IMPROVE YOUR LIFE

What are Your Boulders, Pebbles and Sand?

Admin — Mon, 16 Aug 2010 23:54:37 +0000

What are your sand, pebbles and boulders? This may sound like a perplexing question yet that very concept had a significant impact on a number of people earlier this month when I presented Excuse Free Success: Winning by Losing! to a group of entrepreneurs. Boulders refer to what is most …

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What are Your Boulders, Pebbles and Sand?

What is Personal Development All About?

Admin — Fri, 13 Aug 2010 15:24:00 +0000

I sometimes get very frustrated (it doesn’t last long!) when I see the extent to which Personal Development is hijacked by people whose sole focus is on money. Go on, Google ‘Personal Development’ – the number of sites that talk about becoming a millionaire, trebling your income, achieving …

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What is Personal Development All About?

Personal Development and the Normal Mind

Admin — Wed, 11 Aug 2010 03:24:27 +0000

Nothing is more frustrating than trying to better yourself and being constantly beaten backwards. Embarking on the adventure of personal development can sometimes seem similar to trying to scale Mount Everest and finding that, every time you make a little progress, you suddenly start sliding …

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Personal Development and the Normal Mind

Simply Happy!

Steve Pavlina — Sun, 08 Aug 2010 07:01:55 +0000

The purpose of life is to be happy – so says the Dalai Lama. Jesus Christ said something similar when he said that he came so that ‘you might have life and have it to the full’. Unfortunately, however, having worked in the field of personal development for more than fourteen years, I have …

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Simply Happy!

How the Power of Passion Breeds Success

Admin — Wed, 04 Aug 2010 14:01:04 +0000

The power of passion is an amazing thing that can propel you to great heights if used correctly. Most of us associate this emotion with how we may feel to another, however it is also the ‘force’ behind many a person’s great success. This emotion can and will increase both your patience and your …

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How the Power of Passion Breeds Success

Self Improvement? No Need!

Steve Pavlina — Sun, 01 Aug 2010 02:30:06 +0000

You don’t need self improvement. You’re perfect all ready – you just need to realize it. Some aficionados of personal development might call the process ‘self-realization’ – a big word (two actually) for something that is within every single person’s reach. There’s little pointing in …

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Self Improvement? No Need!

Get Through That To-Do List!

Admin — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 10:05:12 +0000

Being a small business owner or a solopreneur can sometimes mean an endless list of things ‘to-do’ – either things to market your business, grow your business, manage your business or even just run it.

If you’re like me, you probably have put yourself and your business to the bottom of your own to-do list more than once.

I recently made the decision to put myself right at the top of my list, and that has meant making many changes in the way I do things … just to keep myself accountable for the things I need to do to keep myself up there at the top of my own list. After all, how can I help my clients manage and grow their businesses if I am not managing and growing my own business?

So I got wise and started treating myself like my own client. It’s important to set yourself up for success, and to put a plan in place to help you get it done. Here are a few tips that I am using. I hope you will find them useful for you as well!

1. Make a master list – put together a ‘laundry list’ of each thing you need to do. Don’t leave anything out. If there is more than one component to any single piece, break it down on your list. (ie instead of ‘redo website’, indicate the smaller parts of what you want to do, and use THOSE as your to-do items … do you really need to rewrite all of your content just to add testimonials? probably not. Break it all apart!)

2. Prioritize your list – score each major item on your list from most important or urgent to least important. Do the same for any subtasks. Be realistic here. Make sure that you are prioritizing by what really needs to be done, instead of what you think might be easy or fast to do.

3. Get out your calendar – Set realistic deadlines for each project by checking your calendar. Don’t be too ambitious, but try to get into the routine of doing something small every couple of days to keep your momentum going. And remember as well, that if you have something large like ‘clean out email folders’ on your list, you may want to set several shorter deadlines to manage the task, and then have a final deadline for when you want to have it all finished.

4. Schedule it – On your calendar, write down the things you need to do each day. You can do this on a paper calendar or on a Google calendar, wherever it makes sense for you (I have mine in both!). Aim for 15 to 20 minutes of work per day. Any more than that, and you might be overscheduling yourself. It will be a big chore instead of just a quick task which is manageable.

5. Hold yourself accountable – Make sure you have someone who will help you stay on track with your goals and deadlines. I have my VA, but you can have an accountability partner, a spouse, a friend, anyone at all that you can check in with. Hold yourself accountable too. Check off the things you do when you are finished. It feels so good to cross an item off of a to-do list! I know!

