Archive for Self Examination
Do You Let Trials Knock You Down For The Count?
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Like anything else in life, your online business isn’t always going to perfect. No matter how much you might hope it will be. Things will go wrong. It’s how you decide to react to trials and issues that arise that will determine if you will succeed or maintain success in your business.
Depending on the type of business you are in or have will determine the type of problems that can arise for you, so we may all be going through different types of stresses and problems but the fact remains that any problem can throw a monkey wrench into your business if you let it.
How do you react when things aren’t going the way you’d like them to? Does it force you to keep going or do you just give in and give up. Think about you and your business being like a boxer and the stress and problems that arise are your opponent. When the other fighter swings and connects with a really good hit, are you going to let them take you down or keep you down? Will you be knocked down for the count?
With my own businesses I have certainly experienced ups and downs.
My natural response to stress is to want to shut down and just say, forget it all. It puts me in a bad mood when things go wrong, but then my “Why” and my craving for my business to be a success kicks in. It helps me to keep going when I really don’t feel like turning the computer on, let alone doing any type of work, and I’d much rather curl up in bed with my Kindle and disappear into a good book or watch my favorite movies and television shows all day long. I now can recognize while I’m in that type of mood as opposed to realizing it later and it helps me to get through it much quicker.
There is nothing wrong with either of those activities but it is wrong if it’s stopping me from being productive, if I’m using those activities to avoid dealing with my business. Quickly one day of neglect can turn into days, weeks and months and before you know it your business can be completely at a standstill. In the past it didn’t used to take much to get me to the point of wanting to give up. I wanted success but I obviously didn’t want it bad enough. I had to learn how to manage my stress when problems would arise. I had to stop feeling inadequate and that I couldn’t be successful because … the reasons were numerous:
- I didn’t know how to blog or what to say.
- I had problems with the technical aspects of an online business.
- I couldn’t possibly sell anything to anyone.
- No one will care about what I have to say or what I can offer.
Any time I have ever gave in to the stress instead of sticking it out, the results were never good because giving up got me no where. Giving up didn’t erase any of my problems, I had to eventually find solutions.
It doesn’t mean that nothing ever goes wrong for me now and things will never be perfect. If you wait for perfection you might as well give up forever because it’s not going to happen. Unforeseen problems happen to all of us, even though we may try our best to have a back up plan or two.
My goal is to take it to the next level. Whatever success I have, I want to multiply that and help others to do the same. While our businesses may be different the first part of the solution is the same, we can’t give up.
If you are struggling with feelings of wanting to give up, you should take a little time to brainstorm and think about the things that attracted you to the particular business that you chose.
Do you still believe in it and want to make it work? If the answer to both of those questions are yes than you need to work through whatever the problem is. Your business will not become successful without you putting work into it. The level of success you see in your business is not an accident but rather a result of your past actions.
You can’t blame anyone for your problems either. We all make choices in our business and we choose whether we will allow a person to do this or that. One person shouldn’t make or break our business and neither should one problem or ten problems for that matter.
For example if you didn’t get that client you thought you were going to get, if that person who said they would join your MLM team or purchase from your business didn’t, should you give up? If you want it bad enough you have to keep going and not give up. Find a new client, a new team member or new customers. Never stop learning because that helps you to be come more efficient in your business. It can be done and it all depends on you and how you treat your business.
It’s okay if things make you upset, give yourself a few minutes to let it out and then move on to doing what you can. The quicker you jump back up and the harder you strive the faster you will get to where you want to be with your business.
So what can you do if you’re stuck in rut and can’t seem to get motivated? First you want to make sure that you are surrounding yourself with positive people and things. This will be upbuilding and uplifting to you. Positivity will help to motivate you and negativity will only pull you down even more. You want to march towards and not away from your success.
Keep in mind that success means different things to different people. For some it may mean enough income to replace or even double your current income, while for others it may simply mean having enough extra money to take a trip or pay a few bills. Never compare your business to someone else’s, that right there can be a source of stress. All the factors aren’t the same so why compare.
They might have started their business sooner than you did, they may have had more start up money or they might have put more time in than you did. The truth is that it really doesn’t matter. Your business is yours and theirs is theirs. Focus on your own business.
One book that I found very helpful and motivating is Grant Cardone’s “The 10X Rule: The Only Difference Between Success And Failure.” In the book Grant talks about how there isn’t a shortage of success and I truly believe that. What does this mean for you? Even though someone else may be successful or even super successful doing the same exact thing as you, it does not mean that you can’t be successful at it too.
There can be more than one person who is successful at the same thing. Online is the same as the “real world”, there isn’t just one good doctor, lawyer, contractor or singer. There are many who are successful and the same applies online. Sometimes jealousies and feeling inadequate with yourself as a business person can be the very thing that will knock you down.
