Live Your Dream
January 8, 2010
By Richard Vennes
At one time, you had hopes, dreams and plans for a great future. But circumstances, events and the trials of life, have caused you to put your plans on hold. But, a little while has become a long time. So you figured, why bother. It’s too late for anything to come of it anyway.
But still, now and then, you wonder how it might have been. Instead of living in regret, why not re-open your dream. A lady recently graduated from college, at 86 years old. It is not too late. Many people realize their dreams at all stages of life.
If you’re like most people, your plan was to someday run your own business, be your own boss, make it on your own. To make your fortune, so that you could live well and retire before you got too burned out to enjoy life. That sounds like a pretty good plan, to me.
Don’t let your dream die. Young, old or middle aged. Your age doesn’t matter. Neither does your financial status. Not even your educational level. Determination and motivation have more to do with success than education, anyway.
Whether it is in business or in everyday life, determination and motivation are key factors in obtaining goals of any kind. Determination is overcoming challenges. Whenever an obstacle gets in your way, you will find a way around it. Motivation is the reason behind your determination. What is the reason for starting your business? Is the reason respect, independence or self-esteem? These are all very good motivators.
But, it’s been a while. Where do you turn? Things are a little different now. You have sort of lost sight of what to do.
Maybe you should consult with counselors. In this aspect, counseling is simply mentoring or coaching. These are people who will help you with thoughts and ideas for starting your business. They will help you with such things as motivation, self-esteem, leadership, goals, putting together a business plan, and so much more.
Their coaching staff will help you to think through some ideas for starting a new business, as well as to refer you to people who can offer assistance if you need start-up capital, business insurance, or have any other business financial requirements.
Go online, and in the search box, type in either counselors, coaching or mentoring. Any of these will give you some very good options. Search through some of the various Web sites that appear, until you have found someone that you feel comfortable working with. By all means, check them over thoroughly before you indulge very deep with them. Make sure that you can trust them.
Now, perhaps you might be more ambitious than most people, and I hope you are, and you are not content with just being self-employed. Instead, you are thinking more of an all out career. If this is your case, I highly recommend tutoring. Just type tutoring in the search box, instead.
Tutoring is a little different than coaching or mentoring. With coaching and mentoring, you will be given help with ideas for business, self-esteem, motivation, and steps for achieving goals. We could all use a little push in every one of these areas. With tutoring you will receive all of this and so much more.
With tutoring, you will also receive technical training in the field that you have chosen. But along with training, they will teach you how to market your business. Every business needs customers to survive. Tutoring will teach you how to both market offline and to market online, in order to attract customers, which in turn will attract business.
Don’t give up on your dreams. If you give up on your dreams, then you given up on yourself. Don’t do this. You can do it. It takes effort to dream. If it is worth the effort to dream it, then, it is worth the effort to live it. Go, realize your dream.
Dreams are great, but reality is better. Far better. Go to http://www.MoneyMaverickDaily.com And live your dreams. Richard Vennes enjoys seeing people move ahead in life.
Success Strategies – 3 Tips to Help Women Overcome Obstacles and Reach Their Dreams
January 7, 2010
By Samantha McMurtrie
So many women wish they could be more successful in their lives, yet, when I take them aside and ask them what would constitute specific success in their lives; they would stare at me blankly. Sure they might cover the obvious success strategies they would imagine they would need in order to be successful – but all too often they are not sure themselves of exactly what they are trying to achieve. Most women could tell me that they wanted to achieve abundance in wealth, health and happiness – yet in order to execute effective strategies to achieve these objectives, they would possibly land up walking away with mediocre results because their frame was too vague.
You see, if you don’t have very clear and specific goals in mind, then no matter what strategies you initiate in your life – you will be running around in circles. As a professional coach, it is my job to make sure that my clients’ goals and objectives are crystal clear before we even attempt to develop suitable success strategies in order to achieve what they are seeking. Often we are in a rush to reach our success, we bypass as many possible points so that we can get into action and start seeing immediate results. But if we don’t formulate a foundation for clarity and develop a plan to implement the right actions aligned with our definitive goals – we will sink before we can even swim!
The very first tip towards developing powerful and pertinent action steps therefore lies in becoming clear on what you want. It is not specific enough to say I want to become wealthy. Wealth to you may mean something very different to what wealthy means to someone else. How wealthy do you want to be, what do you want to earn, when do you want to become wealthy by…? These are all questions that need to be thought through before you get out there and play the game. Being vague will give you vague results. Get specific, measurable and clear so that you know exactly what to set out to achieve and then we can move onto creating success strategies that are right for you!
