Archive for Life Balance
Staying Focused Can Help You Stay Motivated
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Everyone has times when they lack motivation. On the other hand, you may be so motivated and full of ideas that you lose your focus because you are trying to juggle too many tasks at once. However, multi-tasking may do more harm than good. When your mind is divided by too many tasks, your productivity decreases. Here are some tips to help you stay focused and motivated on your business.
Choose a Niche.
Once you know what your niche market is, you will be able to focus on tasks that will help you with that particular market. Try to narrow your market as much as possible. For instance, if you have a coaching business and want to help people work from home, perhaps you can target a certain field, such as web designers or virtual assistants. You will gain a reputation for being an expert in that field and will be able to help people create specific plans while coaching them to success.
Set Goals, and Write Them Down.
When you set goals for your business, you are defining the direction in which you want to take your business. When you write them down, you are greatly increasing the odds that you will accomplish the goals you have set.
Create a Business Plan.
When someone wants to start a brick and mortar business, they need to create a business plan and submit it to a bank to secure a loan. A business plan is a summary of how a business will be organized and a listing of activities that the owner needs to complete. For instance, a business plan will explain when a business owner expects to make a profit, as well as the type of marketing they intend to do. Creating a business plan for your home business will increase your chances of success.
Stay Away From Distractions.
It is easy to lose track of time when reading email, blogs, and surfing the web. Set aside a block of time in the morning and evening to take care of email. Try to limit your internet during work hours for tasks specific to work, such as research. Wait until you are done with your work to read the celebrity gossip.
Prioritize Your Tasks.
When you write out your to-do list, prioritizing your tasks will keep you working on what is important. Some items may need to be accomplished as soon as possible, while other things can wait a day or two. Take a colored highlighter and highlight the things that need to be done ASAP. When you look at your to-do list, your eyes will be drawn to the items that need the most attention.
Outsource When Possible.
As you look over your to-do list, do you notice items that can be handled by someone else? By delegating tasks to others, you will have more free time to work on things that require your attention.
Thinking Positively for Maximum Growth
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Turn on the news and you’ll get an earful of how bad things are – not only in your community but around the world. Head to the coffee shop and conversations will battle for your attention as folks around you discuss their woes. The financial situation and the disposition of people around you are enough to make you want to bury your head in the sand.
Yet, when you can harness a positive mindset, the sky is the limit. A positive mindset not only helps you get through the tough times, it helps you profit from them and continue to grow and succeed. The trick, of course, is actually being able to think positively in tough times. Here are a few tips and ideas to help.
Gratitude
Gratitude is one of the most powerful emotions human beings are capable of. It’s right up there with love as a potent and significant emotion. One of the easiest ways to stay in a state of gratitude is to create a gratitude habit. Start or end each day by listing the things you’re grateful for. Also consider turning to gratitude when you feel negative emotions sneaking in and taking over.
Focus on What Is Working
If something is always going wrong, rest assured something is also going right. The trick is to focus on the things that are working. So make a list. Right now, make a list of the things that are going right in your life, in your business, and in your relationships. Print the list and hang it in a place where you often feel overwhelmed. When negative thoughts begin to creep in, take a glance at your list. Read it aloud if it helps. Absorb it and change your thoughts.
Create Positive Surroundings
Surround yourself with things that you love and people that support you. Emotions are contagious. When the people around you are negative, it’s easy to become negative too. However, the contrary is true too. When you’re surrounded by positive people it’s much easier to feel positive.
And when you’re surrounded by things you love and things that make you feel good, it’s easier to focus on the good. Make your home comfortable. Place personal pictures on your desk. Buy pillows and blankets in colors that you like. Paint your room or office a color that makes you smile. Change your surroundings and change your life.
Personal Care
Taking care of your mind and body makes a huge difference in your ability to stay positive. Exercise, eat well, get plenty of sleep and take time during the day to meditate. A little self-care goes a long way.
When it comes to maintaining a positive attitude, it can be a real challenge during the tough times. Small things matter and can make a big difference. Take care of yourself. Surround yourself with people and things that make you smile and remember to focus on what is good in your life. If you have to, make a list and keep it handy.
Five Tips to Help You Stay Focused on Your Goals
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Setting goals can be effortless. It’s not hard to think up or even write your goals down. Achieving them, on the other hand, can be a bit of a challenge. In order to reach your goals, you must maintain your focus on the end result, especially when things get rough. Here are some tips to aid you in staying focused on your goals.
1. Create a visual reminder. A wish book contains pictures, personal reflections and other notes related to the finished goal. Let’s pretend for a moment that your goal is to start a restaurant. Create a restaurant wish book full of pictures such as cutouts from magazines depicting restaurant grand openings, the type of furniture you would like in the restaurant, famous people coming to visit, or even a fake review that you have written about your impending opening night. Visual reminders are meant to encourage and keep your eye on the prize when you hit a rough spot in your plans.
2. Ask for help. This point can’t be stated enough. No man or woman is an island. Without help, everyone would fail at something. We’re not talking about help to start the business or any actual physical labor. This kind of help refers to support for you in general. Support such as weekly phone calls with a friend or mentor for encouragement, focusing sessions, or even just a sounding board for you when things get a bit off course.
