I found the following article and copied it to my blog to preserve it as a resource for myself and my readers. This philosophy is life changing, although it is not easy to apply in daily life.
We went to visit my daughter after Christmas and she and her family had just returned from a holiday in California where they enjoyed much better weather. She was changing job and looking for a new purpose in her life and her husband is also in the course of changing jobs.
Not surprisingly, being jet-lagged, and facing the reality of every day life, she was feeling a bit down and depressed.
I gave her a pep talk and I expressed some of the points listed below including my favourite quote from Henry Ford ‘Failure is just an opportunity to begin again more intelligently.’ I also told her to let go of her worry and to let her life unfold because her sub-conscious would guide her i.e. at the centre of of your being, you have the answer.
I hope that this article may be of interest to you dear reader!
8 Life Changing Lessons Everyone Can Learn From Lao Tzu
Lao Tzu is one of the most famous Chinese philosophers and is the mind behind many important lessons our souls have to learn. He’s the author of the Tao Te Ching and the founder of Taosim. He’s been a central figure in China for centuries, and you’re about to find out why.
1. You already hold the answer to life’s questions.
“At the center of your being you have the answer; you know who you are and you know what you want.”
“Knowing others is intelligence; knowing yourself is true wisdom. Mastering others is strength; mastering yourself is true power.”
“When I let go of what I am, I become what I might be.”
2. You’re freed when you let go.
“By letting it go it all gets done. The world is won by those who let it go. But when you try and try. The world is beyond the winning.”
“Therefore the Master acts without doing anything and teaches without saying anything. Things arise and she lets them come; things disappear and she lets them go. She has but doesn’t possess, acts but doesn’t expect. When her work is done, she forgets it. That is why it lasts forever.”
“If you want to become whole, let yourself be partial. If you want to become straight, let yourself be crooked. If you want to become full, let yourself be empty. If you want to be reborn, let yourself die. If you want to be given everything, give everything up.”
“Do you have the patience to wait till your mud settles and the water is clear? Can you remain unmoving till the right action arises by itself?”
3. Your ego will never give you true pleasure.
“He who defines himself can’t know who he really is.”
“He who has power over others can’t empower himself.”
“He who tries to shine dims his own light.”
4. Evil dies when ignored.
“Give evil nothing to oppose and it will disappear by itself.”
5. Kindness always wins. Evil always loses.
“Treat those who are good with goodness, and also treat those who are not good with goodness. Thus goodness is attained. Be honest to those who are honest, and be also honest to those who are not honest. Thus honesty is attained.”
“Kindness in words creates confidence. Kindness in thinking creates profoundness. Kindness in giving creates love.”
“Being deeply loved by someone gives you strength, while loving someone deeply gives you courage.”
6. Be yourself.
“Care about people’s approval and you will be their prisoner.”
“When you are content to be simply yourself and don’t compare or compete, everybody will respect you.”
7. Be humble and you shall be wise.
“The wise man is one who, knows, what he does not know.”
“All streams flow to the sea because it is lower than they are. Humility gives it its power.”
8. Change is inevitable, so embrace it.
“If you realize that all things change, there is nothing you will try to hold on to. If you are not afraid of dying, there is nothing you cannot achieve.”
“New beginnings are often disguised as painful endings.”
(This article is courtesy of www.higherperspectives.com/8-life-changing-lessons-everyone-can-learn-from-lao-tzu-1429977337.html)
This question could make you millions – I pinched this from a thread on the Warrior Forum.
If you let it… trying to make money online can be confusing.
Okay, that’s too mild.
If you don’t have a solid plan, it can drive you F**KING nuts!
Believe me, been there, done that, bought the Teespring t-shirt.
So, after 17 years online and multiple millions sold of my own
stuff, and for clients… I try to keep things simple as can be.
Why?
Cause simple gets implemented. Simple gets you to take action.
Simple means you can test and track. Simple means you can make
fast changes and see how it turns out.
Simple is just, well, simpler when it comes to making money online.
And the ONE simple question that I ask myself, every single day
I’m online… and it’s probably helped me more than anything else
I’ve done?
“How can I add value to the MOST amount of people today”.
That’s it.
When I break down everything I do, each and every day,
my mission is pretty much the same.
“How can I help the greatest amount of people”.
When you ask yourself THAT one question… when you
use THAT as your “guiding light” or “North star”…
It makes it easier to decide what you need to do, if you want
to make the most money.
Now, I will say this is a pretty general statement. I get it.
And honestly, it doesn’t work each and every time.
For example, if you offer high ticket coaching, then maybe
your goal ISN’T to help the most people.
Maybe you just need to help a handful… and when you do,
you make a lot of money.
But, you still have to add a lot of value to those people.
The 2 biggest keys to making it online?
Value and scale.
Work on getting those 2 things handled, and you’ll
make a killing.
Not sure what to use for traffic?
Which source will allow you to reach the most people
with your message?
What do you offer for a lead magnet?
Again, what can you give away, to the most people,
that will help them and add value to their lives?
What can you offer, for a product or service, that
will help people solve a problem, reach a desire, or
get what they want.
That one question…
“How can I add value to the MOST people” is
responsible for creating more millionaires and
billionaires than any other.
Apple, Amazon, Google, Facebook…
You name it, there’s a good chance they
add value to a lot of people at once.
Movie stars, rock stars, athletes…
ALL add value to a lot of people at once.
So if you ever find yourself stuck online, and
you’re not sure what to do… maybe asking yourself
that same question I ask myself each day…
“how can I add value to the most people today”…
That may make it a little easier to determine what
you need to do in order to get your online business
where you want it…
Answering this question may yield more than one idea. The additional tip I want to add to this article is… don’t be tempted to do more than one thing at a time.
It is a proven fact that multi-tasking does not work – particularly for men!! Prioritise your actions and just do one thing at a time until you have completed the task and then move onto the next task.
The next tip I have is that it is easy to live your life thinking about past events or dreaming about the future. However, the only reality is the present moment.
If you can work in the moment (sometimes described as ‘being in the flow’), totally absorbed by your current activity, this is the source of ultimate creativity. You can tap into subconscious knowledge that you probably never knew you had.
We are all capable of adding value to someone else’s life. We all know things that other people would like to know. We all have skills that might help someone else. We all have thoughts that could turn someone else’s life around – even if you are just promoting someone else’s content that you found helpful (as I am doing in this article).
I would also add that when ‘adding value’, don’t just think about quantity. I sometimes find that big products that take a lot of time to consume are unhelpful to me as I get distracted and move on before I can consume the whole thing. I would much prefer a shorter, high quality piece of content or training that has been boiled down to the essentials that I can consume in one sitting!
Sometimes simplifying someone else’s training would be a great way to add value or perhaps converting it into a different format or media e.g. text to video or vice versa.
Do you think asking yourself this question could make you millions? The only way to know is to try it out!
My grandson, Daniel, who has finished reading his book!
How to finish what you started is the subject of the email that I received from Sean Mize today.
I think the essential skill that Sean outlines here is having clarity about what it is we want to achieve and then holding onto the ‘picture’ of what that is for long enough in order to achieve it.
The process he outlines is simple.
Personally I would use a mind-map in order to get my ideas into some sort of logical order and then tick off each element of my plan as I progressed. A mind map enables me to move things around easily and to add and subtract ideas as they occur to me.
The other important element of any plan is to put a deadline on its accomplishment.
Here is what Sean says:
It’s easy to fall into a pattern of just doing one thing then another in this business, but the parts never fit together to make a finished product.
Here’s how to out of that trap:
Create for yourself a solid picture, draw it if you are creative, write it out if you are logical, do it the way that works for you
But make a picture that tells you what you want in the end.
Like this:
I want to change the world by helping (name who you are going to help) and helping them do (what you are going to help them do/teach them)
I will use the following medium to do it:
For example, I will create 10-15 information products that will sequentially teach them
And/or I will create a coaching program to teach them and then coach, support, and encourage
And/or I will create a membership that gives them access to my teachings
Then once that’s done, make EVERYTHING you do be a part of making that happen.
You commit to not doing anything that doesn’t lead you close to the fulfillment of that flowchart.
And then just fill in the blanks.
A product one month.
A membership the next.
A product the next month.
Another product the next month.
A coaching program the next month.
A product the next month.
Just one step at a time, filling in the empty places, the spots in your dream that aren’t done yet.
This works, it really does.
This is the kind of process successful people use to realize their dreams.
It WILL work for you.
It’s practically a law of nature.
Sean
As you get into the process of creating your content:
create an outline for that content (again I would use a mind-map)
turn on your video recorder and teach that particular topic
write an email to your subscribers about what you taught
write an article, or get the video transcribed on Fiverr, and add it to your blog or membership site
I hope this simple process will help you to finish what you started in order to earn an income from it. Please sign up to the free offer on my blog if you want to receive more tips like this.
I thought that I would set out the reasons why I avoid Apple products and any products like them.
Apple is one of the most profitable companies in the world with huge profit margins. That effectively means the consumer is paying more than they really need to for their products. Great for Apple but not so good for the consumer.
Apple eliminates competitors by making sure that all Apps and related software are controlled by them so that they can control competitors and thereby their profit margins. Apple products only integrate with other Apple products which once again enables them to expand sales of their other over-priced products.
The consumer is trapped in their universe of well-designed but over-priced products.
When running my business I work hard to reduce any other businesses control over my business.
For example, if your main traffic source is SEO traffic then you are dependent on Google or Bing for your traffic. They change their algorithm and you can be out of business overnight. Same goes for platforms like Facebook.
It is OK to use these platforms but always be sure to have a back-up service in place and reduce your business risk by diversifying.
That’s why I use a self-hosted solution for my websites – it’s more expensive but I have more control over my ultimate destiny. I don’t have complete control because a hacker could take me down so I mitigate the risk by backing up my websites.
You need to think through your business decisions properly.
Let me give you another example. My son is running my 10 year old Saab and was wondering if he should scrap the car or pay a £500 repair bill to keep it on the road. This is the email that I sent him:
Hi James,
I have been thinking about the cost of the car repairs and I think you need to get real about this.
Just to illustrate.
A 2015 BMW 1 series with 25,000 miles on the clock would cost around £17,000. If you financed that you would have to pay a £1,700 deposit and £250 per month (or £3,000 p.a.) for 4 years and have a residual payment of £7,000. On top of that you have tax and insurance and servicing costs. The main cost is in fact depreciation of the car as interest costs are no more than £500 p.a.)
In my opinion, you should budget £100 per month to cover repairs for the Saab plus the cost of MOT & service (£250), insurance (£400 incl breakdown) and tax (£270) i.e. £76 p.m. + £100 = total £176 p.m.. That gives you a contingency of £1,200 p.a. to cover running repairs for the car to keep it on the road as long as possible – hopefully you will not require anything like this figure.
You have to compare that £100 per month with the monthly outlay of £250 and the huge capital outlay for the deposit and final payment for the BMW to see that keeping the Saab on the road is financially the right thing to do. On the other hand, I understand that it is not cool to be running around in an old car but if you look after it and polish it it is still a good looking car with a lot of power under the hood.
I suppose reliability is a big factor but sometimes new cars have problems too!
Hope this helps you to get things in some sort of perspective
Love Dad
In financial terms, the decision to pay the repair bill is easy but the desire to run a new car to look and feel good i.e. ego – gets in the way of making a rational decision.
The same is true of Apple products – they are well designed fashion items that people desire in order to look cool and sophisticated.
Personally, I think most people are ‘chumps’ when they let ego get in the way of making a rational decision. They are surprised when they end up with nothing at the end of their life.
