#his journeys goal has been reached but that doesn’t mean his overall dreams are achieved

[punz4lyfe]

Now you've been asked what you do like about him what about the opposite what don't you like about goh?

Aw man, this is gonna hurt.

TL;DR - Goh’s a completely lovable character, but I have three particular issues with him that I feel could become worse if not taken care of properly.

First off, DISCLAIMERS!! To all my fellow Goh fans, please know that writing this, I do not mean any hatred to Goh in anyway. I LOVE Goh, and if you’ve seen literally ANY of my past anipoke posts, you would already know that. These are just issues I find with his character that I want to be changed for the best.

Now with that outta the way, here’s what I don’t like about Goh:

1. His iffy character development. While he’s doing fine in becoming more open to people and more willing to help Pokemon, his fighting skills are what I have trouble with it. Let’s go back to his first ever official battle.

It was at Hoenn’s Frontier Cup where he used Scorbunny and Scyther against a trainer’s Mightyena. Despite having a type advantage with Scyther, he lost horribly, which is completely understandable. He’s a beginner and doesn’t possess the same kind of street smarts and experience Ash and many other trainers have. Alright then, so maybe this will lead to a change in character of wanting to become better in battles by getting some training with Ash, who made quick work of that Mightyena trainer. Surely we’ll get some development over this topic after this episode!

He beats Saffron City’s Karate Master and scores a free Hitmonchan.

...Okaaaay, I mean, we’ve never seen the Karate Master in battle before, so perhaps it was just another fodder trainer the anime is filled of. I sure we’ll get some more Goh development after thi-

He easily defeats and captures a powerful Flygon.

.....Alright, alright, it was only a wild Pokemon. Everyone can beat those, right? Heck, in the next episode, he technically suffers a curbstomp loss against Kiawe and admits he only battles Ash every so often. Perhaps this loss will encourage Goh to train more with Ash so he could become a stronger trainer. I mean, despite his good luck with Pokeballs, he’s gonna need to be as strong as he can be for tougher mons, like Legendaries. I’m 100% sure we’ll get something out of thi-

He takes down a wild Zapdos and NEARLY captures it.

.........Uh, okie dokes, it wasn’t a successful capture, and who knows? Even though we have not seen him battle/train that much on-screen, maybe he just got a little lucky. Even in the games, it happens to the best of us. Perhaps this barely missed victory will finally give Goh the time to actually development more on-screen so that he could have a better chance agai-

He defeats Oleana’s Milotic, using his fire-type Raboot who only wanted to use a weak fire-type move.

..............Allllriiiiight, maybe Oleana just got a little cocky later on. Plus, Raboot finished Milotic by evolving in Cinderace and finishing it off with Pyro Ball. With this powerful evolution in hand, maybe Goh will finally realize that, in order for Cinderace to reach its greatest potential, he must start training for once and obtain some proper development for a chance against stronger threa-

Cinderace fights decently well against Mewtwo, even lasting longer than Pikachu and being on-par with the more trained Lucario.

....................At this point, I’m all out of excuses for him. Overall, Goh’s development as a trainer is very rushed to the point seeing him achieve numerous victories despite all odds being against his favor to be iffy.

2. Slightly touchy topic, but there are some negatives with his whole catching all Pokemon goal. So Goh wants to catch every single mon he can in order to reach up to Mew, as he said to Mewtwo in episode 46. And yes, this includes Legendaries as well. Unfortunately, this is where my issues with his goal starts. First off, where in the world will Goh keep any Legendary he encounters? Cerise’s glorified garden dome? Yeah, keep Dialga and Palkia, literal beings of space and time, inside a glass dome with a bunch of weaker mons. And speaking of which, wouldn’t catching mons like the Creation Trio or the Island Guardians cause quite the upset in, well, y’know, the natural balance of things? Sure, Goh technically hasn’t caught a single Legendary yet (Eternatus doesn’t count because it had to be sealed away), with how the anime is playing out, issues like this will surely rise throughout the series.

And yes, the anime is playing it out for Goh to indeed catch every single mon before reaching Mew. If you pay attention to the openings as well as many of Goh’s own character moments, such as episode 46, then you can easily see the signs telling us that Goh is bound to catch them all, just as Ash is bound on defeating Leon. In the past, pretty much all of Ash’s traveling companions had their own goals as well, but it’s usually because of those goals is why they leave Ash by the end of their journeys, like May and Dawn pursuing contests in other regions, Brock wanting to become a doctor, Iris wanting to find more Dragon types, Kiawe wanting to become an Island Kahuna etc. Because of that, it becomes up to the audience’s interpretation (and fanfics) on how they achieve their dreams and what challenges they could face throughout the way. With Goh, there will a lot more focus and emphasis placed on his goal, and while this isn’t necessarily a bad thing, it’s too bad there aren’t really any stakes or obstacles in Goh’s journey!

Really now, another glaring issue with Goh’s goal is that he has NO trouble going through with it at all. From his very first fodder capture, all he has to do is get a good throw and then PING! Pokemon caught. Guess the thing of having to weaken a Pokemon first before capturing it has been retconned out of the anime forever. With that said, there’s absolutely no struggle for Goh to overcome in his journey, which kinda makes things boring. Where’s the challenge? Where are his rivals? Are there any doubts? Does he have any issue of having to catch and connect every single mon in existence? No, well then good for him I guess! Sad thing too is that he catches so many Pokemon with so much potential, but they then disappear completely after their debut.

Remember that free Hitmonchan he scored from Saffron’s Fighting Dojo who seemed completely willing to train with Riolu and Farfetch’d? Never seen again. That female Raichu who loves giving berries? Completely forgotten about. That Aerodactyl Goh resurrected and bonded with before catching? Thanos snapped. The Heracross Goh obtained from a trade at the cost of a second Pinsir he worked hard to find? Literally who?

3. And my biggest issue with Goh. The fact he’s somehow on the same scale as Ash.

Don’t believe me? Well, let’s go back to the ending of episode 46. After Mewtwo teleported him, Ash, Pikachu, Lucario, and Cinderace back home, Goh said this: “We’ve still got a long way to go.”

Excuse me, but WHAT?!?!?!

You BOTH got a long way to go, even though you both suffered a complete curbstomp from a mon that would probably even make the likes of Lance, Cynthia, and Leon comparable to Youngster Joey?!?! What the Distortion World?!?! Why is Goh and, by extension, the writers implying he and Ash are on even terms when it comes to being a trainer? Goh, as a reminder, you literally only began your trainer career 45 episodes ago!!

Alright, let’s talk about Ash for a second and what he’s been through since he started his trainer career. Ash started in Kanto, and while he really only fairly achieved three out of his eight badges (Brock and Misty’s were givens, Erika’s was a thank-you gift, Sabrina’s was all Haunter’s doing, and Jessie and James are complete jokes that no one should take seriously), he still partook in as many battles as he could against tough trainers while getting some pointers from the much more experienced Misty and Brock. After that, he went on to become a much more impressive trainer in later journeys. Instead of a full recap, I’ll just list two impressive things Ash has done in each region he’s journeyed through after losing in the Kanto League.

Orange Islands: Won his first official double battle with Pikachu and Charizard despite neither initially getting along at first and then defeated the Orange League champ, Drake.

Johto: Survived an entire forest of bloodthirsty Ursaring with his friends and defeated Gary’s Blastoise with his Charizard.

Hoenn: Helped stopped both Team Magma and Team Aqua’s elemental threats and reached Top 8 in the Hoenn League despite only two of his mons being fully evolved with one being a glass cannon bird.

Kanto again: Conquered the Battle Frontier and tied with May in his first ever contest.

Sinnoh: Helped protect a Riolu from the famed Hunter J and knocked out two of Tobias’ Legendary Pokemon.

Unova: Defeated Iris’ Dragonite twice (Charizard pretty much had the high ground in their fight) and helped protect Meloetta.

Kalos: Defeated four Mega Evolutions (Lucario, Abomasnow, Absol, and Sceptile) and was one of the main heroes against Lysandre.

Alola: Became an Ultra Guardian and conquered the Alola League.

And right now as of Journeys: Defeated Korinna’s Mienfoo and Mega Lucario with only Dragonite right after the two curbstomped Gengar and defeated Chairman Rose.

And this isn’t even scratching the surface, and yet, somehow, Ash is still on the same scale of Goh. This doesn’t make any logical sense, it completely negates Ash’s experience while over-wanking Goh’s, and it ruins any semblance of power scaling between the two. Logically, Ash should be leagues above Goh and the latter should always confide to Ash whenever he needs assistance or pointers, not “Oh, we both lost to a powerful legendary, guess that means we both have stuff to learn and we’re both beginners lul”. It’s like Deku and All Might both losing a villain that’s beyond both of their capabilities, and then Deku saying that they BOTH have much to learn afterwards! Does it make sense? HECK NO.

If they had to have Goh comment about their loss, why couldn’t he say something that would’ve made more sense? Maybe say something like “Wow, I can’t believe I lasted that long, honestly.” And then Ash would say, “Hey, you’re only getting better. And me and my team will always be there in case you need more training.” Have the two acknowledge the fact that even trainers like Leon wouldn’t fare any better than them against Mewtwo. Just absolutely anything that doesn’t completely ruin what we know of these characters to the point the two are considered equals, despite all the evidence saying otherwise.

I’m getting a little exhausted now, so I’m done, but thanks for asking, anon!

And for anyone reading, please feel free to agree or disagree. I’m completely acceptable to anyone else’s thoughts/opinions over Goh and would love to hear them.

[oh-phineas]

Emma’s 2021 BDRP Resolutions!

Write your RPer Resolutions for 2021! (What are some goals for yourself as a writer? Improve descriptions? Plot with more members? Etc.)

I’d like to get better at planning long-term and having arcs supported by different mini-stories. I started doing this with Tiana and her restaurant which was a good exercise, but I want to challenge myself to take on less tangible goals as well if that makes sense and finding ways for different characters to get involved in that journey. I think throwing characters together just to see what happens can be a lot of fun and lead to really great interactions, but I’d also like to think more about all the development potential an interaction can have and really jump on that.

I’m also always saying this, but I want to get more comfortable/confident with plotting. Sometimes I feel like I really need to have a fully fleshed-out idea before I approach someone which can lead to me just giving up before I even try because I haven’t fully developed the idea. I want to find a balance where I’m bringing something to the table with plotting but I’m not psyching myself out just because I don’t have a full-blown idea. Because sometimes I think it’s okay to say here’s a vague goal I have, here’s how I think it could work with our characters, let’s see what happens! And overall I just wanna get better at approaching people I don’t write with as often. 

Write at least one resolution, or “goal,” that you have as an RPer for your character(s)

Phineas: Be less freaking selfish! Lol I feel like Phineas’s problems tend to stem from his Main Character Syndrome. Like the kid seriously thinks everything is about him. Honestly, I don’t want to delete that trait from Phineas because I think it is a very important part of his personality. But I want him to seriously reckon with it, see the damage it can cause sometimes and understand that even with the best of intentions, some things just aren’t about him.

Tiana: Learn to rely on other people more! I think the knights can offer this opportunity which is why I wanted to get her involved with them, and I’d also like to see her learn to lean on her staff and the Princess House :) She’s pushed a lot of people away over the years working toward her goal, and now that she’s achieved it, I want to see her navigating relationships and all the messiness that comes with them. Because opening yourself back up is rewarding but it is not uncomplicated!

Aquata: Find a purpose in life other than swimming! That dream is dead! It’s gone! Rest in peace, she is never going to be on the national team and she’s gotta learn to live with it! I’ve spoken to a few people about this but I wanna see her really get involved with Magick rights and dig into her mer-heritage a little bit. Because it’s such a big part of her identity that she’s always sublimated into swimming and I’d love to see her explore it separate from her world as a swimmer.

Henry: I want to do more Order stuff with him. I’d like to set him on a wild goose chase where he totally pursues the wrong person, I think that would be a really fun plot because the exact person he’s trying to stop is RIGHT in front of him!! And he doesn’t even realize and I love some good dramatic irony. 

Ev: I really wanna get some bigger plots moving with her and really shake things up because that was my goal with picking her up initially. I have some stuff in the works but I think I can do more with reaching out to people and planning long-term stuff. And I want her to face the aftermath of her plans: the excitement at seeing it all come together and the guilt of knowing it hurt people, even if she thinks it’s for a greater purpose.

Anna: This is weird because I JUST got her but yeah I’m just excited for college plots! Finding herself! I’ve been thinking about doing some kind of mean girls thing with her bc I think she has Cady Heron parallels lol and I’d love to put her in a situation where she has her loyalty tested. And I also want her to learn to EXPRESS her ANGER. She can get pissed off sometimes but he has this tendency to censor herself when it’s people she cares about. I want her to FIGHT.

Write at least one resolution IN CHARACTER for your characters. What do THEY want to accomplish or change in the New Year?

Phineas: Launch Something Big. It’s the last year before he starts college and he’s running out of time to be a child prodigy!!! Oh no!!! What will he ever do!!! Maybe it’s his first business. His first podcast. His first Ponzi scheme, who knows?? (That is a joke Phineas is not starting a Ponzi scheme). But give him something to try at and fail at!

Tiana: Get situated with the knights, keep making Tiana’s Place a success.....maybe find love?

Aquata: Improve Swynlake. Make it a better place for people to be out Magicks. Improve the environment. Get shit done on Board!!! And stop being weird around Vidia lol

Henry: Figure out what the hell happened on December 21 2020. Hunt down the Unseelie Creatures that Plague the Night. Keep Ashleigh happy <3 Mostly, though, Henry feels like he’s been slacking in his mission and he wants to get back on track.

Ev: Organize a big disaster, preferably taking advantage of cursed people. Gather as much intel about Swynlake as possible. Stop dragging my feet and make it happen!!

Anna: MAKE NEW FRIENDS!! She is so desperate. Fall in love <3 Figure out what the hell actually happened between Elsa and her father and why Elsa never talked to her before now. Make the most of uni :)

List one or more characters you have never interacted with that you would like to do so

Reza!!! He’s on Board with Aquata and has a similar platform. I think they could really work together and I would love to find a way for them to interact.

Ting Ting!!! How am I a Ting Ting stan and I’ve never interacted with her. Tragic. Obv she probably deserves some space rn with all the drama but at some point I would really love to work with her unique form of magic 

Tink!!! She’s got such an interesting story and I want to interact with more fairies in general. 

ROBBIE. Swynlake’s currently only known vampire!! I think he and Henry could be really interesting.

Plotting Exercise! Pick one of the resolutions/goals in #2 and plan a rough guideline to how you could accomplish it. Here’s an example. EXAMPLE OF A MOCK PLOT: HENRY’S WILD GOOSE CHASE

Self Para: Before going back to school, Henry has a talk with his father who tells him that while he knows he is capable, if another widespread Unseelie attack occurs, it’s going to look very bad for him and he needs to figure out what happened.

therefore...

Para: Henry hears loud screeching that keeps him up at night that he concludes must be a banshee. He goes to investigate and runs into KOVU, who is coming back from a “late night walk” and ropes him into helping him search. They don’t find anything, but they are able to trace the sound to DEVYN’s room.

therefore...

Para: Henry ropes ROSE into helping him do research in the library, despite the fact that they are on... not great terms following Rose and Tom’s breakup, by convincing her that there is dark magic afoot in the dorms. Upon some research, Henry starts to doubt that the sound he is hearing is really a banshee, but his options are either admit he is wrong or double down.

therefore...

Para: Henry corners DEVYN at a Student Union outing and tries to ask him if anything weird has been going on, if they are hearing any weird noises or seeing strange omens. DEVYN is understandably confused, setting off some confusion magic. Henry, not understanding the confusion magic (and affected by it) becomes absolutely convinced that Devyn’s death is being foretold by a banshee. 

therefore...

Para: Henry and ROSE camp out all night and discover nothing, but sometime late into the night, they the sound again. They break into DEVYN’s room only to discover it’s no banshee, but just the music he’s listening to while studying late into the night. Henry is embarrassed.

[chadbaileyanimates]

IT’S NOT THE DESTINATION, IT’S THE JOURNEY.

