Tag Archives: #empowerment for women

How to Change Your Life – Part 4

Emotionals States

Anyone is vulnerable!               Image from dailymail.co.uk

“An emotion does not cause pain. Resistance or suppression of emotion causes pain.”
― Frederick Dodson

Emotional States and Life Change decision making

Don’t go shopping on an empty stomach! Makes sense really, doesn’t it! Your tummy will make you bring groceries home that only your present appetite would want.

So why deal with other issues, when your emotional state is not focussed where it needs to be?

One reality of Life Change events and periods is that your emotions will probably be a little turbulent. Especially if it was a sudden event and you didn’t choose it! If you were made redundant from a job you had been at for a long time, it is to be expected that you would be upset, possibly feel betrayed, hurt, abandoned and a host of other emotions. If it financially disadvantaged you, the emotions of fear and loss will be there also.

Emotional States

Emotional Turbulence – image from accuweather.com

Not a great frame of mind to start planning a new future, is it?

Understanding what goes on in your mind at times like these is the key to managing the emotions and turning them around to work for you. Being aware of your emotions is the first step in this management process!

I’m angry!

How often have you had something go wrong, and suddenly found yourself angry over it? Did you make the choice to be angry? Or did you just discover it happened? Mostly, we find out afterwards. However, it is possible to raise awareness to a level where we can see the emotional change coming, and then choose consciously, before it becomes too late, which emotion to feel, that will put us in the best position to deal with it.

Emotional States

Grrrr!               Image from dianafit.com

We have seen sports people put their opponents off their game with ‘sledging’ or other emotional upset strategies, whose game then goes off and they lose the match. However, some players, in whatever sport, seem immune to this behaviour. Why is that?

These professionals have mastered their emotions. They are aware of the emotional upset games and are acutely aware of their emotions, and CHOOSE different emotional states to counter them!

A TV series some years ago explained this in a wonderful and funny way. “Herman’s Head” was about Herman and the four “sub-personalities” in his head, in charge of his four major emotional states. The four characters acting out Herman’s emotions each represented a different aspect of his personality and were very one dimensional. This is a very fair representation of what goes on, although we have many more than four sub-personalities! Remember the ‘shopping when hungry’ experience? How powerful but one dimensional is the pull of the appetite when shopping while ravenous! The fast food counter got a work-over, the BBQ chicken counter had us in from the start, but none of the laundry items made it home!

Emotional States

Herman’s Head TV Show – image from brainsandcareers.com

In a similar manner, when we are angry, we think of little else. When we are sad or depressed, our thinking is in a very narrow focus. However, by being aware of our emotional states and choosing differently, we could be in a much more productive frame of mind.

Rather than angry about losing that job, how about becoming creative and finding a brilliant new way of promoting how valuable you are to a new potential employer? Rather than becoming a Kamikaze Road Rage driver when cut off, how about choosing to be a responsible parent and keep the children sitting in the back seat safe and out of harm’s way? Rather than being depressed, how about being resourceful and choosing to see the future differently?

It’s all about changing that attitude.

The problem is that once it is upon you, it’s very hard to change. You need to catch it beforehand, and choose differently before you are overwhelmed by the new emotional upset.

How do we become aware of emotional states and upsets and changes before they happen?

One section of the Life Change 90 program does precisely this. You make a note of your emotional states each evening through a simple, 30 second process we show you. Over a short time, this makes being aware of your emotional state or changes natural, and you actually CAN see them coming.

Once that happens, you can then choose differently. It really is that simple. However, you need to develop that awareness first and the Life Change 90 program is one of the few readily available ways to easily gain this awareness.

There are other benefits of this awareness also. You learn the range of emotional states you have available within you, to call upon when needed. For example, for those terrified of public speaking, you could call on that part of your psyche that loved to show off, and actually enjoy getting up with a microphone. For those who feared the dark, you could call on that part of your psyche that loved exploring, and make an adventure of the night time! There are so many other examples, and each person will have their own to think about.

If you’d like to develop your emotional awareness as a strategy to deal with and even prevent emotional upset, Life Change 90 has this feature built into it, as part of a powerful suite of tools created specifically to enable you to deal with and manage life change events and times to your benefit. Download it now and start working on your own emotional states, get them working for you, instead of controlling your life for you.

If the life change event or process is too much for you to work on alone, there are people you can ask for help – specialist Life Change Coaches.

Next section of this ‘How To Change Your Life’ series, we will look at Goalsetting, the thing that so many people are afraid of, yet they are actually doing it all day, every day!  Goalsetting for your life change process is a little different to regular goalsetting, and you need to understand that difference!

Til next time, fair winds and full sails,

Ray Jamieson

“When our emotional health is in a bad state, so is our level of self-esteem. We have to slow down and deal with what is troubling us, so that we can enjoy the simple joy of being happy and at peace with ourselves.” ― Jess C. Scott

Related posts:

How to change your life – part 3 – Self Discipline

Life Change Event Definition

It’s OK to ask for help

 

How to Change Your Life – Part 3

How to change your life part 3

A word from Jim Rohn on the topic

Self Discipline

If you are overweight and out of shape, going along to a gym won’t make a scrap of difference. Unless you go back, time after time, develop discipline around the issue, and make fitness development a habit! Just one trip won’t make a difference!

Perhaps the greatest challenge in making serious life changes is breaking out of the habits embedded over many years of use and daily reinforcement.

Changing habits is a huge issue; just ask any smoker, or someone who has tried to break or change a habit. Powerful self-discipline strategies are needed if you intend to break or change habits on your own. However, there is another way.

How to change your life part 3

       Breaking habits can be a challenge.   Image from fwweekly.com

Automating your life change program can be a powerful alternate strategy, especially when you have so much else going on in your life. Setting aside a few minutes each morning and evening to set up your daily program may make the difference for you, and begin the mental reprogramming you need to make these changes work, and stay with you forever.

How to change your life part 3

Putting your auto in drive!   Image from ask.cars.com

How does automating your life changes work?

There was significant research done by Pavlov, using dog feeding times and a bell, to record the use of stimulus and response to establish habits. This technique is essentially a prompt and reward for the appropriate behaviour once achieved. In a different but conceptually similar way, we program our minds each morning, and check off the results each evening, focussing on the positive achievements to feel the reward.

By implanting our goals, intentions and tasks in our minds each morning, we begin the process. For example, if your life change goal required you to take certain steps each day towards achieving it, by reminding yourself each morning by taking a few moments to note exactly what those steps are, your mind is then sent on a search for the opportunity to complete those tasks. It’s not something you consciously have to do, as your subconscious mind is already at work on the project.

During the day, your mind will locate the opportunities you need to complete those steps, and make you aware when it has found them.

To be specific, if you put the thought into your mind “I need to get a map of the downtown area today” and note it in your to-do list, while you are out and about, your subconscious mind is looking for where you might find such a map. When you near a newsagent, post office, information booth or other such likely place, it will pop a thought into your conscious mind and you will remember to look for the map you need.

How to change your life part 3

The power of the subconscious mind! Image from beyondthedream.co.uk

The same applies to either changing or creating a new habit – put it into your subconscious mind early in the day and let your subconscious do the work for you.

As with everything, the more you do this, the more practice you have, the better you become at noticing when your subconscious mind prompts you with one of your daily steps “to do” from your morning routine.

Once you have completed the task or the habit-forming action, you will feel a little sense of self-satisfaction and your self-discipline requirements are done.

