How to Reprogram Your Brain ( Tony Robbins Mindset )

Check out this mindset mastery from Tony Robbins

Self-Worth And How It Impacts Your Achievement Level…

Your perception of your own self-worth can affect every aspect of your life, from your business to your personal relationships, and even your relationship with yourself.

You might feel that you are lacking confidence, when you do not honor or recognize where you do already have great self-worth. And the perception that you are lacking self-worth can dishearten or debilitate you at times.

Your self-worth, or calm state of certainty, will spontaneously emerge the moment your goals, intentions and actions are congruent with your highest priorities or values. Any degree of incongruence between your goals and your highest values can be the major downfall to maintaining an empowered state.

“When you are congruent and confident you will walk your talk, not limp your life.”
When you set congruent goals you become spontaneously inspired from within to achieve and fulfill your innermost dominant intentions. You become more disciplined, reliable and focused. Then your self-worth will rise while your space and time horizons expand.

Self-worth arises when you have a balanced perception of yourself, your abilities and your situations.

Your key to self-confidence is your congruency of speech, body language and action.

Personality attributes that reflect confidence include poise, an ordered mind, power, presence, certainty of vision, purposefulness and patience. All of these will reflect congruency with your highest values.

What can diminish your self-confidence?

Incongruence between your goals and objectives, and your highest priorities or values can diminish your self-confidence.

You see opportunities and make decisions to what you feel will give you the greatest advantage over disadvantage. You act according to what you feel will fulfill your highest values.

When you set unrealistic expectations that do not align with your highest values, your goals will probably remain unmet and unfulfilled. And this will erode your self-worth!

Remember – not everybody who acts confident is actually feeling only that way. An outward display or exaggeration of confidence is often a cover-up for a lowered self-confidence. This incongruence will eventually be recognized. The very façade that brings the rise will serve the fall.

It is wiser to be centered in between.

Areas of high and low self-worth

You have areas of high and low self-confidence, depending on where your priorities, or highest and lowest values lie. Perhaps you are confident in your career, but when it comes to training at the gym, you are quite shy.

Any time that you attempt to excel in an area that is not truly highest in your values, you will lower your self-esteem. When you live according to your lower values you will tend to procrastinate, hesitate and frustrate yourself to do actions that are not important to you. You have another area in your life where you excel, and in this area you will be congruent.

The great news is that self-worth can be awakened.

Your confidence will build momentum as long as you keep your goals in line with your highest values. Whenever you feel a greater self-worth, you will awaken your innate or natural inborn capacities

.

So, what do you need to do to awaken an empowered self-worth?

• Set realistic expectations, goals and objectives that are truly aligned with your highest values.

• Take large projects and break them down into smaller and more manageable pieces. Then tackle them one at a time.

Live your own life and do not attempt to live by someone else’s priorities or values to awaken self-confidence.

Always remember: consistent little actions can lead to big dreams!

Source: https://drdemartini.com/blog/self-worth-achievement-level/

3 WAYS TO START ACCOMPLISHING YOUR GOALS

By Gary Vaynerchuk

If you want to start accomplishing your goals you need to understand that your reputation, a.k.a your “personal brand,” is what you trade from in your personal and professional life.

As I take a moment to reflect, and think about how my profile has expanded dramatically on Instagram, YouTube and iTunes through my Podcast and Playlist over the last 15 months, I have begun to see my audience and the attention that I have on social media shifting significantly younger.

As I realize that I am now impacting more 12-22 year-olds through the content that I produce, I am well aware that there’s a real opportunity to lay the foundation and set the blueprint on things like positivity, empathy, kindness, hard work, gratitude and more. My hope is to use the attention I have been gifted with to try to break through to at least one person on every single post, every single day for the rest of my life. That’s what I want. Hopefully, that will be my legacy.

As I continue to study consumer attention and try to reverse engineer what people care about in culture and why, I have started to notice an enormous amount of stress, anxiety, and misunderstanding for a lot of these 15 to 25-year-olds as they try to navigate the next chapter of their lives. On a phone call to a member of #FirstinLine I was able to create and articulate some of my points of view on specific pillars I think that everyone should be thinking more about when it comes to considering the traditional pathways to “success.”

As most people’s stress and anxiety in life stems from where they will potentially work or spend the majority of their adult life, trying to pay the bills and support themselves or their family, a lot of this advice centers around the traditional pathways of “getting a job.” Obviously, there are a million ways you could go about doing that beyond the standard 9-5 route but for many this is still a concern.

For those of you that might not know, I’ve written two books, Crush It and Crushing It!, that give you an in-depth blueprint for alternatives to the corporate path.In this article, I am not talking about the endless ways you can pursue your passions but more so the three pathways I currently see that can set you on the right track.

1. WHY YOU SHOULD GO TO SCHOOL

When a lot of people think about being “successful” or achieving a major milestone in their life, they think about graduating from school.

This is by far the easiest one for everybody to understand, and probably the one my blog and others that read this will resonate with the most. I am more than confident that there’s a high percentage of my over-40-year-old crowd that will accept it, agree with it, believe it is the best, if not the only way to succeed, and I get that. I have a ton of empathy for the brand promotion of a top-tier college degree.