I thought that I would write this article to demonstrate why running with the crowd is not advisable. Think for yourself and take responsibility.
If you are reliant on Google’s SEO traffic in your business and you lose your traffic overnight then you alone are to blame for making your business dependent on a traffic source that is outside your control.
I hope you can see why I avoid Apple products (or perhaps you think I belong to the ‘basket of deplorables’!)
I really like this TED talk entitled ‘Why comfort will ruin your life‘.
In internet marketing it is easy to stay in your comfort zone and this will limit your growth. Let me give you an example.
It is uncomfortable to buy traffic because initially the outcome is not within your control – you will not know how your landing page will convert and how much you will make in sales in order to cover the cost of traffic.
That uncertainty may stop you from taking a risk and it is in that moment that you stop growing.
This TED talk illustrates the dilemma exactly and why we have to make the choice to choose ‘complexity’ rather than ‘order’.
Of course, eventually you will once again create order out of complexity as you get more skilled with your chosen traffic source and to grow again you willl once again need to choose complexity over order.
In short, growing a business is about taking risks. It’s about being willing to fail and ‘begin again more intelligently’.
If you are stuck with your business, perhaps you have stopped taking risks that are a necessary part of success.
Hopefully this fully explains why comfort will ruin your life! (That being said, I doubt that my dog – pictured here – would agree with this statement!!!)
Obstacles = opportunities i.e. don’t allow yourself to see obstacles as excuses. See them as opportunities.
My son and I have just finished a joint project to set up a new website for a client.
It wasn’t an easy project from the outset. The client’s existing website was in a bit of a pickle and remedial action resulted in two different designs on the same site.
My attempts to get login details for the existing site server failed. However, I was able to get login details for the domain name registrar.
We therefore decided to build a draft website on a directory of one of my existing domains to show the client what we had in mind to win the job.
My son did some research and we looked at the competition to get ideas before coming up with our initial design. (The image on this page is one of the rejected mock-ups I created when thinking about graphics for the site.)
We showed our draft website design to the client to get their feedback and managed to get approval to finish the project with a deadline of the end of September.
We met the deadline quite easily and the finished website was signed off by the client.
I now had the task of redirecting the domain to my server and setting up a clone of the website we had built on my server. This was a 29 step process as I did a manual clone and set up a new database for the website.
We carried out the work on a Sunday to minimise any downtime for the clients site.
Whilst, setting up the new site on Sunday afternoon, I suddenly realised that the client was using hosted emails and potentially their email systems would be down on Monday morning.
I rang my son who thought that they only had 3 email addresses when we initially discussed the project.
It turned out that they had 13 hosted email addresses and were using Microsoft Outlook, a system that my son was not familiar with!
As you can imagine we were a little bit horrified.
As my son had won the business, because it was local to where he works (but some 80 miles from me!) my son was doing all the face-to-face liaison.
Fortunately, on Sunday night I was able to gather a list of the 13 email addresses that needed setting up. I duly set up the email addresses on my server that evening.
After some tuition and guidance from me, my son attended the company at 7 a.m. the next morning and by 10 a.m. had everything set up on the clients premises to ensure that all emails were being received to begin their week.
We then discovered that the company was using Microsoft exchange and emails were being directed into 2 inboxes for each email account.
My son had to withdraw because he had his normal job to attend as a Marketing manager for an accounting software firm.
Needless to say, my son was frustrated and angry that we had encountered these problems – as was I.
However, I reminded him that the important thing to remember was that our client was getting all their emails, albeit in two inboxes.
After some online research, we managed to discover that we could set up a Rule in Outlook that automatically transfers emails coming into one folder to another folder. I did a video tutorial for my son demonstrating how this worked.
Implementing this for the company (another early morning call) resolved the problem.
The point of this story is that, whilst these obstacles literally made our blood boil with frustration, it was also an opportunity to demonstrate to the client how we could work together to resolve problems.
The result was that the client offered my son a job to work for them!
Whilst he his very happy with his existing job, it just goes to show how victory can often be snatched from the jaws of defeat.
This reminds me of a sign we had on the back of our toilet door at one time. It said something like
‘When you are up to your arse in alligators, it’s easy to forget that the initial objective was to drain the swamp.
So next time you and I meet an obstacle, let’s remind ourselves that obstacles = opportunities!
Here are some business quotes to help us through the day:
Every moment of every day, transformation happens. By its very nature, life changes, and you can direct many of those changes.
Worrying, complaining, feeling sad or sorry for yourself won’t do you any good. Choose instead to be realistic, putting thought, energy and action into creating the best outcome.
If it’s complicated, embarrassing, or inconvenient in the moment, so what? Do what will make the biggest positive difference in the long run.
You have this day, and it is the opportunity that exceeds all opportunities. Embrace what’s now possible, and make it all count.
Inject the power of passion and purpose into every experience. Choose to get better, act to get better, every moment, every day.
You are confined only by the walls you build yourself.
What is the one thing I could do today that when completed would make you feel that you had a successful day?
Fate whispers to the warrior, you cannot withstand the storm. The warrior whispered back, I am the storm.
What would you attempt to do if you knew you could not fail?
Compared to immediate gratification, everything else feels like work. Be strong, be purposeful, rise above shortsightedness, and do the work.
What lies behind us & what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.
Don’t allow yourself to see the obstacles as excuses. See them as opportunities.
You’ll get much more done when you start the day with a detailed list of what you intend to do. Intention immunises you from the distractions and interruptions.
Remember, the greatest failure is not to try.
When you talk, you are only repeating what you already know. But if you listen you may learn something new.
It’s important to hold people responsible for their actions. But it’s a waste to obsess endlessly over who is to blame for every undesirable turn of events.
All dreams come true if we have the courage to pursue them.
It is hard to fail, but it is worse to never have tried to succeed.
Stop wondering why you can’t, or why you don’t or why you won’t. Figure out how and why you will.
You cannot grow unless you are willing to change.
Be careful not to become too smug about the successes or too discouraged about the failures. Instead, direct your attention, your focus, your energy and efforts toward what you can do now.
Experience the power of your own focus. Stay centered on the specific difference you’ve chosen to make.
Push yourself past the doubt, fear, uncertainty. With your sustained effort make some momentum, and confidence will come with it.
Yes, be ambitious, set goals, work toward them. Just remember that there is much goodness, life, fulfillment to be enjoyed along the way.
Some people want it to happen, some wish it would happen, others make it happen.
The problem is not the problem. The problem is your attitude about the problem.
You know you’re on the right track when you become uninterested in looking back.
Complaining and feeling sorry for yourself will produce no real benefits. Skip all that wasted time and energy, get the job done, and move on ahead.
You are confined only by the walls you build yourself.
Inspiration without action is wasted. Not only that, but with no action the inspiration itself soon turns sour.
Your actions and your words should always agree with each other.
Hope… Sometimes that’s all you have when you have nothing else. If you have it, you have everything.
If you’ll not settle for anything less than your best, you will be amazed at what you can accomplish in your lives.
Don’t waste another day with excuses, procrastination, self-pity or doubt. Get up, get moving, get focused and get a lot of great things done.
There’s some challenge right now that can change your life, your world for the better. Choose challenge, and choose to live at your highest level.
Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.
Rise above the concerns, frustrations, distractions of the moment. Feel the substance, the goodness, the momentum, and carry it forward.
What happened yesterday, last week, ten years ago is not what matters. What you do today, right now, where you are, with what you have, is what counts.
Those who follow the crowd usually get lost in it.
There are only so many hours in each day. Your priorities are demonstrated by the way you invest that time.
You are more than your capabilities, more than your achievements. Those things are great, and important, yet they are things you do, not who you are.
Though the effort will be complicated and inconvenient, the reward will be worth the trouble. Go ahead and simply do it.
Though you may not get it perfect, you can get it done. Make the commitment to do your best, and simply do it.
Remind yourself over and over again that what matters is never what you’ve been dealt. You can handle any turn of events when you’re willing to give your best.
What is it you really want? Do you want to sit around doing nothing, or do you want to make a difference?
Ideal conditions are nice, but not necessary. You can get good work done no matter what the situation.
From every disappointment, gather more determination. Seize the opportunity when things go wrong to learn how you can do it right.
Your struggle is part of your story.
If you want something you’ve never had then you’ve got to do something you’ve never done.
The mistakes, disappointments, and poor choices have occurred, and cannot be undone. Yet they can teach you, motivate you, make you more determined and purposeful.
Sometimes, not always, a waste of time is a great use of time. Sometimes, when you’re not sure what you’re doing, you can do some very creative things.
Deal with the world the way it is, not the way you wish it was.
Never let the things you want make you forget the things you have.
Pain is nothing compared to what it feels like to quit.
What good is having the latest update if all you do is replace it with the next update? Make real, meaningful use of information instead of making it into an addiction.
Events and circumstances matter, but not nearly as much as what you do with them. When you so choose, everything is an opportunity.
Success always starts with failure. Success is a process.
I have just been reading a 25 page report by Jeffrey Davis called ‘Write To Lead’ which is really about how to be a leader in your niche. Here are a few of the key points in the report..
He says that in order to lead, you do need some grounding of expertise gained through one or more of the following areas:
Experience – what you have produced or created with your own customers or clients
Skills – what skills you bring to bear in your business
Knowledge – what you know to be true in your niche
Research – what you are willing to discover through reading, interviewing, viewing and testing
He then gives ’10 Kickstart Actions’:
Claim Your Content Influence Areas – this is an exercise where you draw a circle on your notebook. Outside the circle you list words or phrases that you do NOT want to be associated with. Inside the circle you list words or phrases that you want to write about, research or discover. You refine these down to 3-5 topics that will become your Content Influence Areas.
Take Your True Stance – you have a point of view and certain values. You examine your niche and contribute your own ideas and critique
Get Obsessed and Get Devoted – gives you the courage to surmount unpredictable difficulties. Your words line up with your choices and actions.
Give Your Readers a Slice of PIE – consider the purpose of what you write – there are 3 purposes:
to Provoke – challenge the accepted norms
to offer Insight – give valuable tips or knowledge
to Entertain – tell a story, surprise or arouse delight
Comment on and add to the big picture – dare to ground your ideas in a greater context than your personal experience. Examine trends and conversations in your niche.
Test it and ship it – the act of writing clarifies your ideas on your topic. It doesn’t have to be perfect – you learn by shipping and testing your ideas in public (possibly on social media). You are a mad scientist in a laboratory of your own making.
Fashion Your Voice – consider your ‘tone’ – it’s not what you say but how you say it. Create a writing persona.
Ask & Listen – be curious and ask questions e.g. at the end of an article to get comments, on social media, crowd-source an article (i.e. get different peoples opinions on a subject).
Search Again – research to see what is currently going on in your niche – top 5 books, 3 current experts etc
Tell stories rather than sell stuff – tell stories to illustrate why you are writing what you do- use experiences gained by you, your clients or other people.
This is simply a short summary of the report I read but it does give you a place to start when you are considering how you can create thought leadership in your niche or you are thinking about how to become a leader in your niche.
In this article I want to discuss the topic of choosing goals.
I was watching a TV programme last night called ‘How The Other Half Lives’. The programme specifically covered the lives of billionaires living in New York (which apparently has more billionaires than any other city in the world.)
After watching for a while I turned to my wife and said ‘I honestly don’t think that they have anything I really want‘.’
In fact their lifestyle slightly disgusted me because of the excess consumption. It was almost as if they really didn’t know what to spend their money on.