In the evening, you sit with your program for a few minutes and review your day. On the list is the task: “Purchase a map of Downtown”. Check it off, and you have rewarded yourself in a tiny way, for achieving that mini-goal. If it was the new habit, you check it off also.

Of course, there are habit changes and other steps towards your goal that you will take each day. Each morning, you note them in your program. During the day, you find and achieve them, and in the evening, you check them off.

Doing this provides you with a visual and an emotional record of your achievements, and your daily use of this system begins to embed the new habit or activities into your subconscious mind, so that you no longer have to consciously work at the habit or activity to remember it – the new system has automated it and it is already happening.

A final step in the process is recording your achievements on a monthly sheet with a check mark, showing your monthly activities at a glance. Each day you completed or achieved the tasks and goals you set yourself is recorded for you to see, along with your moods and emotional state – the subject of the next blog. The chart Shows you your progress for the month at a glance, a visual pat on the back for your progress and success!

How do you set up self-discipline automation?

The program is the Life Change 90 program, a 3 month program designed to enable you to change your life over this 90 day period, with all of the Life Change tools you need, and many bonuses in addition. One of them is the Self-Discipline that the program develops.

Once this self-discipline is programmed into your subconscious, you automatically look for opportunities to advance your goals and life change process through your subconscious. It will seem like you are attracting, as suggested in the “Law of Attraction” promotions, all these wonderful opportunities to you. The reality is that you are training your subconscious mind to be aware of the opportunities when they appear around you, and to take action on them when they appear. The celebrations each evening for your achievements locks the successes and the new habits in place!

Download your copy of the Life Change 90 program now, to get your next 3 months of Life Change Automation started, as soon as possible.

If you need support with it, you have the option of Life Change Coaching to really power through your life change process, and greatly reinforce your self-discipline with the accountability of having a Life Change Coach to support your efforts.

Next time: Your emotional state during times of change

Til next time, fair winds and full sails.

Ray Jamieson

“If you wouldn’t follow yourself, why should anyone else?”  ― John C. Maxwell

Related posts:

How to Change Your Life – Part 2

How to change your life – Part 1

Life Change Event Definition

How to change your life part 3

Enjoy the rewards! Image from tumblr.com

How to Change Your Life – part 1

How to change your life

The time is now!                     Image from Wikihow

“What you’re missing is that the path itself changes you.” ― Julien Smith, The Flinch

How to Change Your Life

If you look at an old photo, you know you have changed. Some major changes, others more subtle, but you will have changed. Change will continue – that is part of being alive.

Consciously choosing major life change is different. Moving from what you know and are comfortable with, to something totally or markedly different can be daunting. However, a number of times in the life of every person, this happens.

There are three ways Life Change happens.

1. You can just let life drag you along and accept wherever you end up.

2. You can wait until life’s events force you into taking action, because you cannot remain where you are.

3. The third option, and the best, is to take charge of the change, guide and direct it to achieve exactly what you want from life. When you accept that life change will happen a number of times through life, you think differently about how important this change process is!

What are these Life Change events?

1. Starting school
2. Changing school
3. Graduating from school and entering the workforce
4. Entering and graduating university
5. Each significant relationship beginning (and possibly ending)
6. Marriage
7. Birth of children
8. Changes in residence, either from one home to another, or to a new town, state or country.
9. Health changes
10. Financial changes
11. Career changes
12. Starting a business
13. Retirement
14. Interests and personal goals taking prominence in your life
15. Setting new major goals

These are some of the events that precipitate life changes. We are all in there, a number of times.

How to change your life

Starting school!        Image from Huffington Post

Some changes we have little control over, such as starting or leaving school or university to enter the workforce, health or financial challenges, career changes when employers make decisions for you.

However, there are many changes we CAN take control and ownership of.  Many will pre-empt forced changes that might otherwise occur. For example, if your employer is in trouble financially, deciding to seek a new career early before you are laid off is a better option and one which gives you more time and control over the change, rather than waiting to be given notice! That only provides a fortnight and some severance pay to speed you on your way.

This blog is the first in a series on #HOW TO CHANGE YOUR LIFE and will provide a Step-By-Step guide to making life changes. Each new blog in the series will deal with and guide you through another part of the process. This first blog in the “How To Change Your Life” series is all about the decision to make the change, and your motivation for it.

“Once you make a decision, the universe conspires to make it happen.” Ralph Waldo Emerson

The motivation to change.

The first step is the realisation you have to make changes. This can be as a result of imposed change, or because you desire better and choose to change.

Your motivation for change is important, in the longer term results you achieve from the change process. If you desire something new or better from your life, that will attract the result of the change towards you far more than something which is just pushing you off your previous path.

If your employer is actually in trouble, you could see it as being forced to change, and go look for another similar job. That is called “AWAY” motivation, just getting away from something you don‘t like, or fear – unemployment in this case.

If you change your attitude towards it, you begin your job search early to look for a new career opportunity of your choosing, seeking the stability, financial rewards, personal challenge and satisfaction that actually makes going to work a pleasure! That is a much more attractive, powerful and inspirational motivator than just looking for any old job that is available.

Knowing what you want.

The next part of the process is in knowing exactly what you want. Without clarity, you can search aimlessly and perhaps miss the perfect opportunity, because you didn’t recognise it.

How do you know what you want?

When you are choosing a new life direction, choose one you are passionate about.

If you don’t know what your passion is, invest in the Business Profits Program.

This PDF download is a simple, powerful and effective planning tool that begins with finding your passion. From there you can build a career, your job, life or even a business if you choose, around that passion.

How to change your life

Passion! Image from “What a Feeling” by Irene Cara

First, find your passion.

“There is no passion to be found playing small–in settling for a life that is less than the one you are capable of living.”  – Nelson Mandela

The tools in the Business Profits Program will identify what you love about your life, what you are good at, and where you can focus to create a life that you love, doing what you are great at, and where you will be rewarded for it!

If you know someone else who is motivated and wants to learn how to change your life, please tell them about this powerful series. Any period of change is a time when we can use all the support available.

Til next time, fair winds and full sails.
Ray Jamieson

Next time: Acting on your decision to change

“Success is a decision, not a gift.” ― Steve Backley

Related Posts:

Passion

Self Development – Why Bother

 

Success in Business

Success in Bsusiness

The view from the top!           Image from guttz.com.sg

Success in Business

“Wealth is good when it brings joy to others.” ― Og Mandino, The Greatest Salesman In The World

It’s what we all want – our business names up in lights, products marching out the door, profits soaring, happy customers, happy staff and regular holidays. Not every business operates this way. In fact, it’s more the exception that the rule. Success in business is not a given, it is always hard earned.

Without meaning to get too Biblical, a Wise Man said, a very long time ago:
“Therefore everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock. But everyone who hears these words of mine and does not put them into practice is like a foolish man who built his house on sand.” Matthew 7:24

Put simply, your business needs really solid foundations to enable it to withstand the forces of nature that are there to act against it, not only to withstand them, but to prosper despite them.

Looking again at nature, we see trees with deep roots withstand storms, floods and droughts, but trees growing in shallow soil get blown over in the same storm, washed away in that flood, or die of thirst in a drought, just because there is too little soil for decent foundations.

Nature’s blueprints are so powerful to use as an analogy when man is looking to create an enterprise. Leonardo looked at birds when creating his designs for winged flight and look at us now – our aeroplanes have wings! Look at a fighter jet – how much like a diving peregrine falcon is it? There are so many parallels in nature with man’s enterprises, and when it comes to success in business, we should do the same.