I still think a college degree has utility and purpose in a pre-2017 work-force and can definitely help sort you or validate you from a societal or historical point of view. That’s why so many of you still consider it the right move.

However, I would be remiss not to mention the topic of conversation around college debt and the fact that many employers, VaynerMedia included, aren’t over-indexing against where our employees, or potential employees, went to school.

School is certainly one path, but in a 2018 world, it’s certainly not the only one.

And look, I get it. For so long a college degree has been this symbol, and medal of some kind which serves as a line item on your resume and your LinkedIn profile that can bring instant credibility to your know-how and experience. It funnels you into a network and it gives you a common shared experience with other employers or employees and alumni who have went through the same thing. I for one, was a D and F student and chose option 3 for myself, which you will read about in a moment as a way to succeed. I did not go to a top tier school, and I got terrible grades, yet I still turned out okay.

So my point is that there are definitely other ways, and if you can’t get into a good school, or you don’t want to go to college, you shouldn’t feel bad about that decision. Because of the internet, there is plenty of opportunity and access to the information you need to help you succeed.

2. HOW TO GET A JOB WITH OR WITHOUT A COLLEGE DEGREE

Number two, as a new way of considering how you might enter the workforce, is this idea of working for someone you admire or want to be like, in any capacity for as little money as you possibly can.

One concept that has really emerged over the last five years is the question to myself that “If I had to do it all over again, what would I do differently?”

Obviously, I had the fortune, and the ability to go and work for and build my family business for my parents, but I also felt the gratitude and excitement to do so. In hindsight, the only option that I would have even considered besides what I did was if I would’ve gone and worked for some of the top entrepreneurs in the world at the time, even if it meant I had to be poor and get a job at midnight on the side to help support that lifestyle.

I think a lot of the time when I talk about providing value or working for somebody who you want to be one day, people often say, “Well, Gary… You can afford it.” But there are many many people in the world that are living on $10 or $12 or $15 an hour. I would do anything to work for Oprah Winfrey or Bill Gates or Steve Jobs or Jack Welch at a low wage because I know the upside, the leverage, and the education from doing so would be enormous.

Not to mention that, unlike in 1998 when the only side-hustle you could have had to be done in person like shoveling snow, shining shoes, getting coffee, etc., today, you can have a side-hustle selling knick-knacks online. All of the opportunity is literally right there on your phone and your fingertips. If you just went on Craigslist and researched the free section, and sold things or flipped them on ebay, Amazon or Facebook Marketplace, you could very well make an extra $300 week from your iPhone or pc. You’d have to put in the work, but it’s definitely possible.

But here’s the thing. Working for and getting close to an Alpha operator is the single best thing you can possibly do in today’s 2018 world. They don’t have to be Diddy or Drake, they can be a high level executive at a company you like, or an athlete, musician, startup founder or just someone you really admire. Once you build that relationship and provide value, it will set you up for disproportionate opportunity down the line.

The fact of the matter is you can’t be romantic. As long as you get your foot in the door and find a way to provide value to the person you most want to be like, then you have a great chance. It is a whole lot better to get coffee for 4 years for Taylor Swift and then go on to manage or have the connection to work with all of these other high profile people than being a mid-level manager at a company you might hate.

I can’t stress enough how much it means to over-deliver for a “superstar” and what that can do for the rest of your life. There is no better springboard than to work for a mogul, getting into his or her inner circle, and then trading off of that equity for your future success. Because when you do it for LeBron, and when you did it for Drake, and when you’re doing it for Bobby Brown, then your equity in the marketplace becomes exponential.

A high percentage of the 25-year-olds that I respect that have been working for me have been eating crow for years but now they get a co-sign from me, not only in business but in my heart which means the world, and it is 100% the best way to win.

The way to go about getting that opportunity is to literally live on social media and DM, and tweet, email or use LinkedIn to hit up 50 people a day that you would like to get close to or help in any way. The thing that might surprise you, is that 1 out of 100 might say yes.

If you start a message with “Hi, xxx I love everything you do! I would love to come film for you and chop up the best moments of your day and distribute that across social media because I think your brand is important and it could be a lot bigger if you did A, B and C. I’m willing to work for free for 2 months and and if you like the value that I provide, I would love a spot on your team.”

It’s 1000% the 2018 strategy to succeed.

Half of the people on my team got their job through Instagram DM and Twitter. I promise that every person you know or want to be like has either a Twitter, Snapchat, Instagram, Facebook or LinkedIn. Do your research and figure out how to provide value. Go in soft, provide value, provide value, make your ask and rinse and repeat. You might have to do this 5000 times but eventually it will lead to something.

Whether you go to college or not, I highly encourage you to give this a try.

3. DO IT YOURSELF

This is probably the most difficult version of how to start the process of achieving your goals but it’s also the one that has the most upside and that is to simply go out and do it yourself. You just have to execute and build your own thing, which is what I did. Obviously I’m a big proponent of this since it’s the model I took but that being said, it’s by far the hardest. The problem is, everyone’s out there doing too much talking and lacking the patience needed to really succeed. I think people’s mouths are way ahead of their actions and they’re not executing to build something substantial and real.