We were introduced to $4m plus ‘sneakers’ covered in diamonds, a picture that cost $3m which was a black ‘V’ on a white background, watches costing $400,000, a city apartment on sale for $54m (reduced from $60m) etc. Most of it looked like worthless, over-valued junk. The owners no longer knew the value of anything in my honest opinion.
One of the wealthy widows lived in an opulent apartment inside an exclusive hotel at a cost of $38,000 per week, excluding room service! The apartment looked somewhat cramped because it was over-filled with ‘priceless’ objects. The main advantage to the apartment was that room service was on call 24/7 and the lady had security. In fact,from the outside, it looked like a gilded cage to me!
The latter profile introduced the idea that having wealth was in fact a huge security problem. In other words, these wealthy people needed to secure themselves from other people that wanted to steal what they had.
Also, it occurred to me that in our relationships with other people, we would never know whether they liked you for who you are or because they wanted something. This suspicion would infect every human interaction, no matter how innocuous.
In fact, having wealth carries it’s own high price – firstly in acquiring it and secondly in keeping and spending it.
Perhaps we are all guilty of over-looking the things that truly have value:
Time – such as the time we have left between now and when we die. Queen Elizabeth I said on her deathbed ‘My kingdom for another moment of time’. If someone said to me, ‘you have a week left to live’ suddenly each minute would have a much higher value than it had before – would we really spend it chasing after more money and more ‘stuff’?
Living in the moment. Most of us live our lives in our head, worrying about things that happened in the past or may happen in the future. This means that we don’t live properly in the present moment and appreciate everything we already have in the current moment. We are looking for life satisfaction at some time in the future through the acquisition of more things, which only provide a short-term pleasure before we soon start looking for the next ‘fix’.
Peace of mind. Without peace of mind, we cannot truly enjoy anything. I don’t believe that the constant desire to acquire more stuff and the effort required in keeping and maintaining it securely from other people can really deliver peace of mind. Too many possessions, beyond the necessities in life, can in fact be a burden (- buying, insuring, storing, organising, maintaining, repairing and selling are all necessary actions that absorb our valuable life.) My wife and I have two garages full of surplus junk – a huge burden to us because we cannot summon up the energy or motivation to deal with it.
Maintaining health – both physical and mental health. Ironically, we usually take our health for granted until one day we have a health problem. Then nothing else in life can be enjoyed until we recover. Whilst it is true that we can purchase better health care if we are wealthy, perhaps we need to ask ourselves to what extent the pursuit of wealth impairs our physical and mental health?
Our connection with nature. I walk my dog for at least two hours every day – in the early morning and early evening. These are my favourite times of day – on many days it feels almost like a meditation as I try to enjoy the present moment in nature. Sometimes, I get lost in wonder, simply watching life around the river or staring vacantly up a tree. (Nothing gives me more delight than walking past a long line of commuter traffic with people staring out of their car windows as I amble slowly past with my dog on my way to the river and the park.)
Doing what I want to do. Simply having the time to do what I want to do – whether its working or simply reading a book or watching a video or gardening or visiting my grandchildren – without someone else dictating what I do with my times is priceless to me. I don’t think that I would have the same time freedom if I was super wealthy, even if I employed others to do what I didn’t want to do, (because I would have to employ them, pay them, monitor their performance, meet with them, lead them, train them, sack them etc etc)
Relationships with others. Often the time and effort required to accumulate huge wealth means that we have less time for loving and caring human relationships. Is this a price that is worth paying? On your death bed, you may not think so…
I think the secret to living is largely embodied in the teaching of Eckhart Tolle and the degree to which we can live our life in the present moment. This enables us to connect more deeply with life – even the simplest of things have increased value and piquancy. It is a way of savouring life as it already is without craving satisfaction at some time in the future or the need for anything more than we already have.
I have a theory that the reason why people are constantly travelling and going on holiday is that they are constantly looking for something more in life – some satisfaction that can be acquired by going somewhere else.
The problem is that wherever they go, they take themselves and their faulty thinking.
It’s true that we can sometimes get a new perspective by changing our circumstances, but often, as soon as we return to every day life, we are back in the same way of thinking and living– worrying about things in the past and what the future holds, always looking for satisfaction at some future indeterminate time and date.
I wonder how many people take the time to sit down and really think through what they want in their life. Even if we do this, it easy to think superficially and put down a lot of stuff like houses, cars, boats etc
The reality is that those that actually achieve goals like this often find very little satisfaction (or at least only short term satisfaction) and quickly need to strive for something more to make sense of their life.
What if personal freedom was the goal? Or helping others?
This means setting a goal that delivers a reasonable quality of life without having to surrender personal freedom of choice.
This might mean that we look at what is essential to living a comfortable life and giving up excessive desires.
For example, having a fast super-car may be struck from our list of goals when we consider that our existing car essentially does the same job i.e. gets us from point A to B albeit with less speed or comfort.
Setting a goal to make a million pounds in our business may be a goal that is abandoned in favour of a business plan to deliver enough to live a simpler, more connected life – a life where we don’t have to give up enjoyment of the present moment in order to strive excessively to achieve a goal that ultimately delivers a superficial benefit without real value.
Projecting forward to our death bed, what is it we would want to say about our life? That you made a huge pile of money and bought a lot of man-made stuff ?
Or… you savoured each moment of your life and connected deeply and gratefully with what you already had?
Perhaps you would want to say that you enriched the lives of everyone you interacted with? That you lived a life that added some real value to their lives?
These are questions that we all need to answer when making our life choices if we are not to lead a life of ‘quiet desperation’. Sifting through choices and selecting what is truly important is time well-employed but you will need to connect more deeply with yourself in order to do this effectively.
I hope that this article will help you to reassess your personal and business goals and to think about what you really want to achieve in your life.
You may even find that you already have everything you need in order to live a happy and fulfilling life! How amazing would that be?
I have been reading ‘Mans Search For Meaning’ by Victor Frankl. Victor Frankl was a survivor of Auschwitz and also a psychologist.
Here is my favourite passage from the book – I will cover how this is relevant to internet marketing and running your own business afterwards:
The experiences of camp life show that man does have a choice of action. There were enough examples, often of a heroic nature, which proved that apathy could be overcome, irritability suppressed. Man can preserve a vestige of spiritual freedom, of independence of mind, even in such terrible conditions of psychic and physical stress.
We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number, but they offered sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms – to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.
And there were always choices to make. Every day, every hour, offered the opportunity to make a decision, a decision which determined whether you would or would not submit to those powers that threatened to rob you of your very self, your inner freedom; which determined whether or not you would become the plaything of circumstance, renouncing freedom and dignity to become molded into the form of the typical inmate.
Seen from this point of view, the mental reactions of the inmates of a concentration camp must seem more to us than the mere expression of certain physical and sociological conditions. Even though conditions such as lack of sleep, insufficient food and various mental stresses may suggest that the inmates were bound to react in certain ways, in the final analysis it became clear that the sort of person the prisoner became was the result of an inner decision, and not the result of camp influences alone.
Fundamentally, therefore, any man , even under such circumstances, can decide what shall become of him – mentally and spiritually. He may retain his human dignity even in a concentration camp.
Dostoevski said once, “There is only one thing that I dread: not to be worthy of my sufferings.” These words frequently come to my mind after I became acquainted with those martyrs whose behaviour in camp, whose suffering and death, bore witness to the fact that the last inner freedom cannot be lost. It can be said that they were worthy of their sufferings; the way they bore their suffering was a genuine inner achievement. It is this spiritual freedom which cannot be taken away – that makes life meaningful and purposeful.
Business Lessons From Mans Search For Meaning
As you can see I have emphasised certain words above:
man does have a choice of action – when you start your own business, you greatly increase your choice of action. Many people start their own business because they no longer wish to limit their choice of action to carrying out the wishes of their boss or company. Even in a job we always have a choice of action but if you do not conform, chances are you will not last very long in your job, particularly if you make a mistake whilst not conforming. So the reason for starting a business in the first place is the freedom to make choices.
to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way. This is a powerful lesson for people in business. For example, if you fail after taking an action, can you view it merely as a test that failed and begin again more intelligently or will it completely destroy your motivation to try again? The choice is yours to take and it will define your ability to succeed because all businesses will test your attitude and fortitude.
there were always choices to make – the same is true in running any business. Will you ‘become ‘the plaything of circumstance’ or will you fight to shape your circumstances?
the sort of person the prisoner became was the result of an inner decision – I would suggest that the sort of business you create (and the sort of person you become as a result) are the result of an inner decision. This is why having the right mindset for business and life, is critical to your success. Success is usually the result of an inner decision rather than circumstances outside yourself.
any man, even under such circumstances, can decide what shall become of him – this reconfirms that YOU decide what will become of you so you don’t need to seek anyone else’s permission.
It is this spiritual freedom which cannot be taken away – that makes life meaningful and purposeful. The freedom to choose one’s own way will give meaning and purpose to your life, particularly if your goal is to improve the lives of other people through your actions. Making money is not a factor in any of this but rather follows as a consequence of making the right choice and adopting the correct attitude. (Of course, you could decide to make money through some criminal act but this may ultimately kill your spirit and potentially limit your freedom!)
Mans Search for Meaning by Victor Frankl has many insightful lessons learnt as a result of extreme human suffering. Whilst we do not have to go through such extreme life and death suffering, it is inspiring to know that we ultimately make the decisions that give purpose and meaning to our life and therein lies our personal responsibility. Sign up to my free ‘Sky Inside‘ offer for more mindset insights.
I Believe In You – the message that Frank Kern sent to me!!!
He went on to say…
Let me tell you something about YOU.
YOU can do anything you want. YOU are in control.
YOU can achieve as much success as you want to.
YOU can and will pick yourself up when life knocks you down.
IBELIEVEINYOU.
—————————————————–
HERE’S THE POINT
——————————————————
If you’re looking back on the past year and
you’re NOT happy with where you are now,
IT WILL NEVER GET BETTER.
Not if you keep doing the same stuff that’s
gotten you the results you’re not happy with.
So if this is you then let me do you the
same favor my Doctor did for me.
—————————————————– LET ME SHOOT YOU STRAIGHT
—————————————————–
Look man, you gotta change what you’re
doing.
It’s not working.
If it was, you’d be thrilled with your progress
since my message to you a year ago.
But if you’re not, then it’s time to change.
Here’s how to do it:
1. Get absolutely focused on what you really want.
Do this by TURNING OFF THE DAMN COMPUTER
and just writing down the answer to this question:
“What do I REALLY want?”
Screw what the emails tell you you SHOULD
want.
Screw what your wife, husband, parents, kids,
or anyone else WANTS you to want.
This is about YOU.
What do you really want?
Want to sell training plans to cross-dressing
MMA competitors?
Great. If that’s your thing, go for it.
Wanna run off and play guitar in coffee shops
across South America?
Good. You only live once. Be happy. Play
“Freebird” at least once. For me. Thank you.
Whatever you do, get clear. Otherwise you’re ripe
for falling into someone else’s agenda.
2. Dump The Crap Out Of Your Brain.
You do this by writing down a huge list of EVERYTHING
you THINK gotta do to in order to do what you REALLY want.
Just doing that will kind of “clear it from your brain”
and free up space in your “mental computer’s”
RAM.
3. Decide what’s doable.
You know that big list you just made that’s probably
freaking you out?
Go through it and put star by all the stuff you can
actually do.
4. Decide what you can do NOW.
Now. You know all the stuff with stars by it?
The stuff you can actually DO?
Go through all of it and find the stuff you can do
in the next 30 days.
Put two stars by those items.
5. Screw the other stuff.
All the other stuff can be dealt with later.