Lay solid foundations!

Success in Business

LAY SOLID FOUNDATIONS!      Image from sladeresearch.com

How do you lay solid foundations for success in business?

The first step is planning. Before you do anything else, get the business concept and ideas clear. Write, scribble, brainstorm and explore the concept to the nth degree. Then take what you have discovered, critically appraise it and look for the core that you can turn into a success in business. There needs to be a product or service that a suitably large target market wants and is willing to purchase. Your business plan needs to show that for success in business, you can deliver what those target customers want, at a price they are happy with, and with the level of quality and service to ensure they keep coming back for more. Until your business plan can demonstrate this, success in business is only a pipe dream for you – keep working at it until the model is right.

How do you plan properly for success in business?

The Business Profits Program is one way of making sure that all your bases are covered, and that your foundations will be strong. The depth of information you need for a successful business plan, one that will give you those strong foundations, will be found when you work your way methodically through the Business Profits Program. Success in Business is established by having all the bases covered, having as few surprises as possible for your business launch, and contingency plans in place, and that is what will come from your working with the Business profits Program.

Why is success in business important?

Whilst this might seem like a silly question, there is a lot to it! Many businesses puddle along, barely making a profit, but keeping the business owner occupied and paying all their bills. Most of the time. It’s as though they were working for someone else – they don’t care – it’s just a job. And what about their customers? Just as enthusiastic. They come there because they have to, or it’s a habit, not because of the service or quality of the product. Therein lies the problem!

This world demands quality of service. Our exchange with the world, the price we pay for our existence here is that we have to earn it. Without a genuine contribution of focussed energy and effort, don’t expect too much back!

Of course, there ARE those that work incredibly hard and don’t seem to get anywhere. That’s true, especially when those dedicated people are pushing against the wrong door. Often that can be a sign that either the techniques they are using are not suited to what they are doing, or their hearts lie elsewhere, and not in their business.

How do you ensure that your heart IS in your business?

In the same way that an accountant would check your books, you do an audit. The Business Profits Program starts with finding your passion, and then finds your skill sets. Next, it marries them up in all the possible combinations you could have with them.

For example, if your heart was in cooking, you loved great food and seeing people eat well and enjoy your cooking, your passion could be found in knowing you helped people eat and enjoy great food. Your abilities were perhaps as a chef, and as a communicator and teacher, because you loved to spread the word. How can you marry these abilities to take your passion to the world, in a way that made business sense and profits for you, whilst ethically working in your area of passion?

Success in Business

A Passion for your Business? Image from bassendeanmeansbusiness.com.au

Here are some options:
1. Open your own restaurant. (Needs a lot of capital to begin with and a ‘shopfront’)
2. Write and market a cookbook.
3. Create a subscription video series on cooking tips
4. Become a cooking teacher at a school, or start your own cooking class
5. Become employed as a chef
6. Become a food critic
7. Study nutrition and healthy eating
8. Study nutrition and great chefs and design new and innovative dishes and food combinations to write (#2), teach (#3 & #4) or practice (#1 & #5)

Just because you loved cooking. There are many more options, but this shows that you don’t have to limit yourself to a narrow range of options in your specific field!

What if you were a trades person, say a carpenter, who was no longer able to work hands on in your industry? Similar options, possibly even wider choice here:
1. Sales of equipment or products in the industry
2. Teaching carpentry at a school or vocational course
3. Writing about carpentry topics, books and teaching manuals
4. Seminars on industry safety and training in workplace safety
5. Designing new tools and equipment
6. Designing new carpentry/cabinet making products and innovations
7. Research and development in the industry
8. Teaching tradespeople to go from being employees to business owners

The list goes on. Each of these options works with your passion, but can be a business in its own right, working with your resource levels, skills and abilities, tailored around your current situation.  Look for that “Sweet Spot” in your life where what you are good at, what you enjoy and what people will pay you for all come together for you!

Success in Business

The Sweet Spot in your SPECIFIC Business!    Image from jasonrpeters.com

How do you narrow success in business down to the specifics for you?

The Business Profits Program is the ideal tool to harness your passion and skills into a powerful business module and find your “Sweet Spot”. Download it and start with discovering your passion in life, and then learn how to apply your skills and resources to make your passion your business! Can you imagine how it will feel to be excited about getting out of bed each morning, to charge into a business that thrills you to be there, as well as making the profits and wealth you always dreamed of your way of life? This could be you!

Download the Business Profits Program now, and let’s get started.

If you know other people who either deserve or are seeking a life of passion through their businesses, please pass this message on – they can have it too!

Til next time, fair winds and full sails…

Ray Jamieson

Relevant Recent Blogs:

A lesson of Life for each of us

Those who can, must!

Perils of Small Business

Best Business Ideas for You

 

“If everything came easy in business everyone would have a business and be millionaires. It takes hard work, consistent effort and courage to keeping fighting the monster of failure.”  ― Delaine Robins

Success in Business

                Set your business on fire with the BUSINESS PROFITS PROGRAM!                       Image from ihatepresentations.com

A Lesson Of Life for each of us

“That men do not learn very much from the lessons of history is the most important of all the lessons that history has to teach.”   ― Aldous Huxley, Collected Essays.  

Lesson of Life

Massive Bulldozer lifting power. Image from hulcher.com

Or: The Lesson of Life I learned from a bulldozer and a bucket of oil!

Think back to 1984, if you can.

This was the time of the war over the Falklands Islands, between England and Argentina. It was the year Indira Ghandi was assassinated. Reagan made his famous joke: “My fellow Americans, I’ve signed legislation that will outlaw Russia forever. We begin bombing in five minutes.” He supposedly didn’t know the microphone was on. It was the year of the summer Olympics in Los Angeles, and the Soviet Union boycotted it. Wonder why. 1984 is the name of George Orwell’s famous novel, although he wrote it in 1949. It was the year the first “megabit” chip was ever made in Bells Laboratories – the event that heralded and made possible the super computers. 1984 was the year the “Bill Cosby Show” had its first TV premiere.

1984 was the year my old bulldozer gave me the most amazing lesson of life.

In that former life, I had a farm and an earth moving business, doing land clearing, soil and water conservation dams and channels, noxious weed management, tree removal and levelling building blocks, regular bulldozer type work.

I need to give you some idea of the scale of the machinery used, to put this into perspective.

Lesson of Life

Ironbark Tree – image from nationalregisterofbigtrees.com.au

Imagine a tree, 100 feet tall, around 30 metres. That’s half as long again as a cricket pitch. This tree is an ironbark tree, half a metre through at the trunk. It has branches and leaves on top, roots around 2 metres deep in the earth, and with a big clump of soil around them. It had to be moved. My bulldozer was actually a track loader with a clam bucket on the front (similar to the photo above), useful for picking up objects in the big jaws. The tree was gently pushed over and laid on the ground, roots and all. My bulldozer came alongside, clamped the jaws over the trunk of the tree, picked it up and carried it across the field to a large log pile, lifted it 15 feet (4 metres) into the air and laid it on top of the pile, for pole harvesting later. That was easy. And it shows the power of the hydraulic system of this particular bulldozer.

Earth moving equipment needs to be maintained for it to work properly, and there are many moving parts, using lots of oil.

