Note: The special launch week offer is now over.

Did you ever have an opportunity that you didn’t go for because you didn’t feel like you could do it?

Do you sometimes feel like you cannot ask for what you truly want or say no because you fear being rejected?

Do you feel like no matter how good you do things at work or in school you are still not good enough or happy on the inside?

Do you feel like you are not someone who could have or deserve success in the most important areas in life such as love, friendship, career, finances or your health?

Do you feel like you have not lived up to your potential yet and are quite often discouraged by what you have accomplished in life so far?

And do you think you’d have more success in life if you were happier on the inside?

Well, being in such a place is not uncommon. I used to be in that place. And many are there today in various degrees.

That is why my new course, the 12-week course simply called the Self-Esteem Course is all about understanding and raising your own self-esteem. So that you can be happier and more successful in your life.

How I have built my own self-esteem and you can too

Being in a place of low self-esteem is not a good but an all too common place to be in the world today.

It can feel terribly restricting. You don’t go for what you really want most of the time. And it feels like life never seems to really start for you or truly grow compared to the people you see around you.

But this is not something that is set in stone. Low self-esteem is an issue and a challenge but it is something that can be improved greatly upon so that you can feel great about yourself and live your life to its full potential too.

I think my story with self-esteem is a pretty common one. I didn’t have atrociously bad self-esteem but I was down on myself quite a lot and didn’t feel like I deserved very much in life. So I held myself back from the success in wanted. I held myself back from trying to live up to my potential.

Over the past years things have changed for me. And in this course I want to share what I have learned, what has actually worked and still works to keep my self-esteem up even through rough parts of my days and weeks.

In the Self-Esteem Course you will each week for 12 weeks get a part of the puzzle of high self-esteem.

• Exercises for understanding. I will share the powerful exercises that helped me to understand myself better and to make steady improvements in how view myself and the world.
• Strategies so that you don’t get dragged down in everyday life. I’ll share the ways I have learned to handle those common situations, habits and pitfalls that can drag your self-esteem down on a daily basis.
• The habits of high self-esteem. I’ll share the habits I have cultivated that allow me to feel a lot better about myself and feel the inner freedom to explore life as I want to.

Many of the strategies, tips and exercises in this course are things I have never even mentioned on my blog or newsletter before.

Helping yourself through life’s ups and downs and towards your dreams

Having a healthy sense of self-esteem is much like building and maintaining your personal physical fitness. It is not something you do once and it is fixed for the rest of your life.

But in this course I’ll give you the tools to build it up and then you can run with it and keep it up week after week and month after month, through life’s ups and downs and on the winding path towards your own small, big and awesome dreams and goals.

Because that is what a healthy sense of self-esteem is about. That you feel and think that you are worthy of good things, happiness and love. In your relationships and socially, at work or in school, with your health, finances and other important things in life.

It is about you feeling good about yourself even when you encounter criticism, failure or if your work is not done in a perfect manner or if you are not achieving things all the time. It’s about being good to yourself just like you would be good to your best friend.

The most important positive changes that this course will help you make are how to:

• Deep down feel like you truly trust yourself to be able to handle life and making the important decisions and that you deserve to have and to get more good and awesome things in your life.
• Uncover and reclaim your inner core of unchanging self-esteem.
• Discover your factual strengths and weaknesses and a more balanced and nuanced perspective towards yourself and your world.
• Talk back to your own inner critic, stop it before it can damage you and your life even more and then replace it with healthier habits.
• Finally lay off and overcome your own most self-critical and most self-esteem damaging thought habits.
• Handle mistakes and failure in a way that preserves your self-esteem levels and allows you to learn from what happened.
• Respond to criticism in a more understanding and levelheaded way.
• Stop comparing yourself and your life to other people and their lives.
• Replace your perfectionism with more helpful and healthy habits.
• Cultivate more compassion and understanding for yourself and for other people.
• Find your most important dreams and set up goals and effective strategies that will help you reach those dreams and fulfill your untapped inner potential.
• Stay on course while you work towards what you want and to not self-sabotage when you get it.
• Simply stop feeling lousy or negatively about yourself and start feeling good about yourself and happier on the inside.

60 Day 100%, No Questions Asked Money Back Guarantee

I am so confident that this course will help you that it comes with a 60 day money back guarantee. So it’s a risk-free deal for you.

If you aren’t satisfied that The Self-Esteem Course is helping you improve your life or you don’t like the material for some reason then just let me know via email and I’ll refund you in full with no questions asked.

Here’s What You’ll Get if You Sign Up for the Self-Esteem Course Today

I have kept things very simple for this course. And you have two options when it comes to how you want the course delivered. Either you can get it in small, weekly parts via email. Or you can download the whole course today (if you want this option, scroll down a bit).

If you choose the “one-small-part-each-week” option then you will each week get a short guide with just a couple of clear action steps at the end of the guide to take that week. I have added this weekly option to lessen the chance that you get overwhelmed, stuck in analysis paralysis or start procrastinating.

I want as many as possible not only to read the information but also to take small actions each week to build their self-esteem and be able to better maintain it.

So, with this option you will each week get a new email containing a written guide in PDF format with strategies, practical tips and clear action-steps to take.

And, as I wrote a couple of paragraphs up, many of the things in this course are things I have never even mentioned on my blog or in my newsletter before.

You will also receive these two bonuses each week:

• The Weekly Worksheet. One worksheet per week in PDF format containing in many cases absolutely essential exercises to help you to better understand yourself, your own self-esteem and how to improve it.
• The Weekly Audio Session. That week’s written guide as an audio session in mp3 format.

That’s 12 extra worksheets & 12 audio sessions in mp3 format.

Get the Self-Esteem Course – Weekly Email Edition Now

There is a time for a real change. A time for inner freedom and self-happiness so that you can live the life you really want. A time to grow, to start feeling good about yourself and to explore what you want deep down instead of holding yourself back.

If you like, that time can be now. Today. So let’s get started.

Today you can get the Self-Esteem Course for just $37.

Here are the simple steps to get your spot in the weekly course:

1. Click the button below and then after you have reached and clicked the “Pay Now” button in the Paypal payment process and purchased your membership you will automatically be added to the membership email list.
2. Go to your inbox. First you’ll get a confirmation email where the subject line start with [S-E] and in that email you need to click a link to confirm your membership.
3. Then, a couple of minutes later, you will get an email with your download links for the first guide, worksheet and audio session of this course.

You’ll get a new email every 7 days with that week’s download links for the full 12-week duration of the course.

NOTE! Be sure to put in the email address you want the course delivered to into the PayPal purchase form because it is at this email address you will receive your weekly guides and worksheets.

Or Download the Whole Self-Esteem Course Instantly Today

You don’t have to subscribe to the email option and get the course in small weekly parts though. You also have the option to get the whole Self-Esteem Course right now. You will then gain instant access to all the 12 weekly guides, the 12 worksheets and the 12 audio guides in just a few minutes.