I bought my copy as an unabridged audio because sometimes I like to listen to books while I’m doing other activities. This is a book that I have listened to more than once and I know I will again because I find it so motivational. I also read and listen to other things that motivate and sharpen me. You have to find what works for you. Stay motivated and keep working at your business.
Tweak and change and switch it up until your business is just the way you want it to be. Your success may not be a straight line, your end result may not be exactly as how you started out. Be prepared to go as many rounds as it takes, come out swinging and roll with the punches. Your problems A. K. A. your opponent, may be bigger than you are, might dance around the ring, annoy you or may even hurt you a little bit, but you can show them who’s tougher and who has the most stamina as you fight back and stick it out. You are not a failure just because they things you may have tried has failed. Use it as a learning experience.
You will see that things actually start to fall in place when you take the appropriate actions as problems arise and when it seems like everything is going wrong. When your business begins to show you some success you’ll be so glad that you didn’t give up and it will motivate you to take it to the next level.
To Your Success,
Alice Coaxum
Are You Still Excited?
Posted by: | CommentsNow that we have entered into February, you may want to take a little time to reflect on all of the resolutions that you wanted to accomplish this year. Things you might have been super excited about in Dec 2011, a time of the year when many business hopefuls become full of ideas, hope and confidence in their existing business or business they intend on creating during the new year?
How are you making out? Are you still following your plan?
Unfortunately many fall off after the excitement of the new year falls and fades away. They retract instead of surging ahead like they should. This causes those who do this, not to accomplish their intended goals.You may think this is the worst thing you can do concerning your business but it isn’t.
Even though abandoning your plans can be a business killer I personally believe that it isn’t the worst thing in the world because you do have a plan to come back to, to tweak and shape and mold until you get it right. Lack of planning is the worst because there isn’t a blueprint for your success and more likely than not you won’t achieve any success. Not having a plan is like going to find treasure without a map with clues and a big red X telling you where it is. You will have no idea where you are going.
Failing to plan really does equals planning to fail. It’s not just a saying. You can’t build a business on a whim, it takes a real commitment and hard work.
You can stop your business from being destined for failure if this is the track your business is on, by planning and following through on your plans. Success is never an accident and is always a result of prior actions taken by YOU!
Don’t build your business haphazardly because what you put into it is exactly what you will get out of it or less. You moves should be well thought out and calculated. Look at the big picture. What is your goal overall? What kind of mini goals will you need to accomplish in order to meet those goals? What is hindering you in areas where you may be lacking? What can you learn to get you over the obstacles that are slowing you down? These are some of the question you may want to ask yourself.
Knowledge truly is power. The more you learn, the more you grow as a person and it trickles down into your business as a result of your hard work and dedication.
Whether your business is MLM, Direct Sales, services, handcrafted artisan or a brick and mortar business, your job on the internet when you are marketing your business, is to gather leads, give value, gain trust and make money. If you are failing to do any of those, your business will fail or the growth of it will be severely stalled. This is turn leaves you disappointed and less likely to try harder. Small successes will boost your business ego and do lead up to the total package.
How can you begin setting up your plan if you haven’t yet? Stop and think. Get out an old fashioned pen and paper if need be and brainstorm. Write down what you intend to accomplish and all of the things that you think are stopping you from accomplishing those goals. Once you find the “what” out, you can begin to figure out the “how” which is your game plan for overcoming all of the hurdles and obstacles. Don’t think that it can’t be done. But if you don’t know what you need to do or what is stopping you, how can you expect to move foreward. It’s near impossible.
Knocking off mini goals on your list will cause you to feel good, give you a boost of confidence and encourage you to keep going even when new obstacles occur. Your business life will not be perfect. If you are waiting for perfect, you might as well give up.
Instead of aiming for unnatural perfection, you will learn to bob, weave and duck your way around things that are hindering you as you increase your knowledge in areas where you may be lacking, figuratively knocking out your obstacles. I personally make it a goal to always keep learning. The more I add to my knowledge banks, the more I can pull out when I need to. Am I or my business perfect, of course not but I’m am consistently aiming to do my best and to increase my best. My best changes over time as I change.
Keep in mind that just like with a real brick and mortar bank you can’t make a withdrawal if you haven’t deposited anything and you can’t get credit if you haven’t applied.
Have you set any goals or mini goals for yourself and your business? Have you taken time to figure out what your obstacles are ? What are you going to do in order to increase the odds of your business becoming and staying successful?
Are You Afraid Of Success?
