The Onsen and the importance of living your passion…

Two years ago I went skiing in Japan, Niseko to be exact, and experienced an Onsen for the first time. Now, those of you not familiar with the concept, an Onsen is a term for hot springs in Japanese though the term is often used to describe bathing facilities and inns around the hot springs.  


Apart from the amazing skiing in Japan and the awesome food and the wonderfully friendly people the Onsen is a real treat, especially after a hard days skiing the powder, as these monkey's will attest to.

Unfortunately I was not skiing in Japan over the weekend but I did spend it in Sorrento for some well-deserved R & R. 

So Friday night we headed off to Sorrento primarily to rest and rejuvenate but also so that Stephanie could introduce me to the soothing treat she had found a few weeks earlier. Believe it or not right here in Victoria on the peninsula are some of our very own hot springs. These hot springs are amazing with pools ranging from 37 degrees up 43 degrees and the water is amazingly good for the health.

Ok so maybe you don’t want to hear about my wonderful weekend bathing in the hot springs, I feel fantastic by the way and my skin, smooooooth. What was impressive is what the owners have built there. As an excerpt from their web site describes how it all happened…

‘Peninsula Hot Springs was founded by brothers Charles & Richard Davidson and Norm Cleland’.

‘The inspiration for the project began when Charles visited several hot springs while living in Japan in 1992. This sparked off several years of touring and studying hot springs around the world’.

‘In 1996 Charles heard a rumor that hot geothermal water had been discovered on the Mornington Peninsula in 1979, and a search of Department of Minerals and Energy records substantiated it’.

‘In 1997 the two brothers formed a partnership and they bought the 42 acre site on which the hot springs now stand. It took several more years of hard work to design the facility, secure the water license, obtain a planning permit, and drill a bore some 637 meter deep to a plentiful aquifer of 54 degree C natural hot minerals waters. The Davidson brothers then found an investor, in the form of Norm Cleland and his family, and together proceeded to build the Stage one Spa Dreaming Centre facility, which opened in June 2005. In December 2009 the second stage Bath House centre penned vastly increasing the number of bathing experiences and providing a area for children and families. Future plans include an increase in bathing experiences, accommodation, a restaurant and more wellness focused facilities’.

For me, both as a business mentor and personal development coach, it is amazing to see what they have built. The passion that has gone into the project is obvious and truly inspirational. No expense has been spared and the experience for the patrons is top notch. It is fascinating to see that it has taken them since 1997 to build what we see today. In a world of fast food and instant gratification it is important to remember that sometimes dreams take time, especially big dreams. To see the persistence, dedication and commitment that must have gone into the making of the bathes is worth writing about and also worth the drive to experience.

Noting that it took several years just to secure licenses to design and build the premises and drill the bore. I know for me I sometimes expect that things will be perfect right now and that success should happen yesterday. But in truth it takes persistence, determination and a real commitment to see the project through. This is where passion comes in, for without it, chances are you will quit before it has even got off the ground.

Passion is the driving force behind many of the world’s great projects, companies and individuals. Many things have gone by the wayside just because the passion was not there. The world would be a colder place without the passion that has driven these amazing things. Therefore it is important that we follow are passion. When we do we are twice as likely to have the success that we have dreamt of, experience twice the fun and realize twice the joy. At the end of the day that’s what life is about…Joy!

So what are you passionate about? What is it going to take for you to go and make it happen? When do you get the courage to seek help, to find mentors in those that have been there and are now living their passion fully?

If you can’t connect with your passion or the fear is too deep, just for a moment entertain the possibility that your passion could be made known to you. What if it was possible to know your passion? What if it was possible to live that passion fully?

Passion is the hot spring of life, it gives meaning, it gives energy and it heals the lost soul. So go out into your world and be passionate about what ever you do, even if for the moment it is not your true passion. Living passionately will bring you more joy, success and the possibility that you too can live an abundant and full life.

Have a great week and may the passion be with you…Oh and don’t forget to visit the hot springs next time you are on the peninsula it is well worth it. Check out the web site: 

http://www.peninsulahotsprings.com

Regards Marcus

Easter Bunny Blues...

Well Happy Easter to you all I hope the Easter Bunny was kind to you?

In my household all holidays are meet with great excitement having three littlies, and Easter is no exception. So at the wee hours of this morning they all ran in to announce that the Easter Bunny had arrived and there were soooo many eggs. It is nice to hear the excitement in their voices even though it was 6:30 on a Sunday. Now we are all paying the price for those damn chocolate eggs feeling sick and disgusting, it felt good at the time! It's the Easter Bunny blues...

Anyway it is a public holiday so its time to have a break therefore there is no formal blog today.

Stay tuned for next week it's all about communication, the maker or breaker of success in any aspect of life. Until then enjoy the video and have a great long weekend or if you are reading this on Wednesday I hope you had a great long weekend?