Now – let me address critics in the audience who
want to debate whether or not that’s a good strategy.
“Isn’t that procrastination?”
“Isn’t that other stuff important?”
The answer to both questions is …PROBABLY!
But here’s the deal.
You can’t do anything about it right now, and if you
worry about it then you’re just taking away focus
and energy from the stuff you CAN do.
And that’s not going to get you anywhere.
Also – actually DO the “immediately doable”
things for the next 30 days, my experience
tells me that your momentum will be so great
you’ll actually be able to easily do a lot of the
things from your list you originally thought
were impossible for you.
You’ll also have new clarity and will probably
find that much of the other stuff on the list
isn’t even needed.
6. GET TO WORK.
Listen.
If you get all caught up on the little details,
you’ll be in the same place a year from now.
Don’t let that happen.
7. ACCEPT REALITY
You wanna know something?
This is NOT gonna be easy.
Remember how I told you I lost 20 pounds
of fat?
Man, that first week in the gym was a
NIGHTMARE.
And to make matters worse, my trainer
(who is a terrible person) would make me
display my physical weakness in front of
GIRLS!
So not only was it hard, it was embarassing!
I was failing in public.
But that’s what it took so I did it.
And in the end, it wasn’t so bad.
So if I can muster up the gumption
to struggle through my first few pushups
in front of a room full of pretty girls,
you can break through you comfort zone
too.
I’ll leave you with a quote from the wise
men of Kool And The Gang:
So . . . are you marketing or teaching your passion or craft?
This is a copy of an email sent to me by Sean Mize and I think it is great advice.
So many folks I talk with are spending hours each day trying to “market” or “sell” or something like that.
But marketing isn’t really your passion is it?
Your site topic is your passion.
So catch this: if your topic – the topic you teach is your PASSION – why not spend 80% of your time on THAT TOPIC instead of marketing?
What if you spent 80% of your time teaching YOUR TOPIC, and writing articles about your topic, and recording videos about your topic, and writing emails like this about your topic – like if you are a knitting coach instead of marketing for 4 hours a day, why not do knitting videos and knitting emails and knitting instagrams and knitting emails (can you teach knitting in an email? oops – maybe a video email!)
I mean, live your passion.
And ALL you have to do is put at the end of each piece of knitting training, the following words, with a link to your squeeze page:
Do you want to learn more about knitting? If so, download my top 10 knitting videos here: (then put a link here to your squeeze page which when they sign up you are going to send them to your download page with 10 5-minute knitting videos)
If you do this, you will spend the bulk of your time teaching your PASSION – and people will be coming onto your list in droves and you just write a daily email and then tell them about your knitting course and your knitting membership . . .
By the way, this works for karate, and crocheting, and woodworking, and blogging, and tight abs, and lose weight, and get happy and ANY niche you are in!
I was watching a video about selling art and the presenter said ‘Get good enough at anything and someone will pay you to do it.‘
Examine that sentence for a second and feel the truth of it.
This is a profound and liberating truth. It means that you can either pick something you are already quite good at and become excellent. Alternatively, pick something you enjoy and focus on becoming the top expert in that area.
This is the key to success.
It requires focus, dedication and hard work to become the expert at anything.
Some say that it takes 10,000 hours to become an expert. I don’t know whether it would take 1,000 hours or even 100,000 hours but it does take focus and dedication until you work your way into the top position.
If you are going to dedicate this amount of time to becoming excellent then its probably better to pick something that you enjoy.
However, even if that’s not the case, if you start to become an acknowledged expert in any area, the chances are that you will enjoy the recognition and rewards that flow from that activity anyway.
Bringing your full attention to the present moment and using your creativity and skill in the moment are critical – sometimes this is called ‘being in the flow’ – it’s where you have achieved a state of unconscious competence.
Another artist was talking about how he became an illustrator simply by drawing a sketch every day for 1 year – he shared his results on social media to garner criticism and feedback in order to improve his work. At the end of the year he held an exhibition of his work.
It takes this kind of dedication to become great at anything or to get to a point where it looks easy to do what you do. If you can do it to a point where you are as good, or better, than other people then you will find someone to pay you for your expertise.
Another marketer, Sean Mize, talks about making a goal to change other people’s lives rather than having a goal of ‘making money’ because one will flow from the other. The more you can positively impact the lives of others then the bigger the rewards will be.
Anyone can decide to create a plan to become great at anything. You could decide right now, dear reader, that you will become the top expert on a subject of your choice.
Chances are you could do this relatively quickly if you just decided to focus on achieving a focused goal. Don’t make the mistake of trying to spread yourself too thinly.
Just start by getting really good at one thing that will improve the lives of other people and show them what you can do. They will pay you to do it for them or will pay you to show them how you do it. It doesn’t need to be more complicated than that.
So just decide right now that you will get good enough at something, make a plan on how you are going to achieve your goal and get to work today. It will take discipline and hard work.
Make sure you enjoy the process by working in the moment rather than thinking about your past or what the future might be – the past is over and the future cannot be foretold, so the present moment is all we ever have and the only moment we can be alive in.
When you work in the moment you will be surprised at what your creativity will produce – gold will spring forth from seemingly ‘thin air’ in ways that are entirely unexpected. Your creativity requires you to be in motion, to be engaged in ‘doing’ rather than dreaming of a successful outcome.
Your plan will make sure that you know what you have to do each day. Tackle one task at a time and put everything you have into that task.
If you get stuck then either keep working until the solution arrives or take a break and walk somewhere peaceful – you will be surprised by the ideas that flow from distancing yourself from the problem. Your subconscious will work away to find a solution when you least expect it.
“I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.” — Henry David Thoreau
If you can get good enough at anything then someone will pay you to do it. This is a philosophy for success. You just need to decide what you want to get good at, create a plan and then go and do it. As the meerkats say ‘it’s simples’!
Here are some of the reasons why I want to leave the EU on 23rd June:
Institutional Fraud
The EU has not had an audit signed off since inception.
Each year billions of euros wash through the hands of the bureaucrats in the EU. In my previous experience in the banking industry, any time that the accountants could not sign off an audit meant that there was a serious mis-allocation of funds.
Whilst I have no absolute proof of fraud, I believe that this is what is going on. We only have to see the opulence of the living and working conditions that the bureaucrats have awarded themselves to see that something is not quite right.
There are 10,000 EU officials earning more than our Prime Minister and each EU member of parliament is costing in excess of £1m according to Daniel Hannan and Nigel Farage. The expenses system appears to be a scandal in waiting.
The top rate of tax for EU officials is around 16% only so they are not contributing fully themselves to the system that they have created.
Corporate Fraud
There are thousands of lobbyists in the EU that ensure that big business can influence the EU bureaucrats to make laws and regulations that favour them. This means that they can squeeze out smaller competitors and competitors from outside the EU.
Who pays the cost of this? It is quite clear that the consumer is paying the price in terms of higher prices for goods. Professor Minford of Cardiff University has calculated that consumer prices could drop 8% immediately on leaving the EU if we moved to a system of free world trade. (We do not need a trade deal with the EU, they need one with us if their manufacturers and farmers are to continue to protect their trade in over-priced goods!)
This is why big business is so insistent that we should remain in the EU – it is a racket that they currently control and we are all paying the price.
Who knows what fraud is taking place to influence decisions taken by EU officials? Jobs, contracts, deals, bribes, subsidies, quotas, regulations – I bet the total figure is huge!
The Economic Argument
Professor Minford has calculated that we would be far better off outside the EU as we currently absorb the following costs:
Net UK contribution to the EU = 0.5% of our GDP
Costs of CAP and EU protection of manufacturing = 4% of our GDP
Cost of over-regulation = 6% plus of our GDP (-this would probably rise substantially)
Bail-out transfers = 2.9% of GDP
Effect of EU regulations on our growth = 0.5% p.a.
Effect of joining the Euro = would double our volatility
As members of the EU we are shackled to a trading zone that is at best stagnant. We would be much better off trading with faster growing countries outside the EU including with our Commonwealth partners.
Lack of Control
Whilst one argument for staying in the EU is that we will be sitting at the table when the rules are made and can influence the decisions. The UK has voted against 72 EU proposals and have been defeated on every occasion. The truth is that we have little or no influence on decision-making.
Decisions are really made by the unelected members of the commission who are largely influenced by what the Germans want to happen. The Germans hold the real power in the EU and they control the finances from Frankfurt. The Euro benefits them as their currency is at least 20% weaker than it would be if they didn’t have all the lame ducks within the Euro. This enables the Germans to expand their exports and manufacturing base and the UK is their biggest export market!
We have effectively given up our sovereignty and democracy to unelected officials in the EU where the decision-making is remote and opaque.
The EU is also very slow to respond to problems as demonstrated by their incompetent response to the immigration crisis. The elections in Austria and France have demonstrated that far right organisations are now gaining a foothold in many countries and will continue to do so until control is established.
Over-Regulation
So much regulation is flowing out of the EU that it is impossible for our politicians and businesses to keep abreast of what is happening – much less to influence what is happening. Some of these regulations are highly damaging to UK businesses.
There are 600 plus regulations relating to coffee alone and every aspect of our daily life is impacted by EU regulations which we have not been able to influence or shape.
For example, the imposition of VAT on digital purchases with no threshold is an administrative nightmare for small businesses like myself.
There is a lot of new regulation ready to be implemented if we vote to remain in EU – this has been held back until after 23rd June for fear that it could influence the way we vote. If this regulation was truly to our benefit, why would they hold back?
There are taking an arrogant elitist view about the citizens of the EU i.e. that they know what is best for us.
We are the little people who must shut-up, follow their instructions and pay the cost!
Immigration
Lack of control over our borders has meant that millions of people have emigrated to the UK from both inside and outside the EU. This is impacting all public services to the detriment of the standard of living for the indigenous population.
Schools, roads, housing, health, policing, prisons etc – all are showing huge strain and it is quite clear that there is insufficient funding to keep pace with the sheer scale of immigration.
The possible entry of Turkey into the EU – another large country with a much poorer average quality of life and a largely Muslim population – is reason enough to want to get out of the EU.
I was personally against allowing the Bulgarians and Romanians into the EU for the same reason. We have seen a huge rise in crimes like theft and pick-pocketing in recent years, as we took in people from these poorer countries.
Vote Leave
It seems to me that supporters of the Remain campaign largely fall into the following Groups:
the young who have been brain-washed by the education system to accept the new order, little understanding that they are being enslaved. They have been sold a vision of integration and freedom of travel and movement but without understanding the cost that this will entail.
the politicians, the establishment and bureaucrats who benefit greatly from the employment opportunities afforded by the EU and their regulations. If I was a politician hoping to get a job in the EU after I had left office, clearly I would have a vested interest in remaining inside the EU – turkeys do not vote for Christmas!
big business – as discussed above they have stitched up the system to their benefit through the lobby system and they also benefit greatly from the cheap flow of immigrant labour which holds down wages and working conditions for the general population. Over-supply of labour effectively keeps the work-force under their thumb.
I have yet to hear a good case being made for remaining inside the EU as far as the general population is concerned.
The Remain strategy is to scare the pants off these people by threatening loss of jobs, lower house prices, higher interest rates and so on. Norway says that when they decided to remain outside the EU the same threats were made to them but the opposite turned out to be true for them.
I am fairly certain in my mind that we will find that we will be much better off outside the EU. In fact it would be truly liberating.
Let’s give them a wake-up call on 23rd June and tell them to stuff the EU where ‘the sun don’t shine’! I for one would love to show them that we will be much better off by going it alone and deliver a shock to their complacent and arrogant attitudes.