Click the button below to get your copy of the whole Self-Esteem Course for just 37 dollars today.

P.S: I spent many years to get to where I am today. I don’t want you to have to spend that much time struggling to find your way out of low self-esteem, squandered potential, often feeling down about yourself and your life or beating yourself up on a weekly basis like I did. Instead, get a fresh start today. Start growing and building your own self-esteem and life towards new, unexplored heights and horizons.

And remember, you have a 60 day, no questions asked money back guarantee so you can check out the Self-Esteem Course with no risk for you.

One of the most common questions I get via email is how to create a financially successful small business online. So today I will take a closer look at one of the best guides to help you with that.

First, one very important thing to note is that building a popular blog and creating a financially successful small business online is not automatically the same thing.

I for example had a very popular blog for quite some time but made little money from it because it didn’t view it as a business first. If you want to create a popular and well-read blog that helps a lot of people then that’s a great goal.

But if you also want to create a business that not only helps people but also makes a nice chunk of money, perhaps after a while even enough money to support you fully then you need to look at this the right way. You have to look at it as a business first.

One of the best guides – one that I sure wish I had read a few years ago since it would have saved me so much time, energy, frustration and trouble – to help you to look at this from the right perspective and take action to create the small business for yourself is The Unconventional Guide to Working for Yourself. This very concise and practical guide is all about what I do in my own life with my website and newsletter: Creating Freedom for Yourself Through a Very Small Business.

Visiting every country in the world while being self-employed

This e-book is written by Chris Guillebeau, many of you have probably already heard about him in some way and he has quickly become one of my favorite people online.

Chris has set up a very cool and fascinating lifestyle for himself. He helps people live unconventional lives and to change the world through his website, his unconventional digital guides and The Art of Non-Conformity book.

At the same time he is travelling the world and his very ambitious goal is to have visited every country before his 35:th birthday on the 7:th of April, 2013. Things seem to be going very well as he has already visited 149 out of 192 countries. Chris has been self-employed for his whole adult life and in The Unconventional Guide to Working for Yourself he shares his advice based on more than a decade of experience.

As I mentioned above, I think this is one of the best guides I have found so far to help you start and run your own very small business online. Why?

The pros:

• Not just about blogging. Chris outlines many different ways of creating a very small business such as creating sites and monetizing them, selling on Ebay, creating information products, selling your photos and so on.
• Grounded in reality, not get rich quick schemes. Chris does not claim that you will start making thousands of dollars this month. Instead he writes that he will he share how to make $200 or more each month through your own very small business. I really like that goal and that the book is grounded very much in the reality I have experienced too during these past four years. Yes, you can create a flow of money from your business but it requires hard work and takes time.
• Very concise. What I have seen people go over in 100+ pages Chris covers in 53 pages without missing much details. I love the non-fluff approach and light and sometimes humorous conversational style of the writing.
• What not to do. Chris shares not just what to do but also what to not do by explaining 6 common mistakes that new entrepreneurs make and by sharing 4 highly overrated businesses.
• Lots of actionable and specific advice. The book is a very helpful combination of not just healthy mindsets but also lots of concrete advice in the action plans at the end of each chapter. The action plans are a big positive for me, they make it easy to get started and create clarity.
• Very well designed. This may not be a big deal for everyone, but I do like a well designed e-book. When it is nice to look at it becomes easier to relax and take in the advice.
• Excellent frequently asked questions chapter at the end of the guide.
• I learned from it. Even though I have been doing this for 4 years now and I know quite a bit there were really good tips for me too in the book. I for example learned a few things about opportunities such as speaking on cruise ships and some smart tips I hadn’t thought about for launching products.

The cons:

So those where the positive things about the guide, how about some negatives? Well, I have a few thoughts.

• Not very in-depth at times. Since the guide is so short it is not very in-depth sometimes. But it does contain good references to check out online.
• A workbook would be a nice bonus. The action plans are as I mentioned excellent and at the end of the book Chris also gives you a great exercise to help you focus on the business you want to build with the help of pen and paper. But one idea got while reading the book was that a printable workbook would also be useful to help the readers find clarity.

Who is this guide for?

No guide fits everyone’s needs. So…

This guide is for you if…

You want to start to break out of your 9-5 job. It’s for you who are willing to put in the hard work and want to start a small business to earn extra income on the side or in the long-term work for yourself full-time.

This guide is not for you if…

You already know pretty much everything about running a business online. The guide is aimed at beginners and intermediate people. It’s also not for someone who wants some magic pill that will make it possible to make a ton of money in very little time and with pretty much no effort.

You also get three audio guides and one SEO-guide

I purchased the basic version of the book, it included three audio bonuses in mp3 format that are somewhere around 30 minutes each. You also get a 26-page Search Engine Optimization guide by the expert Naomi Dunford (well-known from for instance Copyblogger.com) that will help you to rank better in the search results on Google.

A brief rundown of the audio bonuses:

• Questions and answers. Chris answers questions from readers. Some really good stuff here such as how to get people to buy your product and not to just look at it.
• How to get started. This one answers one of the most common questions Chris gets and it’s a good guide that helps you with what to do first when you get started with your small business online.
• How to get traffic to your website or offer. About how important it is to find the right readers or customers for you. And other good thoughts on for instance what to avoid and the power of guest posting on blogs.

You also get free updates of the book for 6 months.

If you get the complete version of the book you also get these bonuses:

• The Creating a Brand to Build a Lasting Business audio guide.
• A 17-page report on Turning a Hobby into a Source of Revenue.
• The 10 Ways to Earn Income through Travel Mind-Map with detailed notes.

100% Satisfaction and Effectiveness Guaranteed

Chris has come up with a excellent guarantee to make sure that getting the guide will be risk free for you. Here’s what he writes:

“If you read the guide, listen to the audio sessions, and put in a good-faith effort, I am not allowed to keep your money if it doesn’t work for you. You have to let me know if this happens, and I have to refund your money promptly. You have 60 days to succeed before I return your money.”

Specifically, I want to ensure that you can earn at least $200 a month ($2,400 a year) in new income through what you learn. Obviously, I want you to do even better than that – but this is the bar of success for the guarantee.

In addition, there is the usual, 365-day guarantee – if it doesn’t rock your world anytime in the next year, just tell me and you get your money back.

I make both of these guarantees in part to reassure you, and in part so I can reassure me. I really don’t want anyone’s money who can not seriously benefit from this information for any reason.

Click here to get your copy of the The Unconventional Guide to Working for Yourself today.

That is an affiliate link above, but I do not recommend anything that I do not find insanely useful.

Image by *Zara (license).

“The successful warrior is the average man, with laser-like focus”.
Bruce Lee

To get the results you want out of life you have to be a to stick with what you are doing. Day after day. Focus and consistency is key to success in any area of life.

