This issue is made up of the following sections:

1. Personal Effectiveness Tips
2. Questions for Growth
3. Reality Check

1. Personal Effectiveness Tips
1. A. Instill better morning habits. Use your early morning time to work out, catch up on some reading, or return emails. Doing so sets your day up for success, and allows you to feel a sense of accomplishment, most mornings before 9 o'clock. Getting up an hour early results in an extra two weeks of productive time per year. Not a bad way to start a day.

2. Concentrate your efforts for one month on one specific area of your life (spirituality, finances, health, career, etc) and maximize your production. This is the blitz method of getting things done. Too often we allow life to get in the way of important goals and dreams. Blitzing any one area of your life results in improved results, faster. This might mean picking up an extra workout or two a week, or it might mean drinking only water and eliminating processed-sugar drinks from your daily diet. Hard work in one area results in much greater production than diluting your efforts across many areas over time.

3. Compete! If you are anything like me, you feel most alive when you are pushing yourself beyond current limits, and what better way to do that than competition? Join a league, find a marathon to run, play sports. Get sweaty, get riled up, get the juices flowing.

4. Though pain and inequality are, begrudgingly, facts of life, suffering whilst dealing with them is entirely optional. Understand what you can control and that which you cannot, and master the former. Don't make life harder than it needs to be.

5. Having a difficult time getting motivated in some area of your life? Set better goals- the kind that get you worked up. Better yet, make them publicly known. Let close friends know your goals and intentions. This compounds the likelihood that you will achieve them (through fear of embarrassment should you fail to!).

6. Remember that work supports life, not vice versa. Numerous studies have shown that one of the leading causes of early death in males is job dissatisfaction. You are not your job, and your chosen career should merely be a vehicle to increased income through adding value to others' lives. Looking at work as something that you HAVE to do, or something that takes precedence over every other area of your life, is entirely unhealthy. The belief that you can take your accomplishments, trophies, and accomplishments with you when your life ends is also flawed (though quite Egyptian).

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2. Questions for Growth
1. What talents or gifts do you possess that sit unused in your daily life?

2. Is your current work a career (something you would like to do and advance in throughout your life) or a job (something that simply pays the bills)?

3. What will be the consequences of never fully pursuing your life's biggest goals (and allowing fear and the daily grind overtake you)?

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3. Reality Check

November brings us multiple reality checks:

Reality Check #1 surrounds the concept of responsibility. Responsibility necessitates consequences. Broken down further, the word means response-ability: The ability to actively respond to your environment. Increasingly, I see a society full of folks who believe responsibility is something that others need to cultivate in their lives. The core of true response-ability entails being able to accept both the positive and the negative consequences of our choices and actions. It would be nice if life was full of positives, but we can also learn an immense amount about ourselves when adversity follows our chosen path. Seek to cultivate further your ability to make your thoughts YOUR thoughts, and your decisions YOUR decisions.

Reality Check #2 deals with the issue of anger in our daily lives. Remember that anger is almost always self-induced. I would venture to say that half the people I meet in my daily life, in every circumstance, have problems with anger. Quit wasting time being angry, and cleaning up the mess you leave behind with your anger. It merely leads to perpetual guilt. Find out the true reason behind your anger, and seek to eliminate whatever behavior you engaged in that lead to your self-loathing. Perhaps you failed to keep your promise (see the above thoughts on responsibility), failed to follow-through on a task, let your customers/clients down, failed to take action on your dreams. The answer to your anger is action turned inward, not hate/intolerance/vengeance turned outward.

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