Do what you LOVE!

With all the news and talk of this global economic crisis that’s happening around the world, it’s fair to say that a lot of people are feeling a little nervous.
Many people are definitely feeling the pinch with the purse strings well and truly tightening.
But during this period of hardship, many people are feeling dissatisfied with their current jobs and careers.
Many people just aren’t LOVING what they do!
And it’s making them miserable!
Typically, people spend five days a week at work and if you can’t stand your job, it’s hard to say the least! Five out of seven days a week – that’s quite a lot of your life!
And consider the fact that most of us start working fulltime around the age of twenty and retire at sixty-five. That means we work forty-five years!
So if most people don’t like what they do, and they spend about forty-five years of their life working…doesn’t that sound like a situation in need of desperate change?
It certainly does for many people today who aren’t just facing dissatisfaction in the workplace…but also the very real issue of not having enough money to cover basic costs.
Living pay check to pay check, combined with the job dissatisfaction really is a recipe for depression and burnout.
But there IS something you can do about it!
You have to break that old belief system many people have. The one that says the business of making money is a hard one that isn’t enjoyable at all.
People believe that you have to slave away in a job you hate, just to make ends meet.
Now, I don’t know about you, but that doesn’t sound like much of a life to me. Particularly if you’re finding it very hard to make ends meet – or worse – you’re unable to make them meet at all.
My advice to everybody I deal with who is battling with workplace dissatisfaction is this: Determine what you really, really love to do!
• What makes you happy?
• What do you wish you could do and make money doing?
• If you could make money in any way, how would you make money?
• What wouldn’t feel like work to you at all?
By LOVING what we do, we enhance our life!
Marsha Sinetar who wrote the famous book, “To Build the Life You Want, Create the Work You Love: The Spiritual Dimension of Entrepreneuring” said:
“Expressing your enthusiasm can add years of creative life to your time on earth.”
And how true that is! By loving what you do for a living, work no longer feels like work. Instead it feels like the life you LOVE!
And to get paid for it at the same time…wow!
Determine what you really love doing and then start creatively brainstorming over ways you can combine that which you love with income generation.
Start writing it all down NOW!

Dreamers and Goal-Setters

No doubt you have heard of dreams and goals before, right? Many people just place dreams and goals into the same basket, but the fact is, they are quite different.
Dreams are things that many people have. People will say that they dream of being wildly successful and incredibly rich. But they leave it at that. They are vague about the dream and don’t really have any serious intention of making that dream a reality.
And so, it just remains a dream.
On the other hand, goals are great achievements that people create with specific detail…with every intention of making happen!
Introducing the dreamers and the goal-setters
As great as goals sound, in our society today, the majority of people are dreamers! They have a dream list – in their mind – of things they would like to have in their life. But they don’t really give these dreams much thought and believe that they may just happen somehow.
Examples of things dreamers say might be:
• “I want to win the lottery!”
• “I want to be famous, but I don’t know how!”
• “I’d love to be rich, but don’t know how that will happen.”
• “It would be great not to have debt, but if it’s meant to be, it will happen.”
Any of that sound familiar to you?
Many of us are dreamers because we’ve been conditioned to think that things are “too hard”.
Many of us were bought up to believe that to make great money, you have to have extraordinary talent or ability.
Many of us were also bought up to believe that success and money only come to them if they trod all over other people.
There is a lot of negativity surrounding the sorts of dreams many people have. And as a result, people don’t get serious about their dreams. They don’t get serious about turning their dreams into solid, specific goals.
On the other hand, goal-setters acknowledge that they ARE deserving of the things they want and they know that they can get what they want if they know what they want and are willing to take action.
So who are you?
Are you a dreamer or are you a goal-setter?
If you’re a dreamer and you desperately want to effect change in your life to bring your dreams to reality, TAKE ACTION!
Think about what you really want your life to be like, and then start DOING things to make it happen.
And remember this fantastic quote – another favourite of mine – from Harvey Mackay:
“A dream is just a dream. A goal is a dream with a plan and a deadline.”
Start turning your dreams into goals that WILL happen TODAY!

Leadership principles to apply for everybody!

You know, often when I’m talking to people about leadership issues, many will write the topic off because they just don’t believe they are a leader.
There is a common misperception out there that leaders are people in well paying, executive jobs. In other words, people just think that to be a leader, you must be in a corporate career.
But the fact of the matter is that leadership is something each one of us has at some point in time.
Examples of everyday leaders
If you are in a partnership with a spouse, if you have children, if you have friends, if you have relatives…there are many non work-related situations where you need to take on those attributes of good leaders.
I have an excellent quote that I have loved for a long time that really brings the whole leadership topic down to the earth level. Here’s what it says:
“If I accept you as who you are, I will make you worse; however if I treat you as though you are what you are capable of becoming, I help you become that.”
That quote came from Johann Wolfgang von Goethe – many of you may have heard of him, but for those who haven’t, he was a German natural philosopher who was also a novelist, playwright, diplomat and poet.
Read that quote again, because what it says really is amazing.
It basically says that for us to be great leaders…
…we must see the potential in other people!
Think about your really great friends. Chances are, they are people who encourage you in everything you do! They are people who are there to help you achieve those things you really want to achieve in your life.
They treat you as though you are capable of becoming – just as Goethe said!
Great friends do this, and great bosses, parents and spouses do as well.
Recognising one’s potential is the attribute of a great leader, but as you can see, it’s also a great attribute when it comes to our personal relationships as well.
It’s all about believing in other people and acting and saying things in accordance with that.
If we open our eyes to this great leadership attribute and start implementing it in all of our interpersonal relationships TODAY, it’s amazing what effect it will have both on yourself and on everybody you know.
Believing in other people is contagious as well. If you really give somebody else encouragement, it makes them feel great! And then they will do the same to somebody else, who in turn will feel great and pass it onto others.
You don’t have to be a high flying executive in a suit to start implementing great leadership qualities like this one. Try it today and put it to the test!