Potential Is Always Bigger Than The Problem

Potential Is Always Bigger Than The Problem

by | Nov 30, 2016

Wow, I can’t believe that it is the last day of November. Christmas is just round the corner, closely followed by the start of 2017. Are you prepared? If not now is a great time to begin planning for the best 2017 ever. I recently learnt that we are at the end of a 9 year cycle which means that 2017 is a fresh start for all of us.

Make sure there are no negative influences and unfinished projects you are carrying into the next year, or else I am told they will stay with you for another 9 years and none of us want that, do we!. To help you get 2017 off to a flying start I’ll be running a workshop to help you Get Your Business Off To A Flying Start in 2017. It will be on Friday 13th January, which I think is a pretty auspicious date. More details to follow.

This weekend I was tidying my desk and I came across this quote from Dr. Michael Beckwith “Potential is always bigger than the problem” which that I wrote on a post it note some time ago. What struck me about this quote is that each of us has within us all the resources we need to be successful. We all have access to untapped potential but often we allow our problems to consume us and so we don’t access this potential.

What if actually our problems and challenges were the activators that helped unleash our potential?. Would you then regard problems and challenges from a different perspective? How would it be if these problems and challenges were actually just highlighting the areas where we are failing to live our purpose and where we are limiting ourselves in both life and business.

This is a great time of year to refocus and reset exactly what your purpose is for your business. WHY are you doing what your doing, is it working, is it turning out as you planned for 2016, if not why not?. What impact do you want to make.? If you haven’t achieved the results you desired in 2016 then maybe it’s time to reflect on whether you are building the right thing, or is it time for a pivot.

Once your WHY is clear again, move to vision. What does 2017 look like and feel like?. You should be able to paint it on the wall. Make it vivid and make it epic, if it doesn’t get you excited, it doesn’t inspire you then you’re building the wrong thing. This is also a great time of year to create or redo your vision board.

Finally, all this reflection and planning is great but you need to take action and this is why you need a strategy. A vision without a plan is a mere dream…. you have to bring it to action. What are the missing strategies in your business?

  • Marketing
  • Sales
  • Operations
  • Cash or
  • Talent.

Where are you weak? Where do you need education? Where is change impacting the most? These are some of the questions we will be answering on the Get Your Business Off To A Flying Start in 2017 on Friday 13th January. Get on the early bird notification list right now.

If You’ve Never Failed…….

If You’ve Never Failed…….

by | Nov 16, 2016

There is a great saying that goes “if you’ve never failed, you’ve never tried anything new” and I’ve been reflecting a lot on this over the past week. Before I launched my own business I was very proud of the fact that I had never failed at anything. I saw only being successful as a good trait. After all why would you want to fail. I had been brought up only to be successful and in fact failure was seen as a negative thing. It meant you were stupid. So I only ever put myself in situations where I could succeed. I’d study hard for my exams to be successful. I’d work hard to be in all the school sports teams and now I realized I would avoid activities where I had any fear that I might not succeed.

Fast forward seven years of running my own business and I realize that a flawed belief that earlier thinking was. Since running my own business I have had more failures than I care to imagine. Its been really humbling at times, as well as frustrating as very failure has initially seemed like a barrier to my success. And yet what I have learnt from these failures has been the magic dust that has helped me become more successful.

In fact the only failure is not to learn from the failure. This is because there is a lesson in everything that doesn’t work out as you expected. Recently I was speaking to my friend who rather sheepishly admitted to me that she had quit her part time role. She was embarrassed and ashamed by this as she simply could not complete the work required in the two days a week she worked. To try and push on would have been in conflict with her values of integrity and delivering excellent service. So she gave in her notice. When I chatted with her about this I asked her what was the lesson she learnt from this experience and she shared with me that intuitively she had had reservations about taking the role. So the lesson she learnt was to listen more to her intuition. What a great lesson to learn.

Increasingly I have come to realize that life is just one big lesson and that each and every day we are presented with opportunities to learn more about ourselves. Sometimes we might not like the lessons but each of us is given the lessons we most need to learn. And you know what. If we don’t learn the lesson, the universe delivers the lesson more profoundly and acutely, until such time we get it.