But the problem is that it’s very easy to get off track. It’s very easy to make a few common mistakes and shot yourself and your potential success in the foot.

Here are four mistakes that I have made many times. And a few solutions I have used to make them less frequent.

1. You get distracted.

Maybe the biggest problem when trying to stay on track is all the distractions around us. There is however a few things one can do to decrease the number of times you get distracted in day to day life.

Use a cone of silence.

How do you create one of those? You unplug and remove as many distractions in your work environment as possible. Some examples:

• Unplug your internet cable. If you don’t, it may be tempting to just take a short breather online. Perhaps check your email or your RSS-feeds. Or chat for a few minutes with some friends via IM. This breather usually expands and before you know it your 5 minute break has become a 35 minute procrastination-session.
• Unplug the phone. If have the possibility, consider unplugging or shutting off the phone for a while. Talking, texting and emailing can become big distractions and time-thieves
• Shut the door. Get away from the voices and noises outside your room. Try to keep it as silent as possible to be able to focus on your work.

Reduce and clean up visual clutter.

Clutter in your work space can also be distracting. So:

• Declutter your desk. I remove old coffee mugs, put things back where I got them, order any loose papers in neat piles and throw out what is not needed. This creates a clean workspace with a minimum of visual distractions.
• Declutter the desktop. If I have any files/icons on the desktop that should be stored somewhere else on the computer I move them. What I don’t need anymore I throw out. I have also incorporated a bit of quick decluttering into my morning routine now. I make my bed and clean up for a few minutes. This declutters my space and mind and creates a good and focused start to the day.

Ask yourself helpful questions.

Be alert. Ask yourself questions throughout the day. Questions like:

Is this useful?
Will this matter 5 years from now?
Is this the most important thing I could be doing right now?

Whenever you feel like you are heading down a path of irrelevant thoughts or distractions ask yourself a question like the ones above to snap yourself into a better headspace.

2. Your simply forget.

In my experience one of the most common mistakes is simply forgetting what you should be focusing on. You fall back into your old ways and habits or get distracted into some different path during your day. Especially in the beginning, when you are starting to establish a new habit or working towards a goal.

So you need a bit of help. One thing that has worked well for me in this case is to use external reminders. To use something outside of your own leaky memory. You can, for instance, write your goals on a piece of paper and put it where you can’t avoid seeing it. Examples of such places are your bathroom mirror, fridge or computer. This helps to reinforce each and every day where you are going and what is most important to do.

3. You choose something you don’t really, really want.

I think this is a very, very common. You think you want something. But deep down you soon discover when you get started that you don’t really want it that much. Or you fool yourself into thinking that you want it and keep going. This can lead to many new problems as you try to go forward and start looking for solutions to resolve the new difficulties that pop up. But the big problem may simply be on the basic level you are overlooking.

So set goals you really feel for/are interested in. What are your goals? This is crucial. As much as possible, you have to set the goals for yourself.

Should and ought to-goals isn’t good enough. Or goals that other’s have set for you. Or other people’s goals.

Think about your goals. Think about who has set them. Then think about what you really want in life. Then set your own goals.

It has to be your goals and you have to have a real interest in them to increase your chances to achieve them. Plus, when it’s your own goals instead of ones imposed upon you the journey towards them becomes a whole lot more enjoyable. And so, everyday life – the biggest part of your life – becomes more enjoyable.

And when you really want it simply becomes easier to push through any inner resistance you feel. You are so motivated to achieve whatever it is you want that the risk may be scary but smaller than your desire. This is crucial when you hit an inevitable rough spot.

When considering what you want to do it’s also helpful to keep in mind that things can seem a certain way in your head when you think about doing them. But you have to actually do them for a while to gain understanding of how they really are. So to find what you really want to do you may have to try a few of your ideas and experiment to find what you love doing.

4. You don’t add clarity to what you want.

Really, really wanting it is great. Adding as much clarity as you can makes it even easier to stay on track.

A few good guidelines to add clarity to what you want is to set goals and make them specific, measurable and to think about them in present tense.

Don’t go for more visitors for your website or just for running more. Go for a thousand visitors a day or running for 20 minutes three times a week. The more detailed picture you have of where you want to go, the more likely you are to actually get there.

If you don’t make your goals measurable then how will you know when you have achieved them? You will never be done with the goal of “making more money”. But you’ll know when you have achieved a goal of “earning 5000 dollars a month”.

It’s also important to keep your goals in present tense. Not: I will run for 20 minutes three times a week. You have to write: I run for 20 minutes three times a week.

Why? Well, your subconscious mind needs clear direction of what is to be achieved. If you put your goal in an “I will…” form you mind will always strive to bring the goal of running into your life sometime in the future. It will always be out of reach. To actually bring the goal into your life, into the present moment, you have to think about it/write it down in present tense.

My experience is that the more clarity I can add to a goal the less I procrastinate and the less I get off track.

Of course, you may still not achieve the goal as quickly as you’d like. And you will probably still get sidetracked from time to time. That’s pretty normal. Things are seldom perfect, except in our dreams. But you can improve your consistency and focus in a big way by avoiding those four easy to make mistakes.

What is your best tip for staying on track in day to day life?

If you found this article helpful, please share it on Stumbleupon and Twitter. Thank you very much! =)

“The great breakthrough in your life comes when you realize that you can learn anything you need to learn to accomplish any goal that you set for yourself.”

”Spend eighty percent of your time focusing on the opportunities of tomorrow rather than the problems of yesterday.”

“Success comes when you do what you love to do, and commit to being the best in your field.”

One of my absolute favourite personal development people is Brian Tracy. He has written many, many books about success, effectiveness and leadership.

What do I like about him?

• He gets to the point quickly. Brian Tracy is one of the most concise writers I have found in the personal development niche so far.
• His products are often jampacked with practical value. You get stuff you can use when you buy one of his products rather than just a few tips and a lot of motivational padding.

Here are just 11 of my favourite tips from Brain Tracy at the moment.

If you want to learn much more I highly recommend checking out books – either in paper or audio form – like Time Power and The Psychology of Achievement. Also, check out the Focus & Concentration Paraliminal, it’s my favourite to sharpen my focus and boost effectiveness.

1. Change your self image.

“The person we believe ourselves to be will always act in a manner consistent with our self-image.”

“We will always tend to fulfill our own expectation of ourselves.”

“Move out of your comfort zone. You can only grow if you are willing to feel awkward and uncomfortable when you try something new.”

You will often stop yourself from doing stuff that “just isn’t you”. But when that stuff is the new normal, the stuff you just do because you are you then it becomes a lot easier.

How can you change your own self image?