“It’s not the destination, it’s the journey.”

I’ve heard that expression a lot during my own personal journey of life and attempting to pursue my dreams. I would hear if from mentors, and peers. From athletes and celebrities in interviews and from some family and friends. However just recently 2 unrelated instances have given that expression new meaning for me and I think, finally, helped me understand what that message MAY be trying to convey.

The first instance I heard it most recently this week was during the Kobe Bryant Memorial/Tribute that was on TV. The tribute was playing a clip of Kobe from, what I can only assume was his speech during his LA LAKERS Basketball jersey retirement ceremony only a few years ago. In it Kobe says:

“...those times when you get up early & work hard. Those times when you stay up late and work hard... THAT is actually the dream. ....it’s not the destination, it’s the journey. If you guys can understand that... then what you’ll see happen is that, you won’t accomplish your dreams. Your dreams won’t come true. Something greater will. “

Now before I dissect what Kobe said in more detail, I want to go back to the original expression. “It’s not the destination, it’s the journey, that matters.”

I could never understand that quote. It never made sense to me. Most of all while I was struggling to reach my destination of working at an Animation studio and be a professional animator. I spent countless hours behind my computer day in and day out trying to create enough quality work that I could present to studio and someday live out my dream of calling a place like Disney, Pixar or Blue Sky Studios my, “day job”.

Ever since I was a child I loved art. And ever since college I had trained and studied to be a professional animator. After college I was working a traditional day job that was not my dream and all I could do to keep positive and productive was to focus on one day getting out of my current job and reaching this pinnacle of life success I had set for myself.

So imagine my reactions anytime I would hear that: reaching your dream really wasn’t the important thing, the special thing. That somehow “now”, my journey, my process, was what I should be happy about? It didn’t make sense! I was putting everything I had into getting hired at one of those studios— At any animation studio! Tiring late nights of work, countless rejection emails or letters. Potential opportunities never coming to fruition. The idea of me “enjoying THIS?! “ Never made any sense.

Now the second time this week this age old expression made its way back into my life recently was the catalyst for me writing this blog post today...

While I was listening to the Gary Vee podcast, and if you don’t know who he is— I highly recommend you Google him! Anyhow, the podcast this episode was a recording of a live talk he gave. It was during the Q & A portion of the talk that someone got up to ask Gary a question. This man started out by giving Gary some background on himself. The man stated that he had spent the majority of his career at his current job and he had been aspiring and working the whole time to reach this senior position as a “Regional manager” ( or something of the sort). He told Gary he was promoted and had reached his desired position about 6 months ago—and he couldn’t have been more miserable! He continued from there, and Gary gave him some life guidance and the episode carried on. But something in that moment struck me!

Maybe it was all the events from the week mixed with some of the words Gary Vee has said earlier in the podcast. Whatever it was, that expression came rushing in and mixed with Kobe’s previous words.

This guy in the podcast had reached his goal ...and he wasn’t happy? Now it could have just been him, an isolated incident. But how many times can you think of something you wanted desperately and it turned out to not be as satisfying as you thought? Some new clothes you were waiting for? A new car, a new job? When you can’t wait to win some award or accolade, achieve a land mark, reach a personal best. Why is it that sometimes, not all the times, whatever you may have been chasing doesn’t seem as good once you catch it?? Now that question alone is worthy of its OWN blog post haha, and this one is already getting too long. So putting that aside let’s go back to Kobe’s quote from earlier.

“...those times when you get up early & work hard. Those times when you stay up late and work hard... THAT is actually the dream. ....it’s not the destination, it’s the journey. If you guys can understand that... then what you’ll see happen is that, you won’t accomplish your dreams. Your dreams won’t come true. Something greater will.

That got me thinking; what if the best part of having a dream is the ACT of trying to achieve it?! What if the steps you take to try to get you where you want to be is actually when you will feel your best?

The sense of satisfaction you have in yourself when you’re being consistent and dedicated to what you want most in life. Being proud of yourself as you achieve small victories on the road to your overall goal. The feeling of happiness with your work ethic and discipline as you trudge and struggle along. During the “journey” there is a mix of anticipation to receiving what you had hoped for and the idea of what it will be like for you once your goals are met.

But more than anything else, what if the best part of having a dream or a goal is the feeling of Purpose it gives you? A destination. A benchmark to hit. A goal to achieve. And then what of the sense of emptiness that MAY come when you no longer have that anymore? So while people rush to get past the journey, for the 1st time I really see how perhaps the journey really IS the best part. And instead of being impatient for it to be over, we should consider how good we have it NOW, and appreciate all the journey really has to offer us.

This really was meant to be a positive post & I hope it comes across that way in its underlying message. My mind is still reeling from this new conclusion and I’m completely in shock at this new perspective. I for one, will be approaching my process: my journey to continue after my life long dream, in a much more mindful and thoughtful way from now on.

[peterbarron13-blog]

From A Skinny Kid To Dubai Fitness Pro - Exceptional Fitness Journey Of Peter Barron

In 2014, Peter Barron visited Dubai on holiday, fell in love with the city and never looked back. “I could see massive potential in fitness here. I knew it was the right career choice,” says the cheeky chap of his massive move to the UAE.

Barron took an extended leave of work from his medical career and set up a fitness company in Dubai. It grew— and so did his social media. Today Barron has 105k followers on Instagram and regularly posts intense workout videos to his page. Here’s how it began and the things he’s learned along the way.

Clearly you’re into fitness. When did it start?

Growing up, football was the only thing I wanted to do. I’m sure I learned to kick a ball before I could crawl! (Laughs)

I played for a semi-professional team in Ireland. When I was 17, I went on trial with a football club in the UK. I thought I worked hard enough, but I sort of failed a few fitness tests and was sent home to work on that — ironic, really. I didn’t have enough faith in myself, so I never went back.

This is actually what drove me to start studying health and fitness. I didn’t want others to make the same mistakes I had made. My dad would always say to me: hard work beats talent when talent doesn’t work hard. Finally, years later, I believe him.

Now we heard teenage you wasn’t very good at listening…

I was always very skinny growing up and it never really bothered me. A few months before going to the UK foot- ball trials I knew I needed to work on my strength and fitness. I got a workout plan from a top coach and my parents converted our garage to a gym.

I was so excited, but as a 16-year-old, I completely ignored what my coach said. (Because what could he tell me that I didn’t know at 16!) I used the gym to see how much I could press. Every kid wants a big chest, right? (Laughs)

All these mistakes on my fitness journey had to happen to lead me where I am today. I tell people not to look back, and see mistakes as building blocks to achieving those goals.

We’ve seen you jogging around with a particular UAE running club. What’s that all about?

In 2016, Adidas launched their running club in Dubai. I was hired as a coach and helped the group grow to over 2,000 members by 2017. I met so many amazing people throughout the year. I’d highly recommend the group — it’s more than just a running club.

You mentioned a family death recently — right around the time we asked you to be on the cover…

Yeah. A few days before you guys reached out, my grand- dad passed away. His name was also Peter Barron. I know how proud he would have been of all of this, and that makes it extra special for me.

On a lighter note, when I was 20 I had to get surgery, and it was something that made me pretty self conscious. Right after the massive surgery, when the wound was large and fresh, I asked if it would heal or if there would be seriously rough scarring. The surgeon made a joke that stuck with me. She said: ‘It will heal fine, but let’s just say you’ll never be a cover model on a magazine.’

Of course she was a really nice woman and didn’t mean anything by it. We laughed about it, but I did leave that hospital thinking how to prove her wrong! (Laughs) I’ve not been in touch since 2010, so I’ll track her down and send her a copy. (Grins)

Sounds like you’re pretty determined. Was there ever a time when you felt less motivated?

It was hard to motivate myself after failing my fitness test when I was on trial in the UK. In my mind, my dream was over and I was going to have to settle for second best.

I spent weeks feeling down and de-motivated. Then I started to meditate to clear my mind, read motivational books and listen to podcasts from authors such as Jack Canfield, Tim Ferris, Echart Tolle and Tony Robbins.

This helped switch my mindset, teaching me to find the positive in every situation, good or bad.

Everything in life happens for a reason, and what is meant for you won’t pass you by. I live by this, so even when things seem bad I know that something better is just around the corner.

Ok, we totally agree. So is mental health a big thing for you?

Mental health is something I think is very important and something everyone should look after. If your mind is in the right place I think everything else in your life will follow.

Have you ever had a day where you wake up angry or feeling down and somehow everything that day becomes negative? You spill your coffee on your shirt, you’re late for work, and your car breaks down? This only seems to hap- pen to me when I feel negative. I’m not saying you can never feel down but it knows how to recognize and improve your mindset.

If I feel down or tired the only way for me to clear my mind is to exercise, run, play football, and lift weights, any way to release those happy hormones (endorphins). I also try to meditate or be mindful for a few minutes each day. Seriously just two minutes day done right can make a big difference.

I also try being grateful more often for everything I have in my life. Smile more, this sounds stupid but try it. Smile right now and I guarantee you will feel happier. If not, I’m sorry for wasting your time. It works for me. (Laughs)

What would you say to someone who is new to fitness?

Don’t be afraid to ask for help.

No matter how much you know. Someone out there always knows more. Be open to other people’s opinion and don’t be afraid to ask for advice even if you think you know everything.

I have worked in the fitness industry for nearly 10 years and even now I will be the first person to ask another coach for advice or for their opinion. Dubai is filled with top class coaches, use this to your advantage and if you are struggling in any aspect of your journey. Ask for help. Also, make training part of your lifestyle, not a chore.

Make it something you want to do. Find a reason for why you’re doing this, like a goal. Then just get it done.

All that makes sense. So us about your diet. Are you scoffing pancakes on Saturday? Swigging protein? What?

Guys, I’m going to say something you might already know: balance. Balance is the only option that works with nutrition.

For me, after experimenting with different styles, I know that around 2,500 to 3,000 calories per day works best. It allows me to stay fit and give 100 percent at every training session. I’m more about staying fit than thinking about overall body fat percentage and weight.

I love eating pizza, burgers, and basically ‘bad food’ — but there really isn’t any such thing. Your body doesn’t know anything other than macronutrients and what the food breaks down to. Portion control is the key.

It’s all about fitting these types of food into your weekly intake while keeping an eye on your overall calories.

I’ve been using a meal prep company called Pura for the last year. This makes my life so much easier. They give me five meals a day and it basically simplifies everything, while helping me reach my goals.

Thanks, now we’re hungry. Changing topic… something surprising about you?

I have had over 50 stitches in my face throughout my life. I used to run head first at a 45degree angle as a child. I hit my head a lot, fell through a window. Almost gave my mum and dad a nervous break- down on numerous occasions… Then I was in a car crash at 17 and that was over 30 stitches in my face alone. (Laughs)

Glad you stopped that running habit. Talk to us about your pretty massive social media following.

When I started on social media, I used it to track my progress and to hold myself accountable for what I was doing in the gym. I started to create short workout videos for people to try. When I began receiving messages from people that were trying the workouts and sharing their fitness journeys with me, it really motivated me to keep working hard to get fitter and stronger— just like they were.

Social media isn’t all kittens and avo toast (although there’s plenty of that, to be hon- est). Are there any weird pressures you face because of it?

I think the pressure that can be associated with being on social media comes from the fact that we will often compare our lives to that of friends or strangers. We receive constant updates of how “perfect” their lives are and try seeking this in our own life. It can lead to us worrying that our life isn’t as exciting or that we haven’t accomplished as much as our peers.

Sometimes I get anxiety from spending too much time staring into my screen on Instagram or any other social media channels. I try to take a few days every month where I completely stay off social media and make sure to keep on top of real life interactions with friends and family. (Laughs.) Basically remember what it is like to have a proper face to face conversation!

Social media is an amazing tool but It can take over your life very easily so make sure to detox often.

What’s next? We see you working out a lot with our Gal of the Month, Zoe (instagram.com/zoehappyfit).

Yes you do! At the moment I’m focusing on creating YouTube content with Zoe. We’re looking at food, workouts, and healthy lifestyle. Check out #peterandzoe to try some of our workouts.

Blog Source URL: https://www.peterbarron13.com/from-a-skinny-kid-to-dubai-fitness-pro-exceptional-fitness-journey-of-peter-barron/

[coachingreviewsite]

Information That Will Turn Your Life Around!

New Post has been published on http://personalcoachingcenter.com/information-that-will-turn-your-life-around/

Information That Will Turn Your Life Around!

Below is an array of effective strategies as you begin your journey toward personal development, greater happiness, decreased stress and increased motivation. Here, you will find a discussion of personal development and some of the pitfalls that accompany it. By following the tips, you can learn the best path to a better you.

  Try keeping your task manager with you at all times. This can be in the form of a list on a piece of paper, a memo on a phone, or even a list you have online. Wherever you are working, try to keep it within sight or within reach to help you get your tasks done.

    Take time to think about what you want from life. Too often we get rushed into a path that we are really not interested in taking. For some people this might involve a parent pushing them into the family business. For others it might be peer pressure to drop out of school. Only you know what you really want.

  If things get to a place where you cannot handle them, seek help from someone like a therapist. They can help you to cope with your issues by talking them out and coming up with some solutions. It can do you a lot of good to talk to somebody who is not directly involved in your life; it can provide you with a clear perspective.

Everything Works Until It Doesn’t: How to Flow with Change

www.pickthebrain.com

"You're reading Everything Works Until It Doesn’t: How to Flow with Change, originally posted on Pick the Brain | Motivation and Self Improvement. If you're enjoying this, please visit our site for more inspirational articles.

There comes a time in everyone's lives when things that you once used to rely on don't become as effective anymore.

You sort of outgrow the training wheels. The job you started out fresh and new doesn't challenge you anymore. The friends you had in college don't vibe with you any longer. The books you read don't give you any more new knowledge. You and your girlfriend have grown apart and you don't “click” like you should. This is what I call “things work…until they don't”. Everything's peachy until it isn't. The Myth of Forever Many years ago in the Western World (or America at least), people used to work for one employer their entire lives and live in one place their entire lives. You could expect to retire with a nice employer matched pension and for things to “just make sense”. This was the “American Dream”. This stability was a glossy sheen over the inherent chaos and turbulence that is life and nature. Nothing in nature stands still, everything is constant change. You, as a creation of nature are the same way. Things will (and must) change in your life. Dealing with this change is the key to unlocking new levels of meaning and nuance in your life. When people aren't able to accept change, they get tossed around like a leaf in the wind – unable to deal with calamity and chaos. Then, fear sets in. Then, hesitation. Then no action. Knowing When It's Time to Move On What are the consequences of not being able to “go with the flow”? Well, you get stuck. You specifically get stuck in situations you absolutely do not want to be in. I know this because this happened to me. I got hired for a job right after college. The job paid a nice salary for someone just out of college and I was learning lots of new things. About a year in, I stopped learning as much. I didn't get a raise because the company wasn't doing too well. It became unnecessarily monotonous. I had outgrown the position. I justified sticking it out because I was optimistic that things were going to get better, but I stayed another year. At the end of the day, I was getting paid, right? Well, came to an abrupt close. I got laid off 2 years after I started. Everything worked out in the end, but I could have prevented this by being willing to jump off an obviously sinking ship. The consequences of not moving on could be even more drastic in certain situations. You need the willingness, the discernment, the decisiveness to cut your losses and just move on. Moving on From Certain Ideas You not only have to move on from certain situations, but you also have to leave old modes of thought behind. Things you once cherished as absolute truth are now seen as half-truths or downright lies. These may be beliefs you have about yourself, about others, about the world, etc, that are holding you back from achievement in a certain area. You will only rise to the height of your belief system, also known as your paradigm. If you want to achieve success and especially earth-shattering, skyscraper type success, you have to leave old patterns and ideas behind. What are some examples?:

Believing you don't have the skills to change into a new line of work Believing that you don't have what it takes to attract the partner of your dreams Believing that the world is absolutes and black and white Believing that you need to work a 9-5 salaried job to make it in this world Believing that college is necessary.