That was the case for me with boundaries. I kept avoiding dealing with this issue, which had been presenting itself I now see for decades, but more recently I was literally slapped around the face with this lesson. The universe had quietly been delivering her lesson but since I had been avoiding it the universe crescendoed up the volume until I couldn’t fail to take action.

There are many examples of successful people that have not been discouraged by their failures and these include:

· Albert Einstein – he wasn’t able to speak until he was almost 4-years old and his teachers said he would “never amount to much”

· Michael Jordan – after being cut from his high school basketball team , he went home, locked himself in a room, and cried.

· Walt Disney – fired from a newspaper for ”lacking imagination” and having “No original ideas”

· Steve Jobs – at 30-years old he was left devastated and depressed after being unceremoniously removed from the company he started

· Oprah Winfrey – was demoted from her job as anchor because she “wasn’t for for television”

· The Beetles – rejected be Decca Recording Studios who said “ we don’t like their sound – they have no future in show business”

In each case they took the lessons they learnt from their so-called “failed experience” and used this to fuel their success.

So where in your life and business are you being shared lessons that you are failing to take heed of? What do you need to acknowledge and learn, to move forward with more flow.

A simple exercise to do is to make a list of all the failures (or opportunities that did not work out as expected). Write these down the left hand side of a page and then on the right hand side list what the gift was for each of these experiences and now knowing this what can you do differently to move forward.

If you need any assistance with mastering your growth mindset then please book in for a complimentary chat and let’s explore what is possible

Wishing you an amazing aligned and flow filled Wednesday

Not All Actions Are The Right Actions

Not All Actions Are The Right Actions

by | Nov 9, 2016

I really hope you are having a great week. I’ve just returned from a four day immersion training with my mentor Clinton Swaine, which once again was incredibly powerful. That’s why I love experiential learning. It really helps you embody the feeling of the situation and you can’t help leaving feeling changed in some way. Reading the Facebook comments of my fellow students I know we all experienced profound shifts in perspective on this programme, and as always it seems the right message always comes at the right time. Spooky how that happens!.

Now, if you have been following me for a while, you will know that if we want to achieve success we have to take action. Nothing’s going to happen for you if you just sit around waiting for something to happen. But not all actions are created equal. Not all actions are the right actions. I’m sure you can relate to that. Just think about it. Two people are given exactly the same resources to lets say launch a business and one is successful and one is not. On paper they both seem to take the same actions and yet they get very different results. How can that be?

Well, it’s all to do with alignment. You have to take action that’s in alignment with your core values and beliefs because unless you do your actions don’t resonate with others, and they fail to connect with what you are saying and doing. And the result is frustration and exhaustion. You can feel like you are stuck on a hamster wheel, running and running but not making progress…Maybe you can relate to this?

I know I do. For some time I have had a deep, inner feeling that everything has not been aligned. My head, heart and gut have in some way been dis-connected, and yet I haven’t been able to figure out why. It has been a painful time, knowing something is misaligned and yet not knowing what. These times have led me to face uncomfortable truths about my life and start examining facets of it that quite frankly I had not been willing to look at. The truth remains unconscious, until the pain of denial becomes stronger than the pain of facing up to it.

The AHA moment that I had on my immersive training is that I have been conning myself that if I have the right knowledge (after all I am the course junkie!) that I would succeed, and yet I had forgotten that you have to take responsibility to get your mindset, programming and influences right first. When we trip up, it’s usually because we jumped to the knowledge and action part before we have sorted out our mindset, subconscious programming and external influences first.

Once I realised this I was mad at myself until I remembered that of all the successful and abundant people I’ve met, many of them did go through tough times due to misalignment, before having an “aha” moment and breaking through.

So, my question for you today is where are you misaligned? Where are you experiencing any incongruence in your business or your life? I now know what has been holding me back, so expect to see some changes in my business over the next few weeks, as I get more aligned and congruent and stop doing what everyone tells me I should do rather than what feels right to me.

The horses are masters at alignment and sensing when your head, heart and gut are not aligned, so if you’d like them to act as your barometers to get you back on track just book in for a complimentary strategy session and we can get a session booked in for you.