Onto the lesson of life. We, my assistant David and I, were doing a regular oil change. The hydraulic oil was very special – read ‘expensive’. In 1984 dollars, when a 5 gallon can of regular oil was $20, this was $200! Every drop precious. We drained the old oil, and replaced the filters and the oil plug. Because the machine was so big, we were working on opposite sides of it. David was 18 years old and as fit, flexible and athletic as any farm kid in those days. I called out to him:

“David, I’ve replaced the plug and tightened it. I’m ready to put the new oil in. Have you tightened the filters?”

“Yep. They are tight.”

In went the new oil, glistening gold as it poured down the funnel. I wiped my hands on an oil rag, then climbed up to start the engine. As it started, a spray mist of fine gold particles created a perfect rainbow arc beside me. The precious oil was gone in seconds. David hadn’t tightened the filters enough after all! The incredibly powerful hydraulic pump that could lift a 100 foot tall iron bark tree up in the air, roots and all, pumped all that expensive oil out into a magical golden rainbow.

I shut the engine down and sat for a few seconds in silence. David stood there, out of range, but prepared to sprint for the cover of the bushes behind him. Much went through my mind. First was the thought of the cost. Then there was the thought of how much spare oil we had, because the job had to go on. Then there was David, almost rooted to the spot in fear, very apprehensive about what I might do. He looked ready to bolt into the bush and make his way home across country. A virtual whirlwind of thoughts. However, although I felt like a good butt-kicking would release some pressure from the head of steam I had developed, I didn’t feel it would achieve much else. There had to be a better way.

I looked at David, with a purposely blank expression. “I should have checked those filters, shouldn’t I?”

He just looked back in surprise – not expecting that. He was expecting spanners or other loose objects to be hurled at him I think. He mumbled something in reply but I don’t think his lips had reconnected to his thoughts at that time.

“Could you get the other drum of oil please David? I’ll clean this up and tighten the filters again.”

We put the new oil in and it tested perfectly; back to work we went.

Lesson of Life

That’s about right!           Image from bestsayingsquotes.com

What was our lesson of life?

In the years since 1984, I have found so many lessons that came from that incident. I’ll list a few:

1. Getting angry didn’t serve anyone. Dealing with the problem did.
2. Blaming didn’t serve anyone. Taking responsibility did. On that point – was David to blame? He did say he tightened the filters. But David was an 18 year old staring goggle eyed at a huge machine, the likes of which were out of his imagination before he came to work for me. He was under my instruction, and it was my responsibility to make sure he understood and did what was necessary. No, I should have checked!
3. Monitor what you delegate. That came home with a $200 price tag, in 1984 – I have since had whole weekend seminars that taught me less than those few seconds and cost more too! Powerful lesson.
4. Teaching and imparting lessons rather than blaming for mistakes gains respect and trust.

I’ll spend a moment on this point. David was only 18 and this could have sent him packing, back to a cranky father with a drinking and gambling problem. Instead, it was a turning point in his life, as I later came to find out. From that moment on, he stepped up and took responsibility for maintenance. Never again did anything go unchecked; nothing was ever allowed to leak oil, rattle, or other than behave like brand new. It became his mission, to look after my machinery and be the best operator possible. He became a zealot!

We worked together for another couple of years when the business expanded and we took delivery of a massive earth moving scraper. When the dealer left after unloading and setting it up, I threw him the keys and said “Look after this, would you?”

The look on his face was priceless. However, the pride he felt was evident and he applied himself to caring for that new machine also, as though it was his very own.

David did not need a reprimand on that pivotal day. A lesson of life comes in many forms and opportunities are often disguised as disasters. That day was perhaps my greatest lesson of life and as I reflect on it from time to time, still more comes through.

5. Nurture your people, to allow them to become what is possible. Understanding of their situation and circumstances means that sometimes, you’ll make allowances. When you do, they have the opportunity to see that you are treating them as an individual, not a number. David realised I cared how he felt, and although he expected to be given the blame, he already felt bad enough – no one needed to hammer it home any more. His growth from this incident was phenomenal, but only because he was nurtured through it.
6. Education is critical. I didn’t expect David to know everything. I worked from where he was in life and built on his knowledge from that point. When he left my employ, he could stand tall with anyone in the industry.
7. The lessons you teach are taught to others. Did David tell anyone about this incident? Yes. His younger brother was the first one who came to talk to me about it. Their relationship changed at that time, as David became his mentor, rather than his tormentor – which many older brothers are. They taught others how to deal with crises when it happened to them. And so it went, down the line. Who knows how far the benefits of that lesson of life on that day have gone.
8. If David’s lesson from the day was to react in anger, instead of how it happened, do you think that lesson would have been perpetuated? Of course. However, it broke a cycle of blame and anger that had been his family’s way for generations. One incident can change a life, depending on how you deal with it.

In the 30 years since this event, much has happened. When I sold the machinery, David went his own way and I entered the corporate world. I attended seminars and heard the greats speak of their lesson of life and the amazing incidents they recounted. However, I often wondered about how these much embroidered tales of their wisdom and mastery actually began. Did they have an oil can moment too?

With my current programs and coaching clients, I am most conscious of how important the simplest lesson of life can be. The opportunity to impart them is vital, as we never know where they will end up and who they will empower.

“The difference between school and life? In school, you’re taught a lesson and then given a test. In life, you’re given a test that teaches you a lesson.” ― Tom Bodett

Life Change Coaching?

We still have a couple of coaching places available for anyone wishing to experience and benefit from our life change coaching first hand.

At your free initial session;
• We will look at what you want and gain clarity on the cause or need for your desire for coaching and change.
• We will give you an objective perspective of your situation and the opportunities, as well as the obstructions to your progress.
• Finally, we can help you establish a plan to progress your desires and goals to where you really want them to be.

If this is you, take a look at our Coaching Page, answer the simple questions at the bottom and send the answers through to us, to schedule your free session. I look forward to hearing from you soon.

Til next time, fair winds and full sails.

Ray Jamieson

PPS: If you wish to read my book “Lessons of Life”, check it out here!

Related Posts:

Help From My Friends

“Life is a succession of lessons which must be lived to be understood.” ― Helen Keller

Help from my friends – Life change coaching

 “You have everything you need inside of you to create anything in your life that you desire.”
― Mike Basevic, No Limits, Mastering the Mental Edge

Evolution and Change

A lot has changed in the last few million years. A creature emerged from amongst the primitive life forms on this planet, learned to use tools, to walk upright, communicate, harness fire and began to exert an influence over its environment. That creature was the predecessor of what evolved to become what we now know as mankind!  It became us!

Believe it or not, most of the changes occurred, at an ever increasing rate, in only the last 10,000 years. Change in the 21st century is occurring at the fastest rate ever, with knowledge doubling in an estimated time of every few months – depending on who you ask!  Whilst it is the fastest rate ever, it is also increasing exponentially!

To put this in perspective, 1,500 years ago we were generally, globally in an agrarian age, where man lived off the land, either hunting and gathering or cultivating crops to live on. OK, there were a few plunderers too – a lot of us have some Viking blood in our ancestry! In those days, change was generational – in other words, parents would teach their children what their parents had taught to them, and significant inventions and innovations were decades apart. The wheel, steel and bronze tools replacing stone tools, feathered flights on arrows, and so on. Significant advances in their time, but decades or even centuries apart.

Leading up to the 20th century, we saw a rush of inventions including wireless radio wave transmissions, the motor car which followed the invention of the internal combustion engine, the electric light bulb and the subsequent development of power generating stations and electricity transmission lines and so on. These followed and were often inspired by developments in the Renaissance Period where brilliant minds like Leonardo Da Vinci put forward some crazy (at the time!) ideas for things like flight, numerous inventions of which many are now in common use.  Of course, the printing press came out of this period, enabling the distribution of these new ideas and innovations to the wider audiences.