Here’s what I used to see myself as a fit and healthy person rather than a person who dabbles in such stuff occasionally:

• A ton of proof. Your mind needs proof that you are this new person. The proof is the experiences you have had. So if you really dive in and immerse yourself in something like fitness and work out every other/every day, read a lot about it all and are eating healthy stuff in a conscious way you change a lot about your day to day living environment. Expanding your comfort zone like this will quickly give you a lot of experiences and so the change can come about quicker than if you dabble a bit with it for a few years.
• Let go of your old self image. In my experience you can shift back and forth between two self images. I think at some point you have to make a shift and let your old identity go if you want to grow. It may be your identity when it comes to health. Or money. Or socially. The problem is that the old image is so familiar and reassuring that your mind may not want to let go. I recommend checking out Let Go! to learn how to better let go of your past self image and other things in your life.

2. Create helpful habits.

“Successful people are simply those with successful habits.”

Pretty simple. Our habits are what we tend to do consistently in our day to day life and so they control our success – or lack of it – very much.

What are successful habits? Some you can find in this article. A few others are:

• Do the most productive thing right now.
• Do one thing at a time.
• Do things even when you don’t feel like it.

How do you install them in your life? Two tips:

• The 30 day challenge. You have probably read about this old personal development concept before. Basically, you make a deal with yourself to do one thing for just 30 days (one example: exercise every day) and no more than that. But after those 30 days you may discover that your mind will have become so accustomed to this new behaviour that it will be easier to continue doing it than stop doing it.
• Just focus on the process. While doing something for those 30 days you focus on the process rather than the results. I for instance use this when I workout. I don’t take responsibility for the results in my mind. I take responsibility for showing up – even the days when I don’t feel like it – and doing my workout. The results come anyway from that consistent action. And this makes it easier for me to take this action and establish the new habit when I know that is all I need to focus on. Instead of using half of the energy and focus I have available on hoping that I “reach my goal real, real soon”. Focus on the process and you will be a lot more relaxed and prone to continue than if you stare yourself blind on the potential results that never come as quickly as you want to and puts you on an emotional rollercoaster from day to day.

3. Focus on what is useful.

“Whatever you dwell on in the conscious grows in your experience.”

“The key to success is to focus our conscious mind on things we desire not things we fear.”

This is very important and something I think many people don’t grasp the full extent of. I certainly didn’t before. When your focus is split, when you fill your mind just the “normal amount” of negativity or dwell on for example mistakes you are using up valuable time, energy and available focus to pull yourself backwards and to make mountains out of molehills.

Problems seem to become bigger in your mind than they actually are when you dwell on them. But so does, for example, opportunities and gratitude. Your surrounding reality is huge. And the room for interpretations of that reality is wide. What you focus is what you will see in your reality (opportunities vs. more reasons why things suck). What you dwell on becomes bigger and bigger in your mind. And what you think about is what you will act upon.

That’s basically why it’s absolutely crucial to keep your focus and your thoughts in right place and on the positive and useful things in your life as consistently as you can. If you focus on the negative and irrelevant stuff it is quite likely that you never get all those most important things done.

4. Set clear goals. And write them down.

“People with clear, written goals, accomplish far more in a shorter period of time than people without them could ever imagine.”

To be able to focus consistently on what you want you can use goals. If you use them, write down so they transform from thoughts into something physical and real. You can use that piece of paper as a reminder – posted on a wall for example – later on to keep your focus in the right place each and every day.

5. Ask yourself helpful questions.

“After every difficulty, ask yourself two questions: “What did I do right?” and “What would I do differently?”

The questions you ask yourself in life determine much of your outlook and success. If you ask disempowering questions like “what sucks about this?” in any situation then you are creating a lot of unhappiness and victim thinking. If you on the other hand keep it on a useful and empowering level with questions like the ones from Tracy then your chances of succeeding goes up.

You can find more empowering questions in 11 Questions That Could Help You to Vastly Improve the Quality of Your Life in 2009.

6. Luck is predictable.

“I’ve found that luck is quite predictable. If you want more luck, take more chances. Be more active. Show up more often.”

People who take the action and more chances in life tend to get the luck. If you never take chances or action you don’t get the opportunity to get lucky. You might just sit around doing nothing and rationalize it as “being unlucky”.

Also, if someone focuses on what s/he wants s/he tend to find more opportunities and other useful things that someone with a negative focus will simply not “be lucky enough” to see.

7. Focus on the activities that brings you results.

“Most people engage in activities that are tension-relieving rather than goal-achieving.”

This is very true. People love to just take it easy or relieve tension – and create more of it – by procrastinating and complaining instead of doing. It seems easier on the surface but in the long haul it tends to cause you more pain.

Of course, you must take time to relax too. But find a good and helpful balance for the two aspects of life and the best ways and most positive ways to relieve tension. Three suggestions could be regular exercise, meditation in some form or just watching a good movie.

8. Realize that you have to pay the price.

“The price of success must be paid in full, in advance.”

Nothing you really want in life is free. You have to put in hard work to get it. And usually over a long time period. You have to make hard choices and sacrifices.

Now, doing so can produce a lot of happiness along the way and when you reach your destination. But when you take the step from comfortable dreams about success and happiness to actually start doing things then there is always a price to pay. So be prepared for that.

9. Keep going.

“Every great success is an accumulation of thousands of ordinary efforts that no one else sees or appreciates.”

That’s what people like Tiger Woods, Michael Jordan and Bruce Springsteen did. They practiced a lot.

How do you put in all that time and effort if no will reward you right now? Well, you find things you love doing, things you do for yourself – rather than to get someone else’s attention and appreciation – and when things feel rough you just do what you know is the right thing to do anyway. You keep going with persistence but also simple the joy of doing what you love as two supporting friends.

10. Make a decision. Any decision. Just do something.

“Decisiveness is a characteristic of high-performing men and women. Almost any decision is better than no decision at all.”

I harp on about this a lot on the blog from time to time. That’s because it’s one of the most fundamental things that hold people back. Sitting on you hands and hoping that someone else will do something for you usually results in a lot of waiting.

Just make a decision. Try something. The sky will most likely not fall if you fail. You will just feel bad for a short while and learn a few things from asking the question in tip # 5. Then you make new decision based on what you learned and take action again.

11. Take responsibility for your life.

“The happiest people in the world are those who feel absolutely terrific about themselves, and this is the natural outgrowth of accepting total responsibility for every part of their life.”

“The more you like yourself, the better you perform in everything that you do.”

“Disciplining yourself to do what you know is right and important, although difficult, is the high road to pride, self-esteem and personal satisfaction.”

A lot of the tips in this article are based in taking full responsibility for your own life. When you do that you will start doing many of these things naturally like making decisions, putting in hard work and really trying to keep your focus in the right place.

When you decide to take responsibility for your life and doing what you know deep down is right – for example, going to gym instead of lying on the couch eating potato chips – you increase your esteem of yourself. You like yourself more and more as your self esteem goes up.