They’re talking in the short term to build themselves up because they’re worried about the judgment of others who criticize their “thing.”

But if you choose this option, if you can get your head into a place where you’re thinking about your game in ten-year terms, not in three-year terms, your outlook changes dramatically.

The beauty of building your own thing also means you are not at the mercy of anyone else. This equally takes the most ego and the most humility. This is the one that takes the most patience in the macro, but requires the most intensity and speed in the micro. This is the one I’m most romantic about.

But the truth is, not everyone can be a number 1 and not everyone should be. It comes down to self-awareness, and reverse engineering who you really are. My thought process is that great athletes are born with traits and body compositions and muscles that help them excel. Of course they can train and learn and practice, but the fact that you are 6 foot 8 and naturally built to run faster than anyone you know gives you a big advantage.

Even though it’s obvious that I’m very into this path, it’s because I really do think I’m a pure-bred entrepreneur and I was meant to do this. My big concern right now above everything is how many of you reading this could have an incredible career by following the path of option 2 but you’re choosing number three because you lack the patience and you like the badge of being a “CEO” or “entrepreneur” in the short-term.

I promise you starting at number two creates far more people that go on to win than those who start at option three. Number three creates extreme success stories for a very small minority but the masses tend to fail and wind up having to go back to executing a version of number 1.

Not everyone can drop out and start Facebook. About 90% of startups fail.

So you really have to deploy self-awareness in this whole process and do what’s right for you.

There are many ways that these three models can take shape but they really do feel like the most clear pathways to begin to achieve your goals. And whether your goals are money, legacy, or going home at 5pm to play ping pong and be part of the local soccer league, then that’s the right thing for you. I have plenty of friends who have huge titles at big companies who just aren’t happy, and also have friends who make $50,000 a year and have great work/life balance, a family, and tons of happiness with 3 annual vacations.

Whether you’re thinking about going to school or you’re thinking about doing it yourself, these are the 3 ways I see it shaking out. You need to figure out which is the right path for you and deploy self-awareness to realize you are either an operator/entrepreneur, or you need time and you want to go to school to figure it out or maybe you’ll be the most successful as a number 7 or number 17 behind an A player who will help you win. There is nothing wrong with any of these paths, I just want to make it clear that as you navigate and try to mitigate your own stress and anxieties, these are the options you should consider. You need to quiet the voice inside your own head and realize you have a choice. These are 3 great options to help you get there. And the best part about this whole conversation is that you truly have time. You could do a mix of all three over a 10 year period from 18-28 and still have your whole life to figure it out. The fact that you are consumed by the stress of making the “right” decision at 18 or 22 or 26 is ludicrous to me and needs to stop. Deploy patience, self-awareness and an appreciation of the process by doing the thing that you have the most passion, energy and excitement for in the moment. Don’t overthink it! Slow down, take a breath and learn to “get there” day-by-day.

Source: https://www.garyvaynerchuk.com/accomplish-goals/

How Successful Entrepreneurs Think — Multiplier Mindset

There’s a distinction that can be made between entrepreneurs and very successful entrepreneurs. It begins with the way they think.

Get Motivated By Learning the Importance of Taking Action

There’s an enduring axiom of success that says,“The Universe rewards action, not thought.” Yet as simple as this principle seems, it’s surprising how many people get bogged down in the analyzing, planning and organizing stages when what they really need to do is to simply take action.

When you take action, not only do additional resources come your way, but you get feedback that helps you adjust your course and refine your approach.

In my seminars, I conduct a very illustrative exercise. I hold up a $100 bill and ask participants if any of them would like to have it. I stand in front of the room, and wait until they “get it.” 

Usually, after several seconds, someone jumps out of their seat and rushes forward to pluck the $100 bill out of my hand. I then tell the rest of the audience that they, too, could have been the one to get the money if only they had taken action.

The Importance of Taking Action

The truth is, while most of us know a lot about earning money, making things happen and bringing about change in the world, only a surprising few get to have all the abundance, glory and satisfaction this world has to offer—simply because they are the select few who consistently take action.

Taking action is the one thing that separates the winners from the non-winners…the haves from the have-nots…and the high achievers from the everyday people.

Perhaps you’ve already seen someone create a big win in their life, only to grumble to yourself, I could have done that. Or perhaps you’ve watched as a co-worker launched a new project that included your ideas—only to conclude that you stood by while they took action.

How to Start Taking Action

The simple fact remains that, in life, we are not rewarded for what we know, but for what we do.

Of course, many people don’t take action because they’re fearful of the consequences. 

Perhaps they feel they don’t have permission or perhaps they’re more afraid of failure than they are of success.

Successful people realize that failure is an important part of the learning process. They know that failure is just a way we learn by trial an error. Not only do we need to stop being so afraid of failure, we need to be willing to fail. I call this kind of instructive failure “failing forward.” 

Simply get started, make mistakes, listen to the feedback, correct and keep moving forward toward the goal.

