At some point in everyone’s life, they will come across obstacles. Many people are not prepared for these obstacles, and it causes them to stumble. But when you discover that obstacles can be opportunities, then you will be better prepared to handle them.
Many people are plagued with alcohol addiction. Some will come to terms with it and seek out help for their situation. It is not easy for them, but when they are on the road to recovery they can use their experience to help others.
Sometimes it can be as simple as being there for those who are still struggling. Other times, these people will hold seminars about their experiences in the hope that others will see they are not alone.
When we come across obstacles, we are often tempted to wish they would just go away. This seldom works as we usually need to take action to overcome obstacles.
Simply ignoring your problems thinking they will somehow manage to solve themselves will only make your situation worse. The good news is, in many cases, when you come up with a plan for your obstacles you will find they can be overcome.
You will be amazed at how many people settle for these obstacles and do nothing about them; perhaps they use them as an excuse for the way their lives are headed.
But realise that you don’t have to tackle them alone; in fact, you are always better off doing this as part of a team.
Join groups where people have dealt with the same obstacles you are dealing with. They can offer suggestions or point you to the right programs or solutions.
What you don’t want to do is to join these groups in the hope they will solve your problems for you. These groups can also help you make new friends and even establish future connections or professional endeavors.
Another opportunity in obstacles is the strength that you obtain during the process of solving them. You will learn a lot about yourself during this trying time. It may be worth you documenting what you are going through and this could form the basis for a book that could be used to help others.
You can bet that there are others in a similar situation to yours, s if you have found a way to overcome a particular obstacle, don’t you think that others would want that information too?
When you find other people who are looking for a solution, you have the opportunity for a business or venture.
People are willing to pay to solve a problem or at least reduce its impact.
When you solve that problem for them, they often tell others who are experiencing the same problem, so the venture feeds on itself. This makes your solution an easy sell.
Talking of obstacles, do you think that age is an obstacle nowadays? It may have been in the past but what about now? Well, let’s take a look at that…
Kids spend a good part of their childhood wanting to be older. They are proud of reaching certain milestones like age 10 and then age 16, etc. Parents try to encourage them not to rush their lives as they know life goes much quicker and seemingly so the older you get.
And there is an obstacle for people who are under 25. It’s harder to get a loan without someone cosigning, and insurance on automobiles is quite expensive for this age group. Rental car companies usually don’t even rent to them until they reach 25 years of age.
But, eventually, they reach the age where they don’t have restrictions anymore. That is until they start approaching their 50’s. It seems companies don’t want to hang onto these aging employees. This is because they can find someone younger for much cheaper.
While companies are not supposed to discriminate based on age, it’s quite easy to find other reasons not to hire these people.
This is narrow-minded on the part of companies. Many of these aging employees hold years of experience and knowledge. While generally, their younger counterparts are cheaper, it will take them years to gain the experience and knowledge of the older employees.
Another problem is people are living longer and many are not willing to retire at age 65, or whatever limit is set by governments. They have a lot to offer and they like the challenge of working. It is supposedly healthier for their minds to keep active as well.
Some companies will offer early retirement packages to people of a certain age. While these packages are not as lucrative as they used to be, it is still generally a wise idea to take them when offered. If you don’t it is likely you will be cut eventually anyway, with no package to rely on.
In many instances, this early retirement policy causes gaps in the business, and they end up hiring the same employees back as consultants. This may seem like a waste but it’s important to remember that consultants don’t add to the headcount and can be let go at a moment’s notice.
One solution is to keep on a group of aging employees as trainers and mentors. They have much to offer in the way of knowledge transfer and they can be a great benefit to the company when new hires are added to the payroll. They can help new employees get up to speed quickly by showing them the ropes as they have already been there and done it!
Whatever you want in life will require discipline to achieve and overcoming obstacles is a small part of this. But if you want to know more about harnessing the power of self-discipline, then check out the featured resource below for a free detailed report; download, read it and take action 🙂
If you’re creatively inclined, then you probably enjoy most of your time coming up with ideas, but you’re likely less intrigued by the serious business side that requires a lot of focus and monotonous work.
