Don't be Scared of a little "Scared"

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It's the season to talk about being scared so here goes: Have you ever felt like you are on the threshold of something big, like you've built up enough momentum to take you to the next level but you find yourself too scared to take the next step? You calculate the risks, take stock of the sacrifices you would need to make, and are just too petrified to make another move? I don't know, but they say you're in good company. They say anybody who's ever had some measure of success has felt the fear and made the plunge anyway. (Not sure who 'they' is either....I'm just going with the flow.... ). Seriously though.....I've come to realize that feeling fear and vulnerability are necessary parts of the journey. Business owners risk that the market will accept a new product or innovation; Potential start-up investors know that on average seven out of ten of these investments go belly-up. Most new entrepreneurs hear the 'eight out of ten new ventures fail' tale every-day. But they do it anyway. I guess everybody comes to the place where they realize it's do or die.

Some weeks ago, as I read Brene Brown's "Daring greatly", I was faced with two big questions. One I had heard many times over, "What would you do if you knew you couldn't fail?" It's a question I have answered several times in my mind - ranging from running a full time business (and yes, its all done on paper) to speaking to a live audience of thousands - but the second question is what really got me thinking (and excited). She asked us to contemplate "what's worth doing even if you fail?" Hmmmm. Now that's something else. What's important enough to you to risk failing at? What matters enough to you to get you beyond the point of being scared? How willing are you to challenge Henry David Thoreau's assertion that the 'mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation and go to their graves with their song still in them?"


So what's a little 'scared'? It's a good thing, actually. It renders you vulnerable, humble, dependent on expert advice and most importantly, teachable. It makes you aware of the mistakes you make along the way and therefore provides a host of what-not-to-dos next time round. Mistakes, they say are better teachers than successes. It's wisdom you can pass down, paying it forward as you progress in your business, building strong networks of partners and team members. So embrace the fear. Know that it comes with the territory. Just do it again, and again, and again....Do it scared that's how you get there,

So today, challenge yourself to identify that one thing that you are scared of that's likely to have the biggest impact on your dream. Now juxtapose that fear against your biggest WHY...What's your most important reason for wanting to pursue your dream? How do they stack up against each other? Do you find your 'why' more compelling than your fear? Does your 'why' not push you beyond those boundaries? If it does, you're in a good place. Feel the fear and do it anyway.....

Learning how to Measure Value

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Recently I stopped to compile a list of likely little known quotes about how to create value in the home and at work. These reflect the thoughts of entrepreneurs, inventors, authors and politicians. At first glance they appear trivial but but they unwittingly hold a wealth of wisdom. Take some time to give each some thought:

1. "We must teach our children not to spend their money a dollar at a time. If you spend your money a dollar at a time, you'll wind up with trinkets not treasures. You can't buy much of value a dollar at a time."
2. "When you do more than you are paid to do, you'll be paid more for what you do."
3. "You are not here merely to make a living. You are here in order to enable the world to live more amply, with greater vision, with a finer spirit of hope and achievement. You are here to enrich the world, and you impoverish yourself if you forget your errand."
4. "Profits are better than wages."
5. "We must seek the opportunity inherent in the risk, knowing that we must sometimes run the risk of going too far in order to discover how far we really can go."
6. "The highest reward of a man's toil is not what he gets for it, but what he becomes by it."
7. "It's best to start the discipline of generosity when the amounts are small. It is easy to give ten cents out of a dollar; it's a little harder to give a hundred thousand out of a million dollars." 
8. "Being grateful for what you already have creates magical pathways to infinite possibilities 
9. "The greatest good you can do for another is not just to reveal to him your riches but to reveal to him his own."
10. "Many of the things you can count, don't count; many of the things you can't count, really count."
11. "The borrower is servant to the lender."
12. "What you become directly influences what you get."
13. "We get paid for bringing value to the marketplace. It takes time.....but we get paid for the value, not the time."
14. "Formal education will make you a living. Self education will make you a fortune"
15. "The rich invest their money and spend what's left. The poor spend their money and invest what's left."
16. "Here's the major problem with going on strike for more money: You cannot get rich by demand." 
17. "Time is more valuable than money. You can get more money; you cannot get more time."
18. "The greatest reward in becoming a millionaire is not the million dollars. It's the person you must become in order to be able to earn that million dollars."
19. "Poor people have a big TV; rich people have a big library.
20. "Money is usually attracted, not pursued."