3. Reassess the game plan. A goal is only as good as the plan behind it. Looking at that plan every three to six months, let’s you see what can be tweaked or omitted all together. As things change, so do the steps in that plan. If one step involved starting a website business by the end of the year, a major move to another state can put that on hold. Instead, maybe selling items on eBay or similar auction site would help keep you in the loop, without the pressure of reaching your original goal until the move is over.
4. Reward yourself. For every step along the way that brings you closer to your goal, celebrate. It can be a night on the town with friends, a new outfit, or a quiet weekend alone. If the goal involves saving money, then the quiet weekend alone would not dip into your coffers. For weight loss goals, a new outfit or trip to the movies won’t ruin all of the work you have done up to that point.
5. Learn how to deal with setbacks. One reason people lose focus on their goals is a temporary delay or two. They call them failures, when in all honesty, they are anything but. Setbacks can signal that the goal needs a new direction or you need to rededicate yourself to the task at hand. Put it into perspective, deal with the hindrance and move on.
Staying focused on a goal can be tricky and even hazy at times. To correct your vision and stay focused on the final result, use the five tips above as often as needed throughout the process of completing your goal.
There is Empowerment in Action
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If you’ve ever been stuck in a rut of inertia in business or in life before, you probably know the sense of helpless futility that seems to take over. You want your business or life to change, but you feel powerless to do anything about it yourself. You may find yourself constantly making plans to improve these areas, but never quite get around to taking action because it seems so intimidating.
Though taking action can intimidate and frighten you, it can also empower you and make you fierce! If you learn to use it effectively, it can provide the fuel to keep you moving forward toward more fulfilling circumstances. When you do this, you realize that there was never anything to fear in the first place, and you’ll quite possibly never get stuck again.
Below are three simple steps that show you how to get started:
1. First, be sure you understand that your business and life is the way it is right now because of your hesitation in taking action. This is important, because you’ll understand the importance of moving forward no matter how anxious it makes you feel at first.
Then, decide on one action to take to get the ball rolling. Think about your business or life right now, and ask yourself which situations you want to change first. You might choose your relationships, health, financial situation, business networking, or anything else that makes you feel powerless and stuck. Then think about one simple action you can take to inspire some positive change. It doesn’t have to be a huge action, just SOMETHING to start building momentum. It’s time to become fierce!
2. Once you’ve decided on your action step, you’ll have to push yourself to take it no matter what. This may seem incredibly difficult or even scary, but remember that most often the things you fear are not going to happen. In fact, you may not even have a clear reason for feeling scared – you’re just afraid of the “unknown”. Give yourself a pep talk or push yourself in any way you have to in order to move forward at least a little bit. After you take that first step, be sure to let go of any expectations of the things that will happen because of it, and allow yourself to feel great simply because you did something about it.
3. Repeat with the same step, and/or others. Once you’ve taken one step forward, you’ll need to keep pushing yourself to take others. Consider this…even if you take a hundred small steps in a month, you’ll be putting forth positive effort to make changes in your business and life, which cannot help but bring about better circumstances.
The good news is that taking action quickly begins to build momentum. Just as chronic non-action can create a cycle of negativity and stagnation over time, being proactive can create a positive cycle that continues to grow. It gets easier the more you do it, which eventually makes it seem almost effortless.
How can you build momentum in your business and life? Let’s talk about it here.
You Better Check Yourself Before You Wreck Yourself
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Did you know that you talk to yourself all day long? No, not the mental chatter about activities and chores that you need to remember throughout the day. That’s a form of self-talk too, but I’m referring more to the things you say to yourself on a regular basis and more importantly, the tone in which you say them.
When you make a mistake, do you berate yourself angrily? Do you put yourself down or call yourself names? When you have a hard time making positive changes in your life, do you lament what a worthless person you are and tell yourself that you never do anything right?
Negative self-talk can be incredibly damaging to your self-esteem, especially if it’s a big part of your daily life. When you keep saying things like that to yourself, eventually you begin to believe them.
Most often these messages begin as statements uttered by the adults in your life when you were a child. They may have said something negative about you when your actions displeased them, or perhaps they had a habit of saying unkind things even when you didn’t deserve it. As painful as these experiences can be, even worse is when you pick up where they left off and keep repeating the same negative messages to yourself over and over.
The good news is that you can change your self-talk any time you want. You just have to know how to become aware of the tone of your messages and consciously replace them with more encouraging ones.
Try these simple steps for starters:
Develop awareness of your self-talk. It may take practice, but if you keep listening to your inner voice, you’ll begin to notice when you talk negatively to yourself.
Challenge the negative messages. When you notice yourself saying something negative such as, “You can’t do anything right” – stop yourself and challenge that belief. Is that really true? Maybe you mess up sometimes, but does this ALWAYS happen? Probably not.
Replace the negative messages with positive messages. When you realize you’re saying unkind and untrue things to yourself, simply turn it around in your mind. Using the above example, you might say, “Wow, that’s not true at all! I do plenty of things right. It’s true I make mistakes, but so does everyone. I’m a good person and I try my best.”
Over time, your efforts will pay off in the form of stronger self-esteem and respect for yourself and your capabilities. It probably won’t happen overnight, but the more you work at turning your self-talk in a more positive direction, the better you’ll feel about yourself.