Of course, one major benefit of taking action is that it’s a key factor in putting The Law of Attraction to work in your life. 

Step 1: You have to ask for what you want.

Step 2: You have to believe it will come about

Step 3: You have to create a vibrational or emotional match in order to receive the results when they come your way.

When you’re in action—doing research, connecting with people, finding ways to accomplish a goal—you are sending a powerful signal to the Universe that you expect and anticipate meeting that goal or enjoying that experience soon.

After all, you wouldn’t be doing all that work if you didn’t expect to be living that new life sometime soon, would you?

How to Learn to Take Action: The Rule of 5

A powerful strategy to get you in action and keep you in action is something I call The Rule of 5.

Here it is:

Every day, do five things that will move you closer to your goal – 5 concrete action steps.

If you’re self-employed, do five things to grow your business.

If you want a promotion at your job, do five things a day to improve your skills and knowledge so you’ll be eligible to be promoted.

Even if you accomplish just 5 things each week, that’s more than most people do in a month to achieve their dreams.

I remember back when I was building my speaking career, I would send 5 letters a day to school districts and program directors for educator conferences for teachers, counselors and school administrators.

And later, when Chicken Soup for the Soul was published, I would send out 5 books a day to companies who could hire me to speak at their next industry event or sales meeting.

Practice your “5 Things a Day” habit and after three weeks – not only will you have taken major action toward your life goals, you will have developed a new habit of being pro-active in creating your future.

Without action, nothing happens. So to help you get into action, I want to invite you to tune in to my webcast, which will teach you how to set and accomplish your biggest goals and create the life you want. I’ll teach you how to create awareness for where you want to go, see the big picture, and create an action plan to get there.

Source: http://jackcanfield.com/blog/how-to-take-action/

How To Deal With Overwhelming Guilt In Business Life

Do you ever experience (overwhelming) guilt? Do you eat and feel guilt? Work and feel guilt? Play, rest or spend time with your family and feel guilt? Everywhere you are not, do you feel guilt for not being there? Everything you do, even for yourself, do you feel the guilt of not doing something else? I believe there are 8 ways to overcome, and even master, those feelings of guilt. That is not to ignore it, because guilt has an important purpose. It is to realise what purpose the guilt serves, see it for what it is, and then let go of where it is holding you back and not serving you.

I wrote a short excerpt (not worthy of being called a poem) below on guilt, that created reach and discussion on social media, as well as an overwhelming response on my “Disruptive Entrepreneur” podcast. Here it it, with the 9 ways to overcome guilt below. Can you relate to this?

Everyday; the guilt

Everyday guilt consumes me

When I’m working, guilt I’m not with my family

When I’m with my family, guilt I’m not working

So many ideas and guilt that I’m not implementing them all

When I make money, the guilt that others don’t have any

When I start tasks, guilt that I don’t finish them

When I hurt people, the guilt of how I made them feel

When I fail, the guilt of the people I have let down

I don’t know if the guilt ever goes away.

Sometimes it eats me up inside.

In a sadistic way I think it drives us to spend our time wisely, do the best we can, and try to be kind to others.

I think it is part of being human.

Do you feel it too?

Here are 8 things that should help you deal with and master guilt:

1. Don’t deny it

Guilt is a human emotion. and every human emotion serves a purpose. Don’t try to ignore it or suppress it. What you suppress you will be forced to express. Simply notice yourself feeling it. Try to disassociate yourself from it as part of who you are, and see it as a feedback emotion to check in that you are dong the right things.

2. What is its function/purpose?

The purpose of guilt is to ensure we are focusing on the right things. If we didn’t experience it, we should do all manner of evil and feel numb. It keeps us in check and in balance between the selfish and the selfless. In more modern times, guilt may arise if you are focusing on the wrong tasks or if you perceived you have wronged yourself or someone else. Again, notice it, but evaluate it’s purpose, in the knowledge that it is serving you somehow. Wisdom is discovering that balanced service to you.

3. Too selfish; too selfless – guilt is the feedback

Neither extreme serves yourself or humanity. Too selfish and people rebel against you. Too selfless and you become weak and irrelevant. Guilt is the feedback mechanism that forces you to remain in balance to serve and survive as an individual and as a species. Selfless are like Lemmings who walk off a cliff, selfish are those who get outed, incarcerated or in extreme cases assassinated. You’ll experience self guilt or resentment when giving without receiving, and guilt in the form of regret when receiving without giving. And as such it

serves you well in both cases.

4. Plan & compartmentalise all your KLAs & KRAs

KLAs are Key Life Areas and KRAs are Key Results Areas. KLAs are the things most important to you in your life such as health, family. KRAs are the tasks most important in your career, business, or secondary, non survival areas; maybe a passion or your profession. If you focus on KLAs and KRAs, you will minimise guilt and maximise fulfilment. As soon as you get distracted away from them, guilt will occur as feedback. You feel far less guilt that you should be doing something else when you have compartmentalised your time, because

everything has it’s time and place and priority. So plan in your day and diary your KLAs and KRAs first, early, and above all other tasks. I wrote “Routine = Results” to show you in a step by step way how to plan and manage your time, diary and life.