Posted by: | CommentsSome may see this title and think, “Why in the world would anyone be afraid of success?” or “Everyone wants to succeed, so how could they fear that?” Nevertheless there are truly people out there who are afraid of success, myself included in the past.
When you are afraid of success you may not realize it on a conscience level. Something inside can keep one from seeing their true potential, while others may see it as clear as day when they get to know that person.
It is not as uncommon as you may think, to fear success. Their are many who are letting their lack of self confidence and fears hold them back. You could be the biggest thing that is holding you back from living the life that you want. You could be blocking your own success!
How many times have you heard someone tell you that you have so much potential or that you are exceptionally good at something only to have your own nagging thoughts plant the seeds of doubt within your head.
At that moment you are blocking your own success because if you don’t believe in yourself, you won’t try very hard if you even try at all because you already know that you will fail. How you perceive yourself will determine how well you do.
Take steps in the right direction by really examining and scrutinizing yourself the way you would observe someone else if it weren’t you. More likely than not you are more readily to accept and believe in the talents of another than you are to believe in yourself if you are one who has a lot of doubts about yourself.
Figure out what your strengths are. It’s all to easy to figure out where you are weak at. You will want to capitalize on your strong areas while building on your weak areas.
Figure out what is holding you back, change your mindset and dismiss it if you really want to succeed. Throw those nagging doubts right into the proverbial trashcan and dump it … fast.
Do you think you really aren’t smart enough to reach your goal?
Throw that nagging thought away!
Do you feel that you don’t have what it takes to live out your dreams?
Throw that nagging thought away!
Negative thoughts will not help but they will hinder.
Figure out what your dreams are if you have one. If not think about it and develop your dream. It’s okay to not know everything. Some dreams start out as one thing and develop into a whole new dream over time.
Find out what your passion is and what makes you happy. What’s the biggest goal that you have? Is it running your own company, designing your own products or writing a book? It could even be starting a successful website, speaking at a conference or gaining leadership in your MLM company. Passion varies from person to person so only you can figure out what your passion is.
You can do it! Don’t tell yourself any different. Learn, apply and grow if you don’t know something. We all start out as newbies.
Give yourself permission to feel good about yourself. Send those negative thoughts away by replacing them with postive thoughts. Allow yourself to feel that you are worthy of success. No one is better than you because no one can be you like you can.
I’m working on trying to live my dream now even though it can be a struggle at times because I’m not perfect. I’m giving myself permission to feel good about myself and acknowledging my strengths. I want to be successful at what I do and I’m willing to make myself a little uncomfortable to get there.
If you are shy like me than you may at times have a hard time expressing yourself for fear of what others may think. I’m working hard to overcome that. I have thoughts and opinions that people can benefit from and the only way they will is if I open my mouth and speak or write it down to be read.
I’m facing my fears and you can too. Many times it is the build up of thinking about the fear and the “What ifs?” that is scarier than the actual act itself.
It’s not cocky to feel that you are good at something. We all have different talents that are worthy of appreciation. We need to bestow the same compliments on ourselves as we would another and stop being our worst critic, going overboard with self examination.
Take a moment to step back out of your own way and take a step toward success. You’re worth it and so is your dream.
To your success,
Alice Coaxum
Are You Suffering From Information Overload?
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On the internet, books, self help learning courses and tutorials are abundant. You can find all types of different topics, related to home based business to learn about from time management and networking to having the right mindset and technical techniques.
I am one who loves to learn. I ooh and aah when the latest courses and books come out that interest me and you might do the same. As someone who works from home I know that there is a lot of competition out there and I try to expand my knowledge by learning all that I can.
However there should be boundries, even when it comes to learning. Too much of a good thing can be bad.
You might ask yourself how can learning ever be bad?
Learning can be bad when:
It causes you to suffer from information overload. Which simply means there is so much for you to learn that you wind up feeling frustrated, more confused than when you started and overwhelmed. Because of this you accomplish nothing.
You don’t know whether you are coming or going because you are involved in so many different courses that you really aren’t learning anything. You’re not applying what you learn because each course is telling you to do something different and you don’t know who to listen to or where to start.
When you have so many self help books on your bookcase and harddrive that it would take you years to read them all.
When it causes you to be unproductive in your business because you don’t have time for anything but courses and ebooks on various topics and strategies.
When it hurts you financially because you are addicted to buying the latest book, video set or membership.
In this industry it is all too easy to get caught up financially and overloaded with information, especially when you are new.
Learning is a good thing because it expands the mind, storing the information to help you to apply what you learn at a later date. But, you’re only learning if you have time to take in and process the information. You can’t take out (apply) what you never put in.
