Quick Glance

Motivational training about how to actually change your life instead of just making plans or writing goals. The key idea is that success comes from changing your habits, attitudes, and daily actions so they match your goals, not just from “goal setting” or “positive thinking.”

• Writing things down makes your thoughts “real,” so you can organize your life instead of keeping everything in your head.
• Your imagination (dreaming, visualizing) is like a muscle; using it helps you see more opportunities and solutions.​
• A good attitude helps, but you also need systems, routines, and better habits, or nothing really changes.
• Comfort zones are really “what you’re willing to accept,” and if your minimum effort becomes your maximum effort, you stay stuck.
• Time is your most valuable resource, so you need to stop low-value activities and design your days around what matters most.
• The way you bounce back from problems (your “adversity IQ”) is a big part of success, because goals always bring some pain and setbacks.

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Empowered to Succeed: Breaking Success Barriers

Empowerment is our ability to improve results by customizing personal attributes that directly relate to our effectiveness—the art of synchronizing our dreams and goals with the strength of our character.

I’m Mario Pinardo, founder of the Achievement Dynamics Institute. Since 1985, I’ve had the honor and privilege of working with thousands of clients, assisting them in their personal success journeys. This program documents the methods, perspectives, and techniques I’ve realized for creating a powerful and duplicable system that enables both individuals and work teams to travel well on their road to success.

Time and time again, I’ve witnessed ordinary people achieve extraordinary results by maximizing their talents and abilities, often surpassing their dreams, goals, and objectives.

The Goal Setting Myth

My original vision in 1985 was to develop a company that helped people set and achieve their goals. It didn’t take long to realize that setting goals was the easy part—achieving them was the hard part.

We’ve been told repeatedly: “If you want to be successful, goal setting is the way to get there.” The common wisdom suggests that if you survey successful people, they all wrote down their goals. However, if you approach the survey differently and ask people who have set meaningful, specific goals how many they actually accomplished, you’ll find that a very small percentage of written goals are achieved.

The trouble begins when we think goal setting works for everyone else but us. This affects our belief system and self-esteem, preventing us from pursuing more rewarding but challenging personal achievements.

Don’t get me wrong—goal setting is part of the answer, but it’s far from the total solution. There’s an old Chinese proverb: “A man can stare at a map for several years but gets no closer to his destination until he starts walking in that direction.”

Beyond Motivation and Training

You may have tried motivational books, tapes, seminars, or extensive training programs. Most contain good information, but they often fall short of being the solution we’re looking for.

Motivation is inspiration. Training is information. But empowerment is transformation.

Empowerment involves all the motivation and information you need, plus the tools and perspectives to transform yourself into the person who makes it all happen.

Developing Personal Characteristics

What makes empowerment different is that it’s a self-perpetuating system. It includes goal setting and other success vehicles, but also gives us the ability to identify and modify any personal characteristics needed to become more effective and improve our quality of life.

The Exercise Paradox

Consider personal fitness as an example. Ask yourself these questions:

• Do you sincerely want to improve the quality of your life?
• Do you believe exercise improves the quality of your life?
• Do you currently know enough about exercise to start a program?
• Do you exercise regularly?

Most people answer yes to the first three questions, but nine out of ten admit they believe in and know more about exercise than their current behavior indicates. Getting more information about why or how to exercise won’t create permanent change in exercise habits.

The same applies to time management, communication skills, and sales techniques. Most salespeople know more about what they must do to multiply their business leads than what they actually do daily. They adjust to making a mediocre living because they lack the tools and techniques to stretch themselves into making a better one.

Empowerment is the transformational link that connects dreams to reality.

Top Ten Empowerment Principles

1. Conscious Awareness Through Crystallized Thinking

We need to take time to crystallize our thinking—writing down our thoughts and intentions. This raises awareness in our lives and enables us to become more productive and make better choices.

We get the term “crystallized thinking” from the properties of water. A thought in our mind is like fog—easily dissipated. A verbalized thought is like water—once poured, it spreads and evaporates. But a written thought is like a crystallized block of ice with three dimensions that can be shaped and viewed from all angles.