Engagement - A Life Changing Experience

Well another week has gone by and this week I have been playing Mr Mum and Mr Dad as Stephanie has been away in northern NSW working as an assistant on the Shamanic Midwifery course. Thankfully I have had lots of help from my Mum, yea for mums, and what a great help she has been thanks Mum. Now trying to juggle family and the extra responsibilities with an already busy work schedule has not been easy and as I sit here on Sunday night I am a little tired.

I was watching Undercover Boss last night, one of my favorite reality shows, and I could not help but to be dragged into the emotion of it all. It was a particularly emotional show with a boss who connected deeply to his staff and had some very big awakenings. I can’t help but be moved by the deep connection that was felt by all and the life changing results that this connection achieved. It made me think about the whole connection and engagement theories that we talk about but often give lip services to. As I have said before, and no doubt will again, engagement is the key to success or more importantly how we engage. It makes sense that the more we engage and the deeper that engagement we have with anything the more success we are likely to receive. So how are you engaging with your business and your world?

If you are a sole trader or small business owner you might want to look at how you are engaging with each of the domains, or in our language, the pillars of your business. How are you engaging with the finances, the marketing, the sales or in the structure of your files and records? I can bet that the areas that you dislike engaging in are the things that need the most attention. Unfortunately when you are a sole trader you have to be the HR manager, the finance manager, the marketing manager, the sales manager, pretty much everything. Now if you just can’t engage with any of these areas because you just dislike them, like me with my finances, then get someone in who loves engaging in that particular area to help. If you can’t afford it then learn to engage by listing the benefits of engaging in that area and then apply that to your passion. So how is engaging with your finances going to help you to build a successful coaching practice, as in my case. Sometimes we need to segway our engagement so that we can engage in those things that at first thought we can’t stand.

Now if you are in a larger organization where you have employees who report to you or you happen to own a business that has employees then engagement becomes critical to the bottom line. Employee and staffing costs are often the most expense outgoings in any business, so making sure that they are performing is essential if you want to make a profit. It goes without saying, so I’ll say it anyway, that the more engaged employees are the better they will perform. Engaged employees also cost less from a sick leave and turnover point of view. A recent statistic that I read said that over 80% of employees do not like what they do. A scary statistic to think that 80% of staff are disengaged with what they are doing.

I have a theory called motion theory, which states that everything in the universe is constantly in motion. Employees are no different in that employees are either moving towards or away from your business. Those that are moving towards the business are engaged and therefore perform better, have fewer sick days, greater loyalty and have a happier and more enthusiastic demeanor. Now this has to be good for business as an engaged employee is more likely to engage with customers in a positive way. On the other hand those that are moving away from the business and disengaging are more likely to have higher sick leave, less company loyalty and will be less enthusiastic or happy. Now I don’t need to tell you how this comes across to customers just take the supermarket check out person, ‘Hi, how are you’ in a drool monotone voice reading from the employee training manual. Just for fun, change it up a gear next time you meet one of these employees, there not just in supermarkets, and give them a response that is not in the manual.

In all seriousness we have three categories that we place employees into, they are either - Advocates, Fence Sitters or Detractors. Advocates are those that are moving towards the business and engage. These are the employees that enjoy coming to work, are passionate about what they do and the company they work for and the group that we are likely to get the most out of. The second type of employee is the Fence Sitter, these are the employees who are there to do there job and rarely put in over and above but seem to like where they work. These employees are however easily swayed. The third group is the Detractors, these are employees that are in the process of or have disengaged from the business. These employees, depending on the distance of disengagement, don’t like where they work and at the extreme can become toxic to the organisation. These employees hate to be alone and will try to recruit other employees to join their cause. This is where the Fence Sitters can be influenced to join them, which can turn into a mutiny if not taken care of quickly. I am sure we have all been a part of one or all of these groups at some time I know I have. Now both the Fence Sitters and the Detractors, as long as they have not moved too far, can be turned around and encouraged to become Advocates. In fact it is possible to have a company full of advocates. If you don’t believe me check this site out http://www.zapposinsights.com/main/ Zappos is an online business, which started out selling shoes and has now moved into a wide range of merchandise. Their employees are primarily all call centre staff, but a call centre with a very big difference, all their employees are Advocates and moving towards the business. Some of the most engaged employees I have ever seen. They are so successful at employee engagement that they now take tours and run workshops for other organizations that want to learn their secrets.

Engagement is crucial if we want to have a more successful business and successful life. So this week I challenge you to take a look at how you are engaging with your world, identify where you could engage deeper and make an engagement plan. Learn how to love what you do and if you can’t go find and then live your passion, the world will be a better place for it…

Thanks for reading…

P.S: As the Gallup organization have found:

The world's top-performing organizations understand that employee engagement is a force that drives performance outcomes. In the best organizations, engagement is more than a human resources initiative -- it is a strategic foundation for the way they do business.

