Tag Archives: #success

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

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

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

Google Teenage Problems.

teenage problems

            Looking like the weight of the world is on her shoulders.                                                                                Image from visual photos                                                             

I AM SHOCKED!

Teenagers only have to focus on themselves – it’s not until we get older that we realize that other people exist.   Jennifer Lawrence

I was originally going to write about the most influential and positive role models of my early life, and did a little research on it. I looked for how many searches people did on the topic, and found that there were only 30 searches (globally) for that exact search and around 3,000 for that topic in general.

However, in the same search program, which brings up “related topic searches”, I also found:

Search topic                                        Exact match                     Broad match

positive role models for teens                   10                                   100
positive role models for teenagers           30                                   270
positive role models                                   720                                 18720
positive role models for girls                    70                                    630

However, the search also found:

troubled teens                                              4400                            171600
teen depression                                           9900                             386100
teen pregnancy                                            49500                          1930500
teen pregnancy help                                   590                               14750
teenage problems                                       6600                             257400
teen issues                                                   2900                             113100
teenage depression                                    8100                              307800
teen suicide                                                 18100                            705900

teenage problems

Not necessarily a good role model either! Image from belfasttimes.co

What is this saying about what is really going on with teenage problems?

There are more searches each month globally for “Teen Suicide” than there are for all the positive searches for good teen role models! There are so many more people seeking solutions to the teenage problems, than there are seeking positive ways to prevent the problems!

That lifts the scab on the huge issue of teenage problems. I confess, until I saw this, I didn’t realise the incredible depth of the teenage problems issue, even though I have written about the topic in general previously in my blog on “Empowerment for Teens”.

What is needed, obviously, are many more positive influences and role models for children and teenagers, to influence the growth and development of our youth so that these teenage problems are prevented – rather than becoming teenage problems needing treatment!

We can all play a role in this – literally! Are you a good role model for youth? Do you lead with an example that you would be happy your children could follow? Or would you be concerned if your children did as you demonstrated, but not as you said?

Children learn by example and follow the leads given by their most powerful influences in those formative years. Those potentially positive influential people are firstly, their parents, family friends and especially friends of their parents who they see regularly, and their teachers. They are also greatly influenced by what their own friends and peers do and say – mostly learning their habits – good or bad, because in the early stages of learning at least, they still don’t know the difference!

teenage problems

                                                  Peer groups – they can make or break a teenager!                                                   Image from tagesthemen24.de

How can we break this cycle of teenage problems?

Who were the most influential people in your early years? What did you learn from them? What can you still learn from them, on reflection?

Let me tell you of a few influences of my early years, to explain what I mean.

Aside from my parents’ influence, we had a family friend called Dennis. He was an amazing guy and a lot of fun to be with. He met my Dad when I was around 4 or 5 years old, when we were having some construction work done on the farm. He was a friend of the builder, and Dad and Dennis hit it off. He often came up to do a bit of spotlight shooting after this, and that was when we met his wife, Norma.

Norma was a paraplegic. She had been wheelchair bound since around age 18, when a car accident changed her life. She and Dennis were sweethearts at the time and he never left her side. They married and were fortunate to have a child. Dennis was a man’s man, worked as an electrician in the steel mills at Port Kembla, but was also a devoted husband and father, with strict personal disciplines and moral standards that he lived by. He set an example that has stayed with me for all of my life.

When Norma died, I was about 16. She and Dennis had become part of our family, even though they lived 200 miles away. It hit us hard, but Dennis was our strength through it all. He is still strong and courageous, well into his eighties now. He remarried and shared a wonderful relationship with his second wife until recently when she also passed away, again leaving him alone. I spoke to him about his loss and he was shaken, although still his wonderful, compassionate self. I thanked him for the example he had set me for my life to aim for, and he was most humble. He said it was just a day at a time and his aim was to make each day count. Dennis, you certainly did – your days and mine also. Thank you.

Teachers can have a huge influence on the enthusiasm and appetite of youth for all things exciting and perhaps forbidden. No one knew this better than the other major influence in my early years, that of John Stanley Gabb, the wool classing teacher and registrar of the Cootamundra Technical College. He was only a small man, and his uniform seemed to be a white dustcoat and shiny black shoes, over a shirt and tie. He was always well-groomed, probably around 40 years of age when we met, and I was 15.

His class was about a dozen unruly farm teenagers who were ostensibly there to learn to class wool, so they could handle the shearing season on their own farms. However, living miles from town and company meant these guys were also out for a day off the farm, to play up and create merry hell wherever they went before, during and after the class. John Gabb was equal to the task.

Big John Clark was a great example of the students. He would stand up near the front of the room, one foot on the chair seat, elbow on his knee and told jokes non-stop for as long as he was allowed, never cracking a smile, never pausing and knowing that the rest of the room was unable to draw breath for the laughter. But John Gabb was able to judge exactly when was the right time to intervene and say “OK, Guys, let’s give that a break and work on what we are supposed to be doing.” Always firm, but never authoritarian, and always respected.

Respected so much that when these boisterous teens had trouble, he was also the one they went to for advice. No, he wasn’t their agony aunt, but he was a great first step in the process, usually before the boys told their parents the problems they were having. Over the four years I knew him, these informal chats prevented probably half a dozen major episodes of teenage problems that I knew about. He also had other classes and there were a few hundred students at the college, whom I never met. However, he made it his business to know them all, and be available to them.

Twenty years later, I went back to Cootamundra to find John Gabb, and he had retired. As it happened, he retired to the Sunshine Coast in Queensland, only an hour’s drive north of where I lived. I was running my seminars at the time and made it my business to call in to his home, to thank him personally for the influence he had in my life. I did not realise during my time at college how powerful he was. It was only a decade later when I faced certain challenges that his lessons, teachings and examples were the ones I used to pull me through. As I began writing my seminars, teaching and lecturing from the stage to quite large groups of people, I realised how much of his influence was still coming through.

That’s the thing about solid foundations and good principles, they are right and correct, down through the ages. John Stanley Gabb was influencing young people still, all around Australia, through my work, twenty and thirty years later, as he sat in his lounge room up on the Sunshine Coast. When I met him again, his welcome was warm. When I told him what I was doing, and thanked him for the powerful influence he had been in my life, his eyes teared over and he thanked me for telling him.

People such as these are the ones who really make a difference. I know that I could have had serious teenage problems if not for their influence. I was as wild and strong-minded as any other teen, perhaps more than most, but I had great role models in these people, as well as the examples set by my parents. I was fortunate. It seems so many more kids are not, or there would not be so many searches for teenage problems on Google!

Again, I ask you, are you a suitable role model for your children, and those of your neighbours and friends? Or will those children be searching for “teenage problems” on Google as well?

teenage problems

       Are you a good role model for her to follow? Image From strategylab.ca

If you are happy that you are being all you can be, as a role model for today’s youth, then I congratulate you. If you feel you could do more, then may I recommend a look at Life Change 90?

You already know you CANNOT TELL children and teenagers how to act and behave. That’s just an invitation to rebel against you and everything you stand for.

Rather, demonstrate in your life what they aspire to, with the love and satisfaction they also desire, through knowing and using the tools available to them also and which you will not only learn, but develop as habits through Life Change 90. Show them what they want to see and let them know it is available to them also. Join me in Life Change 90.

Few things are more satisfying than seeing your children have teenagers of their own.    Doug Larson

Til next time, fair winds and full sails,

Ray Jamieson

You have teenagers thinking they’re going to make millions as NBA stars when that’s not realistic for even 1 percent of them. Becoming a scientist or engineer is.     Dean Kamen

Related Blogs

Empowerment for Teens

Empowerment for Children

Empowerment for Men

Empowerment for Women

Success Habits

Jim Rohn, Business Philosopher

Jim Rohn

Jim Rohn at home on stage.                                      Image from healthsourcelaunchu.com

I remember Jim Rohn.

Jim Rohn

What a way to think of life!                 Image from mylifemantras.blogspot.com

You must take personal responsibility. You cannot change the circumstances, the seasons, or the wind, but you can change yourself. That is something you have charge of.       Jim Rohn

One of the most quoted names of the business world in recent decades is E James Rohn (September 17, 1930 – December 5, 2009) or Jim Rohn, as most people knew him. Jim Rohn joined the speaking circuit during a period of #life change for him in the early 1960s with a talk at his local Rotary Club and in 1963, he delivered his first public seminar at the Beverly Hills Hotel. When he walked onto that stage, he walked into history to become one of the most influential speakers and motivators of the modern era, until his passing on December 5, 2009.

Some of the most famous and notable protégées of Jim Rohn include:
• Mark R Hughes (founder of Herbalife International)
Tony Robbins
Mark Victor Hansen
Jack Canfield (author of the “Chicken Soup for the Soul” books)
Brian Tracy
Chris Widener
T Harv Eker

I first discovered Jim Rohn through his recorded seminars when I became a member of the Australian Institute of Management in Spring Hill in Brisbane, in the late 1980s. They have an amazing library and I utilised it to the max! Through borrowed cassette recordings, I devoured his wit and wisdom and came to respect him greatly. In April 1990, he visited the Gold Coast in Queensland and I attended my first seminar with him, a weekend Leadership Program. This began a friendship that I was privileged to enjoy for some years, until Jim retired in the USA soon after the year 2005. After our first weekend together where we chatted as often as I could get time with him, we caught up each time I attended his programs and seminars here in Queensland over the last decade before his retirement.

Jim was a man of small stature, but a giant in the business and speaking world. “Business philosopher” is the title that was coined for him and it is so apt. He exuded wisdom wherever he spoke, the wisdom that only comes from someone’s experience, never from a curriculum or textbook!

Through those many hours of recordings played on my car stereo, reading his books, emails and attending his programs, his philosophy and wisdom became a powerful influence in my life also. I was fortunate that I was also able to speak with him when he came to Australia, because the old saying:
A single conversation across the table with a wise man is worth a month’s study of books
is ever so true. Speaking with and sharing a table with Jim Rohn was a real privilege.

Jim Rohn

Jim Rohn Philosophy:                                           Image from millionairemarketingmachines.com

A sound bite from a Jim Rohn Seminar
The first evening seminar I attended with Jim was in Brisbane and only went for a couple of hours. This is part of the session:
“Last year when I was here, I recommended a book to you – “The Richest Man In Babylon”. How many of the people from that evening are here again tonight?”

About three-quarters of the room, over 500 people, put their hands up.

“Thank you, that’s great – nice to see you coming back again. Now, keep your hands up if you went out and bought that book.”

All but about 50 hands went down.

“That’s about right” he said. “Only around 10% of the people you talk to will take action on your advice, no matter how valuable you believe it is for them!”

He went on to talk about the book, and about how easy it was.

“It’s easy to buy, it’s easy to read, it’s easy to understand. However, it’s also easy not to buy! To buy this book, you need to make a conscious decision to become a better person, and that’s harder than not buying the book”.

That’s Jim Rohn philosophy, simple and profound. I love it! And yes, I bought the book.

Learning is the beginning of wealth. Learning is the beginning of health. Learning is the beginning of spirituality. Searching and learning is where the miracle process all begins.      Jim Rohn

Jim Rohn authored a number of books, simple and easy books too. Full of his profound style of wisdom, and so relevant to everyday living and working in business. Jim’s life story is fascinating and well worth studying for a moment. He was a sales clerk in his early years before he was offered a job in direct sales by a very switched-on mentor. He soaked up the teachings of this mentor and propelled himself to success in that company and then the next company when he changed. He wrote and spoke about his success and the teachings of his mentor throughout his speaking career, inspiring the millions of people he reached around the world. It’s the lessons that can only come from experience, from face to face dealing with people, observing and learning from experience. His experience is what makes it so valuable. His style of delivery is what makes it so powerful and profound.

I was privileged to attend Jim’s Leadership weekend, and many other events at which he spoke, and even worked with him onstage at Brisbane once, when he and the great Zig Ziglar were in Brisbane.  That was a wonderful event and I had the chance to speak with both these great men during and after their events.  Since then, I have added all of Jim’s writing to my library and more than a few of his audio programs – more than a national treasure, this man had something worth listening to!

I’m proud to say that through my career in coaching, consulting, and public speaking, I have applied many of the lessons I learnt from Jim Rohn. Those familiar with his work may detect his influence in the Life Change 90 Program, although the original inspiration for that program came from Og Mandino, who I wrote about last week. Jim’s influence comes through most strongly in the Business Profits Program, because above all, Jim Rohn was an excellent business operator, very successful, very smart. Having Jim Rohn on your team would be valuable for everyone, and especially if you were starting a new business, or revamping one that was a little tired – Jim Rohn energy would inspire any business and any team!

Whether you are interested in the personal life change that Jim Rohn inspired world-wide, or whether you would like some of his philosophy in your business program, there’s something here for you. I’m also proud to say that I think Jim Rohn would be honoured to think he had a small role in the development of either of these programs. His legacy lives on also.

To find out more about the Life Change 90 Program, click here.

If you have a business or would like to begin one, it most likely could benefit from the Business profits Program, so click here!

Either way, the wisdom of the ages will be with you, allied with the technology of the 21st century, to propel you forward to success and achievement of your desires, now and far into the future. I wish you well with your desires.

Til next time, fair winds and full sails.

Ray Jamieson

Recent relevant blogs:

Og Mandino – Lessons from the Master

Life Change 90 Relaunch

RISK

Empowerment through Challenge

Starting a small business

Starting a small business

Amazing Garden – courtesy of gardeninfluence.com

“A goal without a plan is just a wish.” ― Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

Starting a small business

Starting a small business has much in common with starting a garden.

Starting a small business

Window Box Garden – courtesy of deborahsilver.com

A garden can be as small as a window box of herbs or colourful flowers, or acres of magnificence such as featured in some of the famous gardens of the world. Louis IV for example. Many acres of magnificent gardens, breathtaking in scope and features, a delight to experience and home to so much life and enterprise.

Starting a small business

Gardens of the Palace of Versailles, in France. This was NO ACCIDENT!        Courtesy of rothseye.org

However, these gardens both have much in common with starting a small business.

Each began with an idea, an inspiration. Someone, at some time, had to have the idea and inspiration to create either the small business, or the garden. Without that initial inspiration, neither is possible.

Starting a small business

What an idea! – image from shopigniter.com

“Without leaps of imagination or dreaming, we lose the excitement of possibilities. Dreaming, after all is a form of planning.” ― Gloria Steinem

In some cases, some people just bought seeds and scattered them. Some people just opened the doors on a business and hoped for the best. Both these strategies grow weeds, and soon fail.

Starting a small business

WEEDS!                   Image from hillconsulting.com

Starting a small business successfully requires the same strategy as starting a garden; you need a plan to work to. The best gardens, like the most successful small businesses, saw life through a very clear plan.

Not every garden was planned initially to look like the final completed picture, just as small businesses grow and evolve into their ultimate operation. Over time, the conditions and circumstances of the garden change, just as the small business environment you work in changes. Both must evolve, adapt and change with the times, so they can not only survive, but thrive!

Gardens are living, breathing organisms, teeming with life and activity. So are the most successful small business. Let’s look at what they have in common.

The initial plan is crucial.

Gardens have a creator. Someone had to start them off, create the idea and concept, mark out the seedbeds and plant the first seed. Someone also had to start the business, have the idea and stock the shelves.

Gardens need the right environment and location, soils and climate. With businesses, you must be where you can make sales and service your clients. Location is everything, whether a home based internet business, a corner store or a major retail outlet or service centre. Your location is just as critical because in the wrong location, all you get for either is a surfeit of weeds.

The climate? The business climate is just as important as the temperature and rainfall expectations for your plants. Some like it hot, others will die there – get it right. The business climate must be right for the business you are operating in that environment. Snowboards don’t sell well on the beachfront!

Choice of soils – just like the foundations of the business – crucial. Are your soils shallow and stony, or rich and deep? What is the foundation of your business? The marketability of your concept and the strategy for implementing it. Fundamentals for each enterprise.

Gardens need supplies of nutrients and water as their life flow. Fertiliser, water at the right time and volume, pruning, harvesting and weeding. Just as businesses do. Marketing, promotions, advertising, management strategy and ongoing training for everyone. Staff numbers and training need to be managed for efficient operation also.

Starting a small business is so much like gardening. You even need bees! Gardens need bees to pollinate flowers, to ensure the survival of the plants in the garden season after season. In starting a small business, you need to ensure you have access to bees also – both worker bees for your internal team and customer bees to ensure that the fruits of your labours multiply as profits, to ensure you are back next season also.

Starting a small business

Busy little bees! – Image from care2.com

“Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe.”  ― Abraham Lincoln

There is so much in common with both starting a small business and starting a garden, and knowing this we can plan for success in both, with the crossover of common sense and knowledge required for either enterprise.

Back to the beginning. Neither your garden, nor your business idea have a snowball’s chance in hell of success without their creator knowing and understanding what they are starting, and have a plan for its success. Whether you create your own plan, or get a landscape gardener or an accountant to do it for you, there must be a plan. The great benefit of creating it yourself when starting a small business is that you will get much closer to what you want, what you dreamed of and what you are passionate about.

The challenge is filling in the technical bits, to make sure your plan is complete.

Small business creation and planning is now very easy.

The Business Profits Program provides all the tools you need for starting a small business plan, and much more. It takes your original idea, or prompts you to create one if necessary, locates your resources, skills and capital, then shows you how to combine them into a business model. It asks you how you will define your business, identify your target market, finance your enterprise, produce goods or services, market them to the intended clients and launch your business with a degree of success that even your accountant would be happy to achieve.

However, it doesn’t help with planning a garden. Unless you want to make a business out of your garden. Then it could become the most valuable tool in your garden!

The Business Profits Program: it takes what you already know and have, and turns it into an exciting and profitable business!

It provides the foundations for starting and operating a business, successfully. Take a look – you’ll be glad you did!

If you know some other folks who are either in business or thinking of starting one, please send this article to them. They will thank you, I’m sure.

Til next time, fair winds and full sails.

Ray Jamieson

“Someone’s sitting in the shade today because someone planted a tree a long time ago.”  ― Warren Buffett

Other related blogs from Life Change 90:

Life Change 90 Relaunch

RISK

Empowerment through Challenge

Moving House and all that stuff

#Moving House

Guess what?                                               Image from MotivatedPhotos.com

Moving House

“Move to a new country and you quickly see that visiting a place as a tourist, and actually moving there for good, are two very different things.”  ― Tahir Shah, Travels With Myself 

There’s something about moving house. New energy, new location, new start – another beginning. Yes, that’s all true. But so is the disruption, dislocation, disturbance and the dismay when the removalists, the phone or power company doesn’t keep their many promises to make this ‘the smoothest operation ever…..!”

And that’s where we are – moving house! For the next couple of weeks, we may, or may not get a chance to get more blogs out, but rest assured, after we settle into the new home, there is so much waiting for you. For example, the next couple of blogs – titles coming are “Empowerment Lessons from an Oilcan” and “Where to start”. Powerful, fundamental stuff, with a great story embedded around the lessons I found along the way.

Just like tonight. Moving house.

#Moving house

Oh no! I love doing that!              Image from motleynews.net

How do you keep your head together when the plan is to disrupt, dissemble and generally pull apart every part of your life as it is, box it and reassemble many miles and hours later?

There’s a way that is working for me. I work from the Life Change 90 program, and the organisation it provides in my day is handling everything for me. I put in my challenges and goals for the day each morning, I get my pep talk and off I go. The progress has been amazing – we are actually some days ahead of schedule! Then in the evening, I sit for a few minutes, tick off what we have achieved, tally the results, write a few words about the day and its progress and enable tomorrow’s plan and schedule to come through. I note that and I’m outta here – those few minutes morning and night have made the rest of my day so smooth!

One of the things I am working on is a mild revision of the Life Change 90 program. Correcting a few typo errors in the original text, which somehow I missed before it went to the producer, and adding a few details in a few sections to make it even simpler to understand and live with. By the end of the month, I expect the new version will be uploaded and available to you. If you are one of the folks who take a copy in the meantime, you’ll have the new one emailed to you, as soon as we get it back to us! No charge!

If you’d like this level of support in your day, whether you are moving house, or moving mountains, this is where to get it. Click here and download the best friend you could wish for online! If you know someone else who needs something like this, send it to them and share the love. After all, everyone needs a friend!

Til next time, fair winds and full sails. And removalist trucks!

Ray

“Some part of me can’t wait to see what life’s going to come up with next! Anticipation without the usual anxiety. And underneath it all is the feeling that we both belong here, just as we are, right now.” ― Alexander Shulgin

#Moving house

OK, we are ready!              Image from blog.gamos.gr

Driven or Drifting

#Driven or drifting

Driven? Image from Forza Motorsport

#Driven or drifting

Drifting? Image from duotraq.com

Driven or Drifting

“Freedom lies in being bold.” ― Robert Frost

We are moving house at the moment. It’s a time of frantic activity, packing, planning and preparing for a major change. And it’s OK! We are enjoying the activity because we know there are great things to look forward to. The knowing is driving us forward to the new experiences we will share there.

After we arrive at our new home, we’ll unpack, get ourselves settled in, and then relax.

From time to time in everyone’s life, we are driven by a need, compulsion, goal or ambition, or fear. At other times, when none of these stimulants are present, we can find ourselves drifting, just cruising. Both are OK. As long as we are aware of what state we are in, and are happy with it.

It’s when we are unconsciously in a state of either being #driven or drifting that we can get into trouble.

Can you be unconsciously driven?

Yes. Consider the workaholic. Ask them why they work 18 hours a day and they may not know, or just say there’s “a lot on at the moment” and keep working. However, it’s a subconscious compulsion, driven by who knows what. It’s not something they can control; it actually controls them, and in the process, may ruin lives, relationships, health, businesses and more.

#Driven or drifting

Choices… Workaholic! Image from rockinmarriage.com

Workaholics are not the only ones driven by unconscious compulsions and drivers. There are all the other ‘holics’ as well, plus those obsessed with anything that prevents them from enjoying the ebb and flow of normal life. Collectors are a great example. It’s wonderful to collect items of special significance to you. However, when it takes over your life, costs you financially, emotionally, ruins relationships, health and families, even your best friend will suggest that your obsession with collecting bottle tops has taken over – your life is no longer your own!

Can you be unconsciously drifting?

Yes, again. When the rush dies down, it’s nice to sit on the couch and watch a movie, or read a book. It’s a natural cycle of life that we rest and recharge the batteries before the next big push. But what if there is no ‘next big push’?

The danger of being too comfortable.

When life is cruising like this, each day is a routine where nothing challenging happens, perhaps beyond some traffic, your team losing or the local store being out of your favourite item, the danger is that your mind, and sometimes your muscles, atrophy. “Use it or lose it” is the old saying, and there’s a lot of value in it.

#Driven or drifting

Opportunity passing by. Image from wilywalnut.com

We know that one of the greatest defences against mental illnesses such as Parkinson’s or dementia, for example, is to actively challenge your mind. Crossword puzzles, electronic games and other specific mental activities force the mind and the brain to work and create fresh new neural pathways, that somehow manage to stave off the onset of these degenerative mental illnesses for years, even when there is a genetic predisposition towards them. Being lazy has a terrible price to pay, and it’s not a direct cost. It’s the cost of what you can lose, both in opportunity and function, by not getting out and taking part in life, contributing and being challenged by life. Sometimes the greatest losses are only realised later, when you learn that an incredible opportunity passed by, while you were sitting on your couch!