Are there others that you have come across and would like to add?

Actions, not Ideas, make the difference....

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The world does not pay men for what they know. It pays them for what they do with/about what they know. I often hear people express fear about having their ideas stolen. I tell them the world is probably better off for the many ideas 'stolen' for had it not been for these 'idea thieves' we might never have been exposed to these life-changing solutions. The fact is, ideas are a dime a dozen - no matter how innovative they seem. It's been said that anyone who has ever taken a shower has had an idea with the potential to 'change the world.' That's how cheaply they come. The real truth is, it's no matter the extent of your imagination, the creativity or novelty of your idea or the breadth of your vision, it is only what you do about them that counts.

Life has a way of making room for the man (or woman) whose words and actions show that he knows where he is going. Thomas Edison, the famed inventor, is known to have said "If we did the things we are capable of we would astound ourselves." Have you ever stopped to think of the number of times you have been complimented for a particular talent or skill you possess? Yet you find yourself constrained by thoughts of your inexperience and inadequacy. Add that to your thoughts about how humongous the task is, then stir in your habit of procrastination. The result? You're stuck. Inaction characterizes your existence. What's worse, you look ahead of you and find people with far less skill and aptitude making their way happily across the finish line....and you ask yourself 'how'...and 'why'?

It's not rocket science. It's simply that they have learnt to be more action-oriented. They do not wait for perfect conditions to move. They understand that while timing is important in business, every moment is perfect for some level of activity. They possess an ability to sense, mobilize and act under conditions of uncertainty. "Whoever watches the wind will not plant; whoever looks at the clouds will not reap" (Ecclesiastes 11:4). It can't get clearer than that!

As life would have it, finding is reserved for the seekers and doors of opportunities are opened to those who go knocking. How many of us have ideas upon which we sit like hens brooding over her eggs? The problem is, unlike the hen, our ideas will never hatch with inactivity. Continuous activity/effort - not strength or intelligence, wishful thinking or hope - is the key to unlocking our potential. What we know and how we feel merely determine our potential for achievement. We must find ways to demonstrate externally what we possess on the inside. If not, our values will remain unappreciated and our talents undiscovered and unrewarded.Now what will you DO about it?

Choose the Lens You Use

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"The way we see the problem is the problem." So said Stephen Covey. That's powerful. Indeed, I have learnt that if I always see a problem as a problem, then that's a problem. Learning to see the opportunities buried in the challenges that face us, not only increases our ability to problem-solve, it equips us to meet the next challenge head-on. Indeed, there are two distinct ways of seeing the world...we can see the things we want to accomplish, or we can see the things that prevent us from accomplishing the things we want. When we begin to see challenges as within the scope of our influence we feel empowered to create change. But when we look at our challenges as outside the domain of our influence....as mountains we can't climb, as anchors that keep our ships grounded, then indeed our ability to problem-solve will be significantly compromised.

Now I'm not suggesting that we look at life through rose-coloured glasses (though, believe me...it has its advantages). What I'm suggesting is that we be mindful of the fact that we don't always see things as they are. More often than not we see them as we are. We bring to every interaction, every challenge our past experiences, our perceptions, our established ways of thinking. Obviously, these become the point of reference for all new experiences. In order to see things as they are we need to be mindful of the focus. Though we may be pre-disposed to a certain way of seeing things, we must mindfully choose the lens we use.

So how do we get to that place of power?