Research by Gallup and others shows that engaged employees are more productive. They are more profitable, more customer-focused, safer, and more likely to withstand temptations to leave. The best-performing companies know that an employee engagement improvement strategy linked to the achievement of corporate goals will help them win in the marketplace.

P.P.S: Now you don’t have to go to the USA to get extreme employee engagement you just need to call us. If you want to engage more with your small business or have your employees engage more with your organisation the benefits are far and beyond increased profit. Why not give us a call to see how our Engagement Success Technologies can help you to have greater success. It does not cost anything to get an evaluation…

The 10% of the 10% - overcoming fear!

Monday morning and it’s blog time…mmm I’m sure that’s a song, oh no that’s hammer time for all those eighties retro born individuals like me. I’m sorry for my eighties reflection, I spent a lot of yesterday with my band, playing eighties music (not Hammer Time I’m pleased to say), getting ready for another round of Weekend Warriors.  This is a program run by Allans Music for old farts that desperately want to be rock stars. It is made up of ammeters that can’t play very well but are willing the embarrassment and give it a go. The program runs for four weeks ending in a full on gig at a pub with a live audience. I’ve done it once before, not that I told anyone, which was a huge buzz and scary as hell.  This brings me to today’s blog.

Face the fear and do it anyway…

Now when you decided to go into business, whatever you are doing, I am sure there was fear present. Some of you transitioned from a big firm to your own thing. Some of you followed your destiny and fell into your own business. Others may have had a life changing experience that drove you to changing paths and into your own business. This was my experience when I came down with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. What ever your journey has been there was an element of fear that you had to push past to do what you are doing.

I often find that once you have pushed passed that initial fear, which is often overcome because of necessity and a need to make an income, we forget about consciously and consistently pushing through fears. Fear is a constant especially when you are running your own business. Whether it is a fear of making it work, a fear of putting yourself on the line or fear of pushing into areas that make you feel uncomfortable, it is imperative that we do it. Maybe business success all comes down to how comfortable we are at being uncomfortable. How willing we are to face the fear and do it anyway.

I used to snow ski for Australia, something I don’t tell many people, representing our country in international competition throughout Europe. During some of the most exhilarating experiences of my life I learnt how to face the fear and do it anyway. Imagine if you will placing two bits of wood a meter and a half long to your feet, then crouching down and be pushed down a mountain at 120 kilometers an hour. Imagine the wind in your face, the ground only centimeters from your nose and the chance of crashing and causing serious injury to yourself, or death, a constant reality. At the speeds that you obtain as a downhill skier the planks of wood attached to your feet are not actually touching the ground. As you look at them they rock from side to side as the ground rushes underneath them. What on earth would drive anyone to risk his or her life for such a sport? The rush of it, the adrenalin of it and thrill of it?

In some respects running your own business is like a downhill ski race. Once you leave the start line you are committed down the track. Sometimes it is going to be thrilling, sometimes scary and sometimes you will be racked with fear. At the end of the race you will be left with exhilaration unlike anything else. Now a downhill ski race only lasts a minute and a half and a business sometimes a lifetime. Regardless a lot of your success will come down to how you face the fear and do it anyway. Pushing through fear, overcoming those things that scare you most may ultimately be why you succeed or fail. In a ski race only the most fearless win as any amount of fear slows you down and when races are won by hundredth of a second there is no place for fear.

There is a statistic I herd somewhere which goes like this. 90% of all businesses that start today will not see their fifth birthday. Of those 10% that remain a further 90% wont make it to their tenth birthday. Not a very positive or encouraging statistic is it? So how do you become and remain in the 10% of the 10%?

There are lots of aspects to business that assist in its ultimate success, marketing, networking, having a needed product, identifying and reaching your ideal customers, finance, internet, management, the list goes on. There are also hundreds of guru’s on the Internet showing you many systematic ways to make a million and have a successful business. Even I have a systematic program to increase your business success. However maybe, just maybe it all comes down to one thing…your ability to overcome fear!

So what is your greatest fear? Public speaking, presenting, speaking with customers, dealing with finance, getting yourself out there, networking, managing, organizing the list goes on. The first step in overcoming a fear is to identify the fear. Then, and here’s the key, RUN TOWARDS IT! Summon all the courage that you have and run towards those things that scare you most. Public speaking, which is the number one fear in the world even above death, is an obvious one that most of us have (If you are going to have a successful business then this is one you definitely need to get over and quick). When we run towards our fear we always find it disappears. It is a bit like a fog, it looks thick and scary when you are on the outside however if you run into it you find that it is just a thin layer of mist.

