I was teaching a class on how to have a brilliant year and took the participants through an exercise to eliminate their Brilliance Blockers – you know, things that prevent you from doing your best. One of the questions I asked this eager-beaver group was, “What do you need to…

When you made your first appearance in the world, you possessed the potential to be exceptional. I believe that we are all pre-wired to achieve, create, and produce amazing results. However, sometimes we disqualify ourselves through unplanned setbacks, limited thinking, and a lack of exposure.When I was in Bhutan a few months ago, I recognized a fire in the eyes of men and women who have taken personal inventory of their abilities and realize they are absolutely exceptional.As I talked with each of them, I realized that they would never settle for the status quo or accept the crumbs of opportunity when they could own the bakery. They had high Absolutely Exceptional (AE) factors.Here is the first of three distinct conditions that you can cultivate to increase your AE factor:

Recently, my friend Kyle Wilson invited me to join an inmate group in Rancho Santa Fe, Calif., and spend two days with the effervescent Dr. Denis Waitley. This experience has been the highlight of the year for me. Dr. Waitley is 89 years young and the author of the best-selling book, The Psychology of Winning. He attended the United States Naval Academy at Annapolis, Md., and is the former chairman of psychology for the United States Olympic Committee’s Sports Medicine Council. Here are seven insights I learned from Dr. Waitley: