Tag: Business

BALANCED GARDENING

garden picture

This blog is not called “Secret2anamazinggarden” but please allow me to dispense with some gardening advice. First you start with some seeds. Some you may have picked out, some you may have just found in the garage or the basement and thought it may be fun to grow. At least that is how it seems to work in my family. Now you must choose a place for your garden to grow. You pick a fine spot one which has both enough shade and enough sun for a good garden needs the right mix of both. Then you prepare the land for the garden. Clearing away debris, rocks and anything else that may inhibit the plants from growing. Then you plant the seeds, water them and begin the wait for them to grow. You know they will take a few days to a few weeks for the plants to sprout so you do not expect to harvest a crop the next day. Now as the days pass you continue to water and take care of what you have planted to give them the best chance to grow. Soon something starts to grow in your garden. If your luck is anything like mine they are called weeds. Sometimes they even sprout before the things we have planted. So you must work on removing them to allow the plants to grow. The next day you come out and sure enough your plants have started to grow! Unfortunately so have more weeds. You think didn’t I just remove these yesterday? So you water the plants and pull the weeds. Then you notice a small little worm starting to eat the leaves of your plants. Great you got rid of the weeds now you have pests to deal with too? So you take steps to remove the pests, water your plants, maybe even fertilize them a bit and pull the weeds. This whole production goes on for weeks, perhaps even months. After which time you begin to be able to pick some fruits and vegetables. Some plants only give you one harvest, others continue to provide as long as you take care of them.

Ok, so what does all this have to do with living an amazing life? The steps to growing a good garden are fairly easy to understand even though they do take a good amount of time and effort. Honestly so are the steps to growing an amazing life. They are also quite similar. Let’s compare. The seeds are like your skills and talents. Some you are just born with, others you may choose and wish to develop. The spot for your garden is like the life you chose. You need enough sun and shade. Time to shine and time to relax. Even if your plot of ground is not ideal with the right effort you can still grow a very good garden. So you plant your seeds or choose your skills and talents you wish to develop. Now here is where some people get off track. They water them once and expect a crop the next day. Everything in life takes time. Sometimes even longer than it normally should. A plant will take longer to sprout if the weather is cool and there is a lack of sun. So a talent may take longer to develop if some key ingredients are missing. Continue to take care of them both and they will surely grow. Now come the weeds which can be likened to the challenges that arise in our life. Often before our talents had a chance to get started. Now when the first weed pops up do we give up on the garden? I hope not or you will never grow anything. Still if we do not do our best to remove the weed it will continue to grow and take over our garden. The same can be true of our challenges and weaknesses. If we do not strive to improve them eventually they will choke out any chance of a good life for us. So now your plants start to sprout, or in the case of your life you begin to see your talents come to light. If you only focus on removing the weeds or improving your weaknesses and never water your plants or build your strengths they will surely die. This is a curse of even the person with the best intentions on self-improvement. They often see it as just “fixing the problems with themselves” That is only roughly 50% of the plan. You must also grow the good that is in you. Develop it fully so you can bring the most to the world. So we come to the pests. What do they represent in the real world? Well, simply put, pests. They are the negative people who come into our lives and begin to eat our dreams and hold us back from our goals. if we do nothing to eliminate them or at the very least reduce their effect on our lives we will have no garden at all. Now much like a garden more weeds and pests will always come up and at times it might seem frustrating but if we keep watering our plants and pulling the weeds quite often they will provide us with far more fruits than we expected. So work on not only removing the challenges in your life and improving your weaknesses, but growing your talents. Try to at least make that a 50/50 effort, but understand much like in a garden both will continue in order for us to continue you reap our harvest

GRAPH OF PROGRESS

line graph photo

As you can see in the graph most prices has both its ups and downs. Just stay focused on your goal and keep moving forward. Whether your goal is to improve your financial situation or your relationship there is very seldom a straight line up. Nor should there be. The beautiful thing about the downs is that is forces us to refocus. If everything is going along smoothly there is little motivation to think about improvement. When things start slipping away then we often are forced to take things seriously and work harder. It is quite often after someone suffers a heart attack or some other health scare that they suddenly adopt a healthy lifestyle they have been avoiding. When someone loses some of their income they often start to review their budget. We grow from our challenges. A set back is only a failure if you give up. Any growth or goal you are working toward is never a straight line from A to B but is quite often a crooked line moving in that direction. If you are able map your goal. Keep an eye on your budget, if you start to spend more than you should or income should decline and the graph go down use that to motivate you to positive action. If you are trying to keep track of how many positive days you have with your spouse and one week you have 5 and the next week you only have 3 use that to examine the difference. Sometimes it can be circumstances you hadn’t expected or even ones beyond your control. Your car breaks down, your spouse is sick and in a bad mood. Still keep your goal firmly in mind and remember where you are heading.

HOW TO GET ANYWHERE…

“A number two pencil and a dream can take you anywhere”

This fabulous quote was given to me by a good friend who saw it on a sign at her work. At face value it seems a little pie in the sky, but is it true? In a word, absolutely. Every great dream begins with these two elements. First we need a dream, goal or whatever you care to call it. Without this step it is hard to get excited In fact without a destination in mind it is hard to get anywhere in life. I relate it to getting in your car on the passenger size, starting the ignition and putting a brick on the gas pedal. If you don’t steer and break you will either end up in someone’s back yard, or in the back of someone’s mini van. Either way effort without direction is wasted effort.

Ok, so you have a dream, now what? Can it really be realized with a simple #2 pencil? The simple answer is yes. Let me relay a personal example to you. When I began work on my book “A Happy Life for Busy People” I had a dream. That was a strong desire to bring what I have learned about living a successful and rewarding life with as many people as I could. What didn’t I have? Any idea what the hell I was doing! This can be the biggest obstacle to people achieving their dream life. It has been mine in the past. You have a great idea, but not the slightest clue as to how to accomplish it. Some see endless challenges and often quick before they really begin. I did this in years past. I would think 12 steps down the line and get so overwhelmed I wouldn’t even start step one. This is where the pencil comes in handy.

When I began work on my first book the same idea constantly came into my mind over and over again. That idea simply stated was “I have no idea how to write a book” So I began to write down everything I could think of. Every question I thought of I wrote down. “How do you get your book printed?” “What website is the best choice to use?” “Who do I know who has written a book?” Then I made lists of pros and cons of subjects. I jotted down ideas and bits of inspiration that came to me. Most of which would later only make sense to me. Considering my wonderful handwriting sometimes even that was debatable. The point being I was literally teaching myself as I went along. I wrote down the information I needed to continue. Then I would write down sources I could get that very information from. Is there a website that has that? Do I have to get a book on the subject? Is there a person I know who could advise me in this field?

I would have to say I would add one item to a dream and a pencil. That item would be a positive and expectant attitude. In reflection I fully expected and knew I was going to write a book. So when challenges arose I would just have to ask myself how can I solve this to move forward? Without this valuable tool you may be inclined to give up. If you totally expect your goal to be reached obstacles just appear as challenges to be solved and not walls stopping you.

Another important thing to realize when chasing your dreams is that chances are someone less talented, connected or gifted has accomplished the very thing you are trying to do. Even if this is not the case, consider how many people have done things others have thought impossible. So if you are considering chasing a dream grab a pencil and a great attitude and begin your journey there!

BUILDING A BONFIRE…

What does building a bonfire have to do with living an amazing life? It serves as a very good metaphor. What does it take to build a good fire? Let’s assume you were never in boys or girls scouts and we will break it down for you. You will need a safe place to do so. Making sure your fire burns only where you want it to. You will need kindling, or small pieces of wood or other flammable material that lights easy but burns quickly. You will also need successfully larger and larger pieces of wood to burn more intense and for longer periods of time. You will need to arrange these in such a way that they burn in the proper order. If you try to light the big log first, chances are your match will burn out far before the log catches fire. This brings us to our last needed element, an ignition source of some nature to start the whole thing burning.

Ok, so we have established what it takes to build a good fire, but what does this have to do with living an amazing life? Here is the answer, your motivation is much like building a fire. You will need to properly keep the fires of passion burning hot and big if you want to be able to push through obstacles toward the amazing life you reaching for. This is true of any goal or project you are working on. You will need kindling, which represents small goals that are easier to obtain as you are on your way to achieving the ultimate goal. The feeling of triumph you feel is like the burning of the kindling that will slowly start the larger logs, also known as bigger goals ablaze. You will need the right amount of this kindling. To little and your passion will fizzle long before you are able to reach your bigger goals. Just as you will need successfully larger more daring and scary goals as you get closer to your prize. You will also need an ignition source. Now many people in life, myself included, have waited for a situation to get so bad that it forces you to take action. Desperation can be a great motivator. So should we sit around waiting for our lives to fall apart so we can give ourselves a big kick in the ass to take the actions needed? Not necessarily. Another great way to motivate your self and ignite your own personal bonfire of passion is to look at what you are missing by not taking action. Grab a pen and paper and start to make a list. What will you lose or are you currently losing by not taking action? How worse off is your life being made by your procrastination? Here is a good time to be brutally honest. Trying to lose weight? How does it make you feel when you go clothes shopping and nothing fits? How does it feel when you look in the mirror? This may seem harsh but emotion is the strongest human motivator. So in addition to this ‘push’ of emotion you can double your chances of success by adding a pull. What I mean here is on another piece of paper, or the other side list how much better your life would be if you did take action. Using the above example, how good would it feel to look in the mirror and like what you see? Write it down, but even better take time to close your eyes and picture this. Really add the element of emotion. How could would it feel to get attention from a person you find attractive? If your goal was financial freedom how good would it feel to not worry about paying the bills or if your job is safe? Write it all down and picture it in your mind. Really add as much emotion as you can.

Now if you have done this all correctly you will have created an unstoppable force that will literally burn through and fear or doubt that stands in your way. Still even after you have created your bonfire of passion for success there is more work to do. Let me ask you if you have a fire going and leave it unattended what happens? Eventually you burn through all the logs you have. So the secret to keeping motivation going is to keep adding logs. Now this doesn’t mean only to keep adding new goals, although that is not a bad idea. Other logs you can add include gathering friends who both motivate you and hold you accountable. Purchasing new books or motivational CDs, taking pictures or your fitness progress or bank statements. As you continue to go towards a goal, you must continue to add logs or your fire will burn out.

WHAT ARE YOU PAYING FOR?

“Sometimes one pays most for the things one gets for nothing”

-Albert Einstein

So we featured a quote from this famous physicist in yesterday’s post, but this one was a little hard to pass up. What does this exactly mean to living a rewarding life? Let us look at some of the most expensive things we spend money on and in essence what we get out of them. One of things a lot of money people spend money on are status symbols. Fancy cars, giant yachts, expensive jewelry, trips to the spa and other such items to pamper and spoil us. Why do we do these things? Well we do them for all the same reason. At first it may seem hard to believe that we will buy a sports car for the same reason we get a massage but it is true. We buy them all just to have a feeling. Whether it is one of accomplishment, importance or peace of mind they are all just feelings. Now I am a big fan of symbols and what they can bring to our lives. So I am not saying that you should not reward yourself or have things that make you feel good. By all means, use those things to motivate yourself. The important part is to understand the feelings that you are chasing with those objects. If owning that fancy car you have always dreamed of will make you feel like you have truly accomplished something in your life that by that car. Notice though that feeling doesn’t strike when you turn the keys for the first time or even when you sign the title. No the feeling usually comes over you on the way to the dealership when you know the car is yours and that you are now the proud owner of a feeling of accomplishment as well as a pretty hot ride. Notice you cannot have the car without first having the feeling. So I say while chasing the dream of the car, the new house, the unicorn whatever it is you are chasing chase that feeling as well. After all it is not the object that is why you have accomplished something. A lottery winner could buy ten of them and all they have accomplished was buying the right ticket. No, practice celebrating the feeling daily when you can. If you celebrate your small accomplishments soon they will lead to even greater ones and before you know it you will be picking me up in your new car to celebrate!

STOP! STOP RUNNING!

This is a line I hear in the beginning of the show Ghost Adventures which I must confess came to mind as I read my daily inspirational calendar. It simply said “Sit with it” like many bits of inspiration this one can be interpreted in many different ways. Here is the way I chose to take it. Many of us spend our entire lives running from things we find unpleasant. Are you guilty of this at all in your life? I know I am. A lot of us run from our fears. Run from our disappointments, run from our crazy family members. Ok, sometimes that last one might not be a bad idea. The point is if we run from things we often miss the lessons they may be trying to teach us or may continue to give them control over us. Fear for example, as long as we run from it we cannot be at peace with ourselves. It is out there. It is lurking it is scary. When we sit down with our fears for a cup of tea or in my case a rum and coke, and say look you scare the hell out of me, why is that? Why are clowns so terribly frightening? They are just circus performers in costumes right? Ok well I’m still working on that one. The point is here when we stop running we take back control of our lives, the future seems a lot more certain and we often gain a very valuable lesson. So ask yourself, “What am I always running from?” Are you going to let it continue to control you? Are you going to continue to miss the lesson it is trying to teach you? Instead of running from it, try what my calendar suggests and “Sit with it”. Now if you’ll excuse me I must pour a rum and coke for the clown and I.

THE DAY HAS FINALLY COME…

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If you love this blog please feel free to check out my brand new book now available A Happy Life for Busy People is now available online at Amazon.com. It is a great way to bring the power of positivity and a lot of the tools we explore here to those you care about this holiday season. It may also be a great gift for those you do not enjoy being around so much as it could help them change their attitudes around as well. So pick a copy up today it is as simple as clicking on the following link A Happy Life for Busy People

START YOUR OWN BUSINESS

Company stores and offices and clinic of Delta...
Company stores and offices and clinic of Delta Pine Company,… (Photo credit: New York Public Library)

Ok, this is not a blog about being self-employed, but I do suggest to everyone they start their own business either full-time or on the side. That being said we are not discussing that today. Yesterday we discussed how developing your own mission statement can be a quick tool to assist you in maintaining focus and direction in your life amidst a sometimes chaotic world. Companies and organizations do this everyday. It helps them decide if the actions they are taking and the words they are saying fit who they want to be. That’s great but you are not a corporation. You do not have shareholders, a research and development team, a budget and bottom line to adjust right? Not so fast. Looking at our lives as a business has some real, logical advantages. First we must decide we are the president and CEO of our own lives. The control and ultimately the decisions fall to us and we should not leave them to the mercy of other interested parties. Think of one of the most successful companies you can come up with. How long do you think that company would last if it tried to cater to every outside interest? That being said, companies have to coexist with others in the business world and the same is true between individuals. Each person, whether they choose to view it like this is in charge of their own company. A negative interaction with another company (a spouse perhaps) could negatively affect our bottom line. Therefore although the decisions are made by us, we must be careful to make them while taking into account the considerations of others. Now what about those shareholders? Family, friends, and coworkers are shareholders in our companies. Obviously the closer we are to people and the more frequent our interaction with them the more shares they hold. For example if you choose to spend a night on the town it may compromise your ability to attend the fun festivities at your place of employment the following morning. That affects your boss who has a fair amount a shares invested in your life. Anger that shareholder to often and he may give up his investment in your company. That could cause some major problems. Therefore we must consider major shareholders when making our decisions. Companies, wisely or not, place a great deal of focus on the bottom line. This does seem to make sense as a company who is putting out more than it is taking in can find itself on the short track to ruin. This applies to our lives in more ways than just the family budget although that may be a good place to begin. The bottom line can incorporate a lot of other things. Time with family, joy, charity, free time and countless other things we place value on. Now each company will define their bottom line in their own way. The integrity of a company can also do a lot to determine its success. View your mission statement. Is one of the items in your mission statement to bring joy to others, but you find yourself speaking negatively about people behind their backs? In this case your company, and your life could be in some serious trouble. If the press, we will call them the people in your life, get wind of this you may develop a reputation that you do desire and is hard to shake. This model can be expanded on and could fill a book with ideas, but for today we will end it with this. Grab your mission statement, decide who the main shareholders in your life are. How much are you doing to keep them invested in your corporation? How is your bottom line looking? When we view things this way we can often be a little more honest with ourselves and make decisions that may be hard to do when we are to emotionally attached to the situation.