Any creative projects require these aspects to become full-fledged products or ideas, as annoying as it may seem. Don’t panic when it comes time to set aside your creativity, because you will get back to it.
Instead, just focus on your intentions with the creative idea and work to bring it to reality. While ideas certainly have merit, they’re not particularly useful if they’re never put into action.
Often times, putting them into action can be a tedious process, but it becomes worth it to see your creative endeavor brought to life, able to accomplish the goals that you had in mind when you thought of it in the first place.
For example, if you came up with a great infographic to inform people about a topic that you’re passionate about, it wouldn’t get very far as a simple idea or rough draft. A completed product that was shared and spread online would be able to actually inform others and spread your knowledge, but it’s going to take work.
You’re going to have to do research and cite sources, make it look nice, and go through the work of getting it to be spread and shared around. These are tedious things, but since your intent was to spread knowledge to begin with, it makes it worth your effort.
You might also want to create something with the intent of generating some income for yourself. It might be something like designing logos for up and coming companies or making physical products that people can buy on websites like Etsy.
The thought process is fun when you get to utilize your creativity, but then comes the actual process of bringing it to reality. Gathering materials, stocking your inventory, shipping purchases – all of these things can be a hassle.
Regardless of whether or not it’s a pain for you to do, your intention was to make money. The only way for you to do that is to give them an actual product. Very seldom will people pay good money for the concept of something that they’ll have to actually create themselves.
Instead, they’re more interested in purchasing a completed product, something that they don’t have to put any more work into. That’s where your effort to backburner your creativity comes in handy.
While technology and all of the gadgets we have today are certainly useful and can help you work more efficiently, they may also be dragging down your creativity and focus.
Whether it be a ton of distractions on all your devices or the fact that you might be using them as a crutch, they can sometimes do more harm than good for your creative flow and ability to focus.
In these situations, it’s best to put all of the tech down and just focus with the bare essentials. It’s almost like a palate cleanser. While you spend hours and hours writing on Word documents or drawing pictures in Photoshop, you can just as well get it done with a good old fashioned pen and paper.
It might not be as efficient, but it helps in ways that you might not anticipate. The best thing to do when attempting this is to separate yourself from as much technology as possible.
Otherwise, you shouldn’t be listening to music or watching anything, and preferably it’s somewhere outside where you can really absorb the sights and sounds of nature. When you don’t have the distractions of technology, from constant alerts to easily accessible entertainment, you might find that you’re able to be much more focused.
You’re there with only your own work to do, and otherwise you have nothing to really focus on. If you’re having trouble focusing, this might be a great way to get you back on track.
In terms of creativity, technology is very helpful, but it can start to become more of a crutch than a tool. If you know that you can always reference random guides online and draw inspiration from all kinds of other designs, then you may start to lose your creative edge.
By isolating yourself from all of that, you’ll be able to use your own pure creativity to create something entirely unique, without the reliance on all kinds of other sources. You should always look at technology as a tool – a means to an end.
It’s an amazing tool that you can and should take advantage of, but sooner or later, you’re going to reach a point where you’re becoming overly dependent on it, at which point you need to take a break and reassess.
Productivity is often stressed above all else in businesses today. It’s the best way to put out product after product, which typically results in the highest profit yield. However, productivity isn’t everything.
You need to be able to put out something that you’re proud of, something original and creative, and too much focus on productivity may stifle that, leading to some rather negative consequences.
There are many companies that would rather put out as many products as possible instead of making high quality products a priority. There’s a balance to be found between the two.
You obviously can’t release just one small product every year, but you also can’t be rushing so quickly that you’re not putting enough effort into things. Once you start to rush through your projects without care, you’ll start to slip.
If they’re used to receiving quality products from you, ones that are made with much love and care, they’ll be pretty sour once they start receiving a ton of mediocre work.
At that point, word may start to spread, and you can actually end up losing business. Creativity takes time. That is a fundamental part of business – it doesn’t just come out of thin air.