The list goes on and on. These beliefs served you well at one time by helping keep you comfortable, but now those same beliefs have become very uncomfortable. Pulling the Plug Even When You're Scared There are times when you just know in your deepest heart of hearts that it's time for you to move on, but you just can't. You feel paralyzed with doubt, fear, and indecision. Here's some tips on how you can move on with your life and get past analysis paralysis. 1. Think of the Worst-Case Scenario Things are worse in our mind than they are or will be in reality. This creates fear which paralyzes action, meaning you'll never find out what will actually happen if you can take action. The worst-case of every action is that you will die. We're all going to die anyway, so the worst-case scenario really isn't that bad. In the interim, you may experience some degree of pain, but you still have a chance to achieve whatever it is you want to achieve and get out of situations that simply aren't working. 2. Think of the Best-Case Scenario Imagine what will happen when you have the courage to move out of a certain situation into a better one. Imagine yourself in a better job, a better relationship, a better way of life — if you took action. What would happen? Like before, you will experience some degree of discomfort, but it's in the pursuit of a greater good. 3. Be Flexible and Accepting When you move out of situations that aren't helping you, there will be a rough adjustment period. Accept it as part of the process. Once you do, the better off you'll be in adopting the changes to your new lifestyle. 4. Understand it's necessary The final crux to everything is changing your worldview and how you view things is absolutely necessary at some point in time. You cannot stay the same forever. Having the willingness to change makes everything 10x easier.

Sim Campbell has made it his mission to examine what it means to live an expansive and fulfilling life in the modern world as an emerging young man. He talks about this on Unstoppable Rise, a site dedicated to relentless personal development with a strong philosophical slant. You've read Everything Works Until It Doesn’t: How to Flow with Change, originally posted on Pick the Brain | Motivation and Self Improvement. If you've enjoyed this, please visit our site for more inspirational articles." https://www.pickthebrain.com/blog/everything-works-until-it-doesnt-how-to-flow-with-change/

Don't be afraid to teach! Teaching others, whether it is teaching a child to tie their shoe or teaching a colleague at work to operate a new piece of complex machinery, is empowering. We don't have to be experts ourselves to be ready to lend a helping hand when someone needs it.

  You should get plenty of exercise. Over the years, studies have shown that exercise increases serotonin in the brain. This can make you a happier and more energetic person overall. It's also great for your body image and can make you think more positively about yourself, which is great for depression.

  Help others! Learn CPR and basic first aid skills through your local Fire Station or community center. By helping someone who is in danger or injured, you are also helping yourself. Helping someone will else give you a sense of pride, purpose, and inspiration. There's a chance you could even save another person's life, contributing to the fullness of your own life.

  If you are having difficulty coping with the effects of depression, you may find peace and guidance from joining a depression support group. Sometimes our friends and family members do not understand how depression can affect us; reaching out to a support group allows you to gain the support of people who are undergoing the same things that you are.

5 Simple Ways To Knock Out Stress

yourdost.com

"Stress. One of the most commonly used words in our everyday vocabulary. It almost feels natural to say, “I’m so stressed!” or “This is stressing me out!” since every one of us experiences varying levels of stress at different points in our lives. If you’re not sure how stressed you are, check out the 7 signs that …" http://yourdost.com/blog/2019/08/5-simple-ways-to-knock-out-stress.html

Keep a journal. When you embark on a journey towards personal development, make sure you record all of your thoughts, feelings, and ideas. Not only will it be a joy to look back on when you reach your goals, but it can be a useful tool if you find yourself going astray. You can look over your journal and find what led you to where you are and see exactly how to get back on track.

  To access your subconscious mind and find hidden solutions to your problems and questions, write in your journal each night before bed. Write about your day and ask yourself, in writing, how you might have improved problematic situations. Once you have written your questions, let them go. Your subconscious mind will unravel them overnight and may present you with an answer in the morning!

  For many people, retreating from a conflict is the standard response. Unfortunately, this habit does nothing to resolve the problem or prevent similar issues in the future. Try to practice keeping yourself in the conflict while continuing to engage the other party with questions that can help to resolve the problem. Unlike simply retreating and giving someone the famous "cold shoulder", this approach forces you to work through your concerns and avoid creating further resentment.

  Take half an hour and write out every good quality you feel you have. It's important to understand who you are as a person. What are your key characteristics that you feel you exude? You will want to increase the level at which you offer those good qualities to the world. By writing them out, you are essentially beginning an action plan for personal development.

Find Your Ideal Job and Build Your Dream Business

www.leadershipnow.com

"IS IT POSSIBLE  to have your cake and eat it too? If there was a way to find your ideal job and build your dream business, would you consider both? Most people see this dichotomy and feel that they need to choose one dream over the other. The reality is that you can have both dreams so long as each doesn’t harm the other and enhances your lifestyle. Having worked with more than 10,000 entrepreneurs, innovators, inventors, hobbyists and side hustlers, they often struggle with when it is appropriate to leap from the job environment into the entrepreneurship maze. The presumption is that one has to sacrifice entrepreneurial dreams in order to be successful at a specific career choice. The truth is that you can have both and I strongly encourage aspiring employee-preneurs to review the following five reasons to consider maintaining your job in the first few years of building your business. 1. Learning from Both Work Environments: When you work as an employee and have a side entrepreneurial business, you can learn from both environments and both environments can benefit from each other. Often the entrepreneurial pathway is a lonely pathway and sole-preneurs in particular find themselves trying to navigate, learn and network to gain knowledge while building their business. Realizing that you can gain education from both environments allows an opportunity for you to thrive as an employee and manage a successful side hustle. 2. Business Ownership Strengthens Your Employee Net Worth: In most positions you rarely get the opportunity to experience the functions associated with the roles of a Chief Executive Officer, Chief Financial Officer, and Chief Marketing Officer, as well as manage the day-to-day requirements for customer engagement and retention. As a result of limited job functions in a large corporate environment, it doesn’t give you the full breadth of work involved in successfully managing an enterprise. By exploring the entrepreneurship maze you will quickly immerse yourself in all these functions, which will give you a better picture of the business itself, as well as an appreciation for the company that employees you. 3. Position Yourself with a Better Financial Portfolio: Quitting your job and then applying for a small business loan is a recipe for disaster. Often lenders expect borrowers to be fully collateralized. Having a successful employment position strengthens your probability of obtaining a loan or line of credit. While there are a lot of targeted small business funds that don’t require full collateralization, obtaining funds from your financial institution will be challenging if your debt to equity ratio does not meet their criteria and you don’t have a secondary source of income they can secure against the loan. In addition, being employed allows you the flexibility of investing in your small business without the stress of adding more debt into your current financial portfolio. Having the availability to set aside a few hundred dollars each month towards your business is significant when you have to consider paying for licensing, website development, social media support, etc. 4. Don’t Put Your Financial Eggs in One Basket: Diversifying your income allows you to mitigate financial risk and maximize your ability to make more money. Most people rely on their employment position for sole source income and if that position is compromised they may have a difficult time replacing those funds in a short period of time. Creating other opportunities to generate more money provides an additional financial cushion for investments or as an emergency fund program.  The key is to target business concepts that don’t impose too much time on your part but produce a sizable financial return on your investment. Examples may include selling products online, starting a consulting business, or purchasing a semi-absentee franchise opportunity. 5. There Is No Need to Rush the Process: Most entrepreneurs believe they have to rush things to launch a company because they may lose out on the business opportunity. This may actually be a recipe for disaster. Rushing into a business concept without a proper feasibility review including competitive research, market analysis, and customer input is rushing to an unproven plan. Spending time building the foundation of the business allows for validation and a chance to identify the strengths, weakness, opportunities and threats of the proposed concept. Once the business has reached a certain consistent income you can decide whether to leap into the business full-time or hire others to manage the business. Ironically many of the Fortune 500 companies today began with entrepreneurs that started their business concept while working for an employer and then transitioned to their business slowly. Skin in the game does not mean you have to quit a job to explore a business. It means you have to be willing to invest time, money, or both in order to build your side hustle into a fledging small business operation. The great news is you don’t have to sacrifice either opportunity to benefit from both opportunities. You can have your cake and eat it too. * * * Kedma Ough is the author of Target Funding: A Proven System to Get the Money and Resources You Need to Start or Grow Your Business. One of today’s most respected authorities on small business funding and entrepreneurship, she is a nationally renowned business coach and funding expert and winner of the Small Business Administration (SBA) Small Business Champion of the Year Award.  As a small business consultant and educator, she has guided more than 10,000 individuals through a wide range of business advising and is a past contributing writer for Entrepreneur Magazine. When she is not running around as a live superhero, she enjoys time with her family and traveling the world. Ough is a proud fifth-generation entrepreneur. * * *   Like us on Instagram and Facebook for additional leadership and personal development ideas. * * *" https://www.leadershipnow.com/leadingblog/2019/08/find_your_ideal_job_and_build.htmlhttp://www.leadershipnow.com/cgi-bin/mt/mt-atom.cgi/weblog/blog_id=1/entry_id=1751

Look at the changes you will need to make on a daily basis and actions you need to take daily in order to reach your goals. Turn those actions into daily habits. Once you get used to doing the same action daily it will make your goals easier to reach over time.

  To healthily administer self help in regards to bipolar disorder, make sure that you establish a daily schedule and stick to it. This is important because it removes any stress that is caused by uncertainty in your life. Having a schedule will help to put your overall life in order.

  Do not dwell on your problems. Think about the solutions for them. If you are constantly thinking about all of the things that are wrong in your life you will not find any happiness. If you take the time to think about how to resolve those problems you will eliminate them altogether.

  You must be able to concentrate and focus if you plan on being successful in this life. No one can make it in this world by just talking and offering opinions all the time. You must be able to listen, and you must be able to take time to learn about new things in a concentrated manner.

  As you seek for a better tomorrow, the information here can assist you in making your dreams a reality. Holding onto your education, motivation and essential strategies help you make a concrete plan and stick to it; without such structure, moving forward may be more difficult than you can manage. By holding onto these strategies–and most importantly, to hope–you are setting your path toward a better, happier outlook.

[personalcoachingcenter]

Information That Will Turn Your Life Around!

New Post has been published on http://personalcoachingcenter.com/information-that-will-turn-your-life-around/

Information That Will Turn Your Life Around!

Below is an array of effective strategies as you begin your journey toward personal development, greater happiness, decreased stress and increased motivation. Here, you will find a discussion of personal development and some of the pitfalls that accompany it. By following the tips, you can learn the best path to a better you.

  Try keeping your task manager with you at all times. This can be in the form of a list on a piece of paper, a memo on a phone, or even a list you have online. Wherever you are working, try to keep it within sight or within reach to help you get your tasks done.

    Take time to think about what you want from life. Too often we get rushed into a path that we are really not interested in taking. For some people this might involve a parent pushing them into the family business. For others it might be peer pressure to drop out of school. Only you know what you really want.

  If things get to a place where you cannot handle them, seek help from someone like a therapist. They can help you to cope with your issues by talking them out and coming up with some solutions. It can do you a lot of good to talk to somebody who is not directly involved in your life; it can provide you with a clear perspective.

Everything Works Until It Doesn’t: How to Flow with Change

www.pickthebrain.com

"You're reading Everything Works Until It Doesn’t: How to Flow with Change, originally posted on Pick the Brain | Motivation and Self Improvement. If you're enjoying this, please visit our site for more inspirational articles.

There comes a time in everyone's lives when things that you once used to rely on don't become as effective anymore.

You sort of outgrow the training wheels. The job you started out fresh and new doesn't challenge you anymore. The friends you had in college don't vibe with you any longer. The books you read don't give you any more new knowledge. You and your girlfriend have grown apart and you don't “click” like you should. This is what I call “things work…until they don't”. Everything's peachy until it isn't. The Myth of Forever Many years ago in the Western World (or America at least), people used to work for one employer their entire lives and live in one place their entire lives. You could expect to retire with a nice employer matched pension and for things to “just make sense”. This was the “American Dream”. This stability was a glossy sheen over the inherent chaos and turbulence that is life and nature. Nothing in nature stands still, everything is constant change. You, as a creation of nature are the same way. Things will (and must) change in your life. Dealing with this change is the key to unlocking new levels of meaning and nuance in your life. When people aren't able to accept change, they get tossed around like a leaf in the wind – unable to deal with calamity and chaos. Then, fear sets in. Then, hesitation. Then no action. Knowing When It's Time to Move On What are the consequences of not being able to “go with the flow”? Well, you get stuck. You specifically get stuck in situations you absolutely do not want to be in. I know this because this happened to me. I got hired for a job right after college. The job paid a nice salary for someone just out of college and I was learning lots of new things. About a year in, I stopped learning as much. I didn't get a raise because the company wasn't doing too well. It became unnecessarily monotonous. I had outgrown the position. I justified sticking it out because I was optimistic that things were going to get better, but I stayed another year. At the end of the day, I was getting paid, right? Well, came to an abrupt close. I got laid off 2 years after I started. Everything worked out in the end, but I could have prevented this by being willing to jump off an obviously sinking ship. The consequences of not moving on could be even more drastic in certain situations. You need the willingness, the discernment, the decisiveness to cut your losses and just move on. Moving on From Certain Ideas You not only have to move on from certain situations, but you also have to leave old modes of thought behind. Things you once cherished as absolute truth are now seen as half-truths or downright lies. These may be beliefs you have about yourself, about others, about the world, etc, that are holding you back from achievement in a certain area. You will only rise to the height of your belief system, also known as your paradigm. If you want to achieve success and especially earth-shattering, skyscraper type success, you have to leave old patterns and ideas behind. What are some examples?:

Believing you don't have the skills to change into a new line of work Believing that you don't have what it takes to attract the partner of your dreams Believing that the world is absolutes and black and white Believing that you need to work a 9-5 salaried job to make it in this world Believing that college is necessary.

The list goes on and on. These beliefs served you well at one time by helping keep you comfortable, but now those same beliefs have become very uncomfortable. Pulling the Plug Even When You're Scared There are times when you just know in your deepest heart of hearts that it's time for you to move on, but you just can't. You feel paralyzed with doubt, fear, and indecision. Here's some tips on how you can move on with your life and get past analysis paralysis. 1. Think of the Worst-Case Scenario Things are worse in our mind than they are or will be in reality. This creates fear which paralyzes action, meaning you'll never find out what will actually happen if you can take action. The worst-case of every action is that you will die. We're all going to die anyway, so the worst-case scenario really isn't that bad. In the interim, you may experience some degree of pain, but you still have a chance to achieve whatever it is you want to achieve and get out of situations that simply aren't working. 2. Think of the Best-Case Scenario Imagine what will happen when you have the courage to move out of a certain situation into a better one. Imagine yourself in a better job, a better relationship, a better way of life — if you took action. What would happen? Like before, you will experience some degree of discomfort, but it's in the pursuit of a greater good. 3. Be Flexible and Accepting When you move out of situations that aren't helping you, there will be a rough adjustment period. Accept it as part of the process. Once you do, the better off you'll be in adopting the changes to your new lifestyle. 4. Understand it's necessary The final crux to everything is changing your worldview and how you view things is absolutely necessary at some point in time. You cannot stay the same forever. Having the willingness to change makes everything 10x easier.

Sim Campbell has made it his mission to examine what it means to live an expansive and fulfilling life in the modern world as an emerging young man. He talks about this on Unstoppable Rise, a site dedicated to relentless personal development with a strong philosophical slant. You've read Everything Works Until It Doesn’t: How to Flow with Change, originally posted on Pick the Brain | Motivation and Self Improvement. If you've enjoyed this, please visit our site for more inspirational articles." https://www.pickthebrain.com/blog/everything-works-until-it-doesnt-how-to-flow-with-change/

Don't be afraid to teach! Teaching others, whether it is teaching a child to tie their shoe or teaching a colleague at work to operate a new piece of complex machinery, is empowering. We don't have to be experts ourselves to be ready to lend a helping hand when someone needs it.

  You should get plenty of exercise. Over the years, studies have shown that exercise increases serotonin in the brain. This can make you a happier and more energetic person overall. It's also great for your body image and can make you think more positively about yourself, which is great for depression.

