Sun Tzu: Strategies To Improve Your Life

Thus, though we have heard of stupid haste in war, cleverness has never been seen associated with long delays.
--Sun Tzu "Waging War"

If you are running a business has there been a mistake you've made based on your impatience? I know I have.

I like to think of myself as a pretty intelligent person, but if there's anything that I constantly struggle with it's patience. I want it now!

Especially a few years ago, I started my home business and would start with what I thought was a great plan and get half-way through it, start seeing results, and then change.

I have come to realize, I wasn't prepared for success, because I couldn't trust the process. There's a new book on the market by Stephen Covey called "The Speed of Trust"

Good things happen when you trust your plan, you naturally grow the trust as you begin seeing results. When you find something that works, do more of it. For more ideas on smart simple strategies.

"Therefore the skillful commander takes up a position in which he cannot be defeated and misses no opportunity to master his enemy."
--Sun Tzu

The 48 Laws of Power

If there has been one strategy I've struggled with it's been the ability to overcome myself in business. My natural tendency is to get bogged down by the tedious tasks of everyday action.

I see my natural tendency as my "enemy" and I use the position to "master my enemy" as the everyday actions I take that are contrary to my nature.

The Japanese have a concept of "kaizen" which at its core means "continual change for the better in search of perfection."

If you are intrigued by this powerful concept and strategy of continual improvement in business.

"He will win whose army is animated by the same spirit throughout all its ranks."
--Sun Tzu "Attack By Stratagem"

I think this is probably my favorite quote from "The Art of War" because it really encapsulates the importance of working with people like yourself.

I know when I work with like minded people, those that think, work, and talk similar to how I do, I tend to be far more creative and comfortable with my working environment.

On the other hand, when I find myself working with people who I cannot connect to mentally, my work suffers, conflict breaks out, and life is generally miserable.

On my team building website I think the biggest lesson in creating a great team is probably getting people of "like mind" and setting goals based on what the entire group thinks, rather than how one person, typically "the team leader" thinks.

"It is according to the shapes that I lay plans for victory, but the multitude does not comprehend this.
-Sun Tzu

Read these great tips on harnessing and maintaining power in any situation in this overview of Robert Greene's amazing book The 48 Laws Of Power

Over the last few years we have heard much about "The Secret" and the "Law of Attraction."

In many ways I see this entire concept as a marketing ploy used by companies to explain to their representatives why they are failing in their lives and how if they send in some money we'll explain how to really use "the secret."

The law of attraction, as far as I can understand it, can only really come into your life when you plan for success. Sun Tzu sees these as the "shapes" that the "multitude does not comprehend."

Getting clear mentally is essential to really tapping in to and trusting your intuitive mind. There are a few techniques and tools I've used over the last year that have really allowed me more mental clarity and allowed me to trust my mind more. . .

And trusting my mind is not an easy thing for me, as someone who suffers from ADHD and alcoholism, my mind is one of the last things I typically can trust. But it hasn't always been this way.

As a kid I was very intuitive, but as we grow older we lose that mental sensitivity that allows intuition. We need to get back to a mental baseline that allows unburdened thought.

Here are two techniques I've used to get clear:

1) I journal three pages daily before I do anything. I see this as a mental toilet flushing. I just write like Julia Cameron suggests in her book The Artist's Way (which is in the Amazon resources section below if you don't have it).

My journalism is sometimes coherent, sometimes totally off the wall, but it is always helpful to allow me to "flush the toilet" before I do any work. I just write without any thought to quality and it really opens up the floodgates as far as seeing new productivity in my working and personal life.

2) Like I said above, I struggle with adult ADHD so my thoughts can run the gamut between insightful to totally nuts. . . to get my thoughts in my clear, every morning for the last couple months I've used the free resource Gnaural.

Gnaural is not an easy program to use. The sounds aren't pretty, but it is absolutely free - and for someone who has a tough time concentrating on a project for any extended period of time, any progress is welcome. I recommend checking it out at least.

After just listening to it for an hour, once a day for one week - I had increased my productivity by about 25% and I could see a huge shift in my ability to focus and I also felt much more creative. That's all the proof I needed.

"Order or disorder depends upon organization."
-Sun Tzu

Do you ever find yourself getting distracted? I know I do. When I go through a rough patch in my life, I am the most unorganized person I know.

I can't find shit. "Hey where did I put my wallet." "I left my car keys where?" It's a pretty ugly site. The Art of War is one of those great books that really hits home when you're feeling scattered and disoriented.

When I start with simplicity, not over-thinking things, I almost (almost I said) naturally become more disciplined about my organization and as a result, I find my creativity increases, my productivity goes up, and I'm freer to focus on the tasks I set out to do.

I call this "finding the flow".

I'm a big fan of Julia Cameron's books, like The Artists Way and The Vein of Gold and I think the three pages of daily journaling Cameron recommends definitely plays a huge role in helping me organize and focus my thoughts and actions on a day to day basis.

A major factor in this is starting my task with the desired result in mind.

When I write my three daily pages with the intent to discover a solution to a problem I'm having. . . Let's say a marketing campaign that isn't getting results I want, I'll sit down and just personally brainstorm all the options I have on paper - the problems I can see.

Usually by the end of three pages I'll have much more clarity and solutions to the task at hand.

For example, if I sit down to write a Squidoo lens with my goal in the forefront of my mind, say to generate traffic to one of my websites, I tend to write content that is better suited for the audience, that is more personal, that is better thought out. It comes across as genuine rather than composed.