Wishing you an amazing aligned and flow filled Wednesday.

How To Stand Out From The Crowd

How To Stand Out From The Crowd

by | Nov 2, 2016

I just love this photo I came across this week, as it so clearly demonstrates how to stand out from the crowd. We live in exponential times and the pace of technology is accelerating. Consumers are drowning in technology overload from emails to social media posts. At the same time business competition has never been fiercer and the challenge for all business owners is how to distinguish themselves in a crowded marketplace.

Welcome to the world of disruptive marketing. A world where innovation, creativity and out of the box thinking reign. A world where imperfect action is better than no action at all. A world where speed is of the essence and where organisations need to be agile to be able to respond On-The-Hoof to changes in the marketplace.

As Richard Branson notes: “Disruption is all about risk-taking, trusting your intuition, and rejecting the way things are supposed to be.”

Uber and Airbnb are two companies that between then have changed the face of hospitality and travel industry over the last couple of years by being disruptive. What is amazing is that neither company has any assets, but rather they have both created a platform to connect users to a service that didn’t exist before. In the case of Uber you can easily locate and book a taxi with a few clicks on your phone, whilst with Airbnb you can find quality accommodation to stay in when visiting virtually any location. For many the idea of staying a home, either on a shared basis, or alone, provides a refreshing alternative to traditional hotel accommodation solutions.

Here are five things you can do to make your business stand out from the crowd:

1) Be Authentic

Whatever we say people buy from people who they know, like and trust, so make sure your brand truly reflects who you are and your personality. This is an era where quirky is good. Share your vulnerabilities and stories so that people can really connect with you. Showing that you are not perfect can make you more likeable. Share your vision and why you are really in business. What impact you want to make. All the research shows that the more purpose driven your company is, and the more your customers relate to this, the more successful you will be.

2) Focus on the Customer Experience

The reason people will stop doing business with your company is because they have a bad experience, so focus on wowing your customers with great service. Get to know your customers so you can deliver them promotions customised to their needs. Make then feel special, and really get to understand their motive for buying from you and the solution you are solving for them. This customer feedback is gold dust and enables you to be able to shape your offering quickly and so stay on the innovative edge.

3) Stay Visible To Your Customers

One of the most common problems I come across with my clients is that they fail to stay visible with their customers. They assume that because the customer already knows what service they provide or has already brought from them that they will automatically remember them in the future. Incorrect. Customers are overloaded with marketing messages so unless you remain front of mind with them they can easily end up buying from your competitors – not necessarily because they intended to but rather your competitor happened to send them a promotion on the day they needed that service, so they took the easy option and used the solution that was right inf front of their nose. Combat this problem by providing your customers regularly with value added materials that they can use so that you stay front of mind.

4) Have Absolutely Clarity On Your Niche

Now I know many of my clients resist niching but the reality is you can’t serve everyone and if you do you are a generalist not a specialist and so you can’t command such high rates. You end up in a commodity bidding war for work and that is just not a great place to be. Just think about it. If you need heart surgery do you go to your GP or do you go to a heart specialist.? Who do you think would charge the most? It’s the same in business. It is actually easier for customers to purchase from you if they know you are the expert in X, and because they know you are the expert they are also willing to pay more for your services. So what could you become a real expert in? Getting clarity on this and then ensuring all your marketing collateral supports this will automatically help you stand out from the crowd.

5) Add Value In Ways That Might Not Be Obvious

Find innovative ways to make your product or service different and more luxurious from the others in the marketplace. Simple things you could do include sending gifts to customers on their birthday; packaging additional services together so for example if you are a hair dresser you could offer all your clients a glass of champagne with their haircut. One thing I do is send all my clients a picture of them with one of my horses after their Unbridled Success VIP Day. It gives the client an immediate reminder of the experience they had and helps them embody the learning as every time they look at the picture, they recall what they experienced. It also proves to be a great marketing promotion for me as they tend to show the picture to their friends and the photo has my website address on it so my business stays front of mind with them. It is simple add on’s like this that help retain customers, flood you with referrals and allow you to charge higher prices.

So how are you going to start standing out from the crowd.? I’d love to hear about the disruptive strategies you are using. And of course if you need any help just book in for a complimentary strategy session so I can help you decide on the way forward.