  Help others! Learn CPR and basic first aid skills through your local Fire Station or community center. By helping someone who is in danger or injured, you are also helping yourself. Helping someone will else give you a sense of pride, purpose, and inspiration. There's a chance you could even save another person's life, contributing to the fullness of your own life.

  If you are having difficulty coping with the effects of depression, you may find peace and guidance from joining a depression support group. Sometimes our friends and family members do not understand how depression can affect us; reaching out to a support group allows you to gain the support of people who are undergoing the same things that you are.

5 Simple Ways To Knock Out Stress

yourdost.com

"Stress. One of the most commonly used words in our everyday vocabulary. It almost feels natural to say, “I’m so stressed!” or “This is stressing me out!” since every one of us experiences varying levels of stress at different points in our lives. If you’re not sure how stressed you are, check out the 7 signs that …" http://yourdost.com/blog/2019/08/5-simple-ways-to-knock-out-stress.html

Keep a journal. When you embark on a journey towards personal development, make sure you record all of your thoughts, feelings, and ideas. Not only will it be a joy to look back on when you reach your goals, but it can be a useful tool if you find yourself going astray. You can look over your journal and find what led you to where you are and see exactly how to get back on track.

  To access your subconscious mind and find hidden solutions to your problems and questions, write in your journal each night before bed. Write about your day and ask yourself, in writing, how you might have improved problematic situations. Once you have written your questions, let them go. Your subconscious mind will unravel them overnight and may present you with an answer in the morning!

  For many people, retreating from a conflict is the standard response. Unfortunately, this habit does nothing to resolve the problem or prevent similar issues in the future. Try to practice keeping yourself in the conflict while continuing to engage the other party with questions that can help to resolve the problem. Unlike simply retreating and giving someone the famous "cold shoulder", this approach forces you to work through your concerns and avoid creating further resentment.

  Take half an hour and write out every good quality you feel you have. It's important to understand who you are as a person. What are your key characteristics that you feel you exude? You will want to increase the level at which you offer those good qualities to the world. By writing them out, you are essentially beginning an action plan for personal development.

Find Your Ideal Job and Build Your Dream Business

www.leadershipnow.com

"IS IT POSSIBLE  to have your cake and eat it too? If there was a way to find your ideal job and build your dream business, would you consider both? Most people see this dichotomy and feel that they need to choose one dream over the other. The reality is that you can have both dreams so long as each doesn’t harm the other and enhances your lifestyle. Having worked with more than 10,000 entrepreneurs, innovators, inventors, hobbyists and side hustlers, they often struggle with when it is appropriate to leap from the job environment into the entrepreneurship maze. The presumption is that one has to sacrifice entrepreneurial dreams in order to be successful at a specific career choice. The truth is that you can have both and I strongly encourage aspiring employee-preneurs to review the following five reasons to consider maintaining your job in the first few years of building your business. 1. Learning from Both Work Environments: When you work as an employee and have a side entrepreneurial business, you can learn from both environments and both environments can benefit from each other. Often the entrepreneurial pathway is a lonely pathway and sole-preneurs in particular find themselves trying to navigate, learn and network to gain knowledge while building their business. Realizing that you can gain education from both environments allows an opportunity for you to thrive as an employee and manage a successful side hustle. 2. Business Ownership Strengthens Your Employee Net Worth: In most positions you rarely get the opportunity to experience the functions associated with the roles of a Chief Executive Officer, Chief Financial Officer, and Chief Marketing Officer, as well as manage the day-to-day requirements for customer engagement and retention. As a result of limited job functions in a large corporate environment, it doesn’t give you the full breadth of work involved in successfully managing an enterprise. By exploring the entrepreneurship maze you will quickly immerse yourself in all these functions, which will give you a better picture of the business itself, as well as an appreciation for the company that employees you. 3. Position Yourself with a Better Financial Portfolio: Quitting your job and then applying for a small business loan is a recipe for disaster. Often lenders expect borrowers to be fully collateralized. Having a successful employment position strengthens your probability of obtaining a loan or line of credit. While there are a lot of targeted small business funds that don’t require full collateralization, obtaining funds from your financial institution will be challenging if your debt to equity ratio does not meet their criteria and you don’t have a secondary source of income they can secure against the loan. In addition, being employed allows you the flexibility of investing in your small business without the stress of adding more debt into your current financial portfolio. Having the availability to set aside a few hundred dollars each month towards your business is significant when you have to consider paying for licensing, website development, social media support, etc. 4. Don’t Put Your Financial Eggs in One Basket: Diversifying your income allows you to mitigate financial risk and maximize your ability to make more money. Most people rely on their employment position for sole source income and if that position is compromised they may have a difficult time replacing those funds in a short period of time. Creating other opportunities to generate more money provides an additional financial cushion for investments or as an emergency fund program.  The key is to target business concepts that don’t impose too much time on your part but produce a sizable financial return on your investment. Examples may include selling products online, starting a consulting business, or purchasing a semi-absentee franchise opportunity. 5. There Is No Need to Rush the Process: Most entrepreneurs believe they have to rush things to launch a company because they may lose out on the business opportunity. This may actually be a recipe for disaster. Rushing into a business concept without a proper feasibility review including competitive research, market analysis, and customer input is rushing to an unproven plan. Spending time building the foundation of the business allows for validation and a chance to identify the strengths, weakness, opportunities and threats of the proposed concept. Once the business has reached a certain consistent income you can decide whether to leap into the business full-time or hire others to manage the business. Ironically many of the Fortune 500 companies today began with entrepreneurs that started their business concept while working for an employer and then transitioned to their business slowly. Skin in the game does not mean you have to quit a job to explore a business. It means you have to be willing to invest time, money, or both in order to build your side hustle into a fledging small business operation. The great news is you don’t have to sacrifice either opportunity to benefit from both opportunities. You can have your cake and eat it too. * * * Kedma Ough is the author of Target Funding: A Proven System to Get the Money and Resources You Need to Start or Grow Your Business. One of today’s most respected authorities on small business funding and entrepreneurship, she is a nationally renowned business coach and funding expert and winner of the Small Business Administration (SBA) Small Business Champion of the Year Award.  As a small business consultant and educator, she has guided more than 10,000 individuals through a wide range of business advising and is a past contributing writer for Entrepreneur Magazine. When she is not running around as a live superhero, she enjoys time with her family and traveling the world. Ough is a proud fifth-generation entrepreneur. * * *   Like us on Instagram and Facebook for additional leadership and personal development ideas. * * *" https://www.leadershipnow.com/leadingblog/2019/08/find_your_ideal_job_and_build.htmlhttp://www.leadershipnow.com/cgi-bin/mt/mt-atom.cgi/weblog/blog_id=1/entry_id=1751

Look at the changes you will need to make on a daily basis and actions you need to take daily in order to reach your goals. Turn those actions into daily habits. Once you get used to doing the same action daily it will make your goals easier to reach over time.

  To healthily administer self help in regards to bipolar disorder, make sure that you establish a daily schedule and stick to it. This is important because it removes any stress that is caused by uncertainty in your life. Having a schedule will help to put your overall life in order.

  Do not dwell on your problems. Think about the solutions for them. If you are constantly thinking about all of the things that are wrong in your life you will not find any happiness. If you take the time to think about how to resolve those problems you will eliminate them altogether.

  You must be able to concentrate and focus if you plan on being successful in this life. No one can make it in this world by just talking and offering opinions all the time. You must be able to listen, and you must be able to take time to learn about new things in a concentrated manner.

  As you seek for a better tomorrow, the information here can assist you in making your dreams a reality. Holding onto your education, motivation and essential strategies help you make a concrete plan and stick to it; without such structure, moving forward may be more difficult than you can manage. By holding onto these strategies–and most importantly, to hope–you are setting your path toward a better, happier outlook.

[samedischoolblog]

Plus 1...

This is actually a difficult thing to touch on because it takes so much vulnerability to tell your own story. Especially because I used to think that doing an extra year outside of medicine was a failure on my part. Funny enough, the unplanned extention of my degree actually turned out to be the cherry on top for what’s happening in my life right now. I’m actually having an, “it was all worth it moment”.

You know in life you make a plan. And you hope to stick to that plan with everything perfectly in place. Because God forbid, everything doesn’t go according to plan... I’m sure I’m speaking to someone here... Where my control freaks at ??? I know you see me talking to you 😂. On a serious note, we really need to talk about letting go of control one day...and I really want to get some opinions. Especially because I am a major control freak. But this will be on another day. Now, using my postgraduate story as an example. Let’s talk about delays, denials and redemptions.

2018 was my postgrad year and I was enrolled for an honours degree. In this regard, I chose human physiology as my degree stream. I chose this stream because I got a distinction in this course after undergrad. This was an advantage for me because I thought I’d just pick up from the ground work I began with in undergrad. I think this was a wise decision on my part and in retrospect, it taught me the concept of building a repertoir. This is important for any career path, business idea or even family. The concept of nurturing your strengths while awaiting a bloom. Secondly, after third year, I gained an interest in the cardiovascular system. Therefore, I decided to choose an honours project reflecting that interest. I mean, it’s not cardiology, but it was a start I thought. That start I needed to open my mind up to ideas beyond just being a doctor... Vaguely describing it, I’d say my project was used to determine the effects of high intensity exercise on cardiac function. Basically we wanted to know if there are any new benefits for heart health that we could uncover from exercise. I don’t think I can publish my findings, but it was an interesting project. If you are keen on finding out more, please do contact me on :

Twitter @kundizee

During my honours year, I worked with amazing academics. But I will focus on my main supervisor. She is an amazing young Professor who is just getting better and better. She is an epitome of dedication and I am so privileged to have spent a few months under her wing as a student. Not to sound like a fan girl, but I look up to her and admire her work and drive. She ignited a spark in me for hard work and reaching for my goals, no matter how unheard of. You can read up on her below:

https://200youngsouthafricans.co.za/dr-aletta-esterhuyse-millen/

Dr Aletta Esterhuyse Millen (34)

The point of mentioning my supervisor is that it is so important to have mentors, support systems or even just confidantes on your side. I know more about the journey to medicine, but I think in any journey. You absolutely need to have people in your corner, people to push you, motivate, challenge and encourage you to reach for higher heights.

When I started this post, I referred to my postgraduate year as assumed failure. And for the longest time (probably my first few months), I couldn’t see beyond the fact that I was rejected from medicine. All I could see was how I had failed, how I was lagging behind in my dreams and how this was honestly the end of the world. Fortunately, at some point it all didn’t matter anymore. The delay didn’t matter, because I started opening myself up to other opportunities. At some point, I got tired of fighting my current situation, or denying it. I learned to embrace the delay, accept the denial and work on my redemption. *plays All night by Beyoncé*.

I don’t mean to sound dismissive, and I honestly will never understand anyone else’s story and how they feel. But I hope, that my story brings some light. I hope my story encourages someone to enjoy where they are in the current moment and make the best out of it. I read a blog the other day talking about being present for your present. I cannot stress enough how important it is to be fully aware of the position you are in, in this awareness, you must also be aware of where your position is taking you. You also need to be aware of how you’ll get to your goal and who you’re taking with. It’s a balance between motivation and being content. Being in one place, but making strategic moves around where you are. It’s a hard balance to strike, but it is important for peace of mind. It is important for your self esteeem. And it is important to want more, without disregarding what you currently have. What you currently hold is a diamond in the rough and needs fine tuning. What you currently have is a bush, but tamed and trimmed is a pristine hedge. You are part of a process of refinement that is shaping you for greater things. Believe in that, hold onto that.

My mom always says “never undermine humble beginnings”... I won’t lie, when she used to say this, I didn’t receive it. Instead, I responded with defiance. “Why is all this happening to me?”, “but other people got into medicine after Matric, now I’m 4 years behind”. Crazy affirmations, but in retrospect and even now, my mom was right (as usual). It is the humble beginnings that solidify the foundation of your future. Humble beginnings are the dirty work that needs to be handled before we tidy up and shine. My humble beginnings are multifaceted, but academically, undergraduate and postgraduate life were the building blocks for medicine.

In my honours year, I entered “naive”, but came out with a few gems which I’d like to share with you :

Time can not be created, only used. You need to use it wisely. You don’t have a lot of this so you need to carefully select where you use it, how you use it and who you use it with.

Respect is earned. In the academic space, this is a measure of your accolades. But in real life, it’s good to be a decent person in addition to a GOAT (I aspire to strike this balance).

As you grow, bring someone along. There’s no use in leaving people behind, especially if you have an overflow. It’s more blessed to give than to receive,and putting that into practice, with people who respect your input is unmatched. However, watch out for backstabbers and people who use you for what you can give (they exist).

Where ever you go... connect... network... build more bridges than you burn... you are definitely not an island and collaboration is a beautiful when it’s consensual.

Be present in your present. You have nothing else and nowhere else to go. Just do not ever regress! In every part of your present, find places which prune you, prime you and help you grow healthier and better.

Be patient. With yourself, with your God and with his people 😂😂.

Trust the process. Believe in your journey. If you have a funny feeling about where you’re going, re-evaluate and if needs be, abort mission.

Make sure you achieve the full worth of whatever you are doing and whatever you’ve been tasked with. Because I’m Christian I believe that everything happens for a reason. How is God going to trust you with great things if you cannot multiply the little he has started you on? That sounds so judgy🙈 but I’m trying to point out that you can be given a little, but with hope in your heart and a dream in your head you can achieve great things.

Love yourself. In loving yourself, forgive yourself. In forgiving yourself, give yourself time. Don’t rush yourself, it’s a marathon, not a race. Love yourself enough to know that you are worthy of the wait.

Your test is just a part of your testimony. You’ve got this child !!

Academically I learnt a few things too and I gained some academic and future career wins:

Research acumen speaks volumes when you want to be a specialist.

The medical world is moving towards an evidence based approach and having done research as a degree is beneficial for the overall thought process and critical thinking

Postgraduate life puts everything into perspective. It forces you to innovate. Innovation is not always intrinsic, but you learn to channel your innovative side. The world is moving towards creating newer ideas than those already there, especially ideas which use less resources. Thinking like a researcher allows you to see problems, evaluate them statistically and innovate around them.

The credentials that come with added degrees is unmatched 😂. Imagine your future business card afterwards.

Always remember. Your journey is valid. You are where you need to be at this very moment, enjoy it as much as you can (enjoy being emotional, enjoy being strong, enjoy your resilience). I’m reminding you for all the times you don’t feel it that you are worthy of fulfillment.

[mrchdbaily]

It’s not the destination, it’s the journey.