Balancing life’s driven and drifting cycles.

Human beings need goals, as something to aim for, a purpose, something to identify with and to look forward to.  As a species, we need something to look forward to, something to give us some brightness of the future, some hope. Even the worst day or mood can be lifted when the person is shown a little something they value, something to look forward to. At best, the goals we set can be empowering, motivating and inspirational, as they should be. Whether it’s a family goal, or the love of family that motivates and drives us, or whether it’s a goal to be the greatest in the world at something, it doesn’t matter. As long as it moves us, and stops the atrophy.

However, to balance it, we all need some downtime. Our bodies have a “circadian rhythm”, a 24 hour cycle in which we are programmed for a period of driven activity, and a period when the program is for the body to sleep, to rest and recuperate. Driven or drifting throughout a 24 hour period. Genetically, this is how we are programmed.

Mentally, it’s similar with being driven or drifting, but with different time frames. If we have an interest in something, we are inspired and motivated by it, but when we complete that challenge, the drive to understand and master it, that drive often dissipates and we can move on from it. Depending on what it is, that cycle can last from moments to days, months or years. At the end of that cycle, the mind needs to tune out, before tuning in again on something new.

Even the most satisfying career or job needs us to take a break, to maintain our freshness and enthusiasm. We take annual holidays – at least, we should! Most employment contracts specify some time off each year, but it’s great also to take breaks on weekends, to escape from the rush, the drive and to ‘smell the roses’, appreciating our family and friends and life other than the career or driving force.

#Driven or drifting

Moving house? Image from removalists.com

Just like my wife and I will rest after we move into our lovely new home, and unpack the boxes containing our lives. We will rest, recover and start the forward planning process again, from a new base.

Are you locked into a rhythm of being too much driven or drifting?

How do you know? And what can you do about it?

The first step towards regaining control of life, whether you are driven or drifting, is to be aware of what you are doing. Consciousness is not something everyone is good at! How many times have you driven to work, and only realised when you arrived that you had no memory of the trip? Or the train or bus ride? When we develop a routine of checking in on awareness each day, we regain consciousness of our activities, our thoughts and our direction, and only then can we begin to take back control of our lives. That provides the opportunity to decide on our driven or drifting schedules, when to set and work on our inspirational goals, and when to take time to relax, recuperate and drift along with the flow of life.

The next step is to consciously assess where we are in life compared to where we want to be, and decide on how to make up the differences. Setting goals to achieve the necessary steps to catch up to where we decided perhaps in our youth, where we wanted to be by each certain age. Life throws us curve balls, and only when we become conscious do we realise that we haven’t achieved everything we wanted, or we are not feeling the satisfaction from it that we expected.

That’s when a program to raise awareness and provide the discipline and skills you need to get back on track can be such a powerful aid to progressing towards the life you dreamed of. That program would inspire you each morning, refresh your goals for you and point out the action steps you needed to take that day, provide you with a ‘to do’ list of other life matters for the day, and close your day with a cheer, congratulating you on your achievements, and inspiring you to look forward to tomorrow. You can have that program; it’s HERE! To find out more about it, click this link and picture yourself moving forward into the life you dreamed of, only this time, with the guidebook you always knew was somewhere to be had. Now you can have it!

If you feel inspired to take the next step now, perhaps others will too. Please forward this article and share it with others who you feel want more from their lives too. Change their lives, as well as your own.

Til next time, fair winds and full sails!

Ray Jamieson

When you take charge of your life, there is no longer need to ask permission of other people or society at large. When you ask permission, you give someone veto power over your life.   Abert F. Geoffrey

#Driven or drifting

I’m my own man! Image from super-trainer.com

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