• We begin to see challenges as growth opportunities - we keep our eyes on the broader vision and remember that the problems come to improve our abilities to operate at the next level.
• Be mindful of the things we focus on - what we feed our minds everyday will manifest in our approach to life
• Understand the power of influence - Limited association, increased association and complete dissociation are options available to us. It's always better to choose the people who influence our worldview than to have them chosen for us.
• Harness the power of reflection - Maybe at the end of the day, maybe in a moment in between high-intensity activities, whenever some down time comes around, take a moment to consider if your last interaction left you proud of the person you are. It forces us to see the world through the eyes of persons with whom we interact; obviously, this improves empathy and emotional intelligence
• Remain a dreamer - Dreams help bring the impossible into the realm of possibility; dreams help keep us hitched to a star, keeping us unhinged from the mundane. 
• Understand that in every moment all is as it should be - it keeps us hopeful in times of despair.

In every challenge we face we have the power to control the way we see what we see. You can change that picture by changing the lens. We change our lens as we carefully filter the influences upon our mind, We make ourselves into possibility thinkers or we lead lives of quiet desperation. The choice is ours

Faithful when the Amounts are Small

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Once when noted business philosopher, Jim Rohn, was asked the most important advice he would want to leave with new entrepreneurs, he said, "be faithful when the amounts are small." Over the years I have found it to be excellent advice. The truth is, many of us have fanned the flames to keep a dream alive in our hearts; we have had great ideas that we were/are convinced would take the world by storm; we were pretty sure that we could and would attract investors with our novel startup ideas..only to find that reality had some very different ideas about what could become of our dreams. We are unable to attract the start-up capital we envisioned; readers are not as excited about your blog as you though they would be.....your website has been up and 'running' but it has not been attracting the kind of traffic you were expecting.....and, to add a little of the trivial, the numbers of facebook likes and adds you were sure you would be getting have just not materialized. Life sucks sometimes...too often....I know.

So I think right about this point is where I remind you of Jim's great advice. Press on. Be faithful when the amounts are small. Small amounts matter. They add up. Once, as I taught a class in entrepreneurship, and we discussed the concept of failure, a student asked "when do you know it's time to stop...if your results continue to fall short of your expectations, when do you pull back and call your venture a failure?" Without thinking too much about it, I found myself telling him, "when the fire inside you dies." As long as the dream still inspires you, as long as you are still able to will yourself to do the tasks, push through the mindset that tells you the results aren't worth it. The results will compound over time. But it's crucial that you remain faithful.

If you are a wee bit spiritual (as I like to think I am...yeah, a wee bit) and you make the scriptures your reference point, you will find a verse over in the Old Testament that says, "Do not despise the day of small beginnings..." Point underscored. It's important not to be discouraged by the size of either the input or the output early in the game. And who is to say how long that period of small beginnings will last? Maybe that dream you are 'birthing' needs a longer gestation period. What's important is that you do all it takes to keep the dream alive.

One important lesson I have learnt over time is that the dreams we easily stop pursuing were never meant to happen. Contrarily, there are those of us who have a dream pursuing us...ones we don't have the luxury of releasing as they refuse to release us. So even though we get discouraged by poor results, even though others are not seized with the essence of our desires, even though we find ourselves in the ring alone...we dare not be discouraged by small beginnings. We press on. We remain faithful when the amounts are small. We continue in the arena....We continue to dare greatly.

We Must Teach our Attitudes to Serve Us.....

Recently I conducted an exercise with some business students I had. I had been watching their approach to class attendance and participation and recognized that their levels of interest and engagement were low, despite having themselves chosen the business field as their future career endeavor. It's an exercise I had seen in a video presentation and thought it would be useful to them. The presenter spoke about wealth creation as well as fulfilling our lives purpose and destiny. He very cleverly showed pictures of well known, highly successful, business moguls and asked participants to give one word that came to mind when viewing the pictures. After documenting a list of about fifteen words for each picture, the presenter asked his audience to determine if each of these words would fall into the category of skill, knowledge or attitude. Interestingly (for me at the time) more than ninety-five percent of the words fell under the category 'attitude.' It was an effective way of teaching his audience (as I later did with my students) that attitude is everything.