When your self esteem goes up you feel more worthy of any success and you are less likely to self sabotage in subtle and not so subtle ways. This is crucial and ties back to tip # 1. You tend to behave in alignment with your own self image.

Taking responsibility for your own life and doing the right thing are not the only things you can do to increase your self esteem and success. Another powerful tip is to like/love other people. Why? Because how you view, judge and think about people is usually how you view, judge and think about yourself.

This may sound a bit weird. But try it out for a week or two and see how it affects your view of yourself and your life. You may be surprised.

If you found this article helpful, please give it a thumb up in Stumbleupon and share it on Twitter. Thank you very much! =)

Over the last three month I have been using a product called Paraliminals.

During these months I have experienced such benefits such as increased presence and calmness, being able to get out of negative feelings and headspaces quickly and increased focus and effectiveness.

Paraliminals – a brief explanation

Paraliminals are CDs that are focused on various aspects of your life. One is about getting you to become more focused and effective. Other ones are focused on such things as overcoming anxiety or improving relationships, confidence and health. There are currently 34 of them.

You use the Paraliminals by first reading through a few short instructions in the small booklet included with each CD. Then you just sit or lie down for about 20 minutes per Paraliminal and listen with headphones and closed eyes.

Paraliminals are not subliminals with hidden messages. When you listen you will hear one voice in each ear telling your different things. One voice may for example tell you a short story while the other tells you positive affirmations.

This can be a bit confusing at first as you try to follow them both and hear what they are saying. After you have used them few times you start to relax more and just let the words flow over you like waves. Even though you may just pick up snippets of what is said consciously all of it is absorbed by your mind.

Some Paraliminals are divided into two sessions where the first session might be geared toward some limiting belief or behavior you have. And then the second session is about replacing that belief or behavior with something more useful for you. Paul Scheele from Learning Strategies is who you’ll be hearing most often when you listen. But he also has help on some Paraliminals by top personal development people in the world like Brian Tracy and Jack Canfield.

A powerful faint hum

Beneath the two voices in your headphones there is usually some music and soothing background sounds like ocean waves. Beneath that is another layer with Centrepointe Research Institutes trademarked Holosync technology. Holosync uses something called binaural beats. As I understand it binaural beats means that a different frequency is heard in each ear as you listen. Your brain does however not perceive the frequencies that way. Instead it hears  frequencies that aren’t really there as it combines these two sounds. You can hear this as a faint hum on the CDs.

Here is a short snippet from Learning Strategies about the benefits of Holosync:

“Centerpointe Research Institute’s Holosync audio technology, when listened to with stereo headphones, creates the electrical brain wave patterns of many desirable states. These states include deep meditation, increased creativity, focus and concentration, and accelerated learning ability.”

Personally, I was a bit skeptical of such claims. So does it work?

Yes, most definitely.

Click here to read my full review of the Paraliminals and learn about the top 4 benefits of using them and my 5 personal favorites among the CDs

Or get your own Paraliminals

I am currently using Paraliminals about 5 times a week. I will now focus a few of them and explore them further. Based on what I have experienced so far I am sure it will be a very interesting ride as I intend to more deeply explore such things as my beliefs, self-image and creativity. I’ll probably do an update on that a bit further down the line.

So as you understand I highly recommend Paraliminals. And it’s not just me who like them. Personal development giants like Tony Robbins and – obviously – Brian Tracy and Jack Canfield endorses them too.

The CDs include a 30 day money back guarantee, so there is no risk. You can just try them out and return them if you didn’t find them effective.

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To order the 22 CD collection Ultimate You Library click here. And if you want to order any individual Paraliminals click here.

I still don’t think there are any magic pills when it comes to personal development. You have to do the work yourself. But Paraliminals sure makes that work a lot easier.

Image by Zach Klein (license).

Post by Henrik Edberg. Follow me on Twitter.

“Inspiration exists, but it has to find us working.”
Pablo Picasso

“Don’t think. Thinking is the enemy of creativity. It’s self-conscious, and anything self-conscious is lousy. You can’t try to do things. You simply must do things.”
Ray Bradbury

Here’s a short and sweet post for today. I have been blogging for almost two and a half years now. I haven’t really run into writer’s block so far. How? Here are few tips that help me out. I hope you’ll find them useful.

• Always carry a pen and piece of paper. Obvious tip, but if you always do this then you’ll capture a lot of ideas before they fly away again. I also have a pen and paper beside my bed since I often get ideas just before I go to sleep. Figure out if you have any such creative places and make sure to have some idea gathering materials close by.

• Write down every idea. Even if it may seem stupid at the time. You never know, it might be useful in some way later on.

• Brainstorm. You can often get a good stream of ideas going if you just get started. You may not feel like you have any ideas at all. But as soon as you sit down and start to brainstorm to reach for instance 20 ideas on some topic your mind starts to spit out idea after idea. It’s a bit weird, but after the first idea pop out you often experience a sort of ketchup effect.

• To get a good idea, have a lot of ideas. Then choose one of those ideas. I have Word-documents for every idea that I want write about for this blog with a brief outline or some central words that I have typed down quickly. I never sit down to blog without available ideas to pull up and choose from. This is very helpful if you want to blog regularly without creating a lot of anxiety within about what to write about.

• Expose your mind to new ideas. Read a variety of stuff, not just the stuff you are used to. Talk to people about all kinds of things. Follow blogs and Twittering people that aren’t your usual cup of tea.

• Expose your mind to stillness. If you overload your mind with too much knowledge and ideas you may not only start using it as way to avoid taking action. It can in my experience hinder creativity. Sometimes it’s good to stop exposing your mind to a lot of new information. This can help you digest the impressions you have picked up recently and combine a few of them into cool and exciting ideas. Also, as you may have noticed, ideas often comes to us in the shower or other odd places where the subconscious has time to work while you focus on not getting shampoo into your eyes. So again, don’t forget to always keep a pen and a piece of paper close by.

• Keep your mind open. You never know when you will get ideas. Oftentimes I can get them from something random someone says in a conversation. Sometime it may come from a short part of book or movie. I came up with the idea for this article while watching an episode of Andy Richter Controls the Universe – a very funny sit-com – where the main character runs into writer’s block. There are always ideas floating around out there. You just have to focus on what you want – tune in your reticular activation system – to see them and then use your pen and paper to catch them.

• Just start writing even if your feel uninspired or blocked. It’s just like going to the gym. You don’t always feel like going before your go. But a short while after you’ve started you are glad you got going. I find that I can often start writing and then inspiration catches up with me along the way.

What is your best tip for avoiding writer’s block? Or just to get a really good idea?

If you enjoyed this article, please share it on Stumbleupon or vote for it on Digg. Thanks a lot! =P

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“All achievements, all earned riches, have their beginning in an idea.”