YOUR MISSION SHOULD YOU DECIDE TO ACCEPT IT

Sample mission statement
Sample mission statement (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

We ended last week talking about goals. Hopefully by now you have developed a set of goals you hope to attain in the coming year. Even though we have shown how important these goals are and how much benefit they can bring to your life there still exists one problem. Time. Now truly taking 5 minutes twice a day to review your goals and cement them in your mind should not be that great of a challenge. Especially considering the great benefits you stand to gain. Today we live in a nanosecond world. If an internet page takes more than ten seconds to download to your phone something must be wrong. So to review a list of several items several times a day just is too much to ask most people. In some ways this sounds crazy to me considering I know what a difference it can make. Still the point of this blog and my mission in life is to help the most people change their lives for the better. So taking the modern person into consideration how can one stay focused and give their life direction without taking time to review goals. First, let me make it clear and am saying you should give up on the practice of reviewing your goals. Try to incorporate it into your life as often as you can. Still if we can get some of the same results and make it as simple as remembering a single idea or theme wouldn’t that streamline the focusing process?

How many of you have heard of a mission statement? They are pretty popular with companies and organizations in the corporate world. The main purpose of a mission statement is to define a direction and ethical standard for companies to follow. That way they can easily decide if they or any situation they find themselves in meets their standards. Sound familiar? It is the same thing we have been discussing on an individual basis. Viewing your life as a corporation where you are the president and CEO has great value. that is a subject we will approach tomorrow. Keeping that in the back of your mind begin to think of what would make a good mission statement for the company that is your life? What is your life’s main purpose? Are there any standards you must not violate? What are you passionate about? There is a great website that can assist you in crafting your own mission statement nightingale.com is a site full of self-improvement products you can purchase. Still one impressive thing they have available free on their website is a tool allowing you to write your own mission statement. After you do so you will have one emotionally charged, positive and descriptive statement for the purpose of your life. This statement can be amended throughout your life, but it provides you a great tool to decide if you and any situation in your life is meeting your standards and purpose for being on this amazing planet. I highly suggest beginning to view your life as your own company and do so by crafting your own mission statement. We will examine the benefits of this tomorrow.

DO IT FOR ME…

Have you ever found yourself facing a task that seems insurmountable? Ever have a day where it just seems all you do is learn lesson after lesson? Have you ever thought to yourself that on those days cloning might not be such a bad thing after all? That having ‘another you’ to do all the tough stuff in life, to experience all the rough times would be rather nice? I know I have. If there could be another Neil to go to work for me, If there could be another Neil to go to funerals, deliver bad news and all the other things that steals the sunshine from my life, boy that would be great! Now this comes from a person who will tell you that challenges form us into who we have become. That much like fire hardens steel, we are shaped and molded by the fires and trails of life. I know this and more importantly I truly believe this. Still, sometimes after you have just got into a fight with a friend or family matter, or you just found out you forgot to pay a bill on time we can all find ourselves thinking the same thing, “I know somehow I can learn and grow from this experience, but damn it sucks right now” Other times it can be hard to see how all these challenges serve us. Well I recently heard a quote from the amazing Jim Rohn, a late, great motivation speaker and author. He said “Nobody can do your push ups for you” Think about that for a moment, no matter how much money, how much power you have you can not have someone else work out for you and suddenly you are in shape. They could go to the gym, you could watch them sweat, you could even have them give you every detail of the experience, but still they are going to be the ones who benefit because they were the ones who put in the effort. As a payoff they will be the ones with lower stress levels, healthier immune systems, and less risk of injury. Although working out is an excellent example it is not the only area that this holds true in. Every struggle we make it through, every challenge we face is ‘adding muscle’ to our character. It is strengthening our spiritual fortitude. People could tell us about their struggles and their challenges, and we can even learn from them and benefit from knowing how they handled it. Still they will be the ones who could benefit the most from going through the event. So next time you find yourself asking “Why me?” or wishing science could come up with a clone for you, remember the powerful words from Mr. Rohn and repeat them to yourself or to anyone else lamenting their struggles. “Nobody can do your push ups for you”