Here’s a simple example: What is 627 plus 749? Very few people can answer this off the top of their head. It’s a basic arithmetic function that becomes much easier when written down. Yet most people try to do their entire lives in their heads—sorting finances, career opportunities, health issues, fitness, family matters—all while identifying missions, clarifying values, and justifying priorities.

As Lily Tomlin jokingly said: “I’ve always wanted to be somebody, but I should have been more specific.”

2. Creativity

Crystallized thought leads to creativity—knowing how to create opportunity before it exists, then making it exist within a certain period. Einstein said, “Imagination is the cornerstone of human endeavor.”

Within creativity, there are three aspects:

• Vision is where we are going
• Imagination is how to get there
• Visualization is mental rehearsal of being there

Imagination is a muscle that atrophies through lack of use. By finding ways to stretch it, we multiply options and opportunities.

Sometimes opportunity comes from problems that need solving. We should approach problems as opportunities for growth. One of the best quotes addressing imagination and problem-solving: “No problem can withstand the assault of sustained thinking.”

3. Attitude Modification

We need to get our thought life in order through emotion management and attitude modification. Our thought life must be synchronized with our life goals and personal intentions.

There are two myths concerning attitude:

Myth #1: Attitude is everything. This isn’t true. People have filed for bankruptcy with a positive attitude, gotten divorced with a positive attitude, and haven’t spoken to their adult children in five years—all with a positive attitude. You can have a positive attitude and still not get positive results.

However, a positive attitude does provide benefits: it reduces stress, improves creativity, and attracts positive people.

Myth #2: Just get a positive attitude. There are circumstances where necessary actions complement our priorities and values but feel uncomfortable. The solution isn’t to magically transform from “I can’t stand this” to “I can’t wait to get started.”

The Attitude of Acceptance

A more realistic stepping stone is an attitude of acceptance. When an action step complements your priorities and values but makes you uncomfortable, deal with it professionally. As the saying goes: “In life we can’t avoid pain, but misery is a personal choice.”

The secret is to remove the misery while keeping the action. Consider shaving—most people don’t look forward to it, but they do it because the benefits outweigh the inconvenience. We accept it and just do it.

Affirmations and Effective Thinking

Use affirmations (positive self-talk) to develop new thought patterns and create positive beliefs. We become what we think about. Our subconscious mind believes whatever statements and pictures we feed it most often.

Psychologists have an equation: Event + Perception = Reality. As events happen, it’s our responsibility to create the right mental framework so we can move toward positive results.

Effective thinkers stop themselves at least seven times daily to ensure their thought patterns are synchronized with their best intentions.

4. Habit Formation (Habituation)

Habituation is the art of recalibrating our habits. You have what you have today because of who you are, and you’ve developed a habit of being that person. Every qualification for success is supported by habit.

Habits are to progress as machines are to momentum. The danger lies in unconsciously developing habits that limit our effectiveness and productivity.

When people learn to master their habits, they master themselves. When people form successful habits, those habits form successful people.

5. Having a Strong Self-Concept

The greater your belief in yourself and your intentions, the less things will bother you. When you’re confident in who you are, people will naturally want to help with your ideas and believe in you.

Progress vs. Perfection

A big contributor to positive self-image is understanding the difference between progress and perfection. Achievement builds self-esteem, and self-esteem gives us confidence for greater achievement.

We need to live a life of progress. When we look for progress, we feel encouraged. When we look for perfection, we always feel discouraged. Living a life of progress lets us feel good about ourselves during the climb.

You may not have reached the top of your mountain, but you can still enjoy the view along the way. Being dissatisfied (recognizing room for improvement) encourages continued growth. Being unsatisfied keeps us from enjoying where we are and what we’re accomplishing.

6. Revising Comfort Zones

It’s important to understand the power of comfort zones and how to alter them. They should really be called “what we are willing to accept zones.”

Comfort zones appear as early as grade school. In fourth grade, when assigned a composition due Friday, the first question was: “How many words does it have to be?” We learn early to calculate minimum requirements to complete tasks at the lowest acceptable level.

