow the rules

Your Location: You need to know your present location or where you are

Yardstick: You need a way of measuring your progress. Use a yardstick of some kind to measure your progress.

Personal Honesty: Be honest with yourself, with others, and with God

Resources: Use outside resources, get help, reach up

Limitations and Potentialities: Know your limitations, your strengths, and your potential

Offense and Defense: Use an offense and a defense: In life, you have to play both sides of the ball.

Admissions: Admit your mistakes, your failings, and your weaknesses

Seek: Seek, Ask, Knock

Responsibility: Clean up your past by owning up to what you have done and to the mistakes you have made, then make apologies to the people you've hurt.

Your Broken Past: Burn your broken past and scatter the ashes. Then start anew.

Habits: Do a quick fix on all habits. Fix mistakes immediately.

Prayer: Pray as often as possible.

Others: Build others first.

Improve: Improve yourself. Improve your character, your life, your relationships, your job skills, your spirit…improve your game every day.

Faith: Maintain an unmoving faith in God.

This message was presented in March 2012 as the Virtual Church message in Shepherd's Care Ministries virtual church site at http://www.shepherdscare.net