I remember when I realised that for me to be successful I had to learn and be comfortable with public speaking. I had herd of a public speaking course offered by the Dale Carnegie group, Dale is the author of the famous best seller ‘How to Win Friend and Influence People’ a great book. It took me five years to summon the courage to do this course but I did it. Every week of the course, which runs for 12 weeks, you have to make two presentations in front of 100 people. Every week I sat in my car and said “I’m not going in, there is no way I’m going in” and every week I faced my fear and did it anyway. At the end of the course I was invited to become a leader and then a trainer and the feeling of success I felt as I overcame the fear was incredible. It helped me to have the confidence to do my MBA amongst other things. Now it did not cure my fear of public speaking but rather gave me the tools to do it. Every time I am asked to speak I feel the fear and do it anyway.

One of the tricks I learnt was to say yes before the fear kicks in, you see fear is all in the mind. It takes a few moments for the brain to realize and activate the feeling of fear so if you say yes quick enough the fear does not have time to stop you. I am sure you have all herd of the acronym for fear, False Evidence Appearing Real. It is just the brain reflecting on the past and projecting it into the future and leaving us with a feeling akin to fear in the now. Most of us have had negative experiences of public speaking, whether it was in front of family friends as a kid where people laughed at us, never in malice just how it was.  Even at school a lot of us where ridiculed every time we stood up and spoke. There is no such thing as a naturally gifted speaker just those who have learnt to overcome the fear and do it anyway.

So what is your greatest fear in business? Go run toward it and do what ever you need to, to face it head on. This one action may just change your business success forever. Get out and present to as many people as possible. Take every opportunity to speak in front of an audience. Face the fear of finance by getting someone who is not afraid or fearful of it to help you. What ever your fears get help to overcome them or face the fear and do it anyway.

If you need help call me and I will assist you to identify your fears and provide you with strategies to overcome them powerfully. For when you overcome your fears you take back your power and you move forward into greater and greater success…try it I dare you!

So run toward your fears, face them head on and I bet you will find them not so scary.

Oh and if anyone wants to come to the gig I’ll try and get over the fear and let you know in my upcoming blog’s.

Make Passion a Priority

Well it’s been a long two weeks since I posted a blog, I had planned to post every week however this last fortnight has been a little tough. Over the past few months I have done a great job of posting a regular blog every week. However last week I was recovering from my weekend workshop, Double Your Clients, which as usual challenged me as much as it challenged my participants.

After the weekend I did not have the energy or motivation to write the blog. I was drained and perplexed at the lessons the weekend threw me.  Now I am not going to go into all of them today I’ll save that for another post, suffice to say that on the Monday I wanted to give up. I wanted to throw the preverbal towel in and go back to my old corporate world, you know the one that is safe, secure and you get a regular income for a regular commitment week in week out. So what turned me around?

Well I started to read a book called The Passion Test by authors Janet Bray Attwood and Chris Attwood, it’s a New York best seller. I was reluctantly driven to read the book and I have to say I am glad I did as it has put me back on track. I had been getting more and more frustrated that things were not going the way I wanted them too. I began to push against the natural flow of my own intuitive nature and the universe itself. (There is a natural flow to the universe…) I was becoming a grumpy old man…not that I’m that old, not now anyway. It’s funny how books just appear when you need them. A friend and client of mine passed on an email that had appeared in her in box and she thought it might be of interest to me, and it was.

In the book they take you through a great process for identifying your passion and a systematic way of having those passions become a reality. Now some of the stuff that they talk about is stuff that I often ask clients to do, identify an inspiring vision or in this case passion, put together a vision board etc. However there are some very unique processes that Janet and Chris have developed that I found to be of great help. Identifying your top five passions and the way they question you to identify your real passions. Finding your markers so that you know it is happening, developing a vision board based on the five passions then writing a page on how life will be like when you are living your passions. Then they ask you to write out your 100^th birthday speech, which I found was a positive spin on the message to the world speech I often get clients to do, same objective just a little more positive. Then getting into action and trusting in the passion plus a lot more wonderful insights, quotes and stories. As they say:

'When you are clear, what you want will show up in your life, and only to the extent that you are clear'

Now this is just a small snap shot of some of the exercises in the book. The most inspiring part of the book for me is the stories of both Janet and some of the most famous authors on the planet, all talking about living your passion and the overwhelming benefits that come from living a life with passion.

For me the greatest benefit has been getting back to basics, the realigning of my self, getting back into a discipline and routine that I had left behind some years ago. I used to meditate every day and reconnect with my centre, to recharge and realign myself to myself. The book inspired me to go back to basics to first start with the most important thing ME! To reconnect and stay connected even in the middle of fear, anxiety, panic, anger and all the other things that go on in our day-to-day world. To not be dragged into the drama. Their saying of Intention - Attention - No-tension has led me to taking out the tension part. I have had the intention and have given plenty of attention but it was all with an enormous amount of tension. To the point that my family was ready to disown me… A grumpy, distant unhappy person was the general gist of their feelings. However and I am so excited to say that within a week I had the most wonderful comment from Stephanie. She said to me, that was one of the best weekends, speaking of the one just gone, I feel you are so much more present with the family, you did so much and did not mention being tired or complaining. It was music to my ears and I even went out socializing on Saturday night after spending a lot of the day gardening. This may not sound epic to most of you but for me who has lived the ‘I’m suffering from chronic fatigue’ story it was big. The big part was the fear that I moved through to actually go out. As I say in my workshop ‘choose’ to make it happen and as the fear appears keep choosing, and I did.