“It’s not the destination , it’s the journey.” I’ve heard that expression a lot during my own personal journey of life and attempting to pursue my dreams. I would hear if from mentors, and peers. From athletes and celebrities in interviews and from some family and friends. However just recently 2 unrelated instances have given that expression new meaning for me and I think, finally, helped me understand what that message MAY be trying to convey. The first instance I heard it most recently this week was during the Kobe Bryant Memorial/Tribute that was on TV. The tribute was playing a clip of Kobe from, what I can only assume was his speech during his LA LAKERS Basketball jersey retirement ceremony only a few years ago. In it Kobe says: “...those times when you get up early & work hard. Those times when you stay up late and work hard... THAT is actually the dream. ....it’s not the destination, it’s the journey. If you guys can understand that... then what you’ll see happen is that, you won’t accomplish your dreams. Your dreams won’t come true. Something greater will. “ Now before I dissect what Kobe said in more detail, I want to go back to the original expression. “It’s not the destination, it’s the journey, that matters.” I could never understand that quote. It never made sense to me. Most of all while I was struggling to reach my destination of working at an Animation studio and be a professional animator. I spent countless hours behind my computer day in and day out trying to create enough quality work that I could present to studio and someday live out my dream of calling a place like Disney, Pixar or Blue Sky Studios my, “day job”. Ever since I was a child I loved art. And ever since college I had trained and studied to be a professional animator. After college I was working a traditional day job that was not my dream and all I could do to keep positive and productive was to focus on one day getting out of my current job and reaching this pinnacle of life success I had set for myself. So imagine my reactions anytime I would hear that: reaching your dream really wasn’t the important thing, the special thing. That somehow “now”, my journey, my process, was what I should be happy about? It didn’t make sense! I was putting everything I had into getting hired at one of those studios— At any animation studio! Tiring late nights of work, countless rejection emails or letters. Potential opportunities never coming to fruition. The idea of me “enjoying THIS?! “ Never made any sense. Now the second time this week this age old expression made its way back into my life recently was the catalyst for me writing this blog post today... While I was listening to the Gary Vee podcast, and if you don’t know who he is— I highly recommend you Google him! Anyhow, the podcast this episode was a recording of a live talk he gave. It was during the Q & A portion of the talk that someone got up to ask Gary a question. This man started out by giving Gary some background on himself. The man stated that he had spent the majority of his career at his current job and he had been aspiring and working the whole time to reach this senior position as a “Regional manager” ( or something of the sort). He told Gary he was promoted and had reached his desired position about 6 months ago—and he couldn’t have been more miserable! He continued from there, and Gary gave him some life guidance and the episode carried on. But something in that moment struck me! Maybe it was all the events from the week mixed with some of the words Gary Vee has said earlier in the podcast. Whatever it was, that expression came rushing in and mixed with Kobe’s previous words. This guy in the podcast had reached his goal ...and he wasn’t happy? Now it could have just been him, an isolated incident. But how many times can you think of something you wanted desperately and it turned out to not be as satisfying as you thought? Some new clothes you were waiting for? A new car, a new job? When you can’t wait to win some award or accolade, achieve a land mark, reach a personal best. Why is it that sometimes, not all the times, whatever you may have been chasing doesn’t seem as good once you catch it?? Now that question alone is worthy of its OWN blog post haha, and this one is already getting too long. So putting that aside let’s go back to Kobe’s quote from earlier. “...those times when you get up early & work hard. Those times when you stay up late and work hard... THAT is actually the dream. ....it’s not the destination, it’s the journey. If you guys can understand that... then what you’ll see happen is that, you won’t accomplish your dreams. Your dreams won’t come true. Something greater will. That got me thinking; what if the best part of having a dream is the ACT of trying to achieve it?! What if the steps you take to try to get you where you want to be is actually when you will feel your best? The sense of satisfaction you have in yourself when you’re being consistent and dedicated to what you want most in life. Being proud of yourself as you achieve small victories on the road to your overall goal. The feeling of happiness with your work ethic and discipline as you trudge and struggle along. During the “journey” there is a mix of anticipation to receiving what you had hoped for and the idea of what it will be like for you once your goals are met. But more than anything else, what if the best part of having a dream or a goal is the feeling of Purpose it gives you? A destination. A benchmark to hit. A goal to achieve. And then what of the sense of emptiness that MAY come when you no longer have that anymore? So while people rush to get past the journey, for the 1st time I really see how perhaps the journey really IS the best part. And instead of being impatient for it to be over, we should consider how good we have it NOW, and appreciate all the journey really has to offer us. This really was meant to be a positive post & I hope it comes across that way in its underlying message. My mind is still reeling from this new conclusion and I’m completely in shock at this new perspective. I for one, will be approaching my process: my journey to continue after my life long dream, in a much more mindful and thoughtful way from now on.

[marcusssanderson]

70 Graduation Quotes On Success, Dreams and Your Future

Our latest collection of motivational graduation quotes on Everyday Power Blog.

As the school year comes to an end many students and graduates face a time of reflection, celebration, and even confusion.

“What’s next?”

“What should I do?”

“Where do I go from here?”

We hope these 30 motivational graduation quotes will help you become more confident about your dreams and goals, at such an important time in your life!

Graduation Quotes about the next chapter in your life

1.) “Success doesn’t rush. The greatest reward is the journey!” – Jeff Moore

2.) “Cherish your visions and your dreams as they are the children of your soul, the blueprints of your ultimate achievements.” – Napoleon Hill

3.) “If you don’t go after what you want, you’ll never have it. If you don’t ask, the answer is always no. If you don’t step forward, you’re always in the same place.” –Nora Roberts

4.) “There are far, far better things ahead than any we leave behind.” –C.S. Lewis

5.) “Your time is limited, don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma, which is living the result of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of other’s opinion drown your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition, they somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.” –Steve Jobs

6.) “Don’t say you don’t have enough time. You have exactly the same number of hours per day that were given to Helen Keller, Pasteur, Michaelangelo, Mother Teresea, Leonardo da Vinci, Thomas Jefferson, and Albert Einstein.” –H. Jackson Brown Jr.

7.) “Accept responsibility for your life. Know that it is you who will get you where you want to go, no one else.” – Les Brown

8.) “Nobody ever wrote down a plan to be broke, fat, lazy, or stupid. Those things are what happen when you don’t have a plan.” – Larry Winget

9.) “Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever.” – Gandhi

  10.) “The best way to predict your future is to create it.” – Abraham Lincoln

Graduation quotes to make you wiser

11.) “Even if you’re on the right track, you’ll get run over if you just sit there.” -Will Rogers

12.) “All our dreams can come true… if we have the courage to pursue them.” – Walt Disney

13.) “We do not need magic to change the world, we carry all the power we need inside ourselves already: we have the power to imagine better.” – JK Rowling

  14.) “My favorite animal is the turtle. The reason is that in order for the turtle to move, it has to stick its neck out. There are going to be times in your life when you’re going to have to stick your neck out. There will be challenges and instead of hiding in a shell, you have to go out and meet them.” –Ruth Westheimer

15.) “Just don’t give up trying to do what you really want to do.” – Ella Fitzgerald

16.) “Successful and unsuccessful people do not vary greatly in their abilities. They vary in their desires to reach their potential.”–John Maxwell

17.) “How far you go in life depends on your being tender with the young, compassionate with the aged, sympathetic with the striving and tolerant of the weak and the strong. Because someday in life you will have been all of these.”–George Washington Carver

18.) “Success is not the key to happiness. Happiness is the key to success. If you love what you are doing, you will be successful.”–Albert Schweitzer

19.) “Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.”–Winston Churchill

20.) “Live your life each day as you would climb a mountain. An occasional glance towards the summit keeps the goal in mind, but many beautiful scenes are to be observed from each new vintage point.” – Harold B Melchart

Graduation quotes to inspire success

21.) “Man often becomes what he believes himself to be. If I keep on saying to myself that I cannot do a certain thing, it is possible that I may end by really becoming incapable of doing it. On the contrary, if I have the belief that I can do it, I shall surely acquire the capacity to do it even if I may not have it at the beginning.” – Mahatma Gandhi

22.) “Champions aren’t made in gyms. Champions are made from something they have deep inside them: a desire, a dream, a vision. They have to have the skill and the will. But the will must be stronger than the skill.” – Muhammad Ali

23.) “There is no elevator to success, you have to take the stairs.” – Unknown

24.) Don’t judge each day by the harvest you reap but by the seeds that you plant. –Robert Louis Stevenson

25.) If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with success unexpected in common hours. – Henry David Thoreau

26.) Be happy for this moment. This moment is your life. – Omar Khayyam

27.) So many of our dreams at first seem impossible, then they seem improbable, and then, when we summon the will, they soon become inevitable. – Christopher Reeve

28.) “Instruction ends in the schoolroom, but education ends only with life.” —Frederick W. Robertson

29.) “Intelligence plus character—that is the goal of true education.” —Martin Luther King Jr.

30.) “Do not follow where the path may lead. Go, instead, where there is no path and leave a trail.”– Ralph Waldo Emerson

Graduation quotes to inspire you as you enter the real world

31.) “Your life is your story, and the adventure ahead of you is the journey to fulfill your own purpose and potential.” – Kerry Washington

32.) “Go confidently in the direction of your dreams. Live the life you have imagined.”– Henry David Thoreau

33.) “You may not always have a comfortable life and you will not always be able to solve all of the world’s problems at once, but don’t ever underestimate the importance you can have because history has shown us that courage can be contagious, and hope can take on a life of its own.”– Michelle Obama

34.) “It always seems impossible until it’s done.”– Nelson Mandela

35.) “If opportunity doesn’t knock, build a door.”– Milton Berle

36.) “The highest result of education is tolerance.” —Helen Keller

37.) “Every person you meet knows something you don’t; learn from them.” —H Jackson Brown Jr.

38.) “Don’t just get involved. Fight for your seat at the table. Better yet, fight for a seat at the head of the table.” – Barack Obama

39.) “Not only can you not plan the impact you’re going to have, you often won’t recognize it when you’re having it.” – Dick Costolo

40.) “It doesn’t matter that your dream came true if you spent your whole life sleeping.”- Jerry Zucker

Graduation quotes to inspire hope for the future

41.) “Sucess is like a mountain that keeps growing ahead of you as you hike it… Err in the direction of kindness.” – GEORGE SAUNDERS

42.) “As you start your journey, the first thing you should do is throw away that store-bought map and begin to draw your own.”— Michael Dell

43.) “Kid, you’ll move mountains. Today is your day! Your mountain is waiting so get on your way!”— Dr. Seuss

44.) “Graduation is not the end; it’s the beginning.”— Senator Orrin Hatch

45.) “This is your time and it feels normal to you but really there is no normal. There’s only change, and resistance to it and then more change.” – MERYL STREEP

46.) “Success is no accident. It is hard work, perseverance, learning, studying, sacrifice, and most of all, love of what you are doing.” – Pele

47.) “Don’t settle. As with all matters of the heart, you’ll know it when you find it.” —Steve Jobs

48.) “Don’t make excuses, don’t blame the past. The rest of your life can be the best of your life!” – Joel Osteen

49.) “The world rewards those who take responsibility for their own success.” – Curt Gerrish

50.) “Share your sparkle wherever you are.” – Dodinsky

Graduation quotes to inspire and teach

51.) “Education makes a people easy to lead, but difficult to drive: easy to govern, but impossible to enslave.” —Henry Peter Brougham

52.) “You have brains in your head. You have feet in your shoes. You can steer yourself in any direction you choose.” —Dr. Seuss

53.) “Knowledge is not power. The implementation of knowledge is power.” —Larry Winget

54.) “The important thing is not to stop questioning.”– Albert Einstein

55.) “There are no regrets in life. Just lessons.” —Jennifer Aniston

56.) “It takes courage to grow up and become who you really are.”– E.E. Cummings

57.) “Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work.” —Thomas Edison

58.) “What lies behind us, and what lies before us are small matters compared to what lies within us.”– Ralph Waldo Emerson

59.) “Sometimes you find out what you are supposed to be doing by doing the things you are not supposed to do.”- Oprah Winfrey

60.) “Don’t ever confuse the two, your life and your work. The second is only part of the first.” – Anna Quindlen

Other inspirational graduation quotes to read

61.) “Education is our passport to the future, for tomorrow belongs to the people who prepare for it today.” —Malcolm X

62.) “You can fail at what you don’t want, so you might as well take a chance on doing what you love.”– Jim Carrey

63.) “Take pride in how far you’ve come. Have faith in how far you can go. But don’t forget to enjoy the journey.” —Michael Josephson

64.) “Never bend your head. Always hold it high. Look the world right in the eye.”��� Helen Keller

65.) “When you leave here, don’t forget why you came.” —Adlai E. Stevenson

66.) “Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don’t matter and those who matter don’t mind.” —Dr. Seuss

67.) “Live all of your life. Understand it, see it, appreciate it. And have fun.” – Joss Whedon

68.) “Be bold, be courageous, be your best.” – Gabrielle Giffords

69.) “You get to consciously decide what has meaning and what doesn’t. You get to decide what to worship.” – David Foster Wallace

70.) “Not only can you not plan the impact you’re going to have, you often won’t recognize it when you’re having it.” – Dick Costolo

Which graduation quotes were your favorite?

Graduation is such an important time in life. Whether you’re finishing up elementary, middle, high school, or college, graduation is an important milestone in your learning journey.

Hopefully, these quotes have given you the courage to believe and fight for your dreams and goals.

Did you enjoy these graduation quotes? Which of the quotes was your favorite? We would love to hear all about it in the comment section below. Also, don’t forget to share with your friends and followers.

The post 70 Graduation Quotes On Success, Dreams and Your Future appeared first on Everyday Power Blog.

[queendome-blog1]

YOGA say whaaat?

Sooooo I’ve begun my journey in the realm of yoga oh so recently - like, in the last few hours type of recently. My Trap Yoga idea has been a dream of mine for some time. During my journey of womanhood and throughout my growth I have become a more health conscious, spiritually based individual. I’ve gained knowledge in the field of chakras, proper usage of crystals, the importance of energies - let’s top that off with me adopting a Pescetarian lifestyle, especially as a Black woman?? I feel like I'm out here DOING the damn thing! So the only natural next step would be yoga, right? And not just ANY yoga - oh no. Let’s add some trap music to that thang and get shit shaking in here. I noticed that during my tenure in Big Box retail, one of my morning routines would be to put on my trap music and grind out my shift. The beat, the intention behind the lyrics, the emotion that was inspired by this set of rhythmic patterns, that prepared me to endure, to work, to GRIND. You know? Plus, who doesn’t want to align their center, balance their chakras, AND clap an ass cheek all at the same time?

😏

I KNOW this idea is bomb ass. And if you think too hard about it, you know it too. I already can do a few stretch poses (thanks bae). I just have to learn a few more poses and BAM - I’m in this yoga, bitch.

I wanted my first post to be about my journey in womanhood, and how I have been building a brand off of the lessons I've had to learn on my own. My main goal is to create this legacy that will empower young women coming up, who may have had to navigate is this big, crazy world. One passion is creating a more active lifestyle that doesn't break the bank, and allows for us to TRULY have a space, a moment (10-15 mins) to allow us to listen and converse with our bodies. Our health is SO important, and if we want to be out here living our best lives, it starts with touching your toes. Lifting your arms and being able to hold it. The sinple things that you don't realize you miss, until you are calf-deep in the quicksand of adulting.

Connecting something I love (music) with something that will lead me to working out (I HATE working out) while improving my overall health and wellbeing, sounds like enjoyable work. We HAVE to work to get what we want, but I want to forget that it's necessary. I realized yoga is NOT as simplistic as I preciously thought; it’s so much more than stretching and I had quite an interesting (and fun!) time learning this, y'all. Ain't nothing like a little Yoga to show you where you are. #adulting

 My husband knew of my plans, just as much as he knew I was pushing the idea back for one reason or another. So like the awesome husband he is, I came home the other day with the surprise of a new yoga kit (a yoga mat and towel), with a Yoga book of poses, all laid out for the Queen!

 I'm feeling fancy, yet...inspired. Hubby has been encouraging me to start getting into my crafts, and this was his way of helping nudge me in the right direction. #blacklove the book was titled: YOGA: The Essential Positions. Even the lady on cover looked to be doing a simple ass pose I would be able to conquer in no time. Eagerly I opened the book and flipped to the first pose, read the instructions and immediately started on the pose:

 Easy Peasy.

Let’s go ahead and knock this out.

I plop on down and immediately position my legs like in the photo. I straighten my back and face forward, reaching my arms down in the photo and - uh oh. I feel the stretch in my arms and in my back as I attempt to reach for the carpet - and it is NOT working out. My arms go one way, my back goes another, and my legs start doing what they want. For the life of me, I am unable to mimic this ALIEN, who looks as if yoga is as effortless as breathing. My husband who had been spectating the whole while, comes over and checks out the book.

“You mean like this?” Here he comes, like a swan, gliding over to my homemade yoga studio and sitting down; positioning his legs correctly, aligning his spine correctly, and stretching out his arms with ease. I scrambled to snatch up that book, survey the tutorial image to find this man was doing the pose with perfection...just like the woman in the book. So now I'm frustrated that

1.) I can't do it

2.) He can

Petty Betty, I know. But damn, you mean to tell me after 10 mins my arms jyst aren't long enough??