5. When it turns into beating yourself up…

…it’s time to take stock and a step back. Guilt serves you until it consumes you. If you feel it consuming you, and you start beating yourself up for feeling it, thus compounding the pain further, then STOP. Be kind to yourself. The world will do a good job of beating you up, so start crediting yourself for the good things you do. Pick something of high priority that you know you will feel great about doing, and get it done. Pat yourself on the back for doing it, then move onto the next. Prioritise and execute.

6. Love & accept yourself for who you are

You are perfect as you are; successes and mistakes. The harder you are on yourself, the more guilt you’ll feel when not living up to that persona. This can be a never ending curse of wanting to be better, more or different. Look at how far you’ve come, not just how far you want to go. Allow yourself time to rest, time to play, time to be bored and time to heal if required. Be clear on your strengths and weaknesses, and focus your time and energy in areas you can provide value and have skills in, which in turn increases your self worth.

7. Let go of what you can’t control

You can’t control everything, or everyone. You are not responsible for everything. You can’t be in all places at once. You can’t be great at everything. You can’t live up to people’s expectations they hold of you. All you can control is who you are, what you do, and how you treat yourself and others. Focus on being as good at that as you can, and let go of the rest. Expecting outcomes that you have no power to control will cause you much unnecessary pain. Liberate yourself by accepting what is.

8. Don’t try to be all things to all people

A sure way to be great at nothing is to try to be great at everything. Demands of parenting, career, management and leadership, friends, social media and being a role model can take their toll. It’s fine to not master them all. It’s even fine to be crap at the ones not important to you. It’s fine to have a handful of true friends. It’s fine to let go of being who someone else wants you to be. It’s easier than ever to outsource your weaknesses. It’s good to say no.

Guilt is an emotion where you live in the past. It is a delusion that past events or the way you were should have been different. Yet you can feel them in the present moment, feeling that you should be doing something else, robbing you of the gift of life to be experienced in the now. If you are going to do something. commit to it, work, rest or play. Then the guilt goes away.

Source: https://robmoore.com/blog/how-to-deal-with-overwhelming-guilt-in-business-life/

Manage Your Worklife and Control Your Life

Tony Robbins talks about and shares strategies for managing your work life and in turn taking control of your personal life.

ENTREPRENEURIAL COUPLES

Every year, millions of couples take on the challenge of starting a business together. For some, it is the best decision they ever made. Not only do they get to spend more time together, they get to pursue their passion side-by-side with their best friend. But for others, it becomes a constant source of contention, where the stress and struggle eventually become so inflated that the business and sadly, the relationship, implode.

So what is the difference between the couples that make it and the couples that break up? Why do some succeed while others do not?

The stresses with starting a business are inevitable — the financial risk, the long periods of uncertainty, the seemingly endless list of tasks to accomplish. It’s all par for the course when you’re building a business from the ground up. That’s why you must have structure and strategy, not only with your business, but with your partner. By implementing your own working system, which includes rules, rituals and shared working habits, you and your partner can create a healthy work relationship, and ultimately, a happy personal relationship.

To help you better understand how to navigate this process, here are 5 tips to strengthen your business and your romance:

BUILD A STRESS MANAGEMENT PLAN

Your ability to manage the stress that comes with starting your own business is even more important when your life partner is your business partner.

When someone experiences a stressful situation, the body sounds an alarm and quickly transfers control from the rational brain over to the emotional brain, which is also known as the amygdala. The amygdala can be a bit dramatic, making bad things worse, and worse things catastrophic. So when the day-to-day setbacks or typical pressures of starting a business occur, the amygdala thinks the sky is falling. All rational thoughts go out the window, and the emotional nonsense that has gripped our brains can lead us to say or do some hurtful things.

This is why you and your spouse need to develop a stress management plan that includes approaches that elicit a relaxation response (deep abdominal breathing, visualization, yoga), ways of reframing and discussing irrational thoughts (a detailed communication plan), or a designated timeout period so that if a situation becomes too intense, you both take a 15-minute walk on your own then come back to resume communication.

LET THE BEDROOM BE A BEDROOM

The bedroom should be seen as a resting place, where you only do two things that start with the letter “s”. And no, I’m not talking about “strategize” or “send emails.” When we do anything other than that in the bedroom — work on our laptops while in bed, send emails from our smartphones, bring work talk into pillow talk — we condition our brains to think that the bedroom is meant for those things. According to a Harvard sleep study, we begin to disassociate the bedroom with the idea of peace and passion.

Discussing work issues or doing work in the bedroom can also have physiological effects that impact the health of our relationship.These types of activities are both stress-stimulating that cause the body to release cortisol, which is associated with increased alertness. This means it will be difficult to fall asleep, and even more difficult to fall into a deep sleep. Lack of sleep means you won’t be your best the next day.

When you work together, it’s easy to make the bedroom a surrogate office. Just remember, as harmless as this may seem, it actually can wreak havoc on the intimacy of your relationship. So do personal and your business relationship a favor, whatever you need to do for or discuss about work, just let it rest until the morning.