These are just a few reasons why I want to leave the EU on 23rd June 2016.
The Secret EU Agenda
If the people knew the real, secret EU agenda, and we are only part of the way through it at the moment, then, apart from the elite who benefit from the EU, no one would vote to stay in.
That is how extreme, how extraordinary and how fundamentally tyrannical the EU agenda is.
From its own documents and from the statements of its advocates right from the start it can be clearly shown that where we are now is where it was planned for us to be from day 1.
Also, where we are now is where we are now, not where the EU is meant to finish up.
So when they started out there had been a war in Europe to stop the Nazis from creating their version of what’s become the EU – a pan European centralised tyranny dictating to everyone in every country.
If that had been suggested at that time after the war then, of course, people who had just fought, lost loved ones and been maimed for life by fighting the Nazis to stop, in effect, that plan – a European control system coming into place – their response to the suggestion ‘let us do it’ would have sparked outrage.
So instead of that, they have used psychological manipulation – it’s about programming how people perceive situations so that you get people to respond to situations to suit your agenda.
Don’t tell people where you are going but tell them what they will accept.
Europe was at first a free trade zone called the Common Market. We were told before Britain went in by Ted Heath, PM, ‘it’s just a free trade area and it’s good for jobs’. But from the start, that was not the game at all – that was the foot in the door. The idea was then to pick-off more and more power to the centre until eventually there was a fully-fledged centralised dictatorship with no democratic checks and balances. We are seeing that unfold.
So what did we see over the years? We saw a ‘totalitarian tiptoe’ – more and more power taken by the centre and yielded up by sovereign states to the centre. Today 55% or 60% of the rules and regulations that affect the fine detail of lives in this country do not come up for debate in Westminster – it actually comes from bureaucrats in Brussels, beginning the process of imposing their will on the entire European population.
This has many devastating effects on people’s freedom, fairness and justice and even on the political system itself, which is perceived as one person/one vote – the foundation of democracy. This system is being subverted by the EU.
The Agenda of the Corporate Giants
What has happened is that the EU’s very existence and bureaucratic control system has given trans-national corporations something they could barely have dreamed of (although having said that, those who controlled those corporations planned to do it so, in that sense, it was not a ‘dream’ but a calculated ‘plan’).
What it means for these corporations is this:
Before, if they were to get laws passed in a country that were beneficial for those corporations, they had to set about wheeling and dealing and lobbying in each of the countries they operated in and that took a lot of time, money and effort.
Once the EU bureaucracy was in place, the giant corporations had a one-stop shop. Now all they had to do was persuade the bureaucrats in Brussels to enact the laws and regulations that the corporations want and they were then imposed upon every country throughout the European Union.
This is fully explained in The Brussels Business video which is about how the large corporations control the EU bureaucrats and why there is an explosion of offices in Brussels of lobbying organisations working on behalf of giant corporations. There are now 30,000 lobbyists working in Brussels on behalf of large corporations.
TTIP is a Bum-Deal!
This has now taken us to a point where we have a secret negotiation going on, which cannot be revealed to the public, even by EU parliament members. We have this TTIP deal which is being negotiated between the EU (i.e. the bureaucrats) and the bureaucratic equivalent in the US, the corporations and the lobbyists which, if they get what they want, will bring about a situation whereby if a corporation considers that a decision or the implementation of a new law or regulation by a so-called sovereign government could affect their future profits, they will be able to take that government to a corporate court that will allow that court to impose enormous fines on governments i.e. the population of that country, even though all they have done is pass laws for the benefit of the people or the environment or whatever.
For example:
If you look at something like the NHS – this is systematically being run down to prepare public opinion, and to weaken public resistance to, having it privatised – so that people will say ‘I never wanted it privatised but it can’t be worse than it is now’. (If we weren’t a member of the EU we wouldn’t be affected by TTIP.) But if you are a giant global healthcare corporations, you could go to this court and say the state-owned NHS is affecting our potential profits and it is not a level playing field because the NHS is subsidised by the government.
We are having a situation, on behalf of the global pharma cartel, which generates billions and billions from the ill health and suffering of others, which is seeking to destroy all competition – all alternative methods of healing that it doesn’t control and own i.e. the entire complementary alternative medicines industry. This is a war on alternative health, which already gets a lot of hassle from the authorities.
If we come out of the EU, we do not continue to be subject to the laws that will destroy the alternative healthcare industry. (To underline this point, it was interesting to see a representative from the pharma industry speaking out against Nigel Farage in a recent televised debate!)
EU Tyranny
To see the political elite standing shoulder-to-shoulder asking the people to remain within such a tyranny, is absolutely grotesque.
However, many people are starting to disconnect from politicians and their opinions and are starting to come to their own conclusions by carrying out their own research. Many of these people have also been affected by the tidal wave of regulation that is pouring out of Brussels – they are saying we want to come out because of our own bad experience.
We are now seeing the Leave campaign moving ahead – we are seeing a disconnection between what the people think and what the political class are telling them they should do and how they should vote.
Countries Will Be Turned Into EU Regions
It is also planned that we will have a Europe of ‘regions’, not sovereign states. There will be no nation states.
The preparation for that is the mass migration of people into Europe to break down identification with our nation state. The massive point of resistance is those people who self-identify with their culture i.e. nations. There is a major block to breaking up nations because people don’t want it. What they are doing is diluting our sense of nationhood and culture by allowing vast numbers of people from other cultures to come in from both from outside and within Europe.
The people in the country, and those coming into the country, are both pawns in the same game and are being played off against each other.
Germany has the most sense of national cultural identity so Germany has been particularly targeted by opening the doors to millions of immigrants, many of whom are not genuine refugees. The German people are in shock because it makes no sense to them as they do not know the underlying plan.
There are more countries e.g. Turkey, Albania etc scheduled to come into Europe and the open borders policy will remain in place to dilute national identity so that the resistance in every country to regionalisation is gone because there will be no identifiable culture.
This agenda would have been unthinkable even 5 or 10 years ago, let alone many years ago at the outset of the European project.
Get Informed And Vote Leave
We have seen the step by step attrition of our rights and freedom.
It is critical that people get informed and make their OWN judgment rather than listen to the politicians. Do your own research online and make your own mind up.
Most politicians don’t understand what is going on and are ignorant of where the EU is going or they are being influenced by vested interests. It’s a case of the blind leading the blind!
We can easily sleep-walk into staying in the EU simply through ignorance. Go onto YouTube and do the necessary research and look at the background and documented evidence that the EU is indeed a tyranny.
Ted Heath knew this and even admitted he knew that political union in the EU was the eventual plan. He knew that the regions of the EU will specialise in certain areas – in the UK we are zoned for finance (with London at the centre) financial services and to be a service economy. Other areas of the UK economy were to be systematically run down e.g. fishing, mining, manufacturing etc. It is clear that Germany is zoned to be the manufacturing centre of the EU.
If you don’t know what the plan is – the centralisation of power in Europe and specialisation by regions to make one ‘country’ of Europe – it is difficult to make sense of what is going on.
The public are still being hoodwinked even now by Messrs Cameron and Osbourne who are also being manipulated by the vested interests. They have over-cooked the case for Remaining in the EU – so much so that they are losing credibility with the people.
Hopefully, the Referendum vote will not be rigged.
We Will Be Punished (Remain or Leave) – Prepare To Suck It Up
If we vote to Leave the EU, it will not be the end – it will just be the start!
If you look at the countries and referendums that have voted against the EU e.g. Ireland. The EU waits a bit, make things difficult for the country in question, does more manipulation and has another referendum to overturn the first one.
If we vote to come out, the political classes in the UK and Europe, will be doing everything they can to frighten people into reversing that decision. Getting out of the EU is not a sprint but a marathon, so be prepared for further intimidation tactics. We should not be surprised if they make it as difficult as they can in order that we beg to be re-admitted to Europe.
The referendum is possibly our last chance to throw off the tyranny of Europe and we must be strong.
They are holding back some crucial legislation, such as a European Army, until after the referendum. If we vote to stay in, they will no doubt punish the British people for demanding a referendum and voting in such large numbers to come out.
Once we are ‘in’ again, and we have no other chance to come out, there will be no checks and balances on what the bureaucrats will do then.
The reason why they are now using fear to frighten people to stay in is because there is no credible positive reason to stay in – there is no positive outcome for the people of this country, apart from the elite, to stay in. That is why there is no positive campaigning to stay in.
If this is the case now, what will the situation be in future?
Vote For Freedom
We have an opportunity now to put two fingers up to the bureaucrats in Europe and assert ourselves i.e. this referendum is about FREEDOM above all else.
Why am I writing this political statement on my blog which is mainly about internet marketing?
I can see that if we remain inside the EU it is very possible that they could enact legislation at any time that could put me out of business and there would be nothing that I could do about it because the legislators are unaccountable bureaucrats. Indeed, the introduction of VAT on digital purchases by the EU with no threshold is a case in point which put many small businesses into the position of not trading or having to trade through larger platforms that take a commission to handle their transactions.
This affects every person and business in this country and our freedom from EU tyranny is worth fighting for. This is what is at stake in my opinion.
In this article I want to discuss the internet marketing lifestyle and specifically what it means to me and how anyone can achieve it.
There is a lot of hype about making vast sums of money from internet marketing – some do but many don’t. In fact the failure rate in internet marketing is high at around 95% and it may be that many aspiring internet marketers simply set their sights too high initially and get demoralised.
The first goal should be to cover one of your bills – if you can make say £100 a month to cover, say, your gas bill you can start to scale things up from there.
The first dollar or pound is always the hardest to make but when you can get something working, even if only in a small way, you can begin to build from there.
I was reminded of this last year when I was visiting some allotments and I came a cross an old lady working on a sizeable plot of land which was immaculately neat. She had meticulously dug over the whole plot and planted out all her vegetables in neat rows.
Given her age – she said she was 74 – I asked her how she had created such a beautiful plot because I knew that digging such a large plot alone would be a considerable physical effort, even for someone many years younger and physically stronger.
She said ‘I just do a little bit at a time every day.’
I took that advice to heart with my own vegetable plot. Previous to talking to her, I would always blitz my vegetable plot and inevitably half kill myself in the process which made me more reluctant to return for another session. This year I have dug over my plot – which is quite large – in 5 easy one hour sessions. The whole process is so much more enjoyable.
A simple change in working habits is all it takes! If you don’t kill yourself in the process, it so much easier to get started on the next working session.
So it is with internet marketing. Even though there is a lot to learn, if you take the approach of ‘little and often’ you can soon pick up the necessary skills and enjoy the process at the same time.
Also, by lowering your initial goals, you will be motivated to return because they will be more easily achievable.
Once you have achieved that initial goal of covering one of your bills, you can set your goals a little higher – replacing your current salary. Don’t make the mistake of aiming too high.
What Would It Take To Ditch Your Job?
Calculate what you would need to hand in your notice to your employer. In my own case £1,500 per month is quite sufficient because I have no mortgage.
Can I live like a lord on £1,500 per month? – the answer is no. But I CAN live a life of freedom.
I don’t use an alarm clock any longer to wake me up – I wake up when I am fully rested, usually at around 6.30 a.m. but it varies with the light – later in winter and earlier in summer.
When I am walking down my road with our dog in the morning it gives me great pleasure to walk past all the cars stuck in a queue trying to cross the bridge into town in the morning rush hour.
I often wonder what the occupants of those cars are thinking when the see me breezing past them with not a care in the world every morning – I can’t tell you how good it feels not having to conform to someone else’s timetable.