It takes time and care for you to develop an idea fully and to polish it to near perfection. You can’t take all the time in the world to get it done, since you naturally have certain deadlines to meet, but you can put a bit of extra time and effort into it to get it just as you’d like, to make something you’re proud of.
Extended periods of time spent pumping out as much as you can without any true creative input can actually hurt you in the long run as well. It might get you some short term sales, but it’ll start to fall off.
Creativity is like a muscle. It needs to be exercised frequently in order to grow and develop as well as stay healthy. If you’re not spending some time honing your creativity over a certain amount of time, it will start to degrade.
Eventually, you’ll be left without the same degree of creativity that you had before, and it can be difficult to get back into your flow when you need it. Instead of focusing on pure quantity, make sure you’re actually putting some heart and effort into the things you produce.
Well, as I’m sure you can appreciate, there is a lot more to be learnt about increasing focus and productivity; far more than can be covered in this short post, but if you’d like to know more about this, then click on the featured resource below where you can pick up a free report, Stay Focused For Success, that covers this topic in more detail. Download, read it and take action 😊
We all have a hundred different ideas that we feel could be a smashing success in our industry.
Whether it be the idea for a new product or service, there’s more ideas than there is time.
This is where you need to learn to reign in all of those ideas you have and construct an action plan that not only fleshes those ideas out so you can weed out the likely winners from the duds, but it will help you focus on boosting productivity.
Why do you need to do this?
Because it’s been proven that the human brain can’t focus on more than one thing at a time.
When we try to divide our attention, we end up scattered. Our quality also suffers. While learning to multi-task may seem like a great idea, narrowing your focus so that you’re tackling one task at a time will always produce better results.
So, what can you do when you have more ideas to grow your business than you have time for?
Begin by jotting down the top ideas that come to mind. Don’t write summaries or get carried away with hashing out the details. Instead, write down titles for each idea.
Then, tear them apart, one-by-one. Be realistic with your expectations and the time you have to spend on each project. Think about your core audience and what they’d be most interested in.
Create a priority list based on all the ideas you have. Again, keep your audience in mind because the ideas you have may not align with what your market is actively looking for.
Otherwise, you’ll spend more time thinking about and analyzing ideas, versus bringing those ideas to life.
A project management system is a great tool when it comes to not only fleshing out potential ideas but in staying on track with the projects you’re working on.
Day-to-day operations can be exhausting to keep track of. With a system in place that makes it easy for you to assign value to projects, allocate time and be able to generate a quick snapshot at where you are during each project will make it easier to stay focused on your end goals.
There are countless project management tools available to you including Asana and Basecamp.
You can easily create schedules using Google Calendar found here:
https://gsuite.google.com/learning-center/tips/calendar
By now you probably realise that there are different ways you can improve focus and subsequently, increase productivity and quality output and I have covered a number of them in this and other blog posts.
And now I want to give you a few more tips and strategies that I hope will help you. You can never have enough ways to boost your productivity, right?
Previously I have mentioned the importance of narrowing your focus down to one main goal at a time since it’s been proven that our brain responds better when we are working on one project at a time, rather than attempting to multi-task.
Use project management tools such as Asana or Basecamp to help you stay on track.
What projects aren’t panning out? What do you feel is less likely to be a success?
What tasks could be wiped off the to-do list? Take a step back and evaluate the things you’re spending your time on, staying on the lookout for ways to free up your time and improve your focus.
This is an important one when it comes to staying focused. If you’re finding yourself burned out working on tasks that you are simply not interested in, chances are the quality of your projects won’t be up to par.
Instead, learn to delegate the tasks that you don’t personally enjoy. Not only will you be able to increase output, but you’ll be able to provide a higher level of quality to your customer base by turning to the experts.
Struggling to complete a task because you lost focus?
And finally…
We all struggle with focusing on tasks, especially repetitive or mundane ones. Even the most organized of us all has those moments where no matter what we do to try to refocus on our goals, it feels as though we’ll never get ahead.
So cut yourself some slack when this happens. Acknowledge the fact that you can only do so much. Sometimes taking a step back and giving ourselves permission to simply take a creative break is enough to boost productivity and re-focus on the bigger picture.