Life Change Coaching

                                   Man learns to fly!   The Wright Brothers at Kittyhawk 1911.           Image from kittyhawk.bu.edu

Manned flight soon followed and travel around the globe began in earnest early in the 20th century. Rather than months of travel to cross an ocean, it became possible in hours. Knowledge and innovation jumped from brilliant minds on one continent to brilliant minds on another, and innovation and invention spread like wildfire.

So began a rapid process of ever faster change in the lives of ordinary people, like you and I.

In the early 20th century, a tradesman printer knew he would have a job for life working at his printing press. So did the person working in the woollen mills. They were in stable environments, creating products for a stable, local market. Those jobs virtually vanished within the next 50 years! Whilst there are still printers now in the 21st century, most of them work through computer programs with digital images – nothing to do with the printing presses of the early 20th century.

Woollen mills now are massive automated machines that require few people to operate them and are no longer local. Australia once produced more wool than any other country on the planet, from a flock of 170 million sheep. It had woollen mills and processing plants dotted around the country, in many regional towns and all the capital cities. There are now none! All wool from the flock of only 50 million sheep is now exported and processed in a relatively few countries overseas from us. That industry and those careers no longer exist in Australia, and the same can be said of many industries and careers in different countries around the world.

What we no longer have:
• Vinyl record manufacturing plants – it’s all CD or DVD now, stamped out by the billions in almost unmanned factories.
• carburetor manufacturers – engines are now electronically fuel injected – totally different technology and factories.
• Photographic development labs – everything is now digital.
• Steam engine powered manufacturing plants – everything is gas, oil or electricity powered.
• Steam trains – either diesel or electric powered.
• Incandescent light bulbs – converting to energy saving fluorescent light tubes.

The list goes on.

More importantly, the lives of the people who used to create and manufacture these items changed with the products vanishing. Careers and industries changed and so did the lives of the people in them. This rate of change is ongoing and increasing, and the lives of every person on the planet are affected.

How do you manage the change process?

Sometimes the change is thrust upon you, as it was for many people when those industries vanished. Sometimes, it’s a health challenge that forces change on your life. Relationships are a challenge, moving from thinking for one to thinking of your new family. When children move out, the “empty nest” syndrome kicks in. Once again, it’s the parents learning to live with and share with just each other again. Financial challenges – increasing costs and the need to replace items around the house, or even the house – these are all stressful challenges and require change.  Sometimes, it is an internal desire to grow, evolve and change, for more personal reasons and ambitions. How do you manage it?  Life Change Coaching is one very powerful option!

It’s really a three step process. These are the basic steps:
1. Knowing and understanding what you want and need. Clarity of your vision, something specific to aim for.
2. A realistic perspective on what it is you want, the challenges you face, your opportunities and resources. Sometimes, it can be impossible to see this from where you are in life, because life overwhelms you with the urgency and the need for change.
3. A plan or program to make the changes happen, the way you want!

Change WILL happen, whether we like it or not. If someone else directs it and controls it, the change happens according to THEIR AGENDA and for THEIR BENEFIT! If it happens too fast, the change process can have traumatic effects on the person who bears the brunt.

What is the alternative?

Take charge of the change process with personal life change coaching. When you realise that you need to make changes, identify them and then seek help with the process. If you wanted to change and improve your golf game, you’d get golf coaching. When it’s your life that has to change, why not work with #life change coaching?

Life Change Coaching is what happens when you ask a suitably qualified and experienced person to assist you with perspective, objectivity, experience and resources to manage change in your life, whatever those changes might be.

Life Change Coaching is a valuable and viable alternative to being subject to the winds of change on your own. Whilst we may have been great at what we were doing, that doesn’t mean we are either qualified or prepared for what is coming next!

Life Change Coaching

               With a little help from my friends…                      Image from ncea.org.uk

Why have life change coaching?

There are a few powerful reasons to work with someone outside your areas of challenge and change. These include:
1. An unburdened perspective on your circumstances and situation, free of the pressures you face.
2. An objective appraisal of your challenges and obstacles.
3. A realistic look at your opportunities and the resources you already have.
4. Their objectivity can help you gain clarity that otherwise may evade you, on exactly what you need and where to aim for in your life.
5. Tools, resources and experiences you may not have access to from within your own life experiences and circumstances.

Learn more about Life Change Coaching.

Life Change Coaching is not like regular life coaching.  Click here to go into the website and learn more about Life Change Coaching, the specialty of Life Change 90.

Would you like a free Life Change Coaching session?

For those who wish to or need to make changes in their lives, a limited number of 35 minute life change coaching initial sessions are available free. All you need to do is request the free session and answer these questions to get your free session underway.

1. What do you want to change?
2. How urgent and critical is this change?
3. Whose change is it – yours or required by an external influence?
4. What time frame do you have?
5. What other areas of your life would you like to improve or change?
6. Full name
7. Email address
8. Skype name and contact details
9. Time zone and location

To take advantage of this offer, please complete the contact form at this link, and answer the questions above.  If places are available, we will schedule your session.

If you know anyone else who could benefit from a Life Change Coaching program, please forward this to them. It may change their life too!

Til next time, fair winds and full sails,

Ray Jamieson

“Some strive to make themselves great. Others help others see and find their own greatness. It’s the latter who really enrich the world we live in” ― Rasheed Ogunlaru

Life Change Coaching

Fine tuning techniques – image from chicagoceocoaching.com

Pandoras Box – can we close it?

Pandoras Box

Image from chinahush.com/2009/10/21/amazing-pictures-pollution-in-china; Guiyu, Guangdong province, (广东省贵屿镇) rivers and reservoirs have been contaminated, the villager is washing in a seriously polluted pond.

Pandoras Box

Prawns feed in seagrass,
Bream take the prawns,
Snapper takes the bream,
then to the dolphin they fall.
But hiding away is an insidious evil,
Mercury is lurking, killing them all.

A dolphin goes belly up and floats in the surf,
“Too much mercury” says one expert.
“Didn’t happen here,” says another,
Who cares where it happened, brother?
Just know that it did!
“It’s not our problem!”
Who are we trying to kid?

The dolphin told us the time is at hand,
To take a step back and look at our land.
Look at the stuff we pour down our drains,
Then we wonder, “Why all these pains?”

It’s really not hard to see why it is,
If we look to our fishes, our oceans and seas.
A solitary can lies in sand amidst coral,
Testimony to man, visiting Great Keppel.
Take him and flog him for this heinous crime,
For sullying God’s paradise with filth and grime.

His laziness is littered all over our shores,
Like pus, oozing from festering sores.
What’s the medicine, the cure, be quick,
“Get off your ass, clean up the grass,
Give the fishes something clean to drink!”

Who’ll put the lid back on Pandoras Box,
And seal it up tight with great big locks?
Is it too late for the fish in the sea?
Maybe for that dolphin,
but what about you and me?
Was our dolphin the messenger, a martyr for us,
To wake us, to clean up our mess?

If we could start again and rewrite the pact
With Mother Earth, our planet, an agreement to enact
To honour the fishes, the birds and the sand,
Would she still let us be custodians of this land?

© Ray Jamieson 1996

Pandoras Box

Image from chinahush.com/2009/10/21/amazing-pictures-pollution-in-china; In the Yellow Sea coastline, countless sewage pipes buried in the beach and even extending into the deep sea.