I walk around the River Avon drinking in the silence and watching the simple rhythms of nature – money cannot buy the profound sense of bliss this gives me. When I had a job, I simply couldn’t slow down enough to truly enjoy my life.
Generally, I return home to start work by around 8.30 a.m. and finish at around 12.30 a.m. for lunch. I return to work at 2 p.m. or, alternatively, I often go off and do some DIY or gardening before walking my dog again at around 4.30 p.m. before returning for supper.
One of the surprising discoveries I made about leaving a proper job is that it costs a lot of money to go to work.
If you add up the cost of commuting in both time and money, the cost of lunches and work wear etc (not to mention work social events – which I never really enjoyed-) you will be surprised how much you can trim off your monthly costs by working from home and also how much time you can save for more enjoyable activities.
The Internet Marketing Lifestyle = Stress-less Living
The other thing I want to mention is stress… or the lack of it, since I left a job. I found it stressful to conform to other peoples timetables, deadlines, goals and expectations.
One thing I have learnt is that physical manifestations of success like fancy cars and houses come with a large price tag in terms of the impact on your life i.e. doing things you don’t enjoy, stress and a terrible impact on your peace of mind.
Both my dog and I are totally chilled – in fact my dog is currently lying on my office sofa with her legs on the air dozing in complete luxury. I think we can learn from this attitude to life.
I used to worry about many things, including lack of money. Now I don’t because I have learnt that in the present moment, for 99.9% of the time, I have enough to live a good life and for the unexpected 0.1% something always turns up to fill the gap.
Live In The Moment
Living in the moment is the real key to living a good life and Eckhart Tolle is an excellent teacher of this art – I recommend that you find him on YouTube. It really is the key to living a good life with total peace of mind.
Slow down enough to really savour life and you will never return to your former work life no matter how short of money you are. Physical possessions and money are not the goal – living a good life can be easily achieved without them.
In one of my lean months, I remember my brother-in-law saying that he could get me a consulting job with a local car manufacturer paying £6,000 per month.
I think he was surprised by my reply when I told him that I would rather live in a box than to take a job like that and I really meant it.
It perhaps surprised me too that I was so passionate with my reply because I well remember how frightened I was by the prospect of leaving my well paid corporate job in 2001. I suffered headaches with the stress of it prior to leaving and my wife suffered too because she was so tense that she had a frozen shoulder.
It is amazing how the fantasy horrors that your mind dreams up seem so real and yet they are all an illusion. These fantasies are what keep most people rooted to a job they really hate.
I recently visited my former employer and was surprised to meet two girls who were there when I left. They were totally demoralised and just going through the motions of their job waiting for the day when they could get a voluntary redundancy package. What a sad waste of life.
Don’t let that be you.
If it is, I recommend that you take some time out to design the ideal life for YOU and then work on ‘a little bit at a time every day‘ to achieve your ideal lifestyle. Set low and achievable goals to start with and once you get something working, scale up from there.
There is no need to leave the comfort and safety of your job until you get something working to replace it.
Work out what you need to replace your job and go for it and you too can achieve the internet marketing lifestyle, if you desire it! Take it from me (and the little old lady), a little and often is the key to achieving this without undue stress or worry. Please opt in to my list if you enjoyed this article so I can help you make the transition to a life of freedom and peace of mind.
I’ve just read a ebook called ‘The Systems Mindset’ by Sam Carpenter. This is his second book – his first book was called ‘Work The System’. Both books are well worth reading.
As I read The Systems Mindset. I decided to note down a few quotations from this 164 page book to give you a flavour of what is covered:
Your whole existence and all the world around you is an immense collection of independent systems and subsystems.
Via a host of separate processes, our lives are spent in a constant quest for control.
Here is the simple foundational premise of the Systems Mindset: Your life is not a chaotic swirling mass of sights, sounds, and events within which you must incessantly fight for survival. Rather, it’s an orderly collection of independent processes, many of which you can quietly adjust so they will deliver you the life experiences you want. I call this perspective the Systems Mindset.
Your life is a collection of individual systems!
A system is a linear sequence of steps that execute over time, leading to a result.
Systems want to execute properly to produce their intended results.
To get desired outcomes, you must direct the machinery that produces the outcomes.
In this moment, every condition of your life was preceded by a linear process that executed over time. Consider the following, what I call the Universal Formula for How Things Happen: 1+2+3+4 = Result.
The systems of your life are executing all the time. You can’t turn them off. The conditions of your existence are the products of these relentlessly executing individual machines—machines that will remain invisible and unmanaged—or, through the Systems Mindset, machines that you will choose to see and then direct.
This is the absurdly simple blueprint: If you put consistent effort into system improvement; you’ll reach your goal of living the exact life you want.
And so it makes sense for you to immerse yourself in performing system improvements, to spend a lot of time doing it.
Here’s what I want to hammer home: Since it’s incontestable that every future result in your life will be preceded by a linear process that executes over time, you must spend focused, deliberate effort—in this moment— managing those processes.
How much time should you spend managing the systems of your life? I’d say, a lot. The more time you spend in this system improvement place, the more you will get what you want in your life.
And if you feel that sometimes you’re beating yourself to death to live the existence you want, here’s what’s up: Your world is unsatisfactory because you are not deliberately and intensely controlling the machinery that creates your life results.
So to achieve success, stop trying to rearrange the bad results of unseen and therefore unmanaged systems. That’s fire-killing. Instead, see and then manage your machinery so it produces the results you desire.
First, the mechanical processes of your life must improve, and after that occurs, your emotional state will improve. So, be a mechanic, not a psychologist: Get mechanical control first and then, I promise, the emotional control will follow.
Here’s how to use Ockham’s law in everyday life: When there is a decision to be made and one of the solutions is more complex than the other, and you really, really can’t decide which solution to take, pick the simplest option.
To paraphrase Sir William: “The simplest solution is invariably the correct solution.”
Successful people—the people who get what they want out of life—spend their time observing and then managing the systems that produce their results. Unsuccessful people—those who never seem to get what they want—spend their time fire-killing, constantly trying to untangle the random results of their unmanaged systems.
Expend your energy in quietly building and adjusting the particular machinery that will lead to freedom and life success.
Your life can be what you want it to be if you see it for the mechanical marvel it is, and then take action.
99.9 percent of life’s systems work perfectly. Consider the countless processes that execute with amazing efficiency: plants, animals, oceans, businesses, airplanes, bicycles, cities, whole societies, and six billion human bodies.
And so this life you live is composed of a countless number of perfect linear systems, many of which are under your control. These systems are the invisible threads that hold the fabric of your life together. If there is an outcome that doesn’t suit you, you can change that outcome by making an improvement within a system, adding a system, or eliminating a system.
And again, what of those things you can’t fix because they are out of your control? Relax and move on. If you can’t adjust something, don’t worry about it.
If you would like to read The Systems Mindset by Sam Carpenter you can get it for free in return for your email address at this URL:
‘Playing the ball where it lies’ is a golfing term and the story told in this video extract struck a chord with me, particularly as I used to play golf.
Listen in for 4 minutes to the video below because I think that resistance to ‘playing the ball where it lies’ both in business and our personal lives is the cause of a lot of stress…
The lesson here is that, whilst we can control SOME things in our lives, there are plenty of things that we cannot control and we can easily stray away from what was planned due to factors that are simply beyond our control.
How we respond to this is critical. Most of us will ‘resist’ the situation in our minds and this is the cause of much of our stress.
So its not what happens that is necessarily important, because things will happen that we cannot control, but how we respond to the situation that is important i.e. our willingness to accept the situation and to play the ball from where it lies.
The rest of this video is worth listening to. She goes on to quote Victor Frankel who survived the Nazi death camps in World War 2. He said:
[boxibt style=”gray”]’Between the stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is your power and your freedom.'[/boxibt]
If you are suffering stress in your business or your personal life, you may need the help of a spiritual teacher to help you to cope with the situation. The best person in my opinion is Eckhart Tolle – look him up on YouTube or buy his book ‘The Power of Now’.
It is possible to end stress, and the mental pain associated with it, by ‘playing the ball where it lies’ and thereby accepting the situation ‘as it is’ rather than resisting what we cannot control!
Thought control is at the heart of every business and every public institution. It’s a also a major constituent of marketing – understanding the psychology of marketing and selling is critical to power and success.
Thought control is central to the following institutions:
politics and government
religion
education
our legal system
the media
business
family life – the parent/child relationship
The majority of people are happy to be led by the nose because they are usually lazy in thought and deed.
Everyone has an opinion but most opinion is not based on fact-based research or careful investigation. It is based on prejudice and the daily dose of mis-information and marketing that they are fed by the various institutions that touch their life with their controlling messages.
In King Henry VIII’s time the clergy had a strangle-hold on the interpretation of the Bible which was always written in Latin.
When Latimer translated the Bible into English he was forced to emigrate to Europe as a heretic because the clergy were determined to retain their stranglehold on the thoughts and aspirations of their flock through their monopoly of the Bible and it’s translation, which promised it’s followers access to heaven (or hell for disbelievers and heretics) based on a set of values which included giving money and land to the church to buy your way to a better after-life!
The same level of thought control is in operation today if you care to look for it.
This is particularly the case in marketing.
The internet both facilitates and disarms thought control.
It facilitates thought control by making it possible to share your message – the ISIS rebels in Syria and Iraq are using social media very effectively to recruit support for their dream of an Islamic state.
The internet also disarms thought control because it gives you the capacity to research what is actually happening in more depth and to listen to other peoples opinion.
In the case of ISIS, we can also hear about what an Islamic state means in practice – repression, barbarity and regression to a medieval set of values loosely based on religious fanaticism.
In China, the internet is policed by the state – a form of thought control.
This is why it pays to understand marketing practices and the psychology of marketing – to know when someone is deploying a marketing strategy such as scarcity or risk-reversal – gives you the ability to stand back from the situation and make a more careful assessment of the facts.
Understanding that thought control is at the heart of every public and private institution gives you the ability to start thinking more critically – to unbundle the controlling elite.
To me, religion is all about thought control – it has resulted in the accumulation of enormous power and wealth for the religious institutions and their clergy.
But very few people think like this – they are content to concede personal freedom and power to the clergy.
It’s the same with marketing – businesses can accumulate enormous power and wealth through marketing.
The power of thought control through clever marketing is at the heart of every good business – persuading you to pay more for perceived benefits is what marketing is all about.
Whilst Apple have good products, they are only able to charge more for their products because of smart marketing – a form of thought control. Their equipment is essentially a fashion statement that panders to the ego of the owner who justifies the enormous price he pays by recalling the marketing messages that led to the sale.
Whilst on occasions a mobile phone can be useful, I used to manage very well without one and still do! I don’t have a mobile phone at the moment and I don’t feel the need for one.
Recently my car broke down and I didn’t have access to a mobile phone to call the garage.
What did I do?
I borrowed one from a passer by and offered to pay them for the call. They refused payment because they were happy to help me.
It’s easy to justify your phone purchase as insurance for emergencies but for 99.999% of the time it just doesn’t hold water.
Others will say that they need their phone to access their email (another form of thought control!) or bank account – both of these reasons just aren’t true – I control both without a mobile phone just by organising my time effectively and limiting my access to both services to certain times of the day.
In any event you can get a perfectly serviceable mobile phone for about £5 if you really think you can’t live without one. But people are still paying hundreds of pounds for mobile phones – why?
Thought control achieved through marketing and peer pressure.
In fact, this very blog post is a form of thought control.