KEEP IT PROFESSIONAL

When you work alongside your spouse, it’s easy to fall into the trap of treating your “colleague” with less than professional standards. But just because you are comfortable with your partner doesn’t mean civility should take a back seat.

Keep in mind that you are starting a business, so use your business etiquette. This includes:

• saying “please” and “thank you”

• not pointing at your partner with your index finger

• not interrupting or over-talking each other

• being mindful of your language

• not taking personal calls during work sessions

• giving your undivided attention when your partner is speaking

Keeping your relationship professional does not need to mean being cold and distant. It simply means being mindful. By treating your spouse with respect, you will create a happier, healthier work environment, and ultimately, a happier and healthier home.

GO OFF-SITE

For most couples starting a business together, it means transforming your home into your office. Your kitchen becomes your break room, your dining room table becomes your conference room, and everywhere in between becomes brainstorm central. After a while, it may start to feel like you’re living at the office, because, well…you sort of are.

To avoid the groundhog’s day scenario that working at home can create, select a day every week that you and your partner relocate to somewhere outside your home to work. Not only will you help break the monotony, it may just help you be more productive.

By changing your environment, even just for one day, you can help stimulate creativity and inspiration. You are exposing yourself to new surroundings, new people, and new energy. This means that you will find a new perspective, make new connections, and receive new inputs — all of which can help foster the birth of new ideas.

Going off-site also creates a new tradition for you and your partner that you can look forward to each week. It becomes “your thing” together, where, for instance, you take turns choosing the off-site location. And this sense of camaraderie and teamwork will ultimately enhance and empower your bond, making you better life partners as well as business partners.

PAY EACH OTHER COMPLIMENTS

Every day, make it a point to recognize each other’s strengths. If your partner puts a significant amount of effort into a task or does something well, do not let it go unnoticed. Even if the day has been stressful and unproductive, instead of dwelling on the negatives, redirect the focus to what did go well. There may be days where this means telling your partner something as simple as: “I’m so impressed by how resilient your are.” Just be sure to be sincere. Paying a compliment that seems contrived can actually work against you.

This advice should also be applied to your relationship in social settings. Compliments shouldn’t start and stop when you are alone with your partner. In fact, it is just as important to tout each other’s strengths when you are in public. This lets your partner know that you not only recognize their attributes, but are proud of them, which gives them a sense of pride in themselves and the relationship.

Compliments show appreciation, which allow your partner to feel valued. And when you feel valued, you feel more committed to your work, and ultimately, your relationship.

There is no way around it — starting a business with your spouse can be difficult. But it can also provide great rewards, and not just financially speaking.

Going into business with your spouse can give you and your partner opportunities you may not get otherwise. You have the chance to come together over a shared belief, work under the same mission, and strive towards the same goal. It’s not just time you will be sharing, it’s passion. And through this passion, you become closer and more connected. Essentially, you are enhancing your commitment to each other by your commitment to your business.

So take the time to develop structure and strategies, not just with your business, but with your business partner, and learn how to make working with your spouse work to your advantage. It may just be the best thing to ever happen to your professional and personal life.

Source: https://www.tonyrobbins.com/career-business/entrepreneurial-couples/

The Current State of Fitness Entrepreneurs

Gary Vee and his real talk about the current state of fitness entrepreneurs.

8 Common Traits of Successful Property Investors

Mark Homer and I have been in property since 2003 and 2005 respectively. This doesn’t give us the right to boast or say we are experts, but it does teach you a lot. You can make a lot of mistakes in 15 years, and you can see others succeed and fail too. I always try to analyse the commonalities of people who succeed over the long term, what has worked for us, and to try to understand why those who fail, well, fail.

Here are 8 commonalities across the board of the best property investors vs. the rest, and you will notice all of these are learned skills and traits that don’t involve inheriting lots of money or having property tycoon parents:

1. Consistency

There will always be ebbs and flows, high and lows, wins and losses. You will have your fair share of good and bad luck. The market and strategies and lending and regulations will continually change. This is the same for all of us. Those who keep going and keep growing, slow and steady sometimes, get there in the end, and in their own time. Those who embrace the change and see it as an opportunity evolve with the market. I have lost count of how many people flew out of the blocks hard and fast but then fell off the radar after a couple of small knock backs.

2. V.O.F.M

A simple 4 step model we created at Progressive Property of what to keep focused on through all cycles. In order: Viewings, Offers, Finance, Management. In almost all cases where people drift away or give up, I check that they are maintaining consistent V.O.F.M, and of course they are not. This needs to be be maintained, even if it is only a couple of viewings a week and two offers a month. It doesn’t matter how much, it matters how long. It is not complicated, and it is not supposed to be. It is the core of being a successful property investor. imagine if you kept that up for a decade. V. O. and F. relate to buying and owning property, M. relates to ongoing management and cashflow of property.