“You might well remember that nothing can bring you success but yourself.”

“If you are ready for the secret, you already possess one half of it.”

~ Napoleon Hill

How do you achieve the success of your dreams? For real?

Well, way back in the early 1900s a man named Napoleon Hill dedicated about 20 years of his life to figuring this out by studying and interviewing 500 of the most successful people at the time. People like Edison, Ford and Andrew Carnegie. The result was a book called Think and Grow Rich. A book that went on to sell over 20 million copies. A book that greatly influenced the whole field of personal development as we know it today.

However, in the book there is a secret. The secret to success. It is mentioned in each chapter amongst stories of paths to success and various helpful tips and strategies. Hill never explicitly tells us exactly what that secret is. It’s up to the reader to figure it out. Back when I read the book I thought I figured out the secret somewhat but also felt a bit frustrated.

Fortunately, a guy named Brian Kim came along and wrote a book about just that secret and describes it very clearly as a step-by-step plan. Brian states the hidden secret right away in the first chapter of the book to resolve all ambiguity once and for all. He also backs it up by offering detailed evidence based on the clues Napoleon Hill provided and points out exactly where it is in every chapter of Think and Grow Rich, just as Hill said where it would be, along with plenty of examples, logic and reasoning to support the validity of the hidden secret.

The Hidden Secret in Think and Grow Rich is an e-book that clearly outlines the secret of Hills famous book in a lean and easy to read 122 pages. And if you haven’t read Think and Grow Rich yet Brian includes a free copy of that one too in PDF-format.

Now, the secret in this book is not the same Secret as in the movie with same name. Well, a bit of it is, but Brian’s book is very much grounded in reality and taking action. It’s not about just wishing for stuff (the Law of Attraction doesn’t really seem to be about just that either, although of course some people have exploited the desire for a magic pill and helped form such an impression of that phenomenon). Â

The power of repetition

If you have been reading this blog for a while you may have noticed that some topics show up over and over again. Stuff like positivity and being present. That’s because I try to remind both you and myself of the most important concepts again and again.

It’s easy to be seduced by the “newness” of different concepts, ideas and techniques. Such a thing makes you feel good over and over as you chase “the next big thing that will finally fix my problem”. Unfortunately it can leave you unfocused. And so not very much gets actually done to achieve the success you’d like.

I believe a better way is to keep it relatively simple and repeat what you find most important over and over. Pretty much pound it into your head to make it a natural part of yourself (just like a negative attitude may have been for many years). Brian does the same in his book.

He keeps it simple and then he repeats the most important things in various ways to really impress upon the reader how absolutely vital they are. One of the big points of the book is to get you to “really get it” and start taking action in your life instead of using the book as another “magic pill” and getting another temporary emotional high.

I used the hidden secret to create this popular website

At the end of the book Brian asks you to take a look at the successes in your life and look at if you followed the hidden secret to achieve them. So I took a look at one of the biggest successes so far in my life, this blog you are reading right now and chuckled a bit.

I had followed the steps Brian outlines pretty much precisely. I also took a look at some of my failures and on what step I went wrong. Pretty valuable information that I am sure will help me a great deal during 2009 to course correct and achieve larger and more consistent success in many parts of my life.

I also spotted the weakest step for me regarding this blog and will strengthen it during the year using the techniques Brian suggests. I think this will create some interesting results.

I believe the book will be valuable to refer back to when I feel like I might be straying off my path and get me back into the headspace where I need to be. A nice thing about the book – besides the repetition that gets the stuff to stick in your mind – are the summaries at the end of each chapter. A quick and easy way to refresh your memory. More personal development books should have those.

OK, so why should I buy this book?

Why should you get this book? Well, I think the biggest thing is that if you get the book and actually use the steps Brian suggests in your life many personal development concepts will start to “click” for you and the book will assist you to find clarity and the correct path to the success you desire.

This way of doing things is also a natural way of going about things. Meaning that you won’t have to use tons of motivational tricks each day to get yourself to take action. Taking the steps in this plan in the right order will create a forward motion within you and you will be eager to take action.

Yes, information from other books/blogs/people will be valuable along the way to but The Hidden Secret of Think and Grow Rich provides a very solid foundation with the most fundamental building blocks for success in any area of your life. It’s the very most fundamental stuff of achieving success that no list filled with shiny tips can really replace.

Without the fundamentals in this book and the step-by-step plan it will become a lot harder to organize all the things you hear and read and actually understand what is absolutely essential for you to succeed.

I highly recommend this book because Brian obviously wants you to work hard towards and achieve real success in your life. The book is not just about getting you too feel good for a short while (although it does that too). It’s about you taking personal responsibility for your own life and making what you want out of it.

I also thought it was kinda cool that Brian got a blurb – those short quotes you see on books – from one of my favourite personal development people; Brian Tracy. Kim’s writing reminds me a bit of Tracy’s books; he quickly gets to the point and shares lots of real and practically useful value in a simple but well-written way. Tracy gives the book a very positive but also fair quote that is grounded in real life and not some hype about quick and unrealistically easy success:

“This Hidden Secret requires insight, imagination and discipline to learn and practise, but it’s worth it. It can change your life!”

I agree.

Brian also includes two bonuses, a short report called The Three Biggest Mistakes People Make When Using the Hidden Secret and a 27-page workbook with exercises to ensure that you actually take action and achieve success instead of just using the material as entertainment. He also offers an 8-week money back guarantee.

So click here to access this offer for Positivity Blog readers and get the Hidden Secret of Think and Grow Rich today and discover exactly what the Hidden Secret is that Napoleon Hill wrote about in his bestselling classic. And use it to naturally achieve the goals you truly desire like I have with this site.

I do get a commission if you buy through any of the affiliate links in this review. So thanks for helping me to be able to keep writing and good luck with the book!

Over the last week or so I have been reading a brand new book by my blogging friend Jonathan Fields called Career Renegade: How to Make a Great Living Doing What You Love . I first thought about reviewing it on the blog but decided that doing an interview with Jonathan would be more fun. So here it is, I hope you enjoy it. And that you check out Jonathan’s very practical – there is pretty much no fluff in it – and well-written book.

1. What is a Career Renegade?

Simply put, a Career Renegade is someone who consciously builds her or his career around the activities, settings and people that make them come alive, while also earning enough to live well in the world.

2. Who are you and how has your career looked like so far?

My career path has taken many turns. I was the kid selling lemonade when I was 8 and mowing lawns when I was 15, so I’ve always had a strong entrepreneurial bent. Somehow, I ended up in the law, though, first overseeing the markets at the United States Securities & Exchange Commission, then practicing hedge fund and securities law at a large firm in NYC.

The money was great, but after the stress of the job sent me into emergency surgery, I did a bit of soul-searching and realized I had little interest in law and no desire to become a partner. And, I decided that no amount of money was worth spending the better of your life doing something that consistently emptied your spirit and drained your body.