This process has helped me to find my centre again, to be able to sit in the fear but to do it anyway, to once again live the teachings I pass on to participants of my workshops and my clients. I feel whole again, connect and listening to the wisdom that is within me and within all of us. I actually feel a sense of happiness, which I have not felt for a while, even in the face of fear, maybe that is one way to conquer fear laugh at it....

There are many quotes in the book this one is one of my favourites:

‘Your life is created first in your mind, then in the world’

So when do you choose to live a passionate life…fully. I know there are a lot of people half living their passion in the middle of transition. I know that there has to be a practical pragmatic side to life of making sure the bills are paid and that there is food on the table. However when you get on track and begin to commit to living a life of passion all manner of things will show up to make it possible. So if you are not currently living you passion full time or at all, or you want to realign and get clear on what it is then I highly recommend The Passion Test. Oh and we are going to run some of the Passion Test workshops which run for four hours and are a great way to get started, aligned and in action to make it happen. I have been in contact with one of the amazing Passion Test facilitators in Australia, Ruth Donald and she has agreed to come to Melbourne and run a few of the workshops.

If you are interested please drop me a line.

Thanks for reading see you next Monday…

P.S. If you want to find out more or get a copy of the book just click here http://www.thepassiontest.com/?af=86141

More Lessons from Planet Earth

Even as I write this the lessons from last week, and it was a big week, are drifting off into the depths of my psyche. I remember it had something to do with the father wounding and the constant battle over the years to heal this wounding but last week a new insight appeared.

I had some confronting meetings last week that lead me to a realisation of the importance of emotional intelligence in business and in life. I had always known that my father was emotionally void and distant but I did not realise the depth to which that disease had afflicted me, until last week. Confronted with a situation where I had not lived up to expectations with tasks I had agreed to do, in a new business partnership. This greatly effected both of my partners as they where waiting on me to do what I needed to do in order for all of us to move things to the next level. Now I had real honest reasons why these had not been done. Business and making a living got in the way, but this was not the issue. My partners are both coaches and have a deep understanding of the human psyche and helped me to realise just how far I am from being able to connect my extrinsic world and my intrinsic world. 

The extrinsic world is the face we all put on when we go out into the world, and the intrinsic world is that deeper knowing self that would seem to be very fragile and hence why we don’t lead with this part of the self. When they expressed there disappointment and frustration at the situation I found myself getting angry and upset. Angry that they did not understand how difficult it had been for me and disappointed that i had let people down. This led to the realisation that the centre world of the entrinsic, as I have now termed it, is the most important part of self to understand. Now this maybe easy for a lot of people, however as I looked out into the world in pain, anger and frustration, I realised that it is void in much of our community.

This confronting meeting led me to the understanding that what people really want is to connect with the true self of others. In that I mean is that part of you that is the expression of whom you really are, vulnerable, scared, seemingly delicate and fragile. It takes a great deal of internal honesty with yourself to be able to express this fully to others. You see I have been trained to be a pleaser, anyone else with that affliction? My pleasing gene is so strong that it will over ride my true self, my real desires and place the feelings of everyone and everything above mine. It also leads me to be less honest with myself about what I can and cant do and what my true desires are. If I did connect to that honesty it may not be possible to live out the genetic desire to please. On the extrinsic side, the outer world, I am very honest however on the intrinsic side I sacrifice my honesty to myself so that I can fulfil the pleasing gene. 

So now what? It is one thing to have the realisation and another to integrate it so you can live it out in the world.

How do we break free from seemingly genetic patterns and subconscious subscripts handed down to us from generations past? The secret may lie in the entrinsic part of ourselves. There is a physiological side of the human body that is always trying to place the body in a state of homeostasis. That is our bodies attempt to balance our internal processes of things like hot and cold. This entrinsic side of ourselves is our homeostatic self trying to balance the inner emotional world with the expectations of the external world. So the secret may lie in our connection to our entrinsic or emotional, feeling self. In that sharing our true feelings about what is going on for us may actually help us to break free from these habitual patterns regardless of whether we found them ourselves or whether our parents and their parents handed them down the line.

Feelings in business, now there is a novel idea! 

So what am I feeling at this moment and what are the fears and hesitations that appear as I attempt to connect with them. As always the key is engagement, so if connection is the intrinsic identification of our feelings then engagement is the action to which feelings are expressed extrinsically. Sharing the fear, the hesitation that we may upset another or not please versus the desire to show the world that we are strong is not easy. It takes courage to live from the heart, but isn't this what makes life worth while?