3. A balanced view & emotional management

We’ve seen 1000s of “I’m so excited” people who can’t maintain the energy. We’ve also seen just as many glass half empty people too, who get sucked into believing the critics and haters. When people say “you can’t” they usually mean “I don’t know how”. But being hyper positive without balancing the risks and downsides is also dangerous. Try to see both sides of all situations, and you will maintain more consistency and enduring success. Manage your emotions when you get offers rejected, down valuations, finance pulled at the last minute; because these are all NORMAL.

4. Real understanding of assets and passive income

It takes time to set up assets and create ongoing passive income, but not a lifetime. It can be done, just not overnight. You need to set to forget. You need to work hard enough not to have to work hard. But if you don’t set up assets that pay passive, residual income, you’ll be working until you die. Invest as much of your time into (property) assets, set them up securely, manage them well, systemise them, build up your power team around them, and periodically check them. There’s also nothing wrong with active income, you could choose to have both.

5. Continual learning

If you plateau, be it from job to entrepreneur, or single let to multi-let strategies, or comfortable to successful, you grind to a halt. Then you die out. We saw so many experienced investors disappear after the 2008 crash, because they didn’t embrace the new landscape and the evolved cashflow and capital strategies. The education on yourself never stops. Not just strategies and investing, but understanding yourself, managing relationships with people, the methods of finance raising, marketing, money, markets and more. It’s a continual journey of learning and growing.

6. Contacts and connections

Another asset that continually builds over time is your power team; your black book of great, well connected contacts. More access to finance, brokers and lawyers and partners; you can never know enough good people. Keep building and nurturing good relations and equitable partnerships on an ongoing basis. People start well but often go underground when someone doesn’t walk up to them with a briefcase full of cash after a couple of networking events. See your black book of contacts as an asset like you do property. Build and nurture it.

7. Problem solving (mentality)

There will always be problems. Sorry if you don’t want to hear it, but it is the reality. They will OFTEN happen when you least expect them and don’t want them. The timing will often be bad. This is the nature of problems. It doesn’t mean it can’t be done. In fact it filters out those not committed. Rather than melt down and blame the universe when issues arise, or go into full blown victim mode, roll up your sleeves and tackle them HEAD ON. This can be done by you for big challenges, and leveraged but managed by you for smaller ones. Those who continually solve problems and take responsibility for them, grow, and those who don’t, decay. It is a mindset as well as a skillset to staying enthusiastic through consistent challenges, and this really separates the best from the rest.

8. Patience vs. persistence balance

Stay hungry, stay humble, stay on track. So many people change course or lose enthusiasm or belief without giving it enough time to mature. A couple of knock backs and they’re gone. You simply have to keep going, you will get there if you stay consistent, BUT not become so ‘persistent’ that you annoy and push people away. Remember you have TIME. Give it time, and balance making it happen versus letting go and allowing things to come in their own time. If things or people don’t result in the outcomes you want, stay gracious and keep the door open for future dealings. You never know when a vendor or agent or financier might come back to you.

Source: https://www.progressiveproperty.co.uk/blog/8-common-traits-of-successful-property-investors/

The #1 Skill of an Entrepreneur

In this video Robert Kiyosaki shares the #1 skill of an entrepreneur

How to deal with failure

Success in any endeavour comes hand-in-hand with failure; it’s an unavoidable part of the process. When failure happens, it’s an indicator that you’re acting, innovating and pushing outside of your comfort zone.

It’s through failure that we learn, stretch and improve. How we handle and react to failure determines the degree to which we will ultimately succeed. Those who struggle in the face of adversity are often those who lose motivation and give-in to fear and despondency.

To succeed, we must master failure.

Fail, Learn, Grow, Innovate

Failing is an inevitable part of growth. To fail doesn’t define you as a failure. How well you react to failing not only influences your results but it also shapes your character. Will you be broken by it, or will you push on, better equipped with the knowledge of one more way that didn’t quite work?

Innovators throughout time have recognised failure as part and parcel of the gradual journey to positive results. From the innovation of the wheel through to the electric lightbulb, failures litter the path to success.

“I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work!”

-Thomas Edison

Those who innovate and push beyond the boundaries of accepted wisdom, understand failure. Those who test the limits of their own knowledge, experience and imagination recognise that to progress, you have to fail. Failure is inherent within accomplishment and essential to the pursuit of greatness.

To get from zero to hero is not a linear journey to the top, made by those lucky few who manage to side-step hardship, disappointment and adversity. EVERYONE fails, even those whose successes we admire and seek to imitate.

Chances are your heroes are those who have failed the most in their field of expertise. They’re also the ones who’ve figured out how to make it work to their advantage.

More Failure = More Success (usually)

Rather than being paralyzed into inaction through fear of failure you must seek it out. When you’re committed to taking action AND open to the possibility of failure, you increase your chances of ultimate success, but only when:

• You see each failure as feedback on your actions, rather than on you as a person;
• You analyse, learn and adapt your approach based on it;
• You keep on going!

When we passionately invest ourselves in our business, it’s easy to pin our hopes and dreams on the next action, on the next play. We convince ourselves that our success, and even our identity will be defined by the results of the next thing we do.

Instead of this ‘all or nothing’ mentality, we need to to treat each action as an experiment, a test or an iteration towards the bigger goal. As Seth Godin puts it, “this might work, this might not work.”

