There’s a quote by Helen Keller “Keep your face to the sunshine and you cannot see a shadow”. What I like about this quote is the positive tone to it. Looking towards the sun and away from darkness. I’m sure like me you’ve all experienced those negative thoughts and worked hard at trying to replace them with positive ones. We are often told we should focus on the positive, but when we feel low, it’s the hardest thing to do. It takes strength to blot out negative thoughts and focus on positive ones. As Willie Nelson once said, “Once you replace negative thoughts with positive ones, you’ll start having positive results.” We know that the only time we have to do anything productive is right now, the present, today, yesterday is gone and tomorrow is yet to come for us to plan a positive outcome. As Lyndon B Johnson said,
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Don’t you just love that feeling of know you’re going away somewhere, perhaps travelling or on holiday or just a short break away? In our minds, we are there enjoying the destination in our minds, imaging we are there. The journey there is a means of getting to our destination rather than being a part of it. If we think of our goals being our destination and the journey being our actions, isn’t achieving our goal dependent upon those actions? Just like getting to our destination is dependent upon the journey to get there. For some, we just want the result, whether the goal or the destination, and just want to reach it no matter what and as quickly as we can. And sometimes if we do this, then we rush an important part of the result. This planning to get to our goal or destination is just as important
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Beliefs and Values What is the vision you hold for yourself or a new role or challenge? Is it seeing yourself completing something successful, or is it seeing yourself not completing or failing? For us to be able to have a positive vision of ourselves we need to believe in ourselves and understand our personal values. To do this we need to understand what makes us tick, identify, know and understand our values, and why they are our values as well as what those values mean to us. To enable us to achieve our full potential we need to believe in ourselves. If we were to consider where and what we lack in our own self-belief we can then explore what might be possible if we were to unblock what it is stopping us and what we might achieve if we did. We are growing every day in every way,
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A mindset is a belief or self-perception we hold about ourselves. Our mindset governs our behaviour, how we feel, our attitude and our outlook of how we see ourselves now and in the future. When we are set in a negative mindset, nothing can change our viewpoint or opinion, we seem locked in our ways and our beliefs that what we believe is the truth, and we truly belief we are unable to change. There are two mindsets, a positive and a negative. Having a positive mindset is a great habit to have as we can keep focused and have a clear direction in the belief that we will succeed, and nothing will get in our way. Unfortunately, a negative mindset has the opposite effect, and can be the road to disaster, causing us to be miserable and feel we will never be successful in anything we do. We listen
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Do you know what motivates you? Motivation means “a reason or reasons for acting or behaving a particular way”, however we behave in a particular way because of what motivates us (or not) and how happy and content we are in the job we are doing. To be motivated, we need to have an incentive or a stimulus that truly inspires us to reach our destination, achieve our goal, or grow our business. If we start losing our way, then we lose our purpose, our direction, and therefore our motivation. Purpose means “the reason for which something is done or created or for which something exists.” It’s an intended or desired result, an aim or goal. To achieve our goals, we need to have a purpose so need to be determined, be resolute in keeping our eyes fixed ahead or on the ball. Having a sense of purpose shows commitment
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Have you ever really thought about what it is that inspires us, and do we really know what our aspirations are? What’s the difference between aspirations and inspirations first? Aspirations – these are ambitions, goals, objectives or aims Inspirations – being inspired or motivated to do or achieve something We may have an aspiration to buy gym membership, however, we need to be inspired to physically go to the gym; OR we might have an aspiration to lose weight and get fit, but we must be inspired to start a healthy eating regime or start a fitness programme to achieve our goal. The reason why we often don’t achieve our goals and achieve our aspirations is because we haven’t worked out how to get from one to the other. Here are some steps to help you achieve your aspirations and empower you to feel inspired to succeed. Step 1 –
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Who has influenced you personally and professionally? What has influenced you personally and professionally? What did they do to influence you? How have they influenced you? “Each day you are leading by example. Whether you realise it or not or whether it’s positive or negative, you are influencing those around you.” Rob Liano We can be influenced positively or negatively. Some can challenge us, whereas some provide great chances for us to take. We are often influenced by great leaders who we admire and aspire to be, and they motivate us to be better than we are. What we don’t often take into consideration is that people may see us as leaders, and without realising it we might be influencing others. It’s interesting we often benchmark ourselves against others but can’t measure ourselves as other people see us. If we looked at who specifically influences us, we can then try
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How often have you heard yourself say, “I’ve always done this” or “I’ve always avoided this”? What we think and say we believe, and what we believe becomes reality, but is it? By repeatedly doing the same thing and expecting a different outcome, or habitually continuing to do the things we know we shouldn’t because they don’t achieve something positive just further embeds our believe we ‘can’t’ do the things we want to or continually avoid the things we know we need to face. This ‘bad’ habit isn’t helpful, and can be a soul destroyer, and just emphasises our believes in ourselves resulting in self-fulfilling prophesies! We can make the changes in our lives we want to, it’s not the way you are or the way we are! We weren’t born like that; we became like that due to something in our lives which has created a ‘perceived’ obstacle or
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I’m sure you will be like most people and truly believe there are lucky people in this world that just seem to have nothing but good luck all the time, with everything they touch turning to gold! Whilst the others, seem to forever have bad luck at every turn, one after the other making them feel they are a total failure. But can we make our own luck or is it inherent in us? What are the traits ‘lucky people’ have? Perhaps we can see if we can make some of them rub off on us, or even polish up some of those traits that we do have but haven’t made the best use of? Now you might be one of those people who always grasps an opportunity, or you might be the person who swerves away from opportunity knocking with the fear that moving into the unknown is just
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How to be a Great Business Owner If you are a business owner or thinking about being a business owner you need to have a number of great skills to get you going and keep you going. How do we know what these skills are and if we have them? Below are some tips for those up and coming business owners who wish to be able to grow their business more than what they’re already doing. Organisation – As a business owner you need to be adaptable, flexible, be great at time management and organisation skills. Part of being organised is spending time ON the business as well as IN the business, and to do this it requires planning, so our organisation skills are fundamental in achieving business growth Competition – You might have a great product or service; however, you need to be able to show others how your
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