I think writing a blog is a good way to over come some of this, as long as there is honesty and to the most part I am attempting to do just that. It’s not easy, it is not free from fear but it is cathartic. How will everyone take it, I don’t know, all I can do is be as honest as possible. Now this is not always going to please others. In fact it may often disappoint, but it is much better to disappoint upfront that to let down later on.

So how will connecting to and engaging with your true self, that inner world of emotions and feelings help you and your business? I believe we as a human race have a desperate desire to connect and engage with the true self of others, to know people at a deeper more real level. Let’s face it we all have fears, phobias, habitual patterns we are not proud of and those dark things hiding in the closet. I think when we engage with others at the real level of the entrinsic self we open up the ability for others to 'get us' and therefore employ us. I often talk about engagement as the most important thing in business and maybe in life. As the more we engage with anything the more successful we are likely to be. So what would happen if we engaged in the entrinsic self and opened up and shared the truth of our lives?

I have an amazing job that I am so grateful for as I get to connect with people like this on a daily basis. However it also gives me the ability to hide from myself as it is always about the other person, so in essence I have set this up beautifully so that I can continue the patterns of the genetic self. Well I wonder what would happen if this changed?

What would happen if you changed?

So with the all the fear and phobia that this blog may disappoint some of you planted firmly on my sleeve I post it for all to read....

Here's to honesty with the self...cheers.

Overcoming the Sole Trader Blues!

Now every once and a while most solo entrepreneurs or sole traders, you know people like us with a staff of one, ourselves, or a small team, goes through the ‘Sole Trader Blues’.  Those times where you feel unmotivated procrastinate and feel less than inspired. Where you sit at your desk looking endlessly into the computer hoping something exciting will jump out at you and fire up that passion you had yesterday. Well believe it or not I had the sole trader blues last Thursday.

There I was sitting at my desk looking into the abyss feeling flat and low trying to find something to inspire me back into action. I know I had a lot of things to do as the day before I was flat out, but do you think I could think of any of them in this moment! Even though I had my action plan list, my sales funnel and my priority matrix I just sat there. In that moment of the blues I could not think of anything inspiring to do. As I scanned my list nothing seemed any fun, actually quite the opposite, everything seemed a chore. ‘Ring up some sales leads’ I thought but no I can’t call anyone when I feel like this and they will probably say no anyway…. ‘Write some more of the coaching program manual’ I mussed, oh God I cant be bothered…. So I just sat there! Maybe I’ll look at Facebook or Linkedin maybe that will inspire me…to no avail. Maybe if I play a computer game that might get me out of this rut….no that just made me feel guilty that I had lots to do and here I was procrastinating. So what to do?

In speaking to a few small business owners last week a number of them talked about being in this rut, maybe it was the full moon, or just a strange coincidence or maybe it was there so that I could write about it in my blog and pass on some handy tips to get you out of the Sole Trader Blues. 

Now the blues can be triggered by many things, a few negative sales calls, the moon cycle, your cycle, a brief moment where you loose hope or loose sight of the bigger picture of your vision or just because. So what did I do?

When I find myself in times of trouble Mother Mary comes to me... opps that's a beatles number no help here or is it? Now seriously when I find myself in this situation and I have the means to be conscious enough to realize the rut that I’m in, here are my top tips to beat the blues, and yes playing some beatles on my guitar is one of them:

1.   Get moving – when you feel flat, down or like you are in the blues the first thing to do is to get moving. Get up from your desk change the scenery and go for a walk, even if it is only down to the back of the garden. Pick up a musical instrument and play it outside. Go for a walk along a river or the beach or somewhere that makes you feel good. One of the causes of the blues can be the lack of movement. If you have been moving forward in your business and suddenly there is a hiccup, lick a few negative sales calls, then you can be placed in a space of non movement or procrastination. The best way to get moving again is to get moving, anywhere.

2.     Take an action – Once you have had a walk or moved from your desk the next step is to take an action. Any action no matter how small and preferably small, will have you moving once again. Get up and do the filling, clean your desk, go to Officeworks and buy that stationary you need or write a blog.

3.     Review hope – Often the place that we go to when we have the blues is that place of no hope, even if it is not conscious, a lack of hope will have us stop and loose sight of what we are trying to achieve. So write a list of all the positive things that are, will, or you want to have happen in your business. More often than not there are some great opportunities opening up and reminding yourself of them is a sure fire way of finding some inspiration to get moving.

4.     Call someone – Now call someone, make a business call that you need to make and talk to another human being. Sometimes as a sole trader, of just you or a few, you can get lost in your own mind. The best way out of this trap is to call someone. It is best to call someone who is going to give you a positive response, so not a sales call as yet, but rather someone you are doing business with who is a supporter of your work.

5.     Go do something - Now at worst if none of the above works go do something you love to do, kayaking on the river, playing tennis, reading a good book, gardening, riding a bike, going to the gym or visiting a friend. It does not matter what you do as long as the doing is something you love to do. This will often kick in the inspiration gene and have us get back on track.