Frustrated, I turned the page to the next pose. Now this one looked to be the easiest one. The pose was called: The Mountain, meant to balance the whole body. I proudly stood, placed my feet together, exposed my palms forwardly, and lifted my chin like I finally conquered the beast I so greatly wanted to slay. And slayed I did! And Don laughed. Cause literally, it was the easiest pose. I stood and did a little something with hands and BAM - I completed the task! Any accomplishment is a joyous occasion, my friends. All jokes aside, this is actually one of my favorite poses. I could literally feel my blood ever so gently flow through my vessels, circulating throughout my whole body. This pose did exactly what it said to do, so I truly did get to enjoy the fruits of my labor.  

We moved on to the third pose, right?? The Standing Forward Bend. And yes, that’s literally what it is. You’re standing forward, and you bend forward as FAR as you can go! As I was attempting to bend, the husband was coming up behind me, because your girl was looking like a whole meal. Apparently, I wasn't bending over enough; the goal is to basically hug and kiss your kneecaps. Next thing I know, I see him grab the cute little turquoise rope, and he says “Come on babe, you gotta stretch!" So I say "Hold up, we’re going to need a safe word if we are doing it like this, wtf??” From the description and the look of the pose, I would have sworn he had tricked me with a karma sutra book instead! But hey, if I can strengthen my core and get a little fun in all at once, who am I to protest?

 I may have been a little tooooo bootlylicious for that third one. Between distracting my husband and my struggling to touch my knees let alone toes, we decided it was time to move on to the fourth. The Downward Facing Dog-we ALL know that one. The purpose is to soften the lumbar spine and strengthens the trunk and legs (their words, not mine). Dump in the trunk I am no stranger of, so I knew this was just the pose for me - confidence back up.

First I got on all fours as instructed and while in position I inhaled, focusing on my breath. With each intake I was absorbing the positive energy around me, each exhale I was purging the negative. When ready, I pushed my bottom half upward, leaving a slight bend in my knee. I pushed as far as I could before then reaching out with my arms. Every foot and hand was planted firmly against the earth, each digit spread to maintain the balance I was trying to achieve.

 I couldn’t do exactly what was shown - I just wasn’t as low as the tutorial woman was, but the progress is what’s important here. I faired better with the 2nd and 3rd, semi-successful with the 4th. So I was confident that moving forward was not only an achievable dream but a close one. Don't worry, as hilarious as it is to discover how out-of-shape I am, I'm going to use this as fuel to keep going.

I'm going to keep y'all ninjas posted.

#chakrasaywhat #Queendome

[mediacalling]

Do Twitter Ads Really Work? A Surprising Experiment: 17.2 Million Views From a Single Twitter Thread

As the New Year approaches, many of us find ourselves in a reflective mood. And that’s exactly how JotForm founder, Aytekin ‏Tank, felt as 2017 was drawing to a close.

As he walked along the Embarcadero, one of the liveliest and most scenic areas in San Francisco, looking back on the year, he was a little zoned out to everything happening around him. Meditative. Introspective. Contemplative.

He had many things to celebrate: JotForm had grown to a team of more than 130 people across the globe, it had more than 3.2 million users and its revenues continued to climb every month. It’s also worth noting that all of this happened without taking a dollar in outside funding — a not-so-common story in Silicon Valley these days.

But despite all the good news, there was something that didn’t quite sit right with him.

“Our competitors were super loud on the internet and their user numbers weren’t even close to ours,” he explained to me. “They were announcing one investment round after another, ending up on top of TechCrunch, and we were just quietly going about our business.”

During these moments of reflection, Aytekin realized that, like his competitors, he also had a story to tell.

So he decided to do just that — share his story. But in his own unique way.

Building a brand through stories

The first order of business for Aytekin was simple:

Write stories to share the JotForm journey.

With autonomous teams around him, he was able to dedicate his time to whatever tasks he felt would impact the business the most, so going all-in on content was an easy decision for him.

His first post — How NOT following my dreams enabled me to build a startup with 3.2 million users — was published in a popular Medium Publication, The Startup, and reached over +50K pageviews almost overnight.

His second post — Time off or the top of TechCrunch? — was equally as successful.

“I published these stories on December 18th and 26th respectively”, he explained. “Given their traction and how they resonated with a huge audience, I made my mind up. I was going to get serious about writing in 2018.”

Aytekin had found his niche.

His authentic, honest stories resonated with startup enthusiasts and he decided to write at least two posts per week throughout 2018 to share his journey as founder and CEO of JotForm.

Embracing Twitter: A $24,098 Twitter ads experiment

After his initial success on Medium, Aytekin was keen to share JotForm’s story across multiple channels in order to reach new audiences.

In July 2018, he decided to experiment with Twitter. Specifically, he was curious:

If Twitter could be a great platform to repurpose content

How Twitter ads could help him amplify his content.

After all, Twitter and blogging aren’t really too different:

“Apart from its character limit, Twitter isn’t any different when it comes to sharing your authentic voice,” he explained. “It’s blogging in 280 characters.”

As a platform, Twitter may not have changed too much since over the years — except increasing the character limit from 140 to 280 characters.

But what has changed significantly is the way people use the platform.

Twitter used to feel almost like an RSS feed, full of people sharing links and hashtags, trying to hijack every ounce of attention possible. But now, as Nathan Bashaw pointed out, things are changing:

Interesting example of how internet culture has evolved:

In the early days of Twitter, people used to just share links and headlines all the time. That basically never happens anymore. Now you have to say something in your own voice when you share something.

It’s better.

— Nathan Bashaw (@nbashaw) May 11, 2018

Some of the best performing tweets nowadays are those that tell authentic stories.

For example, Rodolphe Dutel’s recent tweet about workplace culture really resonated with his audience (and beyond), picking up 31,265 retweets and 134,655 likes.

Dear tech companies,

Employees don’t need ping pong tables or beer fridges at work.

Employees need flexibility to do their best work and enjoy life. For instance, working remotely.

Please offer trust, not toys.

— Rodolphe Dutel (@rdutel) September 15, 2018

Would it have been as successful if Rodolphe had simply shared an article link and headline? Probably not.

Kicking off the experiment

Having seen various tweets and threads succeed like Rodolphe’s, Aytekin set out to reverse engineer a “viral” tweet of his own.

The plan was simple:

Repurpose a successful Medium post into a Twitter thread and boost it with Twitter ads to test the limits of Twitter as a platform to spread Aytekin and JotForm’s message. 

In order to craft the Twitter thread, Aytekin used his Medium analytics for inspiration:

With this data, he was able to see which articles had resonated most with his audience and tell a story that he was sure would connect with people on Twitter.

He chose to create a Twitter thread based on his post entitled: ‘Don’t listen to those productivity gurus: why waking up at 6am won’t make you successful’.

Here’s a link to the thread:

1/ Don’t listen to those productivity gurus.

 Waking up at 6am won’t make you successful.

A thread

— Aytekin (@aytekintank) July 16, 2018

The results: 17 million impressions

The aim of this experiment was to test the limits of the Twitter algorithm, and the power of Twitter ads, so Aytekin decided to spend as much as possible on this ad: $24,098 in total.

The tweet generated 17,177,432 impressions on Twitter.

Here are the results in full:

Aytekin didn’t jump right in and spend $24,000 overnight. In fact, when the experiment started, the plan was to spend a maximum of $5,000.

But as the tweet began to take off, the budget was raised accordingly.

“We started this experiment by saying we wouldn’t exceed $5K in spend,” he explained. “But we kept a close eye on the Cost Per Engagement and Impressions, and raised budget accordingly.”

As the advert was seeing super high engagement rates (over 20 percent at times):

And low Cost Per Engagement:

Aytekin continued to ramp up the spend until results started to diminish. In the end, the experiment ran for over a month in total (between July 15 – August 24).

Due to the high engagement, the thread also received plenty of organic reach on Twitter.

Out of 17 million impressions, 4.7 million were organic — so in other words, 27.4 percent of reach was free vs 72.6 percent paid.

Some key takeaways from this experiment follow…

Lessons learned from this Twitter experiment

1. Twitter is a great place to repurpose content

If you’re creating content of any form: videos, blog posts, podcasts, etc, repurposing it across multiple channels is a great way to get the most bang for your buck.

But repurposing doesn’t just mean copying and pasting a link over to Twitter.

If you want to be successful, you need to think about how you can tell each story natively to the platform you’re publishing on.

For this experiment, Aytekin could have simply shared a tweet linking to his blog post and boosted it, but I’m sure that wouldn’t have performed anywhere near as well as the Twitter thread.

By using a format native to Twitter, Aytekin was able to share his story in a way that Twitter users would respond to and be happy to engage with.

2. A Twitter thread can help you to achieve multiple goals at the same time

Impressions and engagement are awesome — especially when you’re quite new to the content marketing game.

But when you use a Twitter thread, you’re able to feature multiple types of content within your tweets and achieve various goals.

For example, in the fifth tweet in the thread Aytekin included a link back to the original article on Medium:

This tweet received more than 1.1 million impressions and over 35,000 clicks, helping to drive traffic back to the original post on Medium.

The sixth tweet in the thread mentioned @JotForm and 4,346 people clicked from this tweet to JotForm’s profile to learn more about the business:

Aytekin also picked up 5,752 followers from this thread.

When it comes to planning an experiment like this of your own, try to think about the goals you’d like to achieve:

If it’s all about impressions and engagement, you could tell the whole story on Twitter.

If you want to drive traffic, add a link back to your website.

To increase your following, @ mention your profile.

Remember: It’s important to tell a great story in a native format, so ensure you use your first few tweets to get people hooked into your narrative before including any links.

3. Twitter is a great place to start a conversation

With any highly shared tweet, you’ll always get a few trolls pop up here and there, but if you look past this, you’ll realize that Twitter is still an incredible place to start a conversation and build relationships.

Following Aytekin’s thread, he received plenty of questions about JotForm and how the business operates. This enabled him to build new relationships with people he previously wouldn’t have reached.

So, do Twitter ads really work?

This experiment was designed to test the limits of Twitter ads and the results speak for themselves:

Over 17 million impressions

35,000 visits to the original article

5,752 followers for Aytekin

4,346 profile views for @JotForm

But that’s not to say everything was perfect.

Due to the way Twitter ads work there’s no real way to tell exactly how many unique people saw the ad and many people reached out to Aytekin to say they’d seen the ad multiple times.

And for every great conversation started by this thread, there was another slightly negative reaction. It seems that some Twitter users don’t quite accept ads in their feed like they do on Facebook or Instagram, where ads are more ingrained within the platforms.

Overall though, Aytekin sees the experiment as worthwhile:

“Even though the initial cost was high, the 5,000 followers we gained from this experiment are permanent,” he explained.

“Every time I publish a new post, I get clicks, likes, retweets and comments from these followers. So the results are compounding over time. I can’t be sure if they will become long-term, highly-engaged audience members, but they seem to stick around for now.”

And the great thing is that you can replicate this experiment yourself with a budget of any size.

Simply take a piece of content that’s been successful for you on another channel:

A highly-viewed Facebook video.

One of your top podcast episodes.

Your #1 blog post.

A copy of your email newsletter.

And repurpose that content into a succinct story on Twitter.

Even if you don’t want to invest any budget in it, repurposing content to Twitter is a great way to connect with your audience and share your stories to another platform.

Have you used Twitter ads? Do you repurpose content from other platforms to Twitter? I’d love to chat about your thoughts and experiences in the comments below.

Want more content like this?

More than 45,000 marketers and small business owners subscribe to our newsletter to receive our blog posts and exclusive email-only content.

Which emails would you like to receive from us? You can select both if you want.

An email for every new Buffer blog post

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Do Twitter Ads Really Work? A Surprising Experiment: 17.2 Million Views From a Single Twitter Thread posted first on http://getfblikeblog.blogspot.com

[mariemary1]

Do Twitter Ads Really Work? A Surprising Experiment: 17.2 Million Views From a Single Twitter Thread

As the New Year approaches, many of us find ourselves in a reflective mood. And that’s exactly how JotForm founder, Aytekin ‏Tank, felt as 2017 was drawing to a close.

As he walked along the Embarcadero, one of the liveliest and most scenic areas in San Francisco, looking back on the year, he was a little zoned out to everything happening around him. Meditative. Introspective. Contemplative.

He had many things to celebrate: JotForm had grown to a team of more than 130 people across the globe, it had more than 3.2 million users and its revenues continued to climb every month. It’s also worth noting that all of this happened without taking a dollar in outside funding — a not-so-common story in Silicon Valley these days.

But despite all the good news, there was something that didn’t quite sit right with him.

“Our competitors were super loud on the internet and their user numbers weren’t even close to ours,” he explained to me. “They were announcing one investment round after another, ending up on top of TechCrunch, and we were just quietly going about our business.”

During these moments of reflection, Aytekin realized that, like his competitors, he also had a story to tell.

So he decided to do just that — share his story. But in his own unique way.

Building a brand through stories

The first order of business for Aytekin was simple:

Write stories to share the JotForm journey.

With autonomous teams around him , he was able to dedicate his time to whatever tasks he felt would impact the business the most, so going all-in on content was an easy decision for him.

His first post — How NOT following my dreams enabled me to build a startup with 3.2 million users — was published in a popular Medium Publication, The Startup, and reached over +50K pageviews almost overnight.

His second post — Time off or the top of TechCrunch? — was equally as successful.

“I published these stories on December 18th and 26th respectively”, he explained. “Given their traction and how they resonated with a huge audience, I made my mind up. I was going to get serious about writing in 2018.”

Aytekin had found his niche.

His authentic, honest stories resonated with startup enthusiasts and he decided to write at least two posts per week throughout 2018 to share his journey as founder and CEO of JotForm.

Embracing Twitter: A $24,098 Twitter ads experiment

After his initial success on Medium, Aytekin was keen to share JotForm’s story across multiple channels in order to reach new audiences.

In July 2018, he decided to experiment with Twitter. Specifically, he was curious:

If Twitter could be a great platform to repurpose content

How Twitter ads could help him amplify his content.

After all, Twitter and blogging aren’t really too different:

“Apart from its character limit, Twitter isn’t any different when it comes to sharing your authentic voice,” he explained. “It’s blogging in 280 characters.”

As a platform, Twitter may not have changed too much since over the years — except increasing the character limit from 140 to 280 characters.

But what has changed significantly is the way people use the platform.

Twitter used to feel almost like an RSS feed, full of people sharing links and hashtags, trying to hijack every ounce of attention possible. But now, as Nathan Bashaw pointed out, things are changing:

Interesting example of how internet culture has evolved:

In the early days of Twitter, people used to just share links and headlines all the time. That basically never happens anymore. Now you have to say something in your own voice when you share something.

It’s better.

— Nathan Bashaw (@nbashaw) May 11, 2018

Some of the best performing tweets nowadays are those that tell authentic stories.

For example, Rodolphe Dutel’s recent tweet about workplace culture really resonated with his audience (and beyond), picking up 31,265 retweets and 134,655 likes.

Dear tech companies,

Employees don’t need ping pong tables or beer fridges at work.

Employees need flexibility to do their best work and enjoy life. For instance, working remotely.

Please offer trust, not toys.

— Rodolphe Dutel (@rdutel) September 15, 2018

Would it have been as successful if Rodolphe had simply shared an article link and headline? Probably not.

Kicking off the experiment

Having seen various tweets and threads succeed like Rodolphe’s, Aytekin set out to reverse engineer a “viral” tweet of his own.

The plan was simple:

Repurpose a successful Medium post into a Twitter thread and boost it with Twitter ads to test the limits of Twitter as a platform to spread Aytekin and JotForm’s message. 

In order to craft the Twitter thread, Aytekin used his Medium analytics for inspiration:

With this data, he was able to see which articles had resonated most with his audience and tell a story that he was sure would connect with people on Twitter.

He chose to create a Twitter thread based on his post entitled: ‘Don’t listen to those productivity gurus: why waking up at 6am won’t make you successful’.

Here’s a link to the thread:

1/ Don’t listen to those productivity gurus.

 Waking up at 6am won’t make you successful.

A thread

— Aytekin (@aytekintank) July 16, 2018

The results: 17 million impressions

The aim of this experiment was to test the limits of the Twitter algorithm, and the power of Twitter ads, so Aytekin decided to spend as much as possible on this ad: $24,098 in total.