Jim Rohn, though deceased, remains my highest value business mentor. Several years ago, he coined the phrase 'It is the set of the sails, not the direction of the wind, that determines which way we will go.' Adversity is a staple of life. Business deals don't get closed, sales numbers fall, competitors out-perform our best efforts. That's business.....and life! It's not what we are going through now, nor what's happened in the past that determines our destiny. It's simply our determination to keep focused on the goal ahead, to turn with the wind, to remind ourselves that pain is a gateway to power and freedom - depending, of course, on our attitude toward that pain. The same sun (they say) that softens the butter, hardens the clay.

Our attitudes are created by our mindset, our mindset by the philosophies (known or unknown) that underlie our perceptions and action. And that's something we have control of. Completely. Obviously, there are those philosophies we may have been force-fed by parents, schools or churches....beliefs that have likely become ingrained in who we are. Some are probably good, some are bad. These likely now form the core of our value system. It's up to us to determine how well these values align with the core of our being. Do they foster and promote a positive attitude to the people and things that are important to us? Do they serve the ultimate goal of facilitating our purpose and destiny?

We must teach our attitudes to serve us...our higher goals and destiny - be those business or life goals. And if our attitudes are fed from our mindset, we must be in control of the things we feed our minds...those things that dictate what we believe and who we are at the core. It may mean deliberately choosing the people we let into our lives and those we release, increasing mindfulness as we make choices, re-thinking the things we have been taught over the years, but which do not promote harmony within. As we focus on pouring in the new we will find that the old ways of thinking and past attitudes that have not served us, will disappear....and slowly we find our minds and attitudes fully aligned at the core with the person we were meant to be.

Changing your Response Changes Everything...

Over the years of my life I have struggled with who I am...whether that be my physical appearance, my introversion, my anger and resentment at the world, or simply my longing to become better at what I do......my life has been an unending struggle for change. More importantly, as a border-line-irrational control freak, I have spent my life trying to control and change every adverse circumstance I've found myself in...determined to experience only the ideal. Sometimes that looked like praying for change, other times it meant negotiating my way out of a situation, but most often it meant senselessly working my butt off......plenty good that did me (or not!)

But I have mellowed. Time has taught me the wisdom of letting it all happen; of letting the rain come, and dancing in that rain. Yes, I have learnt to dance upon my disappointments, smile at the storm, wait in the shadows for change. But that doesn't always mean sitting back and doing nothing. In fact, more often it means a rational approach to looking for growth opportunities. It means looking for the  lessons the problem was meant to teach me and searching out ways to grasp those lessons. The biggest lesson I have learnt through all of this, however, is that so often we expend our efforts at trying to solve the problem or change the circumstance when, without fail, (a hundred percent of the times) the only thing we need to change in order to progress is our response to the problem.

So I have learnt to turn the search-light on myself. But I no longer struggle with who I am - my physical appearance or even my melancholic-choleric personality type. I have accepted that, and I no longer try to change who I am in order to fit in. Instead, I spend much of my waking moments crafting my response to life's circumstances. These days that looks like praying (..still), journaling, introspection, finding expert advice (mainly through reading), changing what I can and letting go mentally of the things I can't control. And I ask myself over and over again...how can I get better, wiser, stronger from all of this....and I look steadfastly for the answers.

In all of this, I have found a simple but trustworthy approach to life.....accept who you are (while you are on your growth journey) and work on changing your response to problems....the problems usually work themselves out. The struggle for change must never lead to the inauthentic or superficial. It starts with a face to face acceptance of who you are, unearthing the strengths you find and applying those to the problems life throws at you. You will find in the process that change comes, that improvement is in fact guaranteed......both to you and to your circumstance.