I wrote this poem after a holiday on Great Keppel, in the mid 1990s. The pollution around the amazing island of Great Keppel off the Queensland Coast infuriated me. However, more recently, something else raised my ire. It shouted that Pandoras Box is still wide open!

Pandoras Box

Image from teachoceanscience.net; drink can in a coral reef, just as I saw while diving off Great Keppel Island, on Australia’s Great Barrier Reef!

A scientist was warning of the threat of sea levels rising due to ‘global warming’. By the end of the century, sea levels may rise by 200 millimetres and threaten vast areas of coastal settlements. That’s true; if it happens it would be an issue for low-lying areas of settlements. However, it seems that in the 2 decades since I wrote this poem, little has happened to deal with the much greater threat of the poisons we are pouring into our waterways and oceans and polluting the great planet we call home! So what if sea levels rise, if all the fish in the oceans are dead or mutated?

Science seems to be evenly divided on whether the planet is warming or not. There is little genuine scientific evidence either way, as temperatures do not seem to have risen appreciably over this time, and for everywhere that claims to have had a rise in temperatures, somewhere else claims a fall. There are as many scientists expecting a mini ice age as there are a global warming outcome and frankly, history suggests it will cool before it warms again! After the Hockey Stick Fraud, the Himalayan Glacial Fraud and the Forged Email fraud, the IPCC credibility as far as global warming goes has been left in tatters. Neither has the anti-global warming side been able to conclusively prove scientifically that there is no threat! But it doesn’t matter!

Nothing matters while our oceans and rivers are still polluted! Pandoras Box is wide open!

In 2011 I wrote a blog The Hypocrisy of the Greens on this topic and specifically pointed out the pollution levels of rivers and marine ecosystems across China and South East Asia, because of the billions of people affected by this pollution. It has now got to the stage where 40% of the Asian seafood available in Australian supermarkets is tainted with pollutants that were outlawed decades ago, and with the levels of these pollutants making the seafood unfit for human consumption! However, for those living on the rivers and their floodplains and relying on them for their daily meals, 100% of their daily intake is of toxic food.

Outside of Asia, we have industrial areas all over the planet pumping chemicals into great rivers such as the Rhine, Danube, Thames, Mississippi and many more, each with a vast floodplain, and each supporting millions of people and massive ecosystems, either directly or indirectly.

Pandoras Box

Image from encyclopediadubuque.org; MISSISSIPPI RIVER BASIN WITH FLOODPLAIN AREAS IN RED

It’s up to the local people in every ecosystem, every catchment area, to clean up their own local waterway. Pandoras Box is wide open – can we get it closed again? Can we solve the problems we created through pollution of the planet, without getting side-tracked by petty arguments about whether the temperate will rise or fall a degree, or whether sea levels will rise or fall a few millimetres over the next few decades?

Pandoras Box

Image from lplmc.com.au; Clean Up Australia Day on the waterways

This takes discipline from everyone involved, people, communities and nations, over long periods of time. The problem didn’t occur overnight and won’t be solved by next week, if ever this Pandoras Box can be closed again.

If you want to develop your personal self-discipline, look at the program Life Change 90. On a daily basis, it will prompt you to take another step forward towards being all you can be, and if healing this planet is part of it, then more power to you. If this is you, download Life Change 90 and start making a difference today.

If you have a business that works towards healing the planet or any business at all, then you need all the support you can get. The Business Profits Program might be for you. Unless your heart is in your business, and your business is profitable for you, then you are probably part of the problem, not the solution. Download the Business Profits Program and empower your business and your life and make your efforts count towards the contribution that is needed.

If you know other people who care about the planet and wish to contribute to healing it, then please pass this message on. The world needs as many of its residents as possible on the task!

Til next time, fair winds and full sails.

Ray Jamieson

Recent Life Change 90 Blogs:

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Those who can must! We all can!

Those who can, must!

             Miracle on the Hudson River:                     Image from nydailynews.com

“You can’t do everything but you can do something!” ― Jeff Dixon

Those who can must!

It’s a simple philosophy, but profound, as many simple philosophies are. It came to me while musing on the world and life in general when, as a teenager, I was driving a tractor and plough in seemingly endless circles on the night shift, preparing a seed bed for planting. Deep in the night, alone with my thoughts, it resonated. Forty years later, it’s still my guiding principle.  #Those who can must!

Why is it that “those who can must”?

“Those who can must” is more than a one liner. It is possibly the most powerful philosophy of all. Why is it so important that we do all we can? What does it mean? Let’s look at the first part – “those who can”.

Those who can what?

Why is it that we have skilled crafts people? Artists, architects, builders, mechanics, pilots, plumbers, lawyers, accountants, entrepreneurs; each of these is a skill-set in their own right. If a person has one of these skill sets, why is it so critical that they be the best they can at it?

Look at what “being your best” can mean.

You’re a mechanic. What difference does that make, whether you are “your best” or not? After all, you’re just servicing family cars. EXACTLY! The young mother who brings the family’s second car in for you to maintain, because the lousy, cheap skate husband has the good car with the good tyres on to drive to his work, leaving mother with the old car to transport the precious cargo of children to and from school! (Yes ladies, this is a global problem – show your husband this blog and let him have both barrels!) If you are an average mechanic, you’ll pop the hood, change the oil, check the water and let it go. If you are an excellent mechanic, being your best, you’ll be aware of the valuable cargo this vehicle carries, children – our future population – and take a closer look at the tyres, brakes, steering, suspension and even the seatbelt fittings. Because you know that when it rains again, your workmanship could be the difference between this little car spinning out of control and putting those lives at risk, or not!

Those who can, must!

Mum’s Taxi? Image from www.vintag.es

What about being a pilot? You became a pilot perhaps because you loved flying and decided to make a career out of it. Now, you fly commercially and may have anywhere from 5 to 500 passenger lives under your control on any flight. Only this year, we have seen two Malaysian jet air liners crash, taking nearly 300 lives each time. It‘s obvious there is a huge responsibility on airline pilots to be the best they can. Yet in the news yesterday we saw a report of an Indian pilot snoozing while in command, and the co-pilot playing on an iPad and didn’t notice that the jet had dropped 5,000 feet and put it on a collision course with other aircraft! A mid-air collision could have killed 500 people in the air and who knows how many hundreds more on the ground!

Why be the best pilot you can, even more than just staying awake? Because sometimes being the best means you could retrieve an impossible situation such as the pilot who landed a US Airways Airbus with 155 passengers on the Hudson River after a bird strike killed the engines and forcing the landing. This incredibly skilled pilot landed the huge plane on the river without loss of life and you can bet he wasn’t looking at his iPad at the time! Every second of his life’s experiences was with him, and came into play as he settled that jet airliner onto the river near the rescue boats and saved every life!

OK, so you’re not an airline pilot, you’re just a local railway worker. How important could it be, to be your best in a railway yard? If you haven’t seen it, look for the movie “Unstoppable” starring Denzel Washington. It’s about a heavily laden freight train that becomes a runaway, speeding into a heavily populated area with a very dangerous turn in the tracks, after a slack train driver is too casual about changing tracks and lets the train get away from him. Denzel’s character in real life – the film is based on an actual drama in Ohio – uses skill and imagination to find a way to stop the runaway train and avert the catastrophe that could have happened.

Everyone has something that they CAN do, but why is it that they MUST do it?