So, I set about rebuilding my career around the things I love to do, which for me, involved launched, building and selling a number of health and fitness companies and even teaching yoga and guiding mountain-biking along the way.

One of the coolest parts of each step along my journey, though, was figuring out how to turn pursuits that most people don’t make a living at into a serious income.

3. Why did you write this book?

The book grew largely out of my desire to wake people up to the fact that your living is not something to be suffered or endured. Sure, there may be elements of any job that you don’t love, but the far greater part of the way you earn your living should make you come alive.

Through the process of writing and interviewing a ton of people, I discovered one of the biggest challenges people have comes when their passion is not something that most people make a living at, like knitting, painting or even playing video games.

When that happens, most people just relegate their passion to the level of “hobby.” Which is really sad, because, approached differently, so many seemingly moneyless passions can be transformed into serious income generators. And, that is largely what this book shows you how to do.

4. Could you give a brief outline of your idea about Career Renegades and how someone can become one?

If you love what you do and you make a nice living, you don’t need this book (though you might still benefit from the wealth of personal branding strategies).

But, if you yearn to be doing something different, the first step is generally to ask what makes you come alive. And, decouple the question from the exploration of whether it can make money or not. With a little innovation and often a bit of technology, it’s now possible to monetize nearly passion, often in very unconventional ways.

Once you key in on this, the steps generally involve:

• Doing a bit of free or low-cost market research.
• Mining the web to devour knowledge in the area of your passion and cultivate a certain level of mastery.
• Building a portable personal brand by tapping blogging and social media to showcase your voice and value.
• Rally your inner and upper circles, it’s so much easier if those closest to you are on-board.
• Leveraging your personal brand to create your renegade career, either launching your own venture or tapping your reputation to attract employers or joint ventures partners who will facilitate your desire to build a great living around what you love.

I go into exactly how to do all of this in detail with hundreds of strategies, resources, links and case-studies in the book.

5. But how do I know or figure out what my passion is?

Ask yourself what makes you come alive. You’ve probably known since you were a kid. At least you know the types of activities, the setting and the people. You just haven’t owned up to them, because every time you did, that little voice in your head (or coming out of your parents’ or friends’ mouths) said, “that’s not a job, it’s a hobby.

So, when you ask the question, forget about the money side, then start writing things down. Then, once you’ve started to free up your mind enough to build a list, you can go back and figure out the money side.

6. What are some common misconceptions about taking this career route?

That if you do what you love, the money will automatically follow. Man, that would be pretty nice, huh. So, if I love to cook macaroni and cheese, and I spend all my time doing it, a great income will just magically appear or I’ll be so happy I won’t care about the money any more.

Um, no. I live in NYC, I have a family to support. As do many others. We can simplify (which I am a fan of), we can live more consciously, but to survive in the place I choose to live in, I need to make a good living. And, if my mad passion is making macaroni and cheese, then I am going to have to get really creative to figure out “unconventional” ways to “make” the money follow. And, THAT is exactly what this book is all about.

7. What do you think is holding people back from pursuing their passions in this way?

One thing is that little voice in their heads that I spoke about earlier. You know, the one that says, “it can’t be done, it’s just a hobby.” One of my biggest awakenings as an entrepreneur came when I finally realized that when other people say “it can’t be done,” what they are really saying is, “I can’t do it, so who the heck are you to try?!” When you realize this, you stop limiting your own choices by what others believe they can or cannot do. It’s incredibly freeing.

Another big factor is fear. Fear of failure…and fear of success. On the failure side, most people spin the failure scenario around in their heads until they literally brainwash themselves into believing it’s the only rational outcome.

I actually lay out a process in the book the short circuit this cycle. Nothing foofy, just a simple approach to building the mindset needed take consistent daily action. And, that is the true secret to success in nearly any endeavor. There’s not magic to it, nothing paranormal, nothing to buy into. Just the ability to act, without fail, day in and day out. It’s immensely powerful.

8. What are some of the most common problems Career Renegades run into and how can they solve them?

The three biggest challenges tend to be rallying support of those closest you, cultivating the mindset needed to take action and acquiring the knowledge needed to go renegade. The great news is that these are all problems that are fairly easily solved. In fact, I spent a substantial amount of time walking you the strategies, actions and resources needed to solve them, often in excruciating detail, in the book.

For example, when it comes to rallying support, many pundits say to jettison anyone who doesn’t get on board your vision train. C’mon, that’s just not realistic. Sure, you can remove certain people from your life fairly easily. But, there will always be another group of people, close friends and family, who you can’t just abandon, nor do you want to.

For them, you need a process to guide them to support your renegade quest or, at the very minimum, withhold judgment until your success begins to validate your efforts. And, I lay that out in detail in the book.

With rare exception, it’s no longer a matter of whether it’s possible…but “how.”

9. How have the internet, social media and blogging changed things for people who want to become Career Renegades?

Blogging and social media have dramatically accelerated both the passion-driven learning curve and the ability to build a personal brand. As little as three years ago, much of the strategies I share in the book would have been far harder to accomplish.

But the blogosphere and social have profoundly leveled the playing field, democratized influence so that if you are willing to devour knowledge, then share high value information and ideas, you can establish yourself as force in very little time, spending very little money and taking very little risk.

Plus, if you decide to actually launch an online business, the internet expands your reach, so that your community and your market are no longer your local neighborhood, they’re the better part of the world.

10. Is there anything more you’d like to add?

First, just a giant thank you. To you and to your wonderful community. I am truly grateful to have been given the gift of all of your time and energy.

Second, whether you buy Career Renegade or not, this is a year of profound change and opportunity for so many.

There is a very powerful silver lining in what’s going on in the world today. The old career paradigm no longer exists. The old rules have been irreversibly changed. And, in this short window of openness lies the chance to remake the rules the way you want them to be.

The big question is, will you emerge doing the same old thing or will you set in motion a series of ideas and actions that will allow you to rebuild a living and a lifestyle that, maybe for the first time ever, make you come alive?

If you enjoyed this article, please share it on Stumbleupon or vote for it on Digg. Thanks a lot! =)

“Coming generations will learn equality from poverty, and love from woes.”
Kahlil Gibran

This is a part of Blog Action Day.

Poverty is a complicated problem. I’m surely no expert on the topic.

But I have found a few thoughts that can be applied both to personal growth and hopefully to alleviate poverty.

Maybe you’ll find something find helpful and/or inspirational in this article. I hope so.

1. Cultivate your kindness and openness.

“We think sometimes that poverty is only being hungry, naked and homeless. The poverty of being unwanted, unloved and uncared for is the greatest poverty. We must start in our own homes to remedy this kind of poverty.”
Mother Theresa

But how can one start doing such a thing? For instance, by being kind. By listening. By being open.