Wealth Creators Know How To Create LUCK

Wealth Creators Know How To Create LUCK

by | Oct 3, 2016

This week I have been thinking a lot about luck and why some people seem to have it and some don’t  Luck is the phenomena that Swiss Psychiatrist, Carl Jung, termed synchronicity and it is ultimately related to flow. So as your flow grows, so your luck grows and vice versa.  This is why it always seems that those that have a lot seem to get more.  They are in flow and luck is attracted to flow.  So how do you master how to create luck and flow. You focus on becoming a Wealth Creator by creating the conditions for success to occur.

The foundation of luck is built on four conditions namely Location, Understanding, Connections, Knowledge and great Wealth Creators know how to leverage these phenomena so that they are working for them rather than against them.

Location: luck comes with being in the right place at the right time.  The problem is that so many of us are busy and not paying attention to what is happening around us that we fail to find the opportunities to be in the right place at the right time.  It’s no coincidence that a football player like David Beckham always knew the right place to be in on the football pitch so he could get the ball and take the winning shot.  In business sometimes it means being at the right networking event at the right time.  I’ll never forget sitting next to someone at a conference who then turned out to become my best source of business bringing me two new corporate clients. That’s the power of synchronicity and being in the right place at the right time.

Understanding: luck comes from knowing the rules of the game so that when an opportunity presents itself you know how to respond. Too many people are spectators in the game of life and business. We observe what is happening around us but we don’t actively engage in the process. Take the football analogy again. The footballer might be in the right place at the right time but if they don’t realize that the aim of the game is to get the ball in the net they might not take the shot.  In business this might translate to not making the offer to a potential client to work with you.  When I met that potential client at the conference I knew that the rule of the game at that time was not asking for the business but rather building relationships. I did this over the following year and then in time the business referral resulted.

Connections: business is all about connections but many business owners that I work with have not invested in developing their wealth connections and so don’t have anyone sending them any referrals.  Expanding the football analogy again, you are on the pitch, you know you need to put the ball in the net but no-one is passing the ball to you. And the reason is there is no-one else on the pitch!!.. Great wealth creators have loads of people on the pitch with them passing them balls, so their opportunity to score is increased exponentially.  (Just a word of caution here. Connections are not the same as your network. Many of us have  big networks, but networks are full of spectators, not players, this is why you can have a great network but still have no opportunities coming your way!).

Knowledge:  just as there is no point in having the ball coming to you if you don’t know how to kick the ball, there is no point having opportunities come your way if you don’t know what to do with them.  Knowing how to act on opportunities comes with experience, so the more you play the more skillful you become. This is why it is imperative to get over the perfectionist syndrome and get in the game, as the sooner you start playing, the sooner you will gain the knowledge and so the sooner your luck will begin to flow.

Now the great thing is that we build these four conditions of success not by investing our money but rather by investing our time. The challenge is that so many of us have been so busy going to work trying to build our businesses that we have not invested any time in building our luck, and so we are no luckier today than we were five years ago.

Remember wealth isn’t about how much money you have, it’s about what you have left when you lose all your money.  Because so long as you have your talents and understand how to create luck then you can rebuild your wealth.

So what actions will you take today to start building your luck?.  As always I’d love you to share in the Facebook group.  And if you are free tomorrow join me at 10am for an in person masterclass on how to build your wealth connections.  Simply email me for more details.

The 7 Secrets to Entrepreneurial Success

The 7 Secrets to Entrepreneurial Success

by | Sep 25, 2016

There are seven secrets to entrepreneurial success that you must practice throughout your business life if you are to achieve maximum results. They have been taught and repeated in thousands of books and articles over the years, and I have summarised them here for you as they are such a great reminder of what to focus on.

1. Clarity: You must be absolutely clear on who you are and what you want. You need written goals and plans for every part of your life. As Zig Ziglar would say, you must become a “meaningful specific” rather than a “wandering generality.”

Begin with your values. What do you believe in and stand for? What is most important to you in life? What would you pay for, fight for, suffer for and die for?  What do you really care about? Someone once wrote, “Until you know exactly what you would do if you only had one hour left to live, you are not prepared to live.”