In business the real power lies in thought control i.e. marketing – get good at this and you can accumulate power and wealth just like all the other institutions listed above. Understanding this transfers personal power and freedom to you and away from these institutions because you now understand the game that they are playing.
I was walking my dog this morning and pinned to a gate in the gardens of the Royal Shakespeare Theatre was the poster above with this headline:
And My Soul Spread Wide It’s Wings
It really resonated with me because it explains exactly why I left banking in 2001.
My job had become soul-destroying.
It no longer aligned with my values and it is impossible to do a job well if you are fighting the system because it does not align with your values. Any action that compromises the values that you live by literally destroys your soul.
And it destroys value – the banks share price has gone from £8 a share to £2.80 a share over a period of the last 14 years.
It has been a lot lower during the financial crisis in 2008 and today it continues to be battered by scandals and penalties imposed by the financial regulators. This is what happens when the lunatics are allowed to take over the asylum and the business departs from it’s core values of serving the customer.
I can’t really describe what my soul is exactly. I just know that I didn’t like myself when I tried to act against my values. The feeling was strong enough for me to resign voluntarily from a highly paid job with no other income to cushion the fall.
[boxibt style=”gray”]One of the most freeing things we learn in life is that we don’t have to agree with everyone, everyone doesn’t have to agree with us, and it’s perfectly OK.[/boxibt]
The 14 year anniversary of resigning from the corporate world is up at the end of this month.
At the time it was a very stressful decision – I really felt that I was stepping off a cliff into the unknown.
I have never recovered the income that I lost by giving up that job. On the other hand I think the stress of the job would have given me a serious health problem had I continued.
I don’t know what price you would put on having peace of mind and having the freedom to always act in alignment with your values.
To me it is everything – priceless!
Work has always been a significant part of my life – I enjoy working as long as I can feel that I am contributing to my own development and also helping others. So work is an important part of my life and it is unthinkable to me to waste my time doing work that is unsatisfying or lacking in integrity.
Of course money isn’t everything but, as Zig Ziglar says, ‘it ranks right up there with oxygen!’
If you are currently doing a job to pay the bills, but it is in the soul-destroying category, then why not work on something else that satisfies you on a part-time basis?
You can greatly reduce the risk of making the transition from paid employment to self-employment by working on something that gives you passion part-time with a medium or long-term goal of transitioning to your passion full-time.
Jim Rohn says that ‘profit is better than wages.’ Wages can earn you a living whilst profits can make you a fortune.
I don’t really want to make a fortune. I just want the freedom to do what I am passionate about without worrying about lack of money.
Sure I want a nice house, a good car and holidays, but these aren’t as important as doing work that is satisfying.
If I can do that, I don’t really need a holiday because I am already doing what gives me joy and satisfaction.
Also, I only need a car for short trips to visit family and friends and to get in the weekly groceries. Working from home means that I have no need of transport to commute to work. So a good car would lose more in depreciation than the benefit that would accrue by owning it.
I am in the fortunate position whereby I had paid off my mortgage by the age of 37, almost 20 years ago now.
Robert Kiyosaki classifies a home as a liability on his personal balance sheet because it consumes cash rather than earns cash. However, having a comfortable house and somewhere nice to work is important to us all and the cash outflow is a price worth paying to me.
Because I no longer go to work, having nice clothes is far down on my list of priorities – in fact I spend very little on clothes because shopping of any form is very boring and uninteresting to me.
I would prefer to spend my time creating something with the tools I have available whether physical or digital.
So money is only important to me in giving me the wherewithal to cover my day-to-day necessities (- only about £1,000 per month -) and also to allow me to invest into my work and hobbies. Also to enjoy the lifestyle that I currently live.
My business of internet marketing is not capital intensive and my lifestyle does not rely on consumerism – if we can give up the constant hunger for my ‘things’ and simplify and de-clutter our lives, I generally believe that it is possible to live a richer life.
Accumulation of physical things becomes a burden – you need somewhere to store them, to insure them against loss and it is difficult to dispose of them for anything near to what you originally paid for them – most possessions depreciate significantly in value as soon as you buy them.
After leaving the corporate world I genuinely believe that I have a new perspective on what is truly important in life.
Deepening our relationship with family, friends and pets – love in particular adds significantly to life’s enjoyment.
I have spent the last 3 or 4 days looking after our grandchildren during half-term – what price can you put on that?
Having time to slow down and to work and live ‘in the moment’ is also critically important. I always lose so much productivity when I am too busy or trying to multi-task.
Having peace of mind i.e. no worries or external conflicts. Realising that there are many things that you hear about in life that you cannot do much about and have the maturity to let them go rather than fighting them in your mind and becoming angry are also important.
Doing work in alignment with my passion and values is also very important to me.
Having time to enjoy the arts (music, literature, art ) and nature are all free pursuits that feed the soul… ‘and my soul spread wide its wings’.
I would be very interested to hear your perspective on living a good life dear reader – please comment below!
‘Service to many leads to greatness’ is a phrase that I first heard on a Jim Rohn audio. This short phrase perhaps epitomises why I have pursued internet marketing as my full-time career for the last 6 years.
From 2001 to 2009 I ran a business consultancy for local businesses. This was reasonably successful based on the relationships that I had established with some local businesses whilst I was in corporate banking.
However, I always had the dream of impacting even more businesses. And, of course, generating more wealth for myself as a result.
The problem with my local consultancy was that it was very intensive of my time and I could only handle a relative handful of businesses.
I ran local events and even ran a business consulting group for a while. I do remember that getting a room for my local events was always more time and trouble than I wanted to expend and also expensive.
So I guess that I was looking for a way to reach more businesses with less hassle.
Which is why internet marketing attracted me.
Initially I got into internet marketing as a way to generate online leads but quickly saw the potential to take my whole business online with blogging and product creation etc
This started in April 2009, when I signed up to a membership training site run by Ann Sieg and Mike Klingler who specifically trained network marketers to generate leads.
Looking back, my biggest mistake was to try to tackle too big a niche – I was not focused enough on specifically what is was that I could do better than anyone else. I was trying to be ‘all things to all men’.
This is difficult to overcome because, when you start out, it is hard to identify what it is that you can do better and who would most benefit from what you have to offer! You need to be very clear about this.
If I had to start again, I would get very good at just one thing, by studying a focused problem or skill in depth, putting it into action and then teaching others how to do it. In other words, I would move more quickly from consuming information to then taking action on what I had learnt and creating training products to teach others what I had learnt.
That is easy to say now but creating products seemed difficult at the time and I lacked the confidence to get started, even though I had been doing it in the real world!
I think the technical part was intimidating to someone who had had difficulty setting up an email account in 2001 when I left banking and started my own consultancy business.
I really have come a long way since then. It’s easy to dismiss or forget just what I know.
My daughter has recently started her own business in the health and nutrition niche – she is an agent for Forever Living Products, whose UK headquarters is about 8 miles from where I live.
My daughter has started her own website – I set it up for her and I support her as she tries to get to grips with creating her own content. It has been an enormous help to her for me to put the right tools in place for her and to be a sounding board for her. It is easy to under-estimate how much time and cost I have cut from her learning experience.
I’m sure my daughter does not really know what I have saved her in terms of her learning curve.
Her biggest mistake at the moment is wanting to be independent and therefore not asking me enough questions.
I guess we are all guilty of that because my experience is that, IF you ask, most people are will to help.
It’s just finding someone that you can trust!
I do know that getting a good coach can be enormously helpful if you can find the right person – it can also be an enormous waste of money if you choose unwisely.
This is why I share so much information on my blog – to demonstrate the range and depth of my business knowledge.
In truth, when I started out, I could have created a business in the management information niche because several of my best consulting projects involved setting up complex management information systems using my accounting skills.
Nowadays, I don’t create content in this area at all although I do have a product called ‘Measure N Manage’ which covers management information in internet marketing.
What I do know is that service to many starts off with helping just one person and steadily growing the scope and reach of your business.
If you can just help one person to get a result, you have someone who can provide a testimonial or a case study to enable you to recruit more customers.
It’s also easier if initially you can narrow the scope of your business to offer one product or service that provides just one solution to one problem that the people in your niche are having.
Become great at this one product or service and expand from there. That’s my best advice.
If you think about it, specialists in any area of life earn more than general practitioners.
You’ll be surprised at how quickly your business will take off if you can discipline yourself to follow this advice.
Word will get around that you are the ‘go-to’ expert in your particular chosen area and people will seek you out.
Soon you will find that your ‘service to many will lead to greatness’ but ‘service to many’ all starts with serving that first customer and providing a solution to their one biggest problem.
I do have a coaching programme that you can join which can help you to identify your area of expertise – it may seem ‘expensive’ but in retrospect I know that in due course you will acknowledge that it saved you a lot of time and money – I can coach you either by email or via some focused coaching sessions. Alternatively, you can invest in my products if you want to know more.
How to have your best year ever is a 4 hour 22 minute video of a presentation by the late Jim Rohn in Fort Worth, Dallas.
It is incredible from a number of angles.
Firstly, Jim Rohn is a great speaker but it wasn’t always that way. He tells the story of when he first stood up to give a talk and ‘his mind sat down’. So you can learn a lot by just watching his method of delivery.
In particular, notice how he weaves stories about his life into the presentation – that’s a fabulous lesson for the content we create. This is the key to the success of most good copy and most excellent presentations.
The content of Jim’s presentation is also excellent – I found the first session to be the best where he covers the 5 keys to success:
Philosophy – he called this ‘setting the sail’.
Attitude – how we feel about ourselves and other people and our situation.
Activity – take your philosophy and attitude and invest it into ACTION.
Results – be willing to face the numbers – success is a numbers name.
Lifestyle – with your results, fashion for yourself a good life.
On money – we get paid for binging value to the marketplace.
In the second session of how to have your best year ever, he covers areas of personal development and towards the end of the session throws out ‘the 3 treasures to leave behind’:
your pictures – the help tell the story. A picture is worth a thousand words.
your library – your stepping stones out of the darkness into the light
your journals – make notes so you can revisit the wisdom that you learn (- I actually do make notes in notebooks so I’m ahead of him on this one!)
In the third session of how to have your best year ever, Jim covers the 5 abilities that we need to nurture:
the ability to absorb – soak it all up – be like a sponge. Wherever you are, be there.
learn to respond – let life touch you. Give in to emotions – our emotions need to be educated as well as our intellect.
learn to reflect – go over your notes, your day, your week, your month, your year. Lock in the experiences. Get some solitude to reflect. Make the past more valuable so you can invest it in the future.
develop the ability to act – act when the idea is hot and the emotion is strong to counter the law of diminishing intent. Everything affects everything else – nothing stands alone. Every let-down or neglect affects the rest of our performance.
develop the ability to share – when you ‘turn on other peoples lights’ both you and they win.
Setting goals – goals are your vision of the future. Decide what you want and write it down. The price is easy if the promise is clear. The price is a few simple disciplines practised each day.
Set goals that will make something of you to achieve them. If you don’t need much, you don’t need to become much.
In the fourth session, Jim says never spend more than 70 cents in the dollar. With the other 30%, put 10 cents aside for charity. The next 10 cents is active capital – try to make a profit yourself – buy and sell. Profits are better than wages. Wages make you a living – profits make you a fortune. The next 10 cents is passive capital – savings and investments. Let someone else try to make a profit and pay you interest and dividends.
Touch something and leave a profit. It’s not the money, it’s the plan that counts.
He finally talks about the importance of good communication – there are 4 parts:
Have something good to tell
Say it well sincerity, repetition, brevity and vocabulary are all important.
Read your audience by what you see, hear and their emotional signals.