Once you are clear on what you want, the second tip I would implicate is to formulate goals that are tangible and do-able. So many women set such high expectations of themselves that they devise unrealistic action plans that they need to implement and they land up getting stuck in over-whelm. We often debilitate ourselves before we even begin. It is true that we all want to be superwomen; however, we also need to look at setting ourselves up to succeed and not to get imprisoned by the anxiety of our own expectations.
The rule of thumb as a coach is to encourage clients to set themselves up to carry out success strategies that are 20% out of your comfort zone. So if you feel that leaving your job and opening up your own business is 100% out of your comfort zone, then you need to look at other alternatives that you could do that would push you to get there, but not keep you trapped in helplessness. Perhaps you could start the company whilst you are still employed and work on it in the evenings and over the weekends, until such time as you feel that the move over would be more aligned with 20% out of your comfort zone.
Thirdly, the biggest tip I can give you as a coach to enhance effective success strategies is the following: see failure as feedback. If you are scared to do something out of fear of failure – then chances are you’ll never do it and you will never be able to face the failure, receive the feedback and move onto becoming a success. Failure is a success strategy in itself. The only way past failure is to go through it and learn so that you can then come out tops! If you can change your perspective on failure, I bet you would be ready and willing to try a lot more things in your life! Successful people welcome failure and use it as a stepping stone towards reaching their ultimate dreams.
So are you ready to define your goals clearly, get 20% out of your comfort zone, and welcome failure? If so, you have three success strategies that will help you overcome any obstacles, and shift you into creating and getting into action towards achieving your dream life!
Samantha McMurtrie is a dynamic woman who has the passion and commitment to seeing that everyone she encounters comes out with direction, purpose and an incredible drive for life! She is a learning facilitator and a qualified Professional Coach, a member of the ICF (International Coach Federation) & Comensa (Coaches and Mentors of South Africa). Samantha is one of the founders and members of Pretty Powerful, a vibrant company that optimises the power of the internet to provide women around the world with affordable, accessible and quality online coaching programs offering tools, success strategies, guidance and support to help women create the lives they want. Samantha is the author and coach of the successful Pretty Powerful 90-Day Life Makeover program that aims to help women become the best that they can be – mentally, emotionally, spiritually and skilfully. Pretty Powerful reflects Samantha’s vision to enthuse women around the world to learn, live and love POWERFULLY! Visit Success Strategies to become 100% clear, confident and excited about your life! Secrets of success.
Glass Half Full Or Half Empty
December 7, 2009
By Graeme Renwall
Have you mastered the power of positive thinking? While we seem to know intuitively that thinking positively will result in positive results, too often we fall into a downward spiral of negative thinking. While it’s impossible to think positively 100% of the time, that should be our goal. Here are some tips to maximize the amount of positive thinking that you do:
1. Be around positive-thinking people.
That old saying about birds of a feather is true. If you hang around positive-thinking people, their thinking will cause you to think positively. And if you associate with negative-thinking people, the opposite will happen. Whenever possible, avoid such negative people like the plague. If you can’t do that due to mandatory social situations, then don’t allow those people to drag you down into their sludge of negativity. Keep your head above it!
2. Control your outlook on life.
Too often we allow others’ negativity to impact our outlook on life. As a wise person once told me, “You can’t control others’ actions-only your reaction.” Sometimes it’s easy to allow negative-thinking people to drag us into their web of negativity. Forget about them! Those types of people will do nothing to reach your goals in life or make you happy. Instead, focus on maintaining a positive outlook on life.
3. Constantly reflect on your actions and attitudes.
Always be aware of whether you are thinking and acting positively. It’s so easy to slip back into our own negative behavior and perceptions. That’s why you must be constantly vigilant. Whenever you catch yourself thinking or acting negatively-change those actions or thoughts immediately. The longer you wait, the more ingrained they’ll become in your life.
4. Make daily affirmations a habit.
A daily affirmation is a carefully-created statement that one repeatedly repeats and writes down. The goal of daily affirmations is to combine them with positive thinking in order to achieve success in whatever activity the person becomes involved in. Various recent books with a focus on daily affirmations have helped to boost the public’s interest in them.
5. Set goals and strive to reach them.
Avoid setting goals that are impossible. Instead, set ones that are challenging but within your reach. Even if you only experience minor successes, this will give you confidence to set more challenging goals to meet. Regardless of the obstacles you encounter, always keep your eye on the prize!
6. Live life to the fullest.
Sometimes the day-to-day grind can be as fun as getting a root canal. It doesn’t have to be that way! Indeed, variety is the spice of life. Try new experiences in life. Take up a new hobby. Travel to an exotic country. Taste foods that you’ve never tried before. By experiencing the variety that life has to offer, you’ll wake up each morning and be ready to face the day.
While thinking positively 100% of the time is impossible, there’s always room for improvement. These tips will help you to constantly see that glass of water is half full in every aspect of life.


