In Brian Klemmer's book, The Compassionate Samurai, he addresses ways that you can become the person you want to be. If you visualized the ideal you, how would you look, feel, and behave? It can be helpful to write the details on paper. For instance, how much do you weigh, what is your waist size, what color clothes do you wear? Do you feel confident, joyful, energetic? As a parent, are you patient? As a spouse or partner are you loving and compassionate? Are you a thoughtful

There are two ways to learn something; emotional involvement and repetition. At Klemmer and Associates we strive to create opportunities at our seminars where you can have an experience with emotional involvement to create a large amount of change in a short amount of time. Repetition is also an effective tool for change. Positive affirmations can be extremely effective. What do you tell yourself about you? Is your self-talk riddled with positive feedback, or overwhelmingly n

Commitments do not exist within a vacuum. Brian Klemmer always said, “Context is everything.” It becomes easy to heighten the level of certain commitments when we have a high level of accountability in those areas. What is interesting is where we choose into that level of accountability. When I look at my life, I can evaluate how healthy I am in terms of my relationships with my word based on how I am treating my agreements. I begin to look at which agreements I am devaluing,

Do you know your purpose? If not, you're in the company of a lot of other people. Like those other people, you might share a feeling of aimlessness and dissatisfaction with life. Something seems to be missing, and you know there's got to be more. But how does someone go about finding their purpose? Is there a course you can take? A book you can read? Someone you can talk to who can tell you what it is? There is no magic bullet, no step-by-step formula which you can follow to

There are times when open, honest communication and the use of code words and fair fighting may not work to get you out of the 3Rs. This can be the case when the person you feel resentment, resistance or revenge toward is not someone you can openly communicate with. When this is the case, consider giving as the solution to resolve the 3Rs in your life. On pages 50-52 of Brian's first book, If How-To's Were Enough We Would All Be Skinny, Rich, & Happy there is a basic discussi

Most people in the professional development or personal achievement fields would agree that we can control our present thoughts and impact our future success. The idea that we can change our circumstances now and in the future has become universally accepted, but very few people consider the possibility of altering our memories. While we can’t change the past, we can reframe, reconsider, and reevaluate the way we look at it. Very few things in life are either all good or all

Have you ever had a list of things you know you are supposed to do or you should do that you really don’t want to do? Are there things you choose to ignore due to discomfort? Things you know will move the boat forward in the direction you say you want to go, yet you just keep putting them off? I have those things. Sometimes I get to make tough phone calls. Do you know what I mean by the tough phone calls? The ones where you get to face the conflict head on. The ones that make

I wish I could have… I wish I could do… I wish I could be… Theodore Roosevelt once said, “Comparison is the thief of joy.” That has been absolutely true for me. I also believe comparison is a thief of productivity. Have you found yourself looking at your life and feeling like you don’t measure up? This is so easy to do in a social media age, where everyone is consistently posting the highlight reels of their life. It can be easy to find ourselves thinking our life “isn’t as g

One of the most important elements for personal or professional success is congruence. In this context, congruence refers to consistency and a sincere, genuine understanding of ourselves both publicly and privately. I have the privilege of speaking to millions of people in corporate and arena events. I have written over 40 books with 10 million copies in print. Each book contains my contact information. Millions more people have seen one of the eight movies based on my novels

How are you enrolling people? I get to work in enrollment in so many areas of my life. There is a lesson I learned from my mentor, Kimberly Zink, that will reside in my heart forever. The question I always get to ask myself is - What kind of energy am I bringing to any enrollment? Am I pushing people or am I pulling people? Neither is bad, and they are both useful at different times. For me, the key is being able to choose what I am leveraging in any given moment or conversat

The choice between the viewpoints of victim and responsible is consistently going to be a decision with which we are faced. Have you ever thought, "I honestly am the victim in this situation!" Being a victim, in this context, is the viewpoint that something is being done to you. Being responsible is not about whether or not you were victimized, but your outlook on the situation. It is about creating the liberty for you to move forward in your life however you see fit. Two peo

We succeed or fail in virtually every area of our lives based on the decisions we make. Decisions often make us nervous because we realize there could be unfavorable consequences if we make the wrong choice. The potential outcome causes many people to rush, delay, or avoid a decision. With every decision we face, there is an optimal window of time to both make and implement the decision. This optimal time comes when we have had an opportunity to gather as much information and

Compliance vs Commitment: these are two very different kinds of motivation. Compliance is a fear based motivation. Usually when someone is in compliance they will finish the task, but their attitude around the task can be negative. Compliance can create results, and it usually is to the minimum necessary to avoid the consequences in place. Commitment on the other hand, is when the individual has something at stake, but the motivation is not fear. People who are committed have

Here in the 21st century, we have the ability to easily communicate with almost anyone, but the number of miscommunications, misunderstandings, and mishaps are multiplying rapidly. Often we assume something is so obvious that it goes without saying. Not only do we need to say it, but we need to communicate clearly and repeatedly to avoid misunderstandings and the resulting disasters. Following are just a few real warnings that have been put on various products. These warnings

These columns have appeared for over two decades in newspapers, magazines, and online publications around the world. In more than a thousand columns, I have written on a myriad of topics and subjects, but every column—including the one you’re reading now—ends with the phrase, “Today’s the day.” It really doesn’t matter what you think about, dream about, or plan to do. The only thing that matters is what you do. Inspiration is important. It may be among the most valuable eleme

Leaders are bold enough to interfere in other people's lives Do you remember studying the physicist Sir Isaac Newton in school? His first Law of Motion stated, "An object at rest tends to stay at rest and an object in motion tends to stay in motion with the same speed and in the same direction unless acted upon by an outside force." Objects (and you and I are "objects") tend to keep on doing what they're doing. In fact, it's the natural tendency of objects and people to resis

We can create a crisis in our lives when we elevate certain purchases to the level of a status symbol. We need to judge ourselves based on our character, our achievements, and our legacy, not which items we buy. You are not your purchases. If we're going to create wealth, we must stop buying things we don't need, with money we don't have, to impress people who don't care. According to the American Automobile Dealer's Association, the average car payment in the United States

The journey we call the work. This work doesn't cause us to not have feelings of guilt, shame or blame. It's not like you go through a training and instantly never make another bad decision in your life. What is amazing about this work is the fact that we have tools to express our feelings, change our sunglasses and move on; if we choose to. If any person on the planet I cannot think of anyone that is more deserving of that experience than our youth. Do you remember what is w

Originally written by Brian Klemmer. Leaders operate from being responsible, even when they don't feel like it and it doesn't seem true A construction worker went to work every day with his black metal lunch pail under his arm. On Monday, he complained loudly about the peanut butter and jelly sandwich he had for lunch. His co-workers ignored his complaints, since it was his first day on the job. Tuesday at lunch this same worker was even louder about how much he hated peanut