6.     

      Positive affirmations – As you begin to move it is important that you tend to your mind and the thoughts you are having. Regardless of whether or not they started this whole blues thing you mind is a powerful tool, use it wisely. Begin to repeat positive affirmations over and over like a broken record. Some of my favorite affirmations are:

“I think positively only”

“I am totally self confidant”

“I am passionate, inspired and in action”

“I have an abundance of new customers/clients”

“I am totally self worthy”

7.     

      Communicate – At the end of the day the best thing you can do is communicate with someone you trust, love or look up to and ask for help. There is nothing like a comforting word or a strong kick up the backside to get you moving. Because the blues is just that, a lack of movement. This lack of movement could be due to any number of feelings from, its too hard, to I can’t be bothered and any number of negative untrue thoughts.

In my case it was the support of my love one, Stephanie, and a good dose of kick myself up the backside to get out into the world and get on with the job that got me moving again but not after spending most of Thursday morning mopping about. So get into action, get moving and know that what you are doing is important, real and of great value to all of those you touch. Oh and if you get stuck CALL ME!

These ‘Sole Trader Blues’ usually only last for a few hours or a day, however in some cases they can go on for days. If they happen to go on longer than a few hours or at most a day or two then call someone, me, a friend, a colleague, someone that can help inspire you out of the blues. If you feel that your blues are more than just blues and maybe depression please seek the advise of a qualified health care practitioner. The sooner you get onto it the sooner you will be back on top.

One Sick Child - Leads to a clear plan for success?

Happy New Year to all of you and I hope you had a great Christmas break, if you got a break that is?

I want to start the year off with a more personal blog and to set a tone of letting you into my life and also into my business life. I want to lead more by example rather than just through knowledge and a façade that we all put on sometimes. I want to be a little more ‘naked’ with my blog. So I hope the following mutterings help.

There were two reasons that I became a business coach, the first is because it is the one thing that allows me to express all of my skills, from business to counseling through to healing. The second was because of lifestyle and a desire to be there for my family…

So here is a story of our New Years holiday that thankfully has a happy ending…

We had a fairly quiet Christmas break together with the traditional family get togethers; lots of wonderful food, great company and many laughs. Once the Christmas craziness was over, and the dishes had all been done and the house once again back to a more ‘normal’ mess as apposed to a ‘crazy’ Christmas mess we decided to get away for the New Year. Having a house up at Mt Buller and a number of friends choosing to spend their New Years eve celebrations at one of the highest points in Victoria we decided to get away.

So on the Thursday we decided to pack up the car and the kid, just Lucy as the other two were with their dad, and off we went.  Now those of you that don’t know me that well I have three children, two beautiful step children Claudia 10 and Brendan 7 and one of our own little Lucy 2. So with Lucy in the car we headed off with a scheduled stop at Lake Eildon to visit some friends who have a houseboat there. I was hoping to water ski for the first time in over ten years, unfortunately the water was too rough much to my disappointment. Anyway after a nice day on the water jet skiing and general splashing about, Lucy loves the water, we headed on up to Buller.

On the way up the mountain Lucy began to become sick and half way up the mountain she threw up. Now this is not the best of stories to start the year but it is what happened and the moral of the story makes all this worth while. By the time we got to the top of the mountain Lucy was quiet unwell. Now our history of going to Mt Buller over the last year has not been a good one. I think we have had at least one sick child on nearly ever trip, so you can imagine our delight at the prospects of another sick one.

After two days of no sleep, Lucy being very unwell and a less than enjoyable New Years Eve for all concerned we decided to head back home early on the Saturday. When we go home Lucy had some concerning symptoms that seemed to be getting worse not better. The poor little thing lay on the couch not talking looking so sad and sultry with a high fever and not wanting to drink or eat. Lucy is normally such an animated kid and loves to talk and play and talk and play… So once again we head off to the Royal Children’s Hospital. I say once again as we had Lucy at the hospital a couple of times during September for an unrelated illness. Now I am not good with my children being sick, which, is quiet different from my normal way of being around sick people. I have spent most of my life helping sick and injured people; be it with a physical or mental illness, get better. Especially in acute situations where I am the person you want around. However when it comes to my little girl I am a bit of a mess. I just hate seeing her suffering and my heart just cried that day. Anyway we sat in the hospital for five hours while they did tests, rehydrated and observed her. After some water a cool lemonade icepole, and don’t icepoles just cure anything, she thankfully seemed to pick up and we were allowed to go home. It was a little worrying for the next 24 hours but I am pleased to say that she has now made a full recovery and back to her normal happy, laughing, dancing and talkative self.