Here are some steps to take that may help you with that:
Well, as I’m sure you can appreciate, there is a lot more to be learnt about increasing focus and productivity; far more than can be covered in this short post, but if you’d like to know more about this, then click on the featured resource below where you can pick up a free report, Stay Focused For Success, that covers this topic in more detail. Download, read it and take action 😊
A lot of people claim they know the secret to success. They will claim it is motivation, ambitiousness, positivity, conscientiousness and all sorts of other abstract nouns.
However they are missing the true vital ingredient, the real key that will get you started on the road to success to begin with: desire.
It is obvious really, but if you are going to be successful in any area of your life then you need to want to be successful. It does not matter how hard working you are, how much time you spend at work, but if you do not particularly want to climb to the top it just will not happen.
Anything along these lines is a competition essentially, and if you do not truly desire success then you’ll still be going against a whole lot of people who do.
And the more you desire something the more you’ll work to get it. And as you do you’ll find that you subconsciously even help to navigate through the mire of challenges and that the world just kind of steps out of the way.
Of course not all desire will work. Firstly your desire needs to be realistic, and secondly your desire needs to be concrete. A desire to fly for example probably is only going to end with disappointment unless you are from Krypton, and a desire to ‘be more successful’ is an abstract aim that’s really quite subjective.
Some people though do not seem to have any desire at all however, and these people can be quite aimless in their lives. They aren’t going to progress because they do not know how they want to progress and they do not know what they want from life. The thing is though, everyone has something they want, it is just a matter of finding out what it is.
Maybe you have got a big house and kids, or a small house and great artistic job, or you are a movie star, or a high flying businessman. Now you know what your desires are, write them down and break them down into smaller steps and priorities. Suddenly you have direction and motivation. So, you can now see the power of changing your mindset, so let’s look at 5 ways you can grow a positive mindset…
Want to start changing your life? Then you need to change yourself. You are in the position you’re in right now because you chose to be there.
You might not realize that you chose it but even through your inaction, you in fact did. The job you have right now, your financial circumstances and nearly every other aspect of your life is a matter of choice – and if you wanted to, you could go out there and change everything today. You just need to take action!
But if you really want to make a change and you want to start by changing your fixed mindset, how do you know where to start? What is it you need to change in order to achieve a growth mindset? Here are five top tips that will help make that transformation much easier…
Most of us have a clear idea of what success means but this is an idea that we have inherited from our schools and our parents.
In order to be truly successful, you need to find your own path and that is going to mean forgetting what others think and finding what makes you happy.
Learning to take risks is a difficult step but if you’re going to achieve the things you really want in life, you need to take the leap sometimes.
Learn to take measured, calculated risks.
And the key is that they are calculated risks; don’t become overzealous when risk taking, but you need to be less cautions.
You know what they say “Nothing ventured, nothing gained.”
Taking risks means being prepared to fail. In this instance, you need to learn how to manage failure and take it on the chin. Pick up the pieces and go again for round two!
Try reframing failure as a learning process and always “fail forward” on your way to success.
Sometimes success doesn’t come in the form we expect. Sometimes we don’t know what we need to be happy.
That’s why it can be useful to break down our dreams to their essence. What is it about that idea that appeals to you and what’s the easiest way to get there?
Some people will call this finding your reason why, but no matter what you call it, you need to find it.
By the way, if you want to know more about this, take a look at this great training here: Finding Your Why
Knowing how important that passion is to you, you now need to invest in yourself and be willing to spend both time and money on everything from your appearance to your skill set.
There is no better investment that investing in you!
Changing the way you think requires self discipline and if you want to know more about harnessing the power of self discipline, check out the featured resource below for a free report; download, read it and take action 🙂
Think back to the last time you had a surge of motivation. Try to remember how it made you feel. What was going through your mind then? If you can’t remember, that’s okay. Just be ready for it when it happens again. If you do remember or find it’s happening again, considering recording your thought processes in a journal.
Sometimes, when you can jar your memory on how you got motivated or stayed motivated, you can reproduce that again. If you record your feelings and actions in a journal, you can simply refer to the journal anytime you need to get that back.