What is your vision for yourself and your future? What is your vision for your family and your finances? What is your vision for your career and your company? Peter Drucker once wrote, “Even if you are starting your business on a kitchen table, you must have a vision of becoming a world leader in your field, or you will probably never be successful.”

What is your mission for your business? What is it that you want to accomplish for your customers? What is it that you want to do to improve the lives and work of the people you intend to serve with your products and services? You need a clear vision and an inspiring mission to motivate yourself and others to do the hard work necessary to achieve business success.

What is your purpose for your life and your business? Why do you get up in the morning? What is your reason for being? And here’s a great question: What do you really want to do with your life?

Finally, what are your goals? What do you want to accomplish in your financial life? What are your family goals? What are your health goals? What difference do you want to make in the lives of others? And here is the best question: What would you dare to dream if you knew you could not fail?

The greater clarity you have regarding each of these issues–values, vision, mission, purpose and goals–the greater the probability that you will accomplish something wonderful with your life.

2. Competence: To be truly successful and happy, you must be very good at what you do. You must resolve to join the top 10 percent in your field. You must make excellent performance of the business task your primary goal and then dedicate all your energies to doing quality work and offering quality products and services.

To be successful in business, according to Jim Collins, author of Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap . . and Others Don’t, you must find a field that satisfies three requirements. First, it must be something for which you have a passion-something you really believe in and love to do. Second, it must be an area where you have the potential to be the best, to be better than 90 percent of the people in that field. Third, it must involve a product or service that can be profitable and enable you to achieve all your financial goals.

According to the Harvard Business School, the most valuable asset a company can develop is its reputation. Your reputation is defined as “how you are known to your customers.” And the most important reputation you can have revolves around the quality of the products and services you offer and the quality of the people who deliver those services and interact with those customers.

3. Constraints: Between you and your goal, whatever it is, there will always be a constraint or limiting factor. Your ability to identify the most important factor that determines the speed at which you achieve your business goals is essential to your success.

The 80/20 rule applies to constraints in your business. Fully 80 percent of the reasons that you are not achieving your goals as quickly as you want will be within yourself. Only 20 percent will be contained in external circumstances or people.

What are your constraints? What holds you back? What sets the speed at which you achieve your goals? And what one thing could you do immediately to begin alleviating your main constraint? This is often the key to rapid progress.

4. Creativity: The essence of successful business is innovation. This is the ability to find faster, better, cheaper, easier ways to produce and deliver your products and services.

Fortunately, almost everyone is a “potential genius.” You have more intelligence and ability than you could ever use. Your job is to unleash this creativity and focus it, like a laser beam, on removing obstacles, solving problems and achieving your goals.

The essence of creativity is contained in your ability to solve the inevitable problems and difficulties of business life. Colin Powell said, “Leadership is the ability to solve problems.” Success is the ability to solve problems. And remember: A goal unachieved is merely a problem unsolved.

The way of the successful entrepreneur is to focus on the solution rather than the problem. Focus on what is to be done rather than what has happened or who is to blame. Concentrate all your attention on finding a solution to any obstacle that is holding you back from the sales and profitability you desire. And the more you think about solutions, the more solutions you will think of. You will actually feel yourself getting smarter by focusing all your energies on what you can do to continually improve your situation.

5. Concentration: Your ability to concentrate single-mindedly on the most important thing and stay at it until it is complete is an essential prerequisite for success. No success is possible without the ability to practice sustained concentration on a single goal or task, in a single direction.

The simplest way to learn to concentrate is to make a list for each day before you begin. Then prioritize the list by putting the numbers 1 through 10 next to each item. Once you have determined your most important task, immediately begin to work on that task. Discipline yourself to continue working until that top task is 100 percent complete. When you make a habit of doing this–starting and completing your most important tasks each day–you will double or triple your productivity and put yourself solidly on the way to wealth.

6. Courage: Winston Churchill once wrote, “Courage is rightly considered the foremost of the virtues, for upon it, all others depend.” It takes tremendous courage to take the entrepreneurial risks necessary to become wealthy. In study after study, experts have concluded it is the courage to take the “first step” that makes all the difference. This is the courage to launch in the direction of your goals, with no guarantee of success. Most people lack this.

