My News
A few weeks ago I spoke at a conference for Top Secretaries in the Public Sector. These were typically PA’s to Chief Execs in Local Authorities. I opened the conference and spoke for 1 hour 40 minutes on the subject of personal empowerment. I believe that it went very well, people were very generous in their response and I have had a subsequent booking from one of the delegates! I have a talk next week at the RIBA (Royal Institute of British Architects) where I will be delivering a seminar entitled ‘The Easiest Way to Double Your Profits’
If you know anyone looking for a motivational speaker please bear me in mind.
My Muse
Are you on target?
It’s the first week of April which means that a quarter of 2004 has gone! If you have found yourself looking back at your New Year’s resolutions or plans and either can’t remember what they were, or haven’t made much progress, can I suggest some action.
Firstly, don’t be tempted into recriminations. Don’t waste your energy. It’s very easy for the winds of life to blow us off course. Whether it’s the demands of family, or finances, or just plain survival sometimes it can feel like it’s blowing a gale and just keeping upright is an achievement.
Now we need to re-connect with your goal or goals. My suggestion is to have no more than 3 current goals. As you meet one, replace it with another, but have a maximum of 3 at any one time. You need to be clear what your goals are, what the benefits to you of achieving the goals are, and why you want to meet those goals. Remember, the bottom line for all of us is feelings. Find out the feeling that you are after. The feeling you think you will have when you reach you goal.
This has the advantage of bringing clarity. For example you may have the goal of getting a new job earning more money, so that you will feel secure, knowing that your income is in balance with your outgoings. That shows that your real goal is not a new job, but the feeling of security. This may be able to be achieved another way, which has more advantages for you. You may, for example, examine your expenditure and cut out some spending like a client of mine did, so they were able to cut the number of hours needed to meet expenditure. This also supported another goal as the expenditure cut was on cigarettes.
Once you have clarity on why you want to achieve your goal, you need to ensure that it is inspiring and compelling to you. This motivation must seem greater than the amount of effort required to achieve the goal. If it isn’t the effort will kill the goal sooner or later. For goals to work they must be effective, and an effective goal is one that motivates you to do what you have to do each day towards reaching your target. So you may need to create a system to remind you how important (to you) your goals are. Keeping plugging yourself back into the motivation to keep you going.
If you do this successfully, you will engage the 90% of your brain that you don’t have direct control over. Your subconscious brain is where all your ideas originate. You now need to allow it to function by generating the ideas that will bring you to your goals. When I say allow, what I mean is not to stop the flow of ideas, but to encourage them. We stop the flow when we judge. We need to have an internal dialogue that brings out lots of ideas, because in my experience the great ideas are not the first ones that come up, but the later ones. But they only come up when the creativity is flowing.
And what better time is there than when the Spring sun is shining and the daffodils are out?
Book Recommendation
The E-Myth Revisited by Michael Gerber
The
E in E-Myth is Entrepreneur. Michael Gerberís
assertion is that the vast majority of business owners
do not own their business, their business owns them!
His argument is that in order to own your own business
it must not be reliant on you. If you are the
business, you donít own a business you own a job!
The message is put across in such a way as not to
cause offence, but to resonate so that it motivates
you to action. To work in a new way. To create
something greater and grander than our current
thinking allows. I have been very inspired by itís
message and I am applying itís ideas into my
business. Itís a must for business owners or anyone
thinking about running their own business. Buying this
book could save you many heartaches and mistakes.
Trust me, Iíve made many of them!
Opportunity to Contribute
Visit The Breast Cancer Site at http://www.thebreastcancersite.com/home every day and click on the pink "Fund Free Mammograms" button to help fund free mammograms for homeless, low-income women.
It costs you nothing to help make early detection and survival possible. Funding is paid by site sponsors and goes to the nonprofit National Breast Cancer Foundation, who uses it to grant access to mammography to women in need. You can click once per day.
Pass it along as a way to fight breast cancer all year long!
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