When the minimum you must do becomes the maximum you’re willing to do, the sum of your life is mediocre.

Once we maximize our time and effort, we develop routines that keep us producing at the same level, drastically slowing continuous improvement. To break through productivity ceilings, we must move our comfort zones to the next level.

The Yo-Yo on the Stairs

A good metaphor for revising comfort zones is a person walking up stairs while working a yo-yo. The yo-yo represents the natural tendency to have more and less effective times. As you climb, the low point of the yo-yo eventually becomes higher than previous high points.

A good sales month in February may be mediocre in July, and that same productivity may feel uncomfortable in November. When we understand this progressive path, we can improve productivity and quality of life at will.

7. Effective Time Management

When Benjamin Franklin said “time is money,” he was only half right. Time is much more valuable because of supply and demand. If we lose money, we can make more. If we lose time, it’s gone forever.

Time is a shrinking commodity. We need a sense of urgency—time is constantly ticking away. Urgency creates energy, creativity, and focus.

The Five Ds of Time Management

1. Design – Make a list of activities that would have the greatest impact on your productivity and quality of life
2. Disregard – Identify activities you could stop completely without significant impact
3. Delegate – Determine what someone else could do for you, freeing your time for reinvestment
4. Diminish – Identify what you could do less of to free up time
5. Do It – Take your designs and integrate them into your life while you have time

Example: The average person watches 5-6 hours of TV daily. Cutting back by two hours Monday through Friday creates 10 hours per week—40 hours per month (an entire work week), or 12 work weeks per year (three months of full-time work)!

Multi-Shifting

Multi-tasking means doing multiple things at once. Multi-shifting means accomplishing many important things over a predetermined time by coordinating and focusing on one thing at a time.

Think of a professional football team. At first glance, you see one team, but there are actually three distinct teams: offense, defense, and special teams. You’re not running all three simultaneously—you shift focus based on needs, one team at a time throughout the game.

Multi-shifting allows you to work in your effective zone—shifting smoothly from one need to another, addressing the most effective action items systematically.

8. Continued Focus and Concentration

Ninety percent of failure is caused by incompletion. We get on the right track but somehow get off and never return to complete the goal.

On a long road of good intentions, there will be roadblocks, setbacks, and unexpected detours. We need to minimize disruptions, but the real question is: How long does it take to get back on track?

Some people get off track at 10 AM and are off for the rest of the day. Others get off track Tuesday morning and remain off the rest of the week. We all know someone who got off track around age 23 and has yet to recover.

The Law of Diminishing Intentions

When we come up with wonderful ideas and sincere intentions to improve results but miss the mark repeatedly, we mentally lower the bar. We keep lowering it until we’re back at square one.

The real danger is damaging confidence in ourselves, our ideas, and our ability to execute them. We must learn to evaluate actions, look for progress, then refocus and recommit regularly until we consistently get the results we want.

9. Your Adversity IQ

Your adversity IQ is your bounce-back ability—knowing how to deal with setbacks, mistakes, and disappointments. You must emotionally take a punch, shake it off in a reasonable time, and keep fighting.

This includes:

• Letting go of disappointments while focusing on what you need to keep doing
• Working side by side with fear—not being afraid to be afraid
• Using problems as stepping stones for progress

Building adversity IQ is like building muscle. Every time we work outside our comfort zone and through our pain zone to achieve goals, we add another layer of emotional muscle.

As confidence grows, we gain mental assurance and stamina to fight back from adversity repeatedly. The more confidence we have, the more risk we’re willing to take because we believe in our ability to recover and learn from setbacks.

In 1982, I watched an interview with Willie Shoemaker, one of the world’s greatest jockeys. When asked for one piece of advice for young jockeys, he paused, looked into the camera, and said: “When you lose your head, your ass will follow.” That sums it up precisely.

10. Balanced Effectiveness

Creating balanced success requires willingness and know-how to identify and modify our weaknesses.

The word “potential” means it hasn’t happened yet. The quickest path to improved results isn’t increasing time and effort on the same old activities. The fastest way forward is finding and fixing weaknesses with the highest payoff returns.