Once you have begun your entrepreneurial journey, you also need the courage to persist. As Ralph Waldo Emerson once said, “All great successes are the triumph of persistence.”

The word entrepreneur means “one who undertakes the risks of a new venture in pursuit of profit.” Fully 90 percent of the population will never have sufficient courage to launch a new venture, to start a new business, to boldly go where no one has gone before. You need, first of all, the courage to begin, to move out of your comfort zone in the direction of your goals and dreams, even though you know you will experience many problems, difficulties and temporary failures along the way.

Second, you need the courage to endure, to hang in there, to persist in the face of all adversity until you finally win. When you develop these twin qualities–the ability to step out in faith and then to persist resolutely in the face of all difficulties–your success is guaranteed.

7. Continuous Action: Perhaps the most outwardly identifiable quality of a successful person is that he or she is in continuous motion. The entrepreneur is always trying new things and, if they don’t work, trying something else. It turns out that most entrepreneurs achieve their success in an area completely different from what they had initially expected. But because they continually reacted and responded constructively to change, trying new methods, abandoning activities that didn’t work, picking themselves up after every defeat and trying once more, they eventually won out.

Top people, especially entrepreneurs, seem to have these three qualities. First, they learn more things. Second, they try more things. Third, they persist longer than anyone else. The good news is that, because of the law of probabilities, if you learn more things, try more things and persist longer, you dramatically increase the probability that you will succeed greatly. If you launch toward your goal and resolve in advance to never give up, your success is virtually guaranteed.

The Ultimate Reward

Jim Rohn once said, “The greatest reward in becoming a millionaire is not the amount of money that you earn. It is the kind of person that you have to become to become a millionaire in the first place.”

To have more, you must first be more. For you to set out on the way to wealth and become a self-made entrepreneurial millionaire, you will have to develop many qualities at a higher level than you ever have before. You will have to become an exceptional person. You will have to become more than you ever imagined possible for you.

To realize your full potential and achieve all your financial goals in your own business, you must develop the virtues of integrity, courage and persistence to a much higher level than you have up to now. You will have to practice the qualities of clarity, competence, creativity, concentration and continuous action until they are as natural to you as breathing. You will have to accept complete responsibility for your life and everything that happens to you, and especially for the way you think in every area.

When you develop these qualities and become a completely different person, you will eventually achieve all your goals in life, including financial success. The best part of becoming an extraordinary person is that, if something happens and you lose it all, it won’t really matter. Because you have become a different person, you will be able to make it all back again and more, far faster than the first time.

Welcome to The Way to Wealth. You are about to embark on a grand adventure that may last for the rest of your working lifetime. But if you have the courage to begin and the persistence to endure, nothing can hold you back from achieving all your goals and dreams. If you decide that, no matter what, you will never give up, you will eventually become unstoppable.

(Adapted from an article by Brian Tracy)

What Choices Are You Making?

What Choices Are You Making?

by | Sep 14, 2016

What choices are you making about your life?  Are you seeing life as wealth of opportunities or are you just seeing the challenges that lie ahead?  Are you a glass half full or half empty kind of person?

I’ve just spent last weekend at Roger Hamilton’s Fast Forward Your Business event where we were looking at the top ten trends that will be shaping business over the next few years.  As a Wealth Dynamics Creator, Roger is definitely always looking at the opportunities in business. It was so insightful to really get to grips with all the trends that will be impacting business and how technology will be changing our world and how we do business.

Potentially, one of the most challenging aspects for business owners, that Roger shared, is comprehending the speed of change. It is estimated that the speed of change in the next four years will be greater than than the speed of change in the last 20 years.

It was just 20 years ago the internet started to be used at work and team members started using email at work.  Mobile phones hadn’t been around long and portable computers (what we affectionately called lugables!!) were just emerging, but were really cumbersome and heavy.  So much has changed in the last 20 years and if this change is exponential over the next four then the world and business landscape will become unrecognisable.

Five years ago at the first Fast Forward Your Business Event I remember Roger sharing about the future trend of 3-d printing. At that time I recall thinking that it was never possible and yet today 3-d printers are being used to create houses and even limbs. The first 3-d house has been printed in China and 3-d printing is changing the way we do business and as a result making products more accessible.