If you set yourself up right, you will find that doing things a little at a time is much more manageable than trying to ‘take all day Saturday to clean up my computer filing system’. How daunting! Who wants to do that? But if you break it down, to maybe one folder at a time … and you do it for just a few minutes … you will find that you will get things done much more quickly, and you will actually enjoy doing it!

Setting deadlines for yourself is just a smart thing to do too. If by the end of the week you haven’t made all of your deadlines, you know you have tried to do too much. Look at your calendar and make some revisions to it – keep at it and if you have to push something back, do it in a realistic manner as well.

The key is to try to do a little something every single day. Pick your time of day and then just schedule a task into your work day. By managing things on a daily basis, you will soon find you are looking forward to working on your own to-do list, and you will be getting a lot more done!

Author’s Bio

Tracey D’Aviero is a successful Virtual Assistant as well as a VA coach and mentor. She helps new and aspiring Virtual Assistants build solid foundations for their businesses by teaching them how to put procedures and plans in place for success and growth. Pick up a copy of Tracey’s free ebook “3 Way To Get The Clients You Want!” at www.yourvamentor.com

How to Attract Happiness

Admin — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 07:41:52 +0000

I wonder whether you noticed an article by the columnist David Brooks in the New York Times entitled the “Sandra Bullock Trade”. It certainly caught my eye as it focuses upon the interactions between personal and professional success with levels of happiness. Over the last few decades much …

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How to Attract Happiness

7 Goal Setting Steps To Success

Admin — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 13:12:29 +0000

The three keys to living without limits have always been the same. They are clarity, competence, and concentration. Goal setting will help you live without limits. Learning how to set goals is an art. Learn why setting goals is a necessity. Here are 7 Must-have conditions to set goals.

1. State your goal in positive terms.

People often set a goal in terms of what they don’t want! “I don’t want to smoke, to be angry…” It’s “what I want to do or want to be” See the difference? Hear the nuance? Are you ready to state positively every goal you want to achieve?

2. Make sure the goal can be self-initiated and maintained The goal doesn’t depend on the attitude of your neighbor, on the behavior of your wife or family. The success of your goal must depend on you, and you alone.

3. Your goal must be sensory specific

Here comes the importance of clarity. The clearer the picture, the more compelling and the more attractive it is, the greater the drive to reach your final destination. Act as if the goal is already achieved. Make a very clear image, in rich details, and you will be so enthusiastic that you will automatically attract the solution.

4. State the context of the goal.

“Where and when will my goal be achieved?” The answer can be obvious for some goals but not at all for others. Try to be as specific as possible.

5. Run a Quality Control check on the goal to ensure balance in all areas of your home/work life.

Above all, you don’t want to lose your balance. When you run this ‘Quality Control Check”, you play a win-win strategy. Everything is one system and the whole system must win. You will find peace of mind in knowing that you are in harmony with the system. Step back and look at all areas of your life. Is your goal worth it?

6. State the resources needed to achieve the goal: what is the price to pay?

There is always a price to pay, for everything. There is always some kind of sacrifice to make when you set a worthy goal. In this step, you will define all that you will need, in terms of time, money and energy.

7. State the value and the consistency of the goal.

Why do I want to reach this goal? Why is it important to me? Is this goal in harmony with my vision, beliefs and values? Answer these questions. If you don’t seem to be satisfied with the answers, maybe you should change your goal. Set a new goal until you feel it is in harmony with your passion, vision or mission.

When you properly set a goal with this model, two important things occur. First, you are in total harmony with your vision, belief and value systems because your entire “You” agrees and offers no resistance. Second, you are programmed to succeed. Indeed, your very (whole) neurology and physiology are both instructed to drive you towards obtaining your desired goal. You’re totally focused.

Again, The three keys to living without limits have always been the same. They are clarity, competence, and concentration. When you set crystal clear goals, and you respect the 7 must-have conditions, you can literally live without limits, can’t you?

Taking Responsibility – Self Improvement Bootcamp: Day 1

Admin — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 11:01:56 +0000

http://www.youtube.com/v/l5OayJ5PU60?f=videos&app=youtube_gdata

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Taking Responsibility – Self Improvement Bootcamp: Day 1

www.selfgrowth.com This bootcamp is designed to help you gain insight into who you are, and help you determine the best approach to improve your life. Day one covers the importance of taking responsibility. We need to start accepting 100% responsibility for what happens in our life, and know that we have the power to take control of many aspects of our life. Awareness is also critical. We need to make an extra effort to be aware when we are blaming others. This awareness alone will enable us to take greater responsibility. http