I believe that there are lessons in all of life’s challenges and I think this one highlighted a few. When things are going well we can sometimes forget the ‘specialness’ of life and of the lives of those around us. In some respect it is why I decided to start my own business, so that I could be nearer those that I love most. To be there to see all the little changes, the new words, the new expressions, but mostly to be present when I am truly needed. Now I know we often make the excuse of starting our own businesses to get out of the 9 to 5 rut, working for the ‘boss’ but at the end of the day isn’t it about being closer to the ones we love? Isn’t it about having the freedom to choose when and where we operate our business?

At the end of last year I was stressed, over working and driving myself too hard. I find that it is easy to get caught up in my business, giving it far to much emphasis and energy. I also understand that this is sometimes a difficult balancing act especially for a male as we have the primal hunter-gatherer gene driving us to provide for our families. Now this is not to undervalue the feminine contribution it is just a primal programming that males have, it’s not real in our modern world but unfortunately still affects some of us.

At the end of the day life is all about balance. The business aspect of that balance is driven by the ability to build something, to be the master of our own destiny but most importantly giving us the time and freedom to be with the people we love most. Now January is a great time to get organized and to plan the year ahead. To take stock of the past year, learn from the mistakes, to celebrate the wins and to take the learning’s of all that has been. To then set clear intentions for a wonderful, connected and successful year ahead.

So what I want us all to do is to list all the most important things in your life and to schedule them into your business plans and business calendar. To not forget the real reason you decided to get into your own business, whether that was because of wanting to be closer to your children, animals or friends. To be able to spend more time with your significant other. To be able to spend more time on yourself or just because you had a burning desire to prove your tenth grade teacher that he was wrong! So apart from the business essentials, marketing, networking, finance, sales, product development and admin, place some emphasis on all those other much more important things in your life. Make the most out of them through the ability to organize your business around your life. Remember that if you don’t design your business then your business will design you. It is the same with your life, if you don’t design your life then life will design you.

So take charge of what you truly want to have happen this year. Make a plan to make time for the most important things in your life, in my case my family. And build a solid business plan to have the most successful year of your life, in all areas and in all ways! Oh and if your business is not allowing you the opportunity to have more time, more money and a greater quality of life then maybe you need a business coach…..if I can help you or anyone else you know give me a call marcus@intrinsicsuccess.com.

Here’s to a great year…. CHEERS!

Engagement Part 1: What has WELLBEING got to do with business?

It would seem like everything according to the Gallup organization, who have been tracking wellbeing from around the world since the mid 20^th century. In fact they track the wellbeing of the US on a daily basis. So what’s all the fuss about and how can it help us in business and career?

Wellbeing is not just about being happy but rather having a full life: according to Gallup ‘wellbeing is a combination of our love for what we do each day, the quality of our relationships, the security of our finances, the vibrancy of our physical health, and the pride we take in what we have contributed to our communities’. According to dictionary.com wellbeing is: a good condition of existence; a state characterized by health, happiness and prosperity.

So how is your health, happiness and prosperity?

Gallup found that the number one contributing factor to overall wellbeing is career wellbeing. Whether you are an employee or you own your own business the amount of enjoyment we get from our work has an enormous effect on the wellbeing of all other areas of our life. In fact people with high career wellbeing are twice as likely to be thriving in their lives overall. Not only does high career wellbeing help us to have ‘thriving lives’ it may also help us to live longer. The Gallup study also shows that high career wellbeing reduces blood pressure and the potential of head disease and also reduces anxiety and the likely hood of depression.

Now this is all well and good but how is this going to help us in business? Besides the obvious health and overall life enjoyment benefits it may also be good for our businesses health. There is a direct correlation between wellbeing and engagement. If you have employees you, as the business owner, can have an impact not only on their health but also the way that they engage with the business. I have a saying and that is ‘the more engaged we are with anything the more likely we are to be successful at that thing’. We tend to put more effort in into that thing and want to spend time and energy on that thing. We have a desire to become better at that thing and therefore are more conscientious. The more engaged we are with our career the more successful we are likely to be. This is why the most successful business people seem also to be the most passionate and engaged in what they are doing. In turn the more that you are engaged with your work the greater your wellbeing will be.

It is also true that those with careers where they get to use their strengths and do what they love are six times more likely to be engaged in their jobs and three times more likely to have a great quality of life. Therefore what you do, and the love you have for what you do, will help you to be more successful and could help you to live longer. Gallup conducted an ‘old age study’ and found that those who enjoyed what they did so much and did not retire until they where eighty lived until at least 95 years of age.

So loving what you do has a great impact on your health and overall wellbeing. It also has a direct correlation to your level of engagement with what you do. Therefore the more we can help ourselves and employees to engage with our business the more successful we are likely to be.

Maybe we need to have some focus on our wellbeing? Our life might just depend on it!

In part two, next week, I will discuss how we can assist the engagement process both providing practical steps to increase the wellbeing of ourselves and our organisation.

If you would like to increase the success of you or your organisation call me to discuss engagement and wellbeing in business.