Much of what I heard at that first event I thought was impossible and just pie in sky and yet much of it is now reality. Think electric cars and solar cities.  In April Elon Musk launched the Model 3 electric car and in one day secured 180,000 pre-orders worth USD$7.5 billion. Not bad for one day at the office!!!

The simple fact is that entrepreneurs like Elon Musk don’t see things as being impossible but rather they look at what is possible and see the opportunities all around them. A simple apostrophe is the difference been Impossible and I’m Possible. In business we can choose to see the challenges or we can harness the opportunities and ride the waves of success.

What choice will you make today in how you approach your business and life?

Are You Living A Life Of No Regrets?

Are You Living A Life Of No Regrets?

by | Aug 24, 2016

Are you living a life of no regrets? No seriously, are you. What do you have on your bucket list of things to do that you’ve been putting off either because of lack of time and/or resources? Maybe it’s a business idea that you haven’t pursued to its natural conclusion, maybe it’s a location you want to travel to or maybe it’s a hobby you haven’t taken up yet. All too often in life we put off things saying I’ll do that when I’m older, have more money etc and yet what happens if this time never arrives. I don’t want to go out of this world wishing there were things I had done, but failed to do because of fear, lack of resources or my failure to take action.

The phrase a life of no regrets is something I’ve coined from a mentor of mine Deri Llewellyn-Davies (aka The Strategy Man). Deri was inspired to live a life of no regrets after listening to the parting words of his father. Since that time Deri has been an adventurous daredevil climbing many of the words highest mountains. He was even on Mount Everest when the earthquake struck last year. You can listen to his incredible story in his TedEx talk F*** the Fear.

This year my own mortality has been brought sharply into focus as I’ve lost two good friends (very unexpectedly) and as my mum goes through cancer treatment again. My good friend Jacqs who terribly passed away after a car crash last weekend certainly lived life to the full. She was always the life and soul of the party and designed her life the way she wanted to – she lived life on her terms. I first met Jacqs when I was working at Andersen and she offered me a refuge when I split with my boyfriend. We had a wild time living together in London as she knew how to have fun. And it is Jacqs that I have to thank for my current business and lifestyle as she persuaded me to go on a ranching holiday with her back in 2000 and that re-ignited my passion for horses and then the eventual purchase of Toby my first horse.

Jacqs was committed to designing and living her life her way. After our time wrangling as cowgirls in Wyoming she decided she wanted to go and live in the US. Within a year she had managed to get her employer Deutsche Bank to transfer her to their New York office and she moved there just after 9/11. I’ll fondly remember that Christmas sitting in her New York apartment surrounded by packing boxes.

Then she decided she wanted to live in Montana. So blow me down that is what she does. She buys a property there and then persuades Deutsche Bank she can work remotely and in the process she gets promoted to Deutsche Bank’s Global Head of Supervisory Analysts. On paper you would never have imagined such a global firm would allow such a senior position to work remotely, let alone in Montana, and yet that is what happened. If she had allowed her logical brain to determine what was possible she might never had tried to make her dream come true. But Jacqs was resilient, steely, determined and tenacious and never had any doubt that this outcome was possible.

So what restrictions are you putting on your life? Where are you holding back and not doing what you want because you think it’s not possible. Jacqs is an example to us all that if you really desire something you can achieve it, however impossible it might initially seem.

Go forth and be the designer of your own life and share in the Facebook group what you want you life to be like, so that we can all support you on your journey.

Who Are You Surrounding Yourself With?

Who Are You Surrounding Yourself With?

by | Aug 17, 2016

Have you ever considered that your success is determined by the attitude of the people you spend the most time with?  Just think about that for a moment.  If you surround yourself with successful positive people it stands to reason that you too will gravitate to their level.

We have witnessed this phenomenon during the Olympics and none more so than on Sensational Sunday, when the UK won 5 gold medals.  The best result for the team in any Olympics held abroad.  What is even more amazing about the feat is that two of the gold medals occurred in gymnastics, a sport that the UK has never won a gold medal in before.

