The ‘F’ Word!

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The ‘F’ Word! What is it about the ‘F’ word that we hate? The word failure is seeped with emotions, stress, memories which can trigger so many responses from us – one of them is flee! Yes, we flee from potential failure, but why? Just the mere thought of failing can bring about so many feelings within us of our own inabilities, inadequacies, that we want to avoid at all costs. And yet failure whilst difficult, you could argue is a definite, a certainty isn’t it? Failure involves us stepping outside our comfort zone, doing things we don’t feel totally confident in doing, taking risks whether large or small. We avoid facing or taking these risks because we fear failure. And yet, we know that taking risks will by default, regardless of whether we succeed or fail, help us grow in confidence. With the ‘at least we tried’ mentality! As

Confidence – Are we Born With It or Is It Learned?

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Wow! Talk about a leading question, however, the reason I wanted to cover this today was because it has cropped up a couple of times with various people I’ve spoken to recently which led me to think there are a few ‘schools of thought’ out there and perhaps it was worth mentioning these to gauge your thoughts and to get you thinking about whether your confidence is where you want it to be and if not what you might be able to do about it from now on. It is commonly believed that confidence isn’t something that can be learned, like learning how to drive a car, but that it’s more of a state of mind. If we work on the basis that it’s based on our state of mind, then we know confidence comes more from how we feel about ourselves. Our own self-belief and how we feel about

Identifying the Bottleneck In Your Business!

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Do you have a bottleneck in your business? Can you identify exactly what that bottleneck is? Do you know how to reduce or remove the bottleneck? These are some of the questions I would like you to consider today particularly for those of you who are in a new, small or medium business. Sometimes we may be a single person enterprise or have a team of helpers who may be direct employees or partners. Either way it’s usually us who must deal with the strategic elements of our business. We need to be able to look ahead to determine what is coming up, however, the day to day running of our business can sometimes take over, preventing potential bottlenecks. This is fine of course if we can ‘see’ the bottleneck coming up! As we know things happen when we least expect, and with the best will in the world we

It’s Relationships That Get Us Through Isn’t It?

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After the tragic and traumatic events of last Friday imprinted images are embedded in all our minds. We all left reeling with waves of varying emotions within us, from anger, frustration, sadness, confusion and many more. Like any senseless act which takes innocent lives, it makes us wonder what in the world are we coming to when we all live in the same ‘place’ and should be living in harmony and peace and not war and hatred. Today, however, I wanted to focus more on how we manage dealing with ‘events’ that may affect us directly and indirectly, and how we might manage to work out how we process what has happened, move forward, working through our feelings, thoughts and memories of that day. We are a social animal, and as such need interaction with others, particularly in the aftermath of something that affects all of us in many ways.

Is Your Problem Child Your Business?

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As a business owner, I find it interesting hearing other business owner’s thoughts and views about being a business owner, what it’s like and how it feels, particularly compared to their previous ‘lives’ as an employee and the difference from being in a corporate world and being self-employed. We have this dream about being a business owner, conquering the world; being the best at what we do. We dream of being our own boss, no-one telling us what to do, choosing the hours we want and working the days we choose. Then of course reality kicks in and hits us just where it hurts! The business we set up and grew, isn’t growing as we want it to, or going in the direction we saw it going. Perhaps the clients we expected to come knocking at our door are looking elsewhere. The dream ‘child’ we imagined as a business owner,

Finding the RIGHT way – Do it YOUR way!

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You probably recall the song by Frank Sinatra ‘My Way’ which came out in 1969? I’m not going to talk about the song but about doing things the right way or your way! The song talks about the end being near, facing the final curtain, living life to the full, travelling each and every highway, having regrets, planning a chartered course, taking careful steps along the byways, biting off more than he could chew, facing up to things and standing tall, laughing and crying, and having his fair share of losing. Wow! That’s some list isn’t it? The song, and its lyrics made me think about how we spend our days often doing same or similar tasks, trying to find better, easier and more productive way of doing things so we can get more out of each day. I’m sure like me you’ve had family, friends or colleagues who have

How focused are you on your business?

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Are you in your business or on your business? Is what you’re doing right now going to lead to a sale or a new client? How much of your time on any given day is chargeable time? Intentions – Our aim and purpose might be to allocate a certain amount of time on our business but, what happens? The ‘day’ job takes over and we end up being pushed into operational tasks rather than focusing on the strategic elements of our business. Present and Future – We know that the past has gone, that we need to focus on the present, but to make the best of each day we need to think about how we see our future and plan what we are doing. This means starting with the long-term goals i.e. where do we see our business in years to come, and are we heading in the right

If You’re Happy and You Know It!

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I’m sure you remember the song “If you’re happy and you know it clap your hands”? I was reflecting on this and what really happiness means. We know this means contentment, gladness or joy, however, are we happy and do we know it? Have you thought what makes you happy and what do you do to make you happy? I try and work on being happy now, because working on being happy surely means I’m not happy now! Here are some of things you could actively do to help you feel happy: Gratitude – We need to start from a place of being grateful for what we have. If we’re not then we are discontented. Being grateful needs to be an action that we do and not just a thought. We default onto negative thoughts mostly focusing on what we don’t have rather than what we do have. Task 1

The Reality is you Need to Take a Reality Check!

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The reality is that we often can’t do everything we want to do and can’t be everything we want to be. We talk of having to take a ‘reality check’ but what does this mean? It usually refers to us saying we need or want to reconsider what we are doing or about to do, consider if what we are embarking on is possible. It’s about resetting ourselves isn’t it? Pushing our pause button or our stop button if only we could find it! How can we take a reality check and what steps might we take to ‘reset’ ourselves? Here’s some suggested tips on bringing ourselves back down to earth and bring SMART back into our lives. Problem Solving – We can often dwell on the problem rather than focusing on a solution or another option. By taking stock of where we are and writing down our problem or

What does SUCCESS mean to you?

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We all might have dreams and aspirations of being successful and having success, but do we really know what that is, what that means? It’s different for each one of us isn’t it? Do we know when we’ve got there? Is it what we wanted? Are we satisfied feeling we’ve achieved our lifetime ambition, and are fulfilled? I fear not! We strive continually for success, whatever that is or means, and often feel we haven’t got there, or we see other people appearing to have success, and we don’t seem to get there. We need to be careful we are wishing for the right thing, aiming for the right goal, going down the right path, don’t we? In the meantime, whilst we are on our journey to success, let’s look at what it could look like; perhaps some of these resonate with you? Success may mean or include the following