....Hope Is Not A Plan....

The below article is from my partner.....and was shared in the September 2006 Cognigen Times. It's no secret that my primary business is with Cognigen. But please overlook that for now. Instead I want you to focus closely on the core message in this piece...and take it to heart for your current business efforts. Very powerful stuff!!!

Hope Is Not A Plan

One of the philosophies of successful business people is the reality statement that "Hope Is Not A Plan". This is even addressed with dozens of examples in the new book by Anderson Cooper, television news anchor.

Do you see the difference? Hopefully you do, since the difference between "hope" and "plan" is even more stark than the difference between day and night. You can hope that you ace your physics exam at school. You can hope you get that raise at your job. You can hope you have enough month left over at the end of the money where you can still make your car payment. You can hope that the hurricane sighted in the Atlantic does not make landfall near you next week.

There is nothing wrong with hoping. The very act helps us to understand what we want to accomplish, what we wish for in our lives, in personal relationships, in various activities and endeavors, and yes, frequently in terms of our future financial situation.

But hope is not a plan.

Hope without action almost has negative value. Some experts say that hope in and of itself, with no accompanying plan is nothing more than day-dreaming, and does not really constitute one's real hope or dreams or goals. Why? Because if it was a REAL hope, then a plan of action would accompany it. Without a plan of action, the hope is nothing, a waste of mental energy.

You can hope you ace your physics exam, but to make that hope a reality, you study, you research, you learn, so that your hope can become a reality. There is the action that can enable your hope to become real. You can hope for a raise at your job, but the action is to know and understand what is required of you to get there and to put that understanding into action. You can hope for financial comfort for yourself and your family, but without a plan to get there -- a plan that you create, endorse, and PUT INTO ACTION, that hope is nothing more than a daydream or a passing fantasy.

The people who are most successful in the world today have deployed their action plan. That does not mean that the first plan they came up with is the one they need to live with. Rather, as situations change and circumstances change, the plan is changed accordingly. The key is that they put their plan into action, every day, without fail.

Are you committed to your plan or simply "involved"? As an analogy, think of a good breakfast of ham and eggs. The chicken was involved in making that breakfast possible, but the pig was committed.

Think about your Cognigen business. Are you committed to being successful and seeing your commissions raise more every month to levels that make the paycheck from your regular job look like a vending machine refund by comparison? Have you created a plan to make that happen? Or are you simply providing a good deal of hope -- hoping that the deal of the century will fall into your lap because you are a deserving person -- involved at the peripheral level but not committed to making it happen?

It is real and it can happen for you. There is one Cognigen agent where August 2006 marked a major milestone, that agent's first ever 5 figure commission check from Cognigen. (Five figures to the left of the decimal point). Less than 5 years ago, that same agent would have laughed in your face if you told them that they would be achieving that kind of commission check for a single month. But like hundreds of Cognigen agents, that agent had hopes and dreams, and also created a plan and worked that plan. Plan the work, work the plan.

Cognigen would like to strongly encourage you to hope and dream, but also to create a plan for you, your family, and your future, and then put that plan into ACTION, starting today. In say 3-5 years from now, if you keep doing what you are doing now, can you honestly say that you will be where you want to be at that point in the future? If not, then today -- right now -- is an excellent time to implement your PLAN.