Over the last decade, led by Louis Smith, the sport has grown in popularity and attracted new talent in the shape of Max Whitlock – who went on to win two gold medals. Part of Whitlock’s success is in no small part to the trailblazing that Louis did for the sport and the fact that he won a silver medal in the 2012 Olympics and a bronze in the Beijing Olympics.

We’ve also witnessed similar success in the Velodrome where the success of an initial handful of riders has rubbed off on the team and at the time of writing this the UK has secured 4 gold medals and 3 silver medals in the cycling events. An incredible feat again considering that two decades ago the sport was barely visible in the UK.

I experienced my own mini-version of how surrounding yourself with successful people helps you up your game and become more successful when I was out running on Sunday.  At one point during my run a lady overtook me as I was coming down the hill near my house. She then proceeded to run past me continuing on the same track that I was planning on following. There was something about following her (or was I chasing her!) that helped me up my game and go much faster than usual.  The result was that I covered the longest distance I have ever done in 30 mins and not surprisingly in the fastest time.

Personally I was really amazed at the impact that her presence had had on me and how it had helped me improve my performance beyond what I thought I was capable of.  And that’s the power of surrounding yourself with people more successful than you.  They can help you achieve levels that you may have previously thought were impossible.  They encourage you to reach for the stars and be your best as they model what is possible.

So who are you surrounding yourself with?  Are they people that will help propel you and your business to the next level, or are they folks who are doubting you, putting you down and quashing your dreams.?  Recognising this is the first step in helping you change your environment to one that is more positive and supportive to your growth.

I really look forward to hearing about what changes you make as a result of reading this weeks Wednesday Wisdom.

The Law Of Cause and Effect

The Law Of Cause and Effect

by | Aug 10, 2016

This weeks Wednesday Wisdom has been inspired by David Neagle who mentors many of the world’s leading coaches. I first met David in Arizona two years ago when I heard him speak on how to break through your income glass ceiling. I was impacted by his straight talking and practical approach to business, yet with a very real understanding of the universal laws and how nature impacts all that we do.

This week David reminded me of the importance of Universal Law No 6 – The Law of Cause and Effect. In essence this law states that for every action there is a re-action or an impact, so if you are not getting the results that you want you need to examine what you are doing.  How are you causing the results you are getting.?

Specifically every effect you see in your outside or physical world has a very specific cause which has its origin in your inner or mental world. This is the essence of thought power. Every one of your thoughts, words or actions sets a specific effect in motion which will come to materialize over time. To become the master of your destiny, you must master your mind for everything in your reality is a mental creation. Know that there is nothing like chance or luck. They are simply terms used by humanity in ignorance of this Law.

Therefore, if you desire more income and that is not manifesting then maybe you are not taking enough action and you are not congruent in really wanting this.   Maybe you need to be having more sales conversations, meeting more people or writing more compelling sales copy etc.  The universe is always giving us feedback so it is important to listen to this and then review what is happening.

Be really honest with yourself at this point. Where are you holding yourself back and not fully engaging in the process?  What are you resisting doing that if you did would change the trajectory of your business. We all have areas of resistance, its only human.  Just acknowledge these and then in the words of Susan Jeffers “feel the fear and do it anyway”.  It is through accurate action that you impress your desire on The Universe so that it can provide what you desire.

My horses are great levelers at providing me with feedback and again this week eloquently demonstrated the law of cause and effect working.  Recently I have been spending a few days a week in London with a client, and so the horses have not been getting as much time from me as usual.  They are clearly unimpressed and so have been re-dressing the situation by getting in all kinds of scrapes resulting in some minor injuries and breaking through the electric tape in the field.  Of course when these things happen I am forced to spend more time with them treating their ailments and re-fencing the field.

The great thing is that I now know when they feel they need some more TLC and so can adjust my schedule to  provide them what they need.  This is why I spent all Saturday with them. It was a lovely day, very relaxing which is also what I needed.

So this weeks question is how is the law of cause and effect impacting your results. What do you need to do differently and what do you need to embrace in order to get the real outcome that you truly desire?.  As always let me know in the Facebook group.

Until next time I wish you amazing Unbridled Success in all you do

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