We can underestimate the importance of the many baby-steps, the small actions that contribute to our achievements. Just as important are the lessons learned from failure. These lessons enable the course-corrections, the tweaks and the improvements to our businesses, our services and ourselves that will get us the results we want to see in our life if we KEEP GOING.

“Greatness is a lot of small things done well, day after day”

-Ray Lewis

Body builders deliberately tear their muscle-tissue through weight-training to build strength. Public-speakers grow confidence through putting themselves in front of bigger audiences. Entrepreneurs need to also use failure to strengthen, learn and to help themselves to progress to the next level.

The things we learn through failing are inherently part of growth, of bettering ourselves to move forwards in life. This only happens when we’re prepared to accept the learning from failure rather than allowing it to crush our determination or dampen our desire for success.

Side-effects of ‘good’ failure.

Success feels great, but the biggest lessons in life come from failing over winning. When everything is going smoothly it can make us complacent. It’s easy to take success for granted, to lose the hunger and the drive.

When you fail, you learn. When you’re succeeding, maybe it’s a sign to push yourself even harder. Maybe it’s time to set new goals, to seek out new failures and to continue the process of learning and growth.

Build the habit of failure, but as a route to success, to bigger and better things. Don’t hope for failure in a sadistic sense, but don’t let fear of it distract or detract from your efforts either.

Fortune favours the brave and the world loves a trier. When you are giving your all, working hard and acting with bravery and determination other people will support and encourage you, and the universe will seem to do so too. When you act with courage, and approach failures as an opportunity for growth, your self-worth will also increase as will your confidence and determination.

“I’ve missed more than 9000 shots in my career. I’ve lost almost 300 games. 26 times I’ve been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.”

-Michael Jordan

Tactics for growth out of failure

Persistent action, determination and an open-mindedness to learning are key, but there are other ways to benefit from failure.

Not all failures are equal. Calculated risk is sensible, and learning from failure is positive but be cautious of taking huge risks and failing repeatedly. Staking your family’s future on your next venture so that you can learn big if you fail big, is not smart. Huge risk can lead to HUGE failure which will ultimately break you.

Failure isn’t something to be approached flippantly. You must treat your work and your art and the risks of failure in each, with seriousness and respect. The difference is in not taking yourself so seriously that you can’t accept and learn from failure without letting it define or label you.

Pioneers and leaders in their fields are those who innovate and blaze the trail, operating at the frontier of their industry or technology. You too can be perceived as a leader if you’re willing to challenge conventional wisdom and find new ways of doing things. To do this effectively requires a willingness to fail, and fail often.

In the technology industry particularly, minimum viable products are shipped early to assess demand and test functionality. For every Facebook, Tesla and iPhone there were undoubtedly millions of failing prototypes that were shipped fast, met with rejection, but yielded invaluable feedback and insight that contributed to later successes.

Don’t be afraid to fail fast and fail often.

There will be others who have pushed boundaries before you, and the lessons from their failures are there to help you through yours. Read their biographies, listen to the success stories and you’ll realise that those who have achieved the most are likely those who have also failed the most on their journey as well.

Learn from their lessons and be inspired by their spirit of learning. The best mentors and advisors aren’t those who talk in unproven theories, but rather those who have the battle-scars from dealing with the challenges you face. Seek them out, ask the questions and learn from their failures too.

Supportive and inspiring people will help you get excited about challenges where failure is a possibility, and you should surround yourself with these people. Those who are risk-averse or afraid of failure will discourage you from taking chances. They’re projecting their fear of failure onto you, and are envious that you can confront your fear and discomfort as you push forward regardless.

When is a failure not a failure?

Virtually all discoveries, inventions and significant achievements are the result of bold experiments, tests and exploration. The first powered flight, 4-minute mile and ascent of Mount Everest each no doubt came following numerous failed attempts not just by those who eventually cracked it, but many others before them.

Things that are perceived as failures at first can later be recognised as great successes in their own right too; consider penicillin and the post-it note, two significant discoveries that were by all conventional definitions, mistakes.

Failure can have upside way beyond the learning it enables.

Failure is in the eye of the beholder.

When we look on at those whose successes we admire, it’s easy to kid ourselves that they cruise through life with ease, effortlessly moving from one success to the next. We forget that beneath the surface they’re working hard, furiously paddling like the proverbial swan that glides with seeming ease across the water.

What differentiates them is that they aren’t afraid of failure; as Gerald Ratner has shared, “your heroes have had it WORSE than you”. The difference is that they don’t let failure and adversity scare them out of action. They don’t let it knock them off track or worse, put them off taking action in the first place.

They recognise that failure is an inherent part of success through the learning and growth it enables.

Contextualise failure and see it for what it is. Failing doesn’t make you a failure. It’s only a negative if you don’t learn from it, and keep on making the same mistakes or doing the same thing over and over, expecting a different outcome.

Train yourself to react to failure as an opportunity rather than a threat to your progress. Make failure a stepping stone to your success.

Source: https://robmoore.com/blog/how-to-deal-with-failure/