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How to Jump Into the Cold Water

Have you ever gone into cold water, so cold that from the first step you start rethinking your desire to be there?  How do you handle that situation?  Are you one of those people that will simply jump in?  Or do you torture yourself by taking one painful step at a time? 

I went to personal development seminar once, and one of the concepts that they taught us was: “How you do anything, is how you do everything”.  Basically what they were trying to say was that if you are a person that will simply jump into the cold water, you will also carry that trait into other areas of your life.  If we take starting a business as an example, you would simply go at it 100%, as opposed to doing endless preparation before you actually do anything productive.

The “Simply jump in” attitude has both advantages and drawbacks.  One of the great things about this outlook on life is the fact that it initiates action.  Inaction is the greatest peril in the way of accomplishing absolutely anything.  Unfortunately we are all susceptible to it to some degree.  The flipside of this concept is that sometimes we can act too fast, and that bears a whole new set of consequences.

So what is the best solution to this problem of making our selves take action, but acting at the “right time”? 

I often bring this up in my articles, but balance is very important in anything that we do.   To apply this concept to what we are discussing – we should “simply jump in”, but at the same time we should also be able to stop out selves long enough to do some necessary due diligence. 

The other solution to inaction is a simple piece of advice – “Get over your-self”.  It might be a bit harsh, as a statement, but I believe that it is a vital thing to do in our life in general.  People tend to over analyze a lot of what they do.  Often we simply need to push ourselves to jump into the cold water, so that we can feel less cold after we do.

Last but not least, we should talk about having motivation to be able to “jump”.  It is easy to say that we should “just jump”.  The simple fact is that if we are not motivated to do so, if the reward at the end of the “jump” isn’t big enough to get us to do it, we simply are not going to jump.  This is a very crucial point.  Imagine that you are standing on the shore of a very cold ocean.  Would you be able to force yourself to jump into it if you didn’t really want to swim?  Probably not!  

People, who are exceedingly successful in life, all have one thing in common.  They all live their passion.  What would be a better motivator then being passionate about what you do?  So the very first thing you have to do before taking any action is to ask yourself a question – is what I am about to do what I really want?  And if it is, or it will give you something that you really want, or bring you to that place where your passion lives – don’t think, even if it is unpleasant at first, simply jump!

Technorati Tags: Personal Development, Success, Fear, Self Discipline

Simple Steps to Discover Your True Destiny

How do we choose what we should do in life, our career, our path in life?  It is a very hard question to answer.  Nobody actually teaches us how to choose our destiny.  In school we are bombarded with a variety of things for us to try, in hopes that we would eventually find something that we could stick with.  This works for many of us, but not all.  Everyone knows at least one person who seems not to have found his/her place in life.  There are even more people who are simply not happy with what they do.  As the matter a fact I would go as far as to say that most of our society could be doing better in that regard.  Most of us just accept our present situation, and think that we can’t do anything about it.  If there are a lot of unhappy people around, society in general is bound to be impacted.

So how do we address this situation? 

First of all I would like to say that there isn’t one thing that will allow all of us to become happy and follow our destiny with ease.  I think that the biggest thing we have to realize is that in order for us to find our real purpose in life; we first have to start looking!  I think intention, is the key element in actually achieving our goals.

Next, after we have decided that we want to find our ultimate mission in life, we have to look at what are the things that really make us happy.  I think that it could be most difficult undertaking, because in order for us to find the meaning in our life, we first have to get to know our selves.  Although this process can be difficult, it also can be very rewarding.  For example some people are very good communicators.  So good, as the matter a fact, that people always make fun of them, because they talk too much.  Their personality will work well in the activities that require them to communicate effectively with other people.  So they would probably enjoy profession such as a journalist or a sales person.  Then there are others who are more analytical in everything they do.  They might want to try something like being an engineer.  These seemingly little personality descriptions, can be very important indicators in our search to discover our destiny.

Here is what I did when I was trying to figure out what to do with my life.  First I wrote down all of the things I enjoyed doing (writing, teaching, personal development, trading on the stock market etc.).  Then I looked at that list and prioritized in order of what I would want to try and do first.  You see out of all of the things I enjoyed or wanted to do, I first and foremost wanted to have my own business.  So anything I would do would have to become a business, in order for me to be completely satisfied.  That is exactly how I started BurstCreativity.com.  This site allows me to teach, write, communicate, help people, but also it is an online business that allows me the freedom that I want - perfect compromise between my desires.  