Intensity – words mixed with emotion are powerful
This is just a short summary of over 4 hours of powerful content – imagine that – being able to hold the attention of an audience for over 4 hours!
His final words were, learn to help people with their lives, not just their jobs. Help them with their dreams, not just to hang in there. Also, if you work on your gifts, they will make room for you.
Hopefully, this video will inspire you to have your best year ever – if you have not yet signed up to my free product, The Sky Inside, then you really ought to if you want more great content like this.
In this article I want to discuss the importance of celebrating success, however small that success may be.
My son, James, just telephoned me – he was happy, I could hear it in his voice.
He’s recently started playing cricket again with a small village cricket team in Thurgaton in Nottinghamshire. It really is ‘village green’ stuff but they do play in a league.
Most of his old cricket kit did not fit him so he’s had to invest in new pads and bat, so he really hasn’t played for a long time.
Coupled with that, when he played in the past he never bowled – he was always a batsman – this is important in understanding what comes next.
I think the village team is well supplied with batsmen but they must lack for bowlers because they asked James to bowl for them! This is someone who has never bowled for a team in the past! He was desperate to contribute to the team and so he took the ball.
In the last two matches (- this is the beginning of the season -) he has bowled a total of 12 overs only. His bowling average is 0.8 runs per over and he has taken 4 wickets. These numbers have put him top of the league in the bowling stats apparently.
In the last match, he opened the bowling and bowled out the teams best batsman second ball – someone who scored over 100 runs last year when they played his team.
I asked James what he was bowling – it turns out he’s bowling slowly but accurately.
What’s happening is the batsmen, who are eager to get runs on the board, are trying to hit him for six, missing the ball and getting themselves bowled out. (If the ball is not coming down the wicket at speed, then the batsman has to generate all the power themselves when hitting the ball which is breaking their normal pattern of scoring off a quick opening bowler!)
Of course, it’s unlikely that James’ stats will last and it could just be beginners luck. Also, James will probably try to defend his stats by trying harder which may mean that his bowling averages deteriorate.
That’s why it is so important to celebrate little successes as and when you encounter them.
Today he is up but tomorrow he may be down. Life is like that.
Everything is temporary – today you may be poor, and tomorrow rich. Today healthy, tomorrow at deaths door. None of us know what life has in store.
The only time that we can really live is in the present moment – the past has gone, nothing we can do about it. The future may partially be determined by what we do in the present moment but there are no guarantees about that.
So it’s important to celebrate our successes today – their memories will keep us moving forward and motivated in tougher times.
Psychology and mindset play an incredibly important part in success – one millionaire I met, who had bought his business for £1 and sold it for £49m, told me that 85% of success was due to having the correct mindset.
Which is why, my product, The Sky Inside, is an important one – because it addresses the issue of the role mindset plays in success. There are a huge number of mindset resources in The Sky Inside and you can get free registration on this page as my gift to you.
There is so much wisdom and help in this product that I really should be charging at least £2,000 for it! I genuinely think that it is the best gift that I could offer to any aspiring entrepreneur.
So I’ve given you a reason for celebrating success – I’ve just given you FREE access to what I consider to be my most valuable product 🙂
This article about the law of averages was inspired by a recording by Jim Rohn that randomly cropped up this morning when I was listening to my ipod whilst walking the dog.
If you do something often enough a ratio will appear.
It’s amazing.
Once a ratio starts, it tends to continue.
This information is hugely important to business success.
In baseball or cricket its called a ‘batting average’.
Talk to 10 people and you get one.
Talk to 10 more and get another one and so on.
If you get 9 out of 10 and I get 1 out 10, I can still compete with you.
How can that be?
If you talk to 10 people and get 9, I’ll talk to 100 people and get 10. I beat you.
You will learn more from losing than you do by winning.
I make up in numbers, I lack in skill.
Anybody can do this.
The law of averages can be increased.
The fourth time you talk to someone you get 2.
Why?
You’re getting better.
In baseball if you only hit 3 out of 10 balls you make $4m per year. That means that you can win big by missing 7 times out of 10!
It’s the same in internet marketing. I’ve found that from affiliate traffic, on average I can get a 10% conversion rate when I sell a digital product.
That means that 9 out of 10 visitors don’t buy!
Once you know these numbers you can work on strategies for increasing your conversion rate through strategies like split-testing, improving your sales funnel, using exit pop-ups etc.
The point is that you don’t have to ‘bat a thousand’ to make big money.
When recruiting people to his network marketing business, Jim Rohn knew he could recruit 3 out of 10 people.
His invitation to listen to his network marketing presentation went something like this:
‘I normally recruit 3 out of 10 people. I don’t mind if you come to my meeting as one of the 7 that don’t join. It doesn’t matter. The important thing is that you just listen. As one of my friends, I don’t want you saying in a years time, when you see my success, why didn’t you pick up the phone and call me and tell me about this opportunity. At least if you listen now I can say I gave you the opportunity.‘
The story of the sower from the bible & how it relates to the law of averages.
The sower was ambitious. He had excellent seed (opportunity).
The sower goes out to sow the seed, some fell by the wayside and the birds got some of the seed. (Some people will not make it to your meeting – the birds will get some.)
You have two options:
chase birds – if you do this, you will leave the field i.e. distract you from your main purpose.
or just say ‘Isn’t that interesting’ which is the preferred option.
The sower kept on sowing.
There are only 9 or 10 miserable people in the world – they move around a lot. When you bump into one, remind yourself that there only 9 more like you in the whole world (i.e. you need to be persistent in the face of adversity.)
Now the seed falls on rocky ground where the soil is shallow but it is not of your making.
The seed begins to grow but, with the first hot day, the seedling whithers.
(These are people that don’t show up to the second meeting.) The hot weather will get some – not an easy thing to watch.
Just say, ‘isn’t that interesting’ and don’t bother asking why.
Some just don’t stay or get put off by the first obstacle. You can’t change that – just take it as it comes.
If someone says ‘why does the sun come up in the east?‘ – don’t sign up for the ‘why is this’ class – it’s the law of averages!
He kept on sowing – he had to discipline his disappointment.
Some are not going to stay but in the normal course of things this is the way things are.
Some of the seed falls on thorny ground.
As the seed begins to grow, the thorns strangle the seedling. These are the little things that get in the way of making progress. Little things cheat people out of big opportunities. It’s just the way it is – like winter following fall.
The sower keeps sowing the seed.
Finally the seed falls on good ground
If you keep sowing ‘it always will’. Some of your ‘seed’ will fall on good people – it’s the law of averages working again!
Some of the good ground did 30%, some did 60% and some did 100%.
Why? Don’t sign up for that class – it just the way it is!
If you try to get the 30% to do 60%, you’ll just hit your head against a brick wall. Just let the 30% do 30% and 60% do 60%.
Learn the law of sowing and reaping because it directly relates to the law of averages and your success in life and internet marketing.
The only source of knowledge is experience. Albert Einstein.
If you are stuck in perpetual learning mode, like I was for a long time when I started internet marketing, then you might like to read that quotation again to realise the fundamental truth of that statement.
This means that you cannot gain ‘knowledge’ by reading a book, listening to an audio or watching a video. To gain true knowledge you need to translate what you learn into action to garner the knowledge.
Yes, we can learn from other people’s experience but true ‘knowledge’ is always found when you take action. This is when you find the real truth – often it was not what we thought it would be.
Perhaps when you initially started internet marketing you thought that you could simply sit on your computer, push a few buttons and the passive income would flow in. As consequence of this lie you were told, you went on a prolonged search for the perfect system.
The reality can only be found by taking action with the information you learn along the way. What works for one person does not always work for another – there may be some nuance that you are missing or some factor that changes an expected outcome. Knowledge can only be obtained by taking action and monitoring the result.
The only source of knowledge is experience – everything else is hearsay and conjecture.
The video below features Daniel Pink who is talking about the surprising truth about what motivates us.
He talks about how the traditional ‘carrot and stick’ incentives don’t work for any task that requires even rudimentary cognitive or creative skills. If the task is purely mechanical then the carrot and stick incentive scheme will work.
He goes on to talk about what does work for cognitive jobs and tasks – basically you have to treat people like people which means that they are driven by 3 basic drivers or needs:
A desire for autonomy i.e. to be self-directed
A desire for mastery i.e. to be making progress in their job
A desire for purpose i.e. to be part of something larger than ourselves.
I can totally relate to this because this is partly why I left banking in 2001.
we lost a good deal of autonomy at branch level when computerisation enabled Head Office to monitor precisely what we were doing and started to interfere in everything we were doing at branch level. Yes there are risks with autonomy but on the whole I think the majority of us had much greater job satisfaction when we could say that these were the results we created without Head Office looking over our shoulders all the time and constantly raining a shower of rules and regulations down upon us. They wanted staff compliance and thereby they lost staff engagement.
the job changed from having a mastery of risk management and customer service to wanting us to master sales and achievement of sales targets – these two skills are to some extent conflicting with each other because there were many occasions that it would have been better to walk away from a transaction but staff were driven forward to do things that weren’t good business by the need to achieve a sales target.
and I do believe that we lost a sense of purpose. My purpose was always to help my customers to become better and bigger businesses that served the community over the long term. I didn’t share the new purpose of maximising short term profits by selling banking services. I simply couldn’t get on board with a purpose that didn’t align with my own and hence I decided to leave because it simply became too stressful to buck the system.
I now compare my banking job with internet marketing:
I am totally self-directed with the freedom to choose my own business model and strategy and to acquire new skills in areas that interest me.
I love the challenge of trying to master internet marketing which, whilst simple at one level, is also a highly complex area where the sands are constantly shifting through the shear creativity of our online marketing community.
and my purpose is to help my customers to make money online by serving and improving the lives of other people through the provision of information, training and software and thereby to provide for our families. (It is very important to articulate your purpose clearly if you want other people to be energised and inspired by that purpose.)
The video below is good use of 40 minutes of your time as it will make you think about how you motivate yourself and other people in future. This is just one of the 325 videos that is part of the upsell package to Productivity Made Simple which we are launching on 22nd September 2014 for a surprisingly low price.
Eric Thomas is a motivational speaker, educator, author, preacher and activist.
He was born in Chicago, IL and grew up on the streets of Detroit, MI. He proclaimed that he had very difficult childhood experiences that pushed him to leave home and drop out of school. Instead, he met a pastor and started to build a mentoring relationship that led him to success.
His messages are always inspiring and have helped thousands of young people nationwide. He also inspires young people to break their bad habits and to reach for new levels of personal and spiritual achievement.
He became well known for his “Thank God it’s Monday” videos. This is my playlist of 13 of his motivational videos:
This video playlist will be one among many that we have created in conjunction with our forthcoming launch of Productivity Made Simple – these video playlists will be part of our upsell offer and there are 325 inspirational videos in total. If you are looking for inspiration or motivation, then there is no better way to start your day than to have a daily dose of inspiration to get you into the correct mindset.
Eric Thomas and his ‘Thank God It’s Monday’ video trainings are just a small sample of what we have compiled for our customers.
I found the following article and copied it to my blog to preserve it as a resource for myself and my readers. This philosophy is life changing, although it is not easy to apply in daily life.
This question could make you millions – I pinched this from a thread on the Warrior Forum.
I thought that I would set out the reasons why I avoid Apple products and any products like them.
I have just been reading a 25 page report by Jeffrey Davis called ‘Write To Lead’ which is really about how to be a leader in your niche. Here are a few of the key points in the report..
I was watching a video about selling art and the presenter said ‘Get good enough at anything and someone will pay you to do it.‘
