Our Greatest Challenges

In my post, Crash diet for your finances, ways to improve our personal financial situations are discussed. It is clear that anyone wishing to do this, must make some changes and that can be quite challenging. Greatest Challenge

Recently, I came across the website of Brendon Burchard, top business and marketing trainer and author of The Millionaire Messenger and The Charge. You can visit Brendon’s site here. Brendon makes an insightful comment: “Our greatest challenges should be those we give ourselves, to reach our full potential”.

So, considering that in order to make positive changes to our lives, we must set targets to focus on, I had a read around on the subject of challenging ourselves.

It seems that for a lot of people, challenge in life is thought of as something that comes from the outside-it is external to us and comes along to disturb our pleasant little world with trials, tribulations and obstacles to overcome, in order to get back to “normal”.

Life throws us challenges all the time though. If we only respond to those, rather than challenge ourselves, we are only going to reach a fraction of our potential. I’m reminded of a quote by Michael Jordan: “No coach has ever asked more from me than I’ve asked from myself”.

To me, what he is saying here is that to be successful, we should ask more from ourselves than life does. Not just respond but to try more to be the cause of positive change, rather than always helplessly at effect to the situations thrown at us. To try to be in the driving seat of our lives, more often.

Advertising executive legend, David Ogilvy said “Hard work never killed a man. Men die of boredom, psychological conflict and disease. Indeed, the harder your people work, the happier and healthier they will be”.

I think David Ogilvy meant that this is true in encouraging, pleasant working environments (rather than in forced labour camps for example!), but you get his point. You can decide to shock yourself this year, to do something amazing and surprise yourself with your levels of commitment, character and strength and not let outside circumstances dictate your level of achievement. This is done by consciously raising personal levels of performance and contribution.

We’ve all heard talk of people who are “movers and shakers” and how these people are to be admired. This is because movers and shakers are all about change. Everything moves and periodically shakes-because that is what happens in life. If you are a mover and shaker in your particular space, then it means that you make things happen. Your competition is likely to observe you to see what your next move is going to be.

There is a thing called first mover advantage. In very competitive situations, those individuals and companies who go for first mover advantage are often discreet in what they do to begin with and sometimes guarded in the information they give out. Then when it is time to move, they really go for it and make a big impact. Paperwork

It is very easy to see though, that as a business grows, too many people get dedicated to doing things that do not move or shake the business in the forward direction. C Northcote Parkinson (he of Parkinson’s law) noted “The person dedicated to paperwork has lost importance. He is dealing with that which is brought to his notice, having ceased to notice anything for himself. He has essentially been defeated in his job”.

I don’t know about you but I can relate to this feeling. At different times in your working life, the paperwork and demands on a to do list begins to swamp you and you feel that you are merely reacting to what other people need from you. You lose the pro-active side of things for a while. You become just a job function, rather than feeling that you are creating something, breaking new ground and driving things forward.

Ski raceWhen I got introduced to The Six figure Mentors, I realised that although I enjoy my day-job, here was something that I could pro-actively work in my spare time to create additional income and improve my lifestyle in so many ways.

I could challenge myself to learn new skills that would prove invaluable in the new digital economy and being in business for myself but not by myself, I knew that I would have instant access to a whole load of people who are where I would like to be and those like-minded people who are at a similar stage to me. All these people would make up a community where information is shared and practically anything could be learned to make it with an online business.

If you are interested in moving forwards in the new digital economy and making money online, either full time or in your spare time, I would thoroughly recommend getting the free video series that can be accessed by entering your name and e.mail here. These reports explain how you can take control in these difficult economic times and build something incredible for yourself using the power of the internet.

I’ll be back very soon with some information and recommendations on some of the essential tools used in building a digital entrepreneurial lifestyle. In the meantime, it is well worth checking out the SFM here and entering your name and e.mail for valuable information on making 2013 your year.

To Your Success!