Consider using an actual paper journal rather than recording online. Documents tend to get lost online, and people often forget. With a physical journal in front of you, it will show itself at every moment.
This way when you need that push, you can simply open up the journal and start reading. However, if you feel that you can make it work with an online journal, go for it.
You can also record motivational tips from others into your journal that you find. This gives you more to draw from when you have a need to motivate. Sometimes, these tips can happen in the strangest places, so make sure you have a way of capturing if you don’t have your journal with you for some reason.
Another benefit to keeping a journal about your motivations is you could eventually turn it into a book and sell it. Self-help and motivation is a huge topic for both eBooks and courses.
Also, the fact that you are drawing from true situations that you experience will go a long way when producing your book. People love true stories about motivation.
Don’t worry about what you write in your journal. The key is to keep consistent with it. If you write something that doesn’t make sense or is silly, either disregard it or remove it from your journal.
When you find a job, you try to do your best work for your employer. Assuming you work for a decent company, they will recognize you for performing well. If you’re lucky, you may even get a raise and a promotion. If you are good at your job, why don’t you start working for yourself and reap the rewards?
People who start their own business often find they are less motivated when the rubber meets the road. In theory, it sounds great to be your own boss. But, the reality sets in, and you now have to handle every aspect of your business. This is something you didn’t have to do when working for someone else.
It’s much easier to do what others say than it is to motivate yourself to run your business. First, we are not born with business acumen. We need to learn how to run a business, and we need to find people willing to pay us for our products and services. Even when we do learn these crucial concepts, there’s no guarantee that we’ll succeed with them.
The manager or boss took responsibility to know what needs to get done and hands out assignments accordingly. The manager is also taking on problems that you may run into and deals with other outside entities, so you don’t have to.
When you run things for yourself, you have none of those working for you. It’s all incumbent upon you to take care of everything. Even if you hire others, you are now the boss. There is no longer any buffer. You are it.
Hiring people can still be a great way to take some of the responsibilities off of your plate. For instance, if you don’t have time to bring in new business, hire a good salesperson or team. Pay them well and let them take on this task.
If you can’t deal with billing, hire someone for this task as well. There are third-party services that you can use, so you don’t have to increase your staff count.
This is not meant to discourage you from branching out on your own. You just have to be aware that it’s a whole different arrangement than when you worked for someone else.
The news is always harping on about tax breaks or other incentives given to businesses to attract or keep them in a town, state or country.
These stories often present the dark side of incentives. It shows the evil giant corporation taking advantage of the state incentives. There is some truth to this, but without those incentives, those businesses will look elsewhere.
These businesses often get criticized for not being good corporate citizens in the areas where they get the incentives. They use up the resources of the community while giving little or nothing back.
The idea behind incentives is certainly a good one. Encourage businesses to build or update the business in exchange for tax breaks, tax credits, or some other benefit. This does motivate businesses to come or stay in that area. But, it is often a one-sided deal with the business driving the process. When this happens, the business gets to dictate the terms. This is why hiring tends to be less than they promised and community development from the business falls by the wayside.
Governments also like to save corporations when they get into trouble. Essentially, they throw money at the company in the hope that it will somehow magically start being profitable again. Money doesn’t help bad companies. It only prolongs the inevitable.
Some may argue that even if companies don’t hire the number of people they promised, at least they are hiring. There is some truth to this, but it’s at a cost to the taxpayer. Are the fewer number of employees going to generate enough economic benefit to make the incentives worthwhile?
It’s clear that businesses will be motivated to find the best incentives to set up shop. On the surface, it seems like it makes sense. However, what typically transpires is that it never works as well for the community as it was supposed to.
In the 1980’s, several Japanese companies set up business in the United States. Many of them refused to take the tax incentives at the time. They felt that the community needed the money and that the company is a member of the community.
As you can appreciate, changing the way you think can have a huge impact on your life, and if you want to know more about developing an inspirational mindset for success, please click on the featured resource below for a free Strong Mindset report; download, read it and take action 😊