The tweet generated 17,177,432 impressions on Twitter.

Here are the results in full:

Aytekin didn’t jump right in and spend $24,000 overnight. In fact, when the experiment started, the plan was to spend a maximum of $5,000.

But as the tweet began to take off, the budget was raised accordingly.

“We started this experiment by saying we wouldn’t exceed $5K in spend,” he explained. “But we kept a close eye on the Cost Per Engagement and Impressions, and raised budget accordingly.”

As the advert was seeing super high engagement rates (over 20 percent at times):

And low Cost Per Engagement:

Aytekin continued to ramp up the spend until results started to diminish. In the end, the experiment ran for over a month in total (between July 15 – August 24).

Due to the high engagement, the thread also received plenty of organic reach on Twitter.

Out of 17 million impressions, 4.7 million were organic — so in other words, 27.4 percent of reach was free vs 72.6 percent paid.

Some key takeaways from this experiment follow…

Lessons learned from this Twitter experiment

1. Twitter is a great place to repurpose content

If you’re creating content of any form: videos, blog posts, podcasts, etc, repurposing it across multiple channels is a great way to get the most bang for your buck.

But repurposing doesn’t just mean copying and pasting a link over to Twitter.

If you want to be successful, you need to think about how you can tell each story natively to the platform you’re publishing on.

For this experiment, Aytekin could have simply shared a tweet linking to his blog post and boosted it, but I’m sure that wouldn’t have performed anywhere near as well as the Twitter thread.

By using a format native to Twitter, Aytekin was able to share his story in a way that Twitter users would respond to and be happy to engage with.

2. A Twitter thread can help you to achieve multiple goals at the same time

Impressions and engagement are awesome — especially when you’re quite new to the content marketing game.

But when you use a Twitter thread, you’re able to feature multiple types of content within your tweets and achieve various goals.

For example, in the fifth tweet in the thread Aytekin included a link back to the original article on Medium:

This tweet received more than 1.1 million impressions and over 35,000 clicks, helping to drive traffic back to the original post on Medium.

The sixth tweet in the thread mentioned @JotForm and 4,346 people clicked from this tweet to JotForm’s profile to learn more about the business:

Aytekin also picked up 5,752 followers from this thread.

When it comes to planning an experiment like this of your own, try to think about the goals you’d like to achieve:

If it’s all about impressions and engagement, you could tell the whole story on Twitter.

If you want to drive traffic, add a link back to your website.

To increase your following, @ mention your profile.

Remember: It’s important to tell a great story in a native format, so ensure you use your first few tweets to get people hooked into your narrative before including any links.

3. Twitter is a great place to start a conversation

With any highly shared tweet, you’ll always get a few trolls pop up here and there, but if you look past this, you’ll realize that Twitter is still an incredible place to start a conversation and build relationships.

Following Aytekin’s thread, he received plenty of questions about JotForm and how the business operates. This enabled him to build new relationships with people he previously wouldn’t have reached.

So, do Twitter ads really work?

This experiment was designed to test the limits of Twitter ads and the results speak for themselves:

Over 17 million impressions

35,000 visits to the original article

5,752 followers for Aytekin

4,346 profile views for @JotForm

But that’s not to say everything was perfect.

Due to the way Twitter ads work there’s no real way to tell exactly how many unique people saw the ad and many people reached out to Aytekin to say they’d seen the ad multiple times.

And for every great conversation started by this thread, there was another slightly negative reaction. It seems that some Twitter users don’t quite accept ads in their feed like they do on Facebook or Instagram, where ads are more ingrained within the platforms.

Overall though, Aytekin sees the experiment as worthwhile:

“Even though the initial cost was high, the 5,000 followers we gained from this experiment are permanent,” he explained.

“Every time I publish a new post, I get clicks, likes, retweets and comments from these followers. So the results are compounding over time. I can’t be sure if they will become long-term, highly-engaged audience members, but they seem to stick around for now.”

And the great thing is that you can replicate this experiment yourself with a budget of any size.

Simply take a piece of content that’s been successful for you on another channel:

A highly-viewed Facebook video.

One of your top podcast episodes.

Your #1 blog post.

A copy of your email newsletter.

And repurpose that content into a succinct story on Twitter.

Even if you don’t want to invest any budget in it, repurposing content to Twitter is a great way to connect with your audience and share your stories to another platform.

Have you used Twitter ads? Do you repurpose content from other platforms to Twitter? I’d love to chat about your thoughts and experiences in the comments below.

Want more content like this?

More than 45,000 marketers and small business owners subscribe to our newsletter to receive our blog posts and exclusive email-only content.

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Thank Do Twitter Ads Really Work? A Surprising Experiment: 17.2 Million Views From a Single Twitter Thread for first publishing this post.

[thecosydragon]

My latest blog post from the cosy dragon: An Interview with Jimmy Brandmeier

An Interview with Jimmy Brandmeier, author of Be Who You Are, A Song For My Children

Jimmy Brandmeier is “the Dad” in a beautiful, wacky family of three daughters—Jamie (age 24), Jessie (age 23), and Josie (age 19)—Paula his wife of twenty-five years (ageless), two doves, a couple of goldfish, and a cat named Squeakers. Though their loving yellow lab, Satchmo, went to doggy heaven, his doggy hair will always be with them.

The couple moved their family from California to Wisconsin to raise their kids closer to family. They managed to be hands-on parents through the demands of two busy careers—Jimmy, a music industry veteran flying back and forth to California, and Paula, an airline pilot flying back and forth to Europe. Flexibility and priorities kept them from missing a beat in their children’s lives.

Apart from family, Brandmeier is a Telly Award winning composer/producer and a Summit award marketer. He’s worked directly with celebrity artists raging from Eric Clapton, Carole King, Avril Lavigne and Joss Stone, to Wynona Judd, Jason Mraz and Dave Mathews among others; written jingles for brands from Mazda to Mattel.

Brandmeier is a seasoned jazz flutist who has played everywhere from town halls to Carnegie Hall and a teacher, passionate about inspiring students to create a life of abundance and fulfillment. He has a deep-seated dedication to help people transcend inner and outer obstacles and understand the point of life, so they may live fulfilled and happy lives—which at its core, is the essence of his book Be Who You Are, A Song for My Children.

Why did you write Be Who You Are, A Song For My Children?

I didn’t intend to write a book. The book started out as a song, which took on a life of its own. Each line grew into a separate topic. The lyric spun like a thread that wove into the prose that unfolded into Be Who You Are: A Song for My Children. I was grabbed by the gut, by what turned out to be the tip of a message, which expanded as I wrote.

I wanted my three daughters to hold on to their authenticity—to the unrepeatable sparkle in their eyes—no matter what. I thought the right words could protect them; shelter them from the inner and outer storms of life. I didn’t want life suck the life out of them. And I wanted to leave them something they could lean on, long after I’m gone.

But it wasn’t until reaching the end the book that I fully understood what the book was about—what it really means to, Be Who You Are. That unexpected message has unfolded into an unexpected life mission, one that I believe will help people be happy no matter what happens and live their best lives.

So, you never expected your song to grow into a 368-page book?

Writing the book was a surprise. But the process of writing the book took me on an “unexpected” spiritual journey. Turns out the message I was grabbed by the gut to instill in my three daughters was the one I most needed to hear. Be Who You Are. And again, there are layers to being who you are, most people don’t think or care about.

So, what’s the overall message of Be Who You Are, A Song For My Children

The big picture message has three parts.

1-The Framework of Life: There are two roads, which layer and lead towards or away from who you are.

The inner road and sole purpose of life: Transcend the ego. Rise above fear (ego) into the essence of who you are. (Love!)

The outer road and secondary purpose of life: Make the most of yourself, your talents, your livelihood, and your life in this world. (Live!)

All you can imagine, do, be, achieve or experience is found on these two roads. The quality of your life depends on the relationship between them.

2-The Big Mistake: Believing the outer road is the only road that matters. Believing the outer road leads to happiness. Everybody is scrounging for happiness in all the wrong places. Happiness is not an external event. Your inside life “is” life.

3-The Point: The real journey in life is the voyage from fear to love. Casting off from the ego and returning to who you are—born again into the love of your infinite essence—is the point and purpose of life.

Does being who you are mean, doing what you love?

Doing what you love is a beautiful part of life’s big picture, and part of the overarching message of this book. Doing what you love can also be part of the curriculum in the course of authenticity. It can fade the façade of appearance, into an opening for your essence to shine through like the sun.

Lose your self (ego) in what you love, and you’ll find your Self (Essence) through what you love.

But doing what you love is only a portal to the point, which is perfect happiness—being who you are, inside and out. And finding happiness on the outer road only, no matter how much you love it, is an impossibility. As comedian Jim Carrey says . . . “I wish people could realize all their dreams of wealth and fame, so they could see it’s not where you’ll find your sense of completion.”

What is the meaning of your cover illustration—two separate puzzle pieces, that when aligned, transform into birds soaring free?

The two puzzle pieces represent the inner and outer roads moving into alignment. When the amazing outer road of our talents, dreams, passions, career, finances, relationships, achievements, accolades, adventures, and motivations merge with the spiritual purpose of the inner road—the ultimate and only point of life. When heart and heaven beat as one, as the song lyric says—you’ll be happy, no matter what happens. You’ll be fearless. You’ll be free. You’ll have reached, The Point.

What would you say is the best way to improve your writing—to master your craft?

I probably come from a different writing background than most of the authors reading this. I’m a musician. My first non-fiction book started out as a song.

As a composer, I’ve been immersed in writing songs, jingles, scores, music beds and anything else the client of the moment asked for. What comes first—words or music? Answer—the phone call. But certain truths for mastering the mechanics of writing—in order to free the soul of writing—are universal. The most powerful and least glamourous tool of all . . . butt in chair.

Habit is a hammer that builds virtuosity. Consistency activates a creative force in the universe sending us insights impossible to come up with sporadically, on our own. As Julia Cameron, author of The Artist Way, says, “were not thinking something up, were taking something down.” As I point out in my book, “world class dreams, require world class routines. Your goals and dreams must match your habits and routines.” What’s the difference between an artist and an amateur? According to Malcom Gladwell author of Outliers, about 8000 hours. Amateurs put in 2000 hours, by age 20, artists who’ve mastered their craft, put in 10,000. Talent is not enough.

I’ve noticed that many aspiring music students do not listen to music. I’ve met aspiring authors who do not read. If you want to be a better writer, be a better reader . . .

Read! Read! Read!

Creativity—at least the non-contrived, unexpected, happy accidents kind of creativity—originates almost entirely in the sub-conscious. You can program the sub-conscious with cable news and video games, or inspiring books, that shake the soul and expand your consciousness. Either way it’s going to come out in your writing.

I have heard of writers that could only write in one place – then that cafe closed down and they could no longer write! Where do you find yourself writing most often, and on what medium (pen/paper or digital)?

I write most often in a quiet place, in my home. The challenge is . . . it’s not always quiet. In a crazy household filled with three wonderful daughters, (for whom I wrote the book), a fantastic wife, dogs, cats and pet rats, its necessary to escape to a coffee shop to get in the zone.

But for me it’s more about “time” than “place.” I’m most creative and tapped in to the muse, early in the morning. I set up my “writing chair” the night before—wake up at 3AM, meditate, pray, visualize and sip that first magical cup of coffee. After saying hello to my writing partner—a great big Evergreen tree outside my window—I get to work. (I know. Weird! Kind of like Tom Hanks talking to his soccer ball in the movie The Cast Away), But hey, me and the tree have been through a lot of writing together. 

It is easier to slip behind the veil of ego, and the white noise of world early in the morning. The wee small hours of the morning opens the channel, for insights to flow through me, (not from me) with ease. I call it a dialog with divinity. Call it the force, the source, the muse, the universe; It doesn’t matter—it’s all the same reservoir of creation to me.

On average, I write for 90 minutes and take a break, then write another 60 to 90 minutes. I walk away after that, and deliberately quit thinking about writing. It’s part of the creative process, as described by Graham Wallace in the book, The Art of Thought. Know it or not, whether you’re writing a book or baking cupcakes, the same 4 stages are happening.

1- Preparation. Questions, what does the story want, what do I want to say etc. 2- Incubation: Quit writing let the mind/universe process questions and problems. 3- Illumination: Aha! The answer/idea/insight comes when you least expect it. 4- Verification: Plug the answer and verify how it works. Adjust accordingly.

When I’m done with my morning, preparation stage, I work out, wake the kids, do errands in order to let the writing, incubate. Because the initial creative heavy lifting is over in the morning, total quiet isn’t necessary. I can write at a coffee shop for the next session. When I come back for round two, everything flows much easier.

And one more writing, so called, place: I love to walk my writing. Walking frees the mind. I’ll go on long 2-3-hour walks and record insights, ideas and paragraphs on my iPhone. I’ve written full songs without touching an instrument. When I get back to my desk and enter the verification stage, the ideas I’ve walked out of me generally stand up. Per the last part of this question. I write on a Mac Book Pro and always keep my iPhone handy.

Before going on to hire an editor, most authors use beta-readers. How do you recruit your beta-readers, and choose an editor?

My wife belongs to a local book club that meets once a month. They were nice enough to beta-read my book. We had a party at our house for the book club. It not only helped the writing process, it was a lot of fun.

from https://ift.tt/2POKkOi

[zacdhaenkeau]

5 Practical Ways to Strengthen Your Sales and Marketing Partnership

Imagine a world where sales and marketing can actually work together and, in fact, help one another instead of stepping on each others’ toes. A world where roles are clearly defined and prospects enjoy a smooth traversal through the funnel. Never a gap, never a hang-up.

A boy can dream.

Creating a strong partnership between sales and marketing teams has plagued companies since…well, forever. There are a plethora of sticking points that make alignment of any kind a challenge in itself. To muddy the waters even more, organizations are frequently updating their systems and processes, which leads to miscommunication or even worse, no communication at all.

Often times, sales and marketing professionals actually think their jobs are harder because of their counterpart’s “incompetencies.” How many times have you heard sales reps complain about a lack of quality leads? How many marketers have you heard criticizing sales’ aptitude for squandering opportunities they worked so hard to provide? This pessimistic outlook not only makes for awkward company Christmas parties, but it also impacts the buyer journey and, ultimately, the bottom line.

It doesn’t have to be this way. A recent study found that a strong partnership between sales and marketing “results in 208% more value from marketing with 108% less friction.” There are real, practical steps that, when applied, not only keep sales and marketing off each others’ backs but help them work together to achieve their goals and engage with customers in a unified manner.

In this post, I will share five tactics that you can use today to ease the tension between your sales and marketing teams and deliver a joint effort towards driving revenue and winning opportunities.

1. Reward the Team That Wasn’t (Directly) Involved

It’s easy to praise marketing when there’s a success at the top of the funnel. The same goes for sales at the bottom of the funnel. But if each respective team can show their appreciation for their counterpart’s contribution, it reinforces the idea of a communal effort throughout the entire funnel. A little recognition can go a long way, so the next time a deal is closed, make sure the demand generation team gets a shoutout for properly scoring the lead in the first place. And marketers, before you get high and mighty for delivering quality SQL’s, don’t forget that sales works tirelessly to convert those and keep the organization’s engine running.

It sounds almost too simple to be true, but it’s important to remember that we’re human beings working with other human beings. We enjoy feeling valued and recognized for our hard work. Make a point of sharing the fruits of your labor with everyone who played a part, and you’ll be amazed at their willingness to help you be successful again down the road. You can’t move forward as a unified team if you don’t celebrate like one.

2. Keep the Customer at the Core of Your Efforts

As much as we’re talking about helping sales and marketing partner more effectively, that is NOT the end goal. The customer’s satisfaction must be the heartbeat behind whatever actions your teams decide to make. Focusing on what makes your prospect happy can alleviate some of the “us vs. them” tension that arises between sales and marketing. Use the customer’s satisfaction (or lack thereof) as your benchmark, and the partnership between your two teams will improve without having to think too hard about it. Though tempting to focus on quotas and campaign stats, your customers are best served by a joint effort between sales and marketing. When your focus shifts away from personal performance and towards that high-level goal, you’ll be amazed how well your organization will operate.