Now I don’t want to deter you from learning because I am huge on learning and bettering oneself but I do want you to think before you get involved. Don’t just buy because you think it’s the hottest thing or everyone else is doing it. It doesn’t help you one bit if you never take the time to absorb the information.
Investigate: Figure out what the course, book or video tutorial system is about. Can it help you to get further in your business? Does it apply to you? Is it something you are really interested in learning? If you can’t answer yes to these questions, then move on to something else.
Take the time to investigate to see if the system or course is a scam. Are there many satisfied or disgruntled customers? If the course is brand new, take a look at some of their past products. Do their customers feel that it is worth the money, do they rave about the product overdelivering or do they feel that it is shoddy and not worth paying for? You can save yourself time and money by doing a little investigating.
You will also want to factor in if applying the information is within your budget. For example, it’s pointless to buy a book on PPC if you know that you can’t afford to pay for pay per click advertising. It would be more to your advantage to wait until you can to purchase a pay per click advertising informational product to learn about it in depth and instead buy something that you can immediately put to use, which is the whole point of learning something.
Why buy it if you can’t apply it? If you are just curious, find articles written by reputable authors instead of wasting money on something that can’t help you.
Everything isn’t for everybody and that doesn’t mean that the information is bad. It just means that it’s not for you or not for you right now. Your situation could change and what you might not be ready to learn or may not have time for could easily fit into your schedule later, so don’t feel bad if you don’t have the time right now.
Use moderation: You may find that there are numerous ebooks and courses that can help with the niche you are in. If you buy an ebook or two or three actually read them before going on to buy number four, five, ten and twenty.
I am big on reading and I love to learn and improve myself. I now take time to think before I invest in a tutorial system, ebook or online course because I have been guilty of purchasing too many books or courses without having enough time to implement them all.
Now I ask myself the before mentioned questions before purchasing. I give myself a day or so to think about it after I decide that the information it contains can help me, sometimes I take longer than that because I want to be sure.
If I still feel strongly about purchasing I do but if I feel like it isn’t so important to me after all, I don’t. If I decide at a later date that I have the time I can always get it later.
I don’t have a problem learning more than one thing at a time but I have always been that way. I can read several books at the same time without losing track or getting mixed up but everyone isn’t that way. Some can only concentrate on one thing at a time and that’s perfectly okay.
Know yourself and figure out how much you can handle. Even though I can handle more than one thing at a time it doesn’t mean that I can handle 10 or 20 things at once.
Don’t bite off more than you can chew. Take bite sized chunks that you can handle and move on to more once you have completed when you were learning.
No Is A Good Thing So Whip It Out.
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Many times the word no is viewed in a negative light. Many don’t want to hear the word no because it usually means that they cannot do something that they want to do or have something that they want.
When raising our children we teach them the word no so they will know when something isn’t ok for them to do, have or say. In fact it is usually one of the first words they learn because they frequently hear it.
When it comes to running a business, the word no can become your best friend. How can that ever be since no has such a negative connotation attached to it?
The word no can help you to be more productive in your business and personal life. You may feel that you are being pulled in more directions than you can handle, leaving you stressed and confused. Whip out the word no and the confusion or stress ceases.
You realistically may not be able to get involved with every project, joint venture or opportunity that piques your interest. When you are being pulled into so many different directions you can’t really follow any of the paths to the end. You won’t be as effective in whatever it is you are doing when you take on too much.
All of us vary with different amounts of what we can handle. If you are feeling frazzled and burned out, chances are you are taking on too much. You need to whip out your no and slow down some. Concentrate on what is most important and branch out from there once you are on the right track. This is true in life and in business.
We can’t do it all. We can do some things some of the time but we can’t do it all, all of the time. If we want our business to grow successfully, we need to take the time necessary to nurture it. In order to do that we must have goals and stay focused on them.
Sometimes we have to say no to joining a new business, buying every new learning course that comes out, hanging out with friends frequently during work hours and any other distractions that will keep us from our main goal. There is a time and place for everything. Figuring that out will help keep you on the right track and headed towards success.
You may have friends and family who want to talk on the phone all day or just pop over unannounced for a visit, and you might not be able to concentrate on the work you need to do. A successful business requires work.
You have to whip out your no and let people know that while you want to be there for them, it can’t be during your working hours unless it’s an emergency. No work equals no money, so think before you abandon it.
You also may have to whip out your no when it comes to being fair to your homelife. You can’t expect to be able to work 24 – 7 if you have a family to help take care of. You might not be able to take on every project you would like to and maybe sometimes you have to turn things down and pick and choose your opportunities. That is perfectly okay.
You have to strike up the right balance between your life and your business so neither is neglected. The word no can help you to do that. No is a good thing when it helps you to become more productive.