The Weightlifter Story

At the gym, I heard moaning from down the hall. I followed the sound to the heavyweight room, where a man with a barrel chest and massive upper body was bench pressing enormous weights. He counted out fifteen reps with intense effort.

When he stood up, I noticed something striking: his legs were disproportionately small compared to his massive upper body—totally out of balance.

The point? With all his time and effort at the gym, was he improving his health or total body appearance? In bodybuilding, he could never be Mr. Universe, no matter how much effort he put into areas already well-developed.

How many of us invest vast amounts of time and energy into talents and abilities we’re already good at while ignoring areas that would make the biggest difference in our progress?

Sometimes we have mental mirrors that prevent us from seeing the total picture. We need courage and ability to see clearly and address weaker parts of our talents, abilities, and character.

Remember: Big doors swing on small hinges. Small changes often make the difference between being stuck or making progress, success or failure.

Team Empowerment

Empowerment has major impact on work team applications. Those responsible for managing teams understand the challenge of getting everyone on the same page in a supportive, positive, and creative workflow.

Team empowerment offers opportunities to develop and cross-train individuals’ strengths and experiences. It supercharges the creative process because you have a built-in mastermind group and support team.

As the team works together, each member applies personal empowerment to their skills and effectiveness. Each cog of the wheel becomes more effective as the greater team mechanism turns more productively.

The team approach emphasizes communication and positive support for individual growth as well as team growth and effectiveness. All empowerment fundamentals still apply, but the group’s energy perpetuates much faster progress than individuals working alone.

Isolate, Design, and Modify

We need to isolate and design our life areas independently but execute our life activities interdependently. We must methodically synchronize our activities with our attitudes and habits to keep things rolling in the right direction.

At first, this process may seem complex or overwhelming—because life is complex. We need to work through that ceiling of complexity to assess our needs and drive change in the right direction.

Pay Now or Pay Later

It’s an ounce of prevention versus a pound of cure. If we neglect areas of our life that are our responsibility to nourish, develop, and advance, things eventually break down. Once that happens, it becomes truly overwhelming to put the pieces back together in healthy working order.

We are goal-seekers by nature. We feel most enthusiastic about life when we’re stretching ourselves and our capabilities through meaningful goals that relate to who we are. It’s about moving through a sequence of positive achievements as we expand and experience life.

It’s more fun to experience change by your own design than to be at the mercy of adjusting to changes that happen through lack of focus and maintenance.

Windows of Opportunity

Most life goals give us a brief window of time to capture the results and happiness we want—then the opportunity is gone forever. Examples include:

• Having only so many years to effectively enjoy and raise our children
• Making a success of our careers
• Planning for retirement
• Taking care of our health now so it takes care of us later
• Having a positive impact on other people and society

Your Personal PNL

In business, PNL represents Profit and Loss. On the personal side, PNL stands for Purpose and Legacy.

Would you be satisfied knowing the greatest thing you ever achieved in your life has already happened?

Life itself presents the ultimate window of opportunity. We need to reassess our purpose from this point forward. Your life is yours to use and enjoy and, if possible, leave your mark. Some people leave shiny imprints, others leave dark impressions, and some leave no mark at all.

The Three Stages of Empowerment

To be more effective, approach empowerment in three stages:

1. Isolate areas of desired change
2. Design your needs
3. Apply and recommit to the fundamentals that create positive growth and transformation

As you improve at applying these principles, you’re also progressively achieving results in the most important areas of your life.

It’s the progression of our goals that eventually leads to their achievement. With focus on progress, the extraordinary eventually becomes ordinary.

Every time you recommit to your objectives, it becomes easier to produce momentum in your personal development and professional results.

Until we know how to isolate and organize our needs on all three levels—design, attitude, and habit—it’s just one big guessing game on what to work on next. Sometimes we take shots in the dark that produce minimum success. Sometimes we never address the real issues that would have the most positive impact.

Conclusion

Travel well in your life journey!

Mario Pinardo
Founder and CEO
Achievement Dynamics Institute