Everyone also has something they are hopeless at! It would be a wasted life if we spent it trying to do something we would continually fail at. Wasting our lives, wasting our energy, when there is someone else who is great at exactly that job we are failing at, and we are depriving them of the job they love! We have skills so that we CAN use them, for the good of our family, our community and the world in general. Imagine if Einstein continued being a children’s tutor, then a clerk all his life, instead of following his brilliance and passion into the fields of Science where he contributed so much to the world and humanity in general! He followed the ethos of “those who can must” brilliantly, and changed the way the world saw itself. He changed the future, changed the lives of you and I, a hundred years ago.

Those who can, must

He followed HIS passion! Thankfully! Image from hj.vc

When you and I follow the ethos of “Those who can must” we follow our passion and our skills into living and create lives that only WE can live. We are each unique and using our unique talents and abilities and fuelled by our passions, we can make differences like this too. Only WE can live OUR LIVES!

“Things won are done, joy’s soul lies in the doing.” ― William Shakespeare

Does “Those who can Must” apply to everyone? Who does this apply to?

This is for you and for me. Everyone can do something to contribute. Therefore, everyone must, if we are to make this world better for our children to follow on from us, to take our batons for the next leg of the Human Race.

Yes, that means you and me.

“You are responsible for doing what good you can with what you have, and any good is better than none.” ― Bryant McGill

But if you think, “I’m just a stay at home Mum”, then remember that this also applied to the parents of children such as Michelangelo, Leonardo Da Vinci and so many more parents we never hear about. We only hear about the achievements of their children.

Maybe a police officer who notices someone loitering and feels the energy of a crime in the making apprehends them, and prevents who knows how many muggings, rapes, assaults and robberies. Perhaps they also prevent the loiterer from continuing in their dark world any further; perhaps enabling redemption from a possibly wasted life to a life well lived.

The writer who creates fictional novels, wonders how “those who can must” applies to them. Think of Wilbur Smith. Besides giving joy, peace and relaxation to millions of readers, how many people have been inspired by his writing to contribute to the conservation of the endangered ecosystems of Africa, where poaching has all but decimated the populations of elephants, rhino, lions and many other species. His writing has brought the plight of these ecosystems and many others globally to public awareness, far beyond anything he ever thought about when he first put pen to paper. How many other aspiring writers has he inspired to follow their dreams and passion to also become published authors, and reach out to millions more around the globe with their own messages of hope and inspiration?

Even the lowly blogger – if your writing changes or influences the life of just one other person and puts them back on track, then you have done your part. You don’t need to be a global superstar; one life saved is well worthwhile!

Being an unsung hero may be our life’s calling, following our passion into whatever we do. We may never know the magic we create downstream from the effects we have on the lives of the people with whom we interact, but there is no doubt the magic is there, as long as we do our part, as long as those who can must, and then do!

“Those who can must”, demands that we seek and follow our passion and skills, so that we can provide for our families, enrich our communities and make our world a better place for those who follow us! Whilst it seems huge when you examine it like this, all it really means is that we be the best we can, at whatever it is we are good at. If you don’t know what that is yet, then perhaps look at the Business Profits Program, where your skills, abilities and passions are explored for you to find your life’s calling. Perhaps you will uncover your passion and your calling there, to enable you to do what you must.

If you know what your passion is but are having trouble finding the time, discipline or motivation to follow it, then Life Change 90 is for you. Putting a structure into your day, infusing it with the inspiration, motivation and congratulations that make a day both worthwhile and enjoyable, is what you need to create positive habits that will stay with you for your lifetime.

Perhaps all you need to do is to pass the message on so that someone else can find and follow their passion. If you know someone who is searching, looking for a way to put meaning into their life, who is a square peg in a round hole at the moment, this may be your way to help them. Pass the message on; let them have the opportunity to decide, with new information, where they want their life to go. It only takes one to make it worthwhile!

Til next time, fair winds and full sails,

Ray Jamieson

PS: We watched “Unstoppable” again this evening, on DVD. It’s one heck of a ride – treat yourself to watching it soon, to see what a difference a person can make when the chips are down!  Those who can must watch this movie!

“If your life is a miserable disaster, you might want to consider, that it’s because you are doing something wrong.” ― Bryant McGill

Recent relevant blogs:

Og Mandino – Lessons from the Master

Life Change 90 Relaunch

RISK

Empowerment through Challenge

Best Business Ideas For You

Perils of Small Business.

Perils of small business

Kayangel Atoll and Belau Palau Islands – what a paradise!                                                                        Image from wallpapersphotography.com

If all the year were playing holidays, to sport would be as tedious as to work. WIlliam Shakespeare.

Perils of Small Business.

Imagine you are going on a holiday to a small, remote tropical island, a beautiful island, dotted with coconut palms, rainforests and a mountain in the middle of course, to climb and look out over the endless ocean. There is a lagoon with fringing reefs protecting the island beaches from the powerful ocean waves, a lagoon with a catamaran for your use, fishing rods and diving gear. Sounds lovely, doesn’t it.

You hop on the seaplane and it drops you off in the lagoon and takes off again and there you are, in your idyllic, island paradise. Still looking forward to the holiday?

Perils of Small Business

Arrival on your holiday island.               Image from privatejettourguide.com

You look out beyond the reef and see the shark fins beyond the breakers, masses of them. The sun beats down on you because that’s what happens in the tropics, right? But it’s OK, because here you are safe on the beach, where you can sit in the shade when THUMP on the sand beside you, a huge coconut falls – luckily it missed you, it must weigh 3 kilos! So it’s not safe in the shade, not safe in the sun, not safe in the water, and who knows what’s in the rainforest!

Evening falls, and out comes all the mosquitos and other flying, crawling and mostly biting insects! Sure, this is some tropical paradise!

Perils of Small Business

Perils of tropical islands!                         Image from watoday.com.au

“Life keeps throwing me curve balls and I don’t even own a bat. At least my dodging skills are improving.”  ― Jayleigh Cape

Or it could have been! With a little planning. If only there was a phone, you could arrange a few things, but then, a Satellite Phone should have been first on the list of things you planned for this remote island holiday.

What else would have been on your list? How about sunscreen, something around 50+ SPF? What about a hat and protective clothes to prevent sunburn? Insect repellent? Checking the accommodation for what it was stocked with first? Lots of things you could have planned in to make this the most fabulous holiday ever. Except you need to plan ahead, not as an afterthought.

Ahhhh, the perils of deserted tropical islands. They are a bit like small business – and the perils of small business are equally as dangerous, but equally as easy to plan for!

Perils of small business

The beach can be a challenge too!            image from entrepreneur.co.za

“I don’t run away from a challenge because I am afraid. Instead, I run towards it because the only way to escape fear is to trample it beneath your foot” ― Nadia Comaneci

The perils of small business are many, but few of the perils are as dangerous as the failure to think ahead and plan where you are going and what you need. Arriving and hoping to make do is not a viable option. However, many people end up in business in exactly this situation, and then the perils of small business become too obvious, and very painful.

What are the perils of small business?

Perils of Small Business

Perils of small business – it’s not just your competitors!                                                            Image from bigmouth-marketing.com

The first and most obvious peril is not having a focus, a goal, direction or strategy. Why are you in business? What do you want to achieve? Is it a money-making thing? Did you buy yourself a job? Is it your retirement funds invested? Or is it a passion you want to monetize and make a business, a career and a life from? It doesn’t matter, as long as you know, because it affects everything else.