And also by realizing that sometimes we don’t have the patience, energy or time for that. But not to let it discourage us or make us give up altogether. Instead we get up in the saddle again the next day.

So many things in life are to a large part about practise, habits and underlying mindsets. One thing that can prevent people from being even more helpful to each other comes from experiencing a separation and barriers between you and other people.

There is often an underlying frame of mind in interactions. Either it asks us how we are different compared to this person. Or how we are the same as this person. The first frame is based in how the ego likes to judge people and create separation to strengthen itself (either through feeling better or more like a victim). The second one creates warmth, an openness and curiosity within. There is no place to focus on fear or judgement anymore.

Cultivating such a frame of mind is of course not easy, especially if you have held the first frame of mind for many years. But one practical way of working on it is to face your fears. As you face them the barriers and separation you have built in your mind decreases. You come closer and feel more of a connection to other people.

With action, curiousness and understanding we come closer to each other. We gain a greater understanding of ourselves and others. And so it becomes easier to see them in you. And you in them. With this frame of mind kindness and wanting to help out becomes more of a natural part of you.

You can read more about this and other thoughts on how to overcome fear in this article.

2. In knowledge lies power.

“Real poverty is lack of books.”
Sidonie Gabrielle

With knowledge comes power. With personal power it becomes harder for those in charge to just boss you around. You learn more about what you are capable of and what others have done before. You learn to help yourself. And your view of what is possible can expand if you let it.

Today this isn’t just about books. I have to agree with Daniel Scocco’s latest post: the internet is changing a lot of things and can help to bring about change even more in the coming years. It can help people to find each other and find out what’s really going on in the world. And how they can improve their lives and their world.

3. Learn from those who really know.

“Most organizations should be pro-active, but philanthropists concerned with poverty should deliberately be reactive, learning from the efforts of ordinary folks who tired of looking the other way as their communities fell apart.”
Marvin Olasky

Here’s a common tips in marketing: you have to figure out what people really want.  

Not what you think they want. There is often a difference between the two, even though one may not think so.

In this case it is valuable to learn from those who live in poverty and/or works with it. From those who have done what you aspire to do. People with experience that have already made mistakes, failed and learned lessons. Don’t use money and effort foolishly to do what you may think is the right thing to do just based on you thinking it’s the right thing.

Problems can be very hard to understand when you come from the outside. When you haven’t had the experience yourself. It might be tempting to project your own pre-conceived notions on the challenge that you are trying to help out with.

This not only goes for this challenge of course. It’s often valuable to ask people what they want instead of guessing. And to learn from people who have already gone where you want to go by talking to them or by reading about it online or offline.

To continue reading about poverty today, here are a few blog posts from around the world that I liked. Feel free to share any posts on the topic that you found helpful in the comments.

• 1 tip on making yourself happier during the economic crisis — and combating poverty, too
• 30 Simple Ways to Battle Poverty With Technology
• 8 Simple Ways to Save Money & Help Stop Poverty

If you enjoyed this article, please share it on Stumbleupon, vote for it on Digg or bookmark it on del.icio.us. Thanks a lot! =)

Image by mugley (license).

Note: This is a guest post by Hilary Jeanes of Purple Line Consulting.

How important to you is your career?

It is surprising how many people leave their careers to chance.  They seem to think that their career will just happen or that ‘the organisation’ they work for will not only decide when their next step on the career ladder is but also what it will be.  If it doesn’t happen, then the organisation is perceived to be useless or not caring or not recognising/rewarding effort or hard work.  We spend a lot of time at work, so doing something we enjoy and find rewarding (both personally and financially) makes good sense.

From my own experience, both as an employee of large organisations and as an HR professional, here are 10 tips which make it much more likely that you will achieve the career you want.

1. What do you love doing?  Think about any type of work you have done – while you were at school or college, in your vacations or in your past or current jobs.  What is it that gave you a buzz?  What activities have you done where time passed without you even noticing?  This is likely to be where your natural strengths lie.  Ask your friends and colleagues what they think you are good at.  There are probably no surprises, but it’s good to find out what others think are your skills and attributes.
2. What did you dream about doing when you were a child?  If you are not doing that now, what aspects of being an astronaut, professional footballer, model, teacher or doctor etc etc appealed to you?
3. Think about what you’d like to be doing in 5 and 10 years’ time.  Working on your own or as part of a team? What sort of organisation (and which specific companies/organisations) do you want to work for? What type of work would you like to be doing?  At home or abroad?  At a desk or not?  What do you like about what you do now?  What would you like to be different?
4. Let’s go to the end of your working life now… Imagine you are at your own retirement party.  People are talking about what you achieved in your career and what they admired and will miss you for.  What would you like them to be saying?
5. What skills do you have that you are not using and would like to?  They may be writing skills that you used on your college magazine or being captain of the school hockey team.  Seek out opportunities to put them into practice now.
6. Look at job ads – in newspapers, journals and on websites.  Cut out or print off job ads that interest you, that you aspire to or that you are curious about.  Which organisations appeal and why?  Highlight the words that are most appealing.  Keep them in a special folder and every month or so, take them out, review them and write a list of the highlighted words.   What are the common themes?  What of the common themes you identify are you doing now?  What do you need to do to be able to fulfil the requirements of those ads in the future?
7. Who do you know?  Who can help you get to where you want to be?  Talk to as many people as possible about what they do and what they love about it.  Ask them how they got the career development they wanted or if you could shadow them for a day to find out how they do what they do.  Most people are flattered to be asked and are only too happy to help.  Find someone who is doing the job you aspire to or working in an organisation you’d like to work for and ask them if they would mentor you.  If you don’t know someone, ask your family, friends and contacts if they do – remember the 6 degrees of separation.
8. Grasp opportunities with both hands.  My big breaks in corporate life came at times when I was facing big challenges in my personal life – a new parent returning to work and separating from my partner.  I really doubted whether I could manage the jobs that were on offer given the other life challenges I was facing, but what I realised was that if I passed up those opportunities, they might not be there again.  It was tough at first, but they were two of the best career decisions I took.
9. What does your boss do that you could do for them?  Observe your boss in action.  What does he or she spend their time doing?  Are there regular activities that they engage in that you would like to try and that would save them time and energy?  If so, suggest that you do it for them.
10. Finding the right job takes time and effort.  Put the time and effort in and it will pay off.  Write down the answers to these questions and keep referring to them.  Find a coach and explore your future career aspirations with them.  One thing is certain – if you know where you are going you are much more likely to get there.  If you set off from home without knowing where you were headed you would drive around aimlessly. So it is with your career. Be clear about what you want and you will get it.

Hilary Jeanes is a coach, facilitator and HR consultant.  She is fascinated by people and loves supporting them to reach their potential. Visit her website at Purple Line Consulting.  You can read another article of hers here.

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