It doesn’t mean that this is going to be the only thing I could be doing.  I could come up with some other activities that would allow me to fulfill the very same needs.  I also want to build businesses for example, so I am also involved in several other ventures. 

The most important part however is the fact that I try to choose what I do based on what I want.  My inner desires dictate what I do – and this is probably the key formula here.  Find out what you want and do it.

Technorati Tags: Career, Destiny, Path in life, Happiness

10 Steps to Better Efficiency in Your Day to Day Life

I was talking to someone recently and the topic of our conversation ended up about how efficient we are in our day to day activities.  It is a very interesting subject matter.  I have heard numerous theories about this.  Here are a few tips that I think could be valuable:

1.  Make lists.

If you make to do lists and employ other kinds of organizational tools, you surely will benefit from higher efficiency levels of your life.  Time management is one of the most important parts of improving anybodies efficiency. 

2.  Outsource.

This might be a controversial view, but outsourcing all of the things you do on daily basis, can be a great way to free up time and do things more efficiently.  For example if it takes you 4h/week to shop for food, you can find a service that delivers, and use those 4 hours for something much more productive - for example, spending it with your family. 

3.  Learn how to be healthy.

Not everyone would think that health could be an important factor when it comes to improving the efficiency of our daily life, but it really does make a difference.  Just ask yourself if you could be very productive if your health would prevent you from doing what you have to do every day.

4.  Automate your life.

One of the greatest concepts in internet marketing is automation.  Set as many tasks as you can to execute automatically.  This might be a little different in real life, but worth trying.  Our example about grocery shopping can be considered automation.  How many hours does it take you to get groceries every week?  What if you would get a service that would bring groceries to your doorstep every week? 

5.  Leverage whenever you can.

Leverage is a concept that is very familiar in business milieu.  It does however also apply to our regular activities as well.  Do you think it would be helpful to you if you would be able to achieve more with less effort?  Leverage through people - get other people to help you do the things it takes you a long time to complete alone.  Leverage through systems - employ systems.  An example of that could be dividing responsibilities in cooking and cleaning duties in a household.  One person cooks the other does dishes.  It is simple yet very powerful efficiency tool.

6. Plan everything.

It is a lot easier to accomplish anything if you know what it is you are trying to accomplish.  If we don’t plan, we tend to jump from one activity to another, and waist a lot of time.  Write out a clear map of what you are trying to do and follow it.  By the way a plan should never be set in stone.  It should evolve and mutate to best suit your needs as time progresses.

7.  Do all of your banking on the internet.

One of the biggest time wasters is dealing with banks.  I have noticed that those establishments eat at least 1-2 hours of our time every time you go there.  I have done majority of my banking online for several years now and I would say that it saved me at least a hundred of hours of unnecessary waste of time.

8.  Allow yourself to waist 1 hour per day.

We are bound to get distracted!  Most often it happens over and over again, so we actually end up losing quite a bit of real productive time due to distractions.  We also probably tend to get more distracted when we get tired, so over-scheduling can be a real bad thing.  My suggestion is to plan when and for how long you are going to waste time.  If you do, you might start noticing that your attention span actually increases and you are getting less distracted as the time passes by. 

9. Create a flow.

Create a flow of incoming and outgoing items.  Make a place where you would hold all incoming documents and mail.  Put everything that will require you immediate attention in that place.  Alternatively put things that need to go out, such as mail or something you will need to accomplish during the day, in your path.  By that I mean put them in a place you bound to go to on your way out – I often put those things beside my shoes.  This way there isn’t a chance that you are going to forget to do it - you won’t leave without your shoes on, so there is a good chance of you seeing those things you need to take with you.

10.  Set a time for “No Fly Zone”

This is probably one of the most valuable tips I can give.  You will increase your efficiency exponentially if you will put a conscious effort into turning off your phone, internet, locking yourself in a room where no one will disturb you, while you are working.  If you manage to isolate yourself from distractions - you will produce more work.

All these tips are simple and common sense.  We just have to implement them into our life, and the results we are seeking will start showing themselves.

Technorati Tags: efficiency, performance, better productivity, success