Your business planning is based around where you want your business to go in the future. If you are buying a business to build up and sell, your plan will be very different to a business built on your passion and love for something you want to build a career and a life around. The perils of small business are waiting for those who get the fundamentals wrong.

Then there are the details, like the finances, the people you work with, the products and services, marketing and dealing with customers.

Not only are the fundamental issues like your business purpose and direction important, the details are critical too! You can have everything right except for one of many small but critical factors, and the whole lot can go awry before you realise. The perils of small business need to be examined and dealt with, long before you discover them the hard way.

How do you go about preventing these perils of small business taking you down, before they become an issue? The best way is for an intensive examination of your business concept, well before you take any other action on it. Even before your business plan is formulated, you need to be asking a lot of questions, designing and testing your concept and ideas, researching a variety of ideas, looking at your own motivation, your skills and capabilities before you even settle on your business model, around which you can start planning.

Once you settle on the concept, you can start designing the business model and whether you will be doing it alone, in partnership, with a company or in some other entity. All the different factors that will eventually become your business will have an influence on these foundation issues.

Once the foundation of your business model is established, you need to look at the whole raft of factors that are required to work in your favour, to ensure you don’t fall prey to the other perils of small business – failure of the business due to issues such as lack of capital, low sales, poor product or service quality, inadequate marketing, untrained staff or too many overhead costs.

How can you possibly hope to manage all of this, and still look forward to the adventure of being in small business for yourself, without the fear of succumbing to the perils of small business?

There is a way. It’s called the Business Profits Program. It looks at your idea and concept for a business, or helps you with one if all you have to begin with is the desire to be in your own business. Then it builds on your desire through your passion, finds a focal point for it, builds in your resources and capabilities and gives you the options for the businesses you could look forward to creating and building your new career around.

Next, you need to consider the details and the finer aspects of business planning. All that is taken care of too – with all the questions you need to ask to build a solid business plan and contingency plans for your concept, before you spend a cent on setting up the business. At this stage, the perils of small business are all on paper and you can work your way through them without fearing the disasters that could befall you, without this degree of preparation and forward planning in place.

Perils of small business

The delights of small business ownership!                                                                                Image from wellsfargoworks.com

A bit like that holiday. It can be a great idea, perfect location and the most wonderful opportunity, unless you forget something like the insect repellent, or the sunscreen…

The Business Profits Program ensures everything is in place for your business, before you have to face any of the perils of small business.

Perils of small business

  Yes, it’s possible, just plan for it!     Image from mondaysorchids.wordpress.com

If you find yourself in business and feeling like you landed on that deserted tropical island, facing the perils of small business all at once on your own, then it’s not too late – the Business Profits Program can help you re-examine your business and create a whole new plan for it, reinvigorating, reinventing if necessary, to ensure you are in the business you really want to be in. Take a look, no matter where you are up to in business. If you have some friends in business who look like they are facing the perils of small business also, please invite them to take a look too.

Preparation and planning never go astray. Just think of the tropical island holiday. It can be wonderful, or it can be a nightmare. The difference is all in the planning and preparation.

Til next time, fair winds and full sails.

Ray Jamieson

“I want to put a ding in the universe.” ― Steve Jobs

Other related blogs from Life Change 90:

Best Business Ideas For You

Life Change 90 Relaunch

RISK

Empowerment through Challenge

Just as a pet can be more of a challenge than a gift, so too can the holidays.  John Clayton

Best Business Ideas for you

Best Business Ideas.

Best Business Ideas

Day 1 of Life 2!               Image from fffcpas.com

“Screw your career path, live your story.”  Jason Seiden

You would like to start a new business, but are not sure where to begin? So many people claiming to have or offering the ‘best business ideas’ for you. There are so many business opportunities, but either creating a business that suits you, or picking up an idea that could become your business can be a real challenge.

Get the idea wrong and you are a square peg in a round hole – a very bad fit.

Get it right and you are in harmony, and very often, in profit, with the best business ideas!

Getting your business ideas right is critical!

How do you select the best business ideas?

A great question to begin with, before you start looking around for a business, is to ask whether you should actually be in business! Are you an entrepreneur type personality, who can or would enjoy the cut and thrust of running your own solo enterprise, with far-reaching visions, energy and enthusiasm to drive you and a determination to succeed no matter what?

Perhaps you are a person who would work well within a team, conquering the business and corporate world together, each playing to the other’s strengths? You might love the business environment and the opportunities it presents, but would prefer to be part of a team when you tackle the world of business.

This is the crux of it: the best business ideas that suit one person are not the best business ideas that would suit another! Choosing your business approach must be based around your business personality, and knowing whether you are a solo entrepreneurial type or a corporate team player or partnership type is fundamental to the best business ideas turning into successful businesses!

As a first step, take the QUIZ on the Life Change 90 website “Should you be the boss in your own business?

That will give you indications of how to approach your business venture, whatever it is. Then it is time to look through those best business ideas and choose your opportunity.

Best business ideas

Steve Jobs – the ultimate entrepreneur, founder of Apple.              Image from ndtv.com

Short of a starting point when looking for the best business ideas?

Choosing the best business ideas is important, and tailoring these best business ideas to your own style, personality, resource level and ambitions is critical. There is an old saying “Bite off more than you can chew, and chew like crazy!” (Quote from Joe Joyce)… That’s OK as far as a recipe for stress goes, but it doesn’t always auger well for success. Perhaps a personal audit of what you love to do and what you can do, and monetizing that idea is a better way to create the business you want, from all the best business ideas available.

The Business Profits Program begins right at this point, tailoring your business idea around your likes, loves and abilities. If you looked at a dozen small businesses, all the same type of business, perhaps using a mechanical repair business as an example, you would find every business was different in subtle ways to the other eleven. They began as successful business ideas and let’s face it, auto repairs is a great business to be in – provided you get a few things right, by tailoring it to the person doing the business!

One person may be a lover of American Muscle Cars and specialise in that area – the rumble of huge V8 engines and heavy metal. Another person loves high performance European sports cars, especially Italian cars, and creates a specialist workshop for them. Yet another person could love the hot-rod scene and turn vintage and veteran cars into flaming street hot rods. And there will always be a need for someone to service the family car, for the other folks that just go to work each day and use their cars as personal transport rather than as symbols of a youth that they cannot leave behind. All are very successful business ideas, but each is tailored around the personal likes, loves and resources of the business operator. And that is how you must consider your best business ideas too. They are only ever successful business ideas when they are integrated with the personal interests and passions of the operator.

Best business ideas

American Muscle Cars – a passion for some.                    Image from Autocity.com

Whether you have an idea for a new business, or are actively seeking the best business ideas, it will be well worth your while to look at the Business Profits Program, to put into the worksheet what you have and what you want to create, and see what new and potentially very successful business ideas come up for you. The program looks at what you like to do, or be, what you are good at and what your resources and strengths are, before showing you how to work through them to combine them into one of the successful business ideas you always desired, but were not sure how to create. It’s a powerful start.

Once you have the idea, the next thing is to start designing it around where you really want to go with it, and that will be the subject of a future blog. For now, check out the Business Profits Program and choose from amongst the best business ideas out there, to design your next career move around!

If you know other people either in business, or wishing they were, who might like to review their business ideas or are looking for the best business ideas, send this to them. They will thank you for it!

Til next time, fair winds and full sails.

Ray Jamieson

Love everyone, trust a few, and paddle your own canoe.  Barry Moltz

Other related blogs from Life Change 90:

Life Change 90 Relaunch

RISK

Empowerment through Challenge

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