A joint goal of providing the best content, service, and personalization to pipeline efforts will lead to more collaboration and more open transparency between sales and marketing. Marketing will want to provide sales all the collateral they need because their focus isn’t on simply relaying leads to them, but making sure the lead is taken care of at every stage of their journey. Organizations who can keep customer satisfaction at the forefront of their efforts don’t even have to consider strengthening their sales and marketing partnership; it just happens. 

3. Understand When to Butt in—and When to Buzz Off 

The poor marketer, well-intentioned as she can be, frequently doesn’t know how to act once the lead has been handed off to the sales team. Can she continue to nurture, or will that mess up the flow the sales rep is building? Sales and marketing must reach an understanding—set boundaries on how much will each team engage the prospect, and make sure that each piece of content marketing sends fits into the context that sales has worked hard to create.

This gray area used to be known as “the handoff,” but these days it may be best defined as “mid-funnel” (or MOFU), as there is no longer a definitive moment where marketing walks away from the account and sales picks it up. Because of this, a well-orchestrated cadence of communication must be agreed upon in advance, so marketing knows when outreach will help the sales team, rather than detract from their efforts.

This involves a level of visibility that many companies currently lack. As it stands now, sales teams commonly live in their CRM platform, while marketing operates on their own platforms. Though these systems “talk” to one another, it doesn’t allow either team to easily see what actions the other has taken. As a salesperson, how can you be confident you’re providing your customer valuable and previously unseen information if you don’t know what content the marketing team has already sent them? Without having the ability to see the entirety of information that your prospect has been given, you run the risk of sounding redundant, or worse, impersonal.

4. Clearly Define the Roles of Marketing and Sales and How They Work Together

This goes far beyond simply saying “marketing does X, sales does Y.” Just as a doctor isn’t only a doctor, marketers aren’t just marketers, and salespeople aren’t just that either. To increase productivity (and show your colleagues respect), make sure your sales team is familiar with the different roles and responsibilities of the marketing team. Clearly define for them what demand generation, content marketing, product marketing, customer marketing, and marketing operations are responsible for, and what success looks like for them. Do the same for your marketing team. Make sure they’re up to speed on the ins and outs of the sales team and what responsibilities sales development representatives have, how you define commercial vs. enterprise, and the responsibilities of your account executives and customer success managers. Not only will their team appreciate your attempt to understand their roles and responsibilities, but you’ll save time by knowing exactly who to go to with an issue.

Make sure your cross-departmental processes and protocols include specifics —there should be a documented answer to questions like “who should I go to if I need to track down an ebook we published four years ago?” “When did sales last have a call with this prospect, and what should I send them next?” Set your teams up for success and avoid generalizations whenever possible. This will save time and make your teams more efficient.

5. Operate Under Shared Metrics of Success

If marketing only values lead scores and MQL’s and sales only cares about closed-won opportunities, each team will undoubtedly define success by different standards, accentuating the separation between TOFU and BOFU. To cultivate a healthy partnership that encompasses the full sales funnel, it is critical that both teams align on one to two metrics that definitively stand as measures of success.

Let’s use parenthood as an analogy: each parent has a unique relationship with their child: differing day-to-day responsibilities, styles of communication, etc. These individual roles are important no doubt, but they’re judged as a unit, and only considered “good” parents by a handful of measures: the amount of time they devote to their child, and his/her health and happiness, for example. The exact same logic can be applied to how sales and marketing go about their roles: if the customer’s happiness isn’t the key metric of success for both teams, neither will be as successful as possible, and the overall health of the business will deteriorate. Unifying under a shared vision of what “success” really means assures that each team achieves it.

Conclusion

It may be grandiose to think that sales and marketing will ever have a completely flawless partnership. These two groups will always have different daily responsibilities and character traits that won’t always align in perfect harmony. But by adopting these practices into your organization’s strategy, the improvements in each team’s performance may be drastic. When you stop to think about it, sales and marketing are two sides of the same coin, and with the right attitudes and systems in place, they begin to look and act like a unified revenue machine.

  The post 5 Practical Ways to Strengthen Your Sales and Marketing Partnership appeared first on Marketo Marketing Blog - Best Practices and Thought Leadership.

from RSSMix.com Mix ID 8217493 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/modernb2bmarketing/~3/cNy6PSAzLqQ/5-practical-ways-to-strengthen-your-sales-and-marketing-partnership.html

[sualkmedeiors]

5 Practical Ways to Strengthen Your Sales and Marketing Partnership

Imagine a world where sales and marketing can actually work together and, in fact, help one another instead of stepping on each others’ toes. A world where roles are clearly defined and prospects enjoy a smooth traversal through the funnel. Never a gap, never a hang-up.

A boy can dream.

Creating a strong partnership between sales and marketing teams has plagued companies since…well, forever. There are a plethora of sticking points that make alignment of any kind a challenge in itself. To muddy the waters even more, organizations are frequently updating their systems and processes, which leads to miscommunication or even worse, no communication at all.

Often times, sales and marketing professionals actually think their jobs are harder because of their counterpart’s “incompetencies.” How many times have you heard sales reps complain about a lack of quality leads? How many marketers have you heard criticizing sales’ aptitude for squandering opportunities they worked so hard to provide? This pessimistic outlook not only makes for awkward company Christmas parties, but it also impacts the buyer journey and, ultimately, the bottom line.

It doesn’t have to be this way. A recent study found that a strong partnership between sales and marketing “results in 208% more value from marketing with 108% less friction.” There are real, practical steps that, when applied, not only keep sales and marketing off each others’ backs but help them work together to achieve their goals and engage with customers in a unified manner.

In this post, I will share five tactics that you can use today to ease the tension between your sales and marketing teams and deliver a joint effort towards driving revenue and winning opportunities.

1. Reward the Team That Wasn’t (Directly) Involved

It’s easy to praise marketing when there’s a success at the top of the funnel. The same goes for sales at the bottom of the funnel. But if each respective team can show their appreciation for their counterpart’s contribution, it reinforces the idea of a communal effort throughout the entire funnel. A little recognition can go a long way, so the next time a deal is closed, make sure the demand generation team gets a shoutout for properly scoring the lead in the first place. And marketers, before you get high and mighty for delivering quality SQL’s, don’t forget that sales works tirelessly to convert those and keep the organization’s engine running.

It sounds almost too simple to be true, but it’s important to remember that we’re human beings working with other human beings. We enjoy feeling valued and recognized for our hard work. Make a point of sharing the fruits of your labor with everyone who played a part, and you’ll be amazed at their willingness to help you be successful again down the road. You can’t move forward as a unified team if you don’t celebrate like one.

2. Keep the Customer at the Core of Your Efforts

As much as we’re talking about helping sales and marketing partner more effectively, that is NOT the end goal. The customer’s satisfaction must be the heartbeat behind whatever actions your teams decide to make. Focusing on what makes your prospect happy can alleviate some of the “us vs. them” tension that arises between sales and marketing. Use the customer’s satisfaction (or lack thereof) as your benchmark, and the partnership between your two teams will improve without having to think too hard about it. Though tempting to focus on quotas and campaign stats, your customers are best served by a joint effort between sales and marketing. When your focus shifts away from personal performance and towards that high-level goal, you’ll be amazed how well your organization will operate.

A joint goal of providing the best content, service, and personalization to pipeline efforts will lead to more collaboration and more open transparency between sales and marketing. Marketing will want to provide sales all the collateral they need because their focus isn’t on simply relaying leads to them, but making sure the lead is taken care of at every stage of their journey. Organizations who can keep customer satisfaction at the forefront of their efforts don’t even have to consider strengthening their sales and marketing partnership; it just happens. 

3. Understand When to Butt in—and When to Buzz Off 

The poor marketer, well-intentioned as she can be, frequently doesn’t know how to act once the lead has been handed off to the sales team. Can she continue to nurture, or will that mess up the flow the sales rep is building? Sales and marketing must reach an understanding—set boundaries on how much will each team engage the prospect, and make sure that each piece of content marketing sends fits into the context that sales has worked hard to create.

This gray area used to be known as “the handoff,” but these days it may be best defined as “mid-funnel” (or MOFU), as there is no longer a definitive moment where marketing walks away from the account and sales picks it up. Because of this, a well-orchestrated cadence of communication must be agreed upon in advance, so marketing knows when outreach will help the sales team, rather than detract from their efforts.

This involves a level of visibility that many companies currently lack. As it stands now, sales teams commonly live in their CRM platform, while marketing operates on their own platforms. Though these systems “talk” to one another, it doesn’t allow either team to easily see what actions the other has taken. As a salesperson, how can you be confident you’re providing your customer valuable and previously unseen information if you don’t know what content the marketing team has already sent them? Without having the ability to see the entirety of information that your prospect has been given, you run the risk of sounding redundant, or worse, impersonal.

4. Clearly Define the Roles of Marketing and Sales and How They Work Together

This goes far beyond simply saying “marketing does X, sales does Y.” Just as a doctor isn’t only a doctor, marketers aren’t just marketers, and salespeople aren’t just that either. To increase productivity (and show your colleagues respect), make sure your sales team is familiar with the different roles and responsibilities of the marketing team. Clearly define for them what demand generation, content marketing, product marketing, customer marketing, and marketing operations are responsible for, and what success looks like for them. Do the same for your marketing team. Make sure they’re up to speed on the ins and outs of the sales team and what responsibilities sales development representatives have, how you define commercial vs. enterprise, and the responsibilities of your account executives and customer success managers. Not only will their team appreciate your attempt to understand their roles and responsibilities, but you’ll save time by knowing exactly who to go to with an issue.

Make sure your cross-departmental processes and protocols include specifics —there should be a documented answer to questions like “who should I go to if I need to track down an ebook we published four years ago?” “When did sales last have a call with this prospect, and what should I send them next?” Set your teams up for success and avoid generalizations whenever possible. This will save time and make your teams more efficient.

5. Operate Under Shared Metrics of Success

If marketing only values lead scores and MQL’s and sales only cares about closed-won opportunities, each team will undoubtedly define success by different standards, accentuating the separation between TOFU and BOFU. To cultivate a healthy partnership that encompasses the full sales funnel, it is critical that both teams align on one to two metrics that definitively stand as measures of success.

Let’s use parenthood as an analogy: each parent has a unique relationship with their child: differing day-to-day responsibilities, styles of communication, etc. These individual roles are important no doubt, but they’re judged as a unit, and only considered “good” parents by a handful of measures: the amount of time they devote to their child, and his/her health and happiness, for example. The exact same logic can be applied to how sales and marketing go about their roles: if the customer’s happiness isn’t the key metric of success for both teams, neither will be as successful as possible, and the overall health of the business will deteriorate. Unifying under a shared vision of what “success” really means assures that each team achieves it.

Conclusion

It may be grandiose to think that sales and marketing will ever have a completely flawless partnership. These two groups will always have different daily responsibilities and character traits that won’t always align in perfect harmony. But by adopting these practices into your organization’s strategy, the improvements in each team’s performance may be drastic. When you stop to think about it, sales and marketing are two sides of the same coin, and with the right attitudes and systems in place, they begin to look and act like a unified revenue machine.

  The post 5 Practical Ways to Strengthen Your Sales and Marketing Partnership appeared first on Marketo Marketing Blog - Best Practices and Thought Leadership.

from https://blog.marketo.com/2018/04/5-practical-ways-to-strengthen-your-sales-and-marketing-partnership.html

[personalcoachingcenter]

Information That Will Turn Your Life Around!

New Post has been published on https://personalcoachingcenter.com/information-that-will-turn-your-life-around/

Information That Will Turn Your Life Around!

Below is an array of effective strategies as you begin your journey toward personal development, greater happiness, decreased stress and increased motivation. Here, you will find a discussion of personal development and some of the pitfalls that accompany it. By following the tips, you can learn the best path to a better you.

  Try keeping your task manager with you at all times. This can be in the form of a list on a piece of paper, a memo on a phone, or even a list you have online. Wherever you are working, try to keep it within sight or within reach to help you get your tasks done.

    Take time to think about what you want from life. Too often we get rushed into a path that we are really not interested in taking. For some people this might involve a parent pushing them into the family business. For others it might be peer pressure to drop out of school. Only you know what you really want.

  If things get to a place where you cannot handle them, seek help from someone like a therapist. They can help you to cope with your issues by talking them out and coming up with some solutions. It can do you a lot of good to talk to somebody who is not directly involved in your life; it can provide you with a clear perspective.

Everything Works Until It Doesn’t: How to Flow with Change

www.pickthebrain.com

"You're reading Everything Works Until It Doesn’t: How to Flow with Change, originally posted on Pick the Brain | Motivation and Self Improvement. If you're enjoying this, please visit our site for more inspirational articles.

There comes a time in everyone's lives when things that you once used to rely on don't become as effective anymore.

You sort of outgrow the training wheels. The job you started out fresh and new doesn't challenge you anymore. The friends you had in college don't vibe with you any longer. The books you read don't give you any more new knowledge. You and your girlfriend have grown apart and you don't “click” like you should. This is what I call “things work…until they don't”. Everything's peachy until it isn't. The Myth of Forever Many years ago in the Western World (or America at least), people used to work for one employer their entire lives and live in one place their entire lives. You could expect to retire with a nice employer matched pension and for things to “just make sense”. This was the “American Dream”. This stability was a glossy sheen over the inherent chaos and turbulence that is life and nature. Nothing in nature stands still, everything is constant change. You, as a creation of nature are the same way. Things will (and must) change in your life. Dealing with this change is the key to unlocking new levels of meaning and nuance in your life. When people aren't able to accept change, they get tossed around like a leaf in the wind – unable to deal with calamity and chaos. Then, fear sets in. Then, hesitation. Then no action. Knowing When It's Time to Move On What are the consequences of not being able to “go with the flow”? Well, you get stuck. You specifically get stuck in situations you absolutely do not want to be in. I know this because this happened to me. I got hired for a job right after college. The job paid a nice salary for someone just out of college and I was learning lots of new things. About a year in, I stopped learning as much. I didn't get a raise because the company wasn't doing too well. It became unnecessarily monotonous. I had outgrown the position. I justified sticking it out because I was optimistic that things were going to get better, but I stayed another year. At the end of the day, I was getting paid, right? Well, came to an abrupt close. I got laid off 2 years after I started. Everything worked out in the end, but I could have prevented this by being willing to jump off an obviously sinking ship. The consequences of not moving on could be even more drastic in certain situations. You need the willingness, the discernment, the decisiveness to cut your losses and just move on. Moving on From Certain Ideas You not only have to move on from certain situations, but you also have to leave old modes of thought behind. Things you once cherished as absolute truth are now seen as half-truths or downright lies. These may be beliefs you have about yourself, about others, about the world, etc, that are holding you back from achievement in a certain area. You will only rise to the height of your belief system, also known as your paradigm. If you want to achieve success and especially earth-shattering, skyscraper type success, you have to leave old patterns and ideas behind. What are some examples?:

Believing you don't have the skills to change into a new line of work Believing that you don't have what it takes to attract the partner of your dreams Believing that the world is absolutes and black and white Believing that you need to work a 9-5 salaried job to make it in this world Believing that college is necessary.

The list goes on and on. These beliefs served you well at one time by helping keep you comfortable, but now those same beliefs have become very uncomfortable. Pulling the Plug Even When You're Scared There are times when you just know in your deepest heart of hearts that it's time for you to move on, but you just can't. You feel paralyzed with doubt, fear, and indecision. Here's some tips on how you can move on with your life and get past analysis paralysis. 1. Think of the Worst-Case Scenario Things are worse in our mind than they are or will be in reality. This creates fear which paralyzes action, meaning you'll never find out what will actually happen if you can take action. The worst-case of every action is that you will die. We're all going to die anyway, so the worst-case scenario really isn't that bad. In the interim, you may experience some degree of pain, but you still have a chance to achieve whatever it is you want to achieve and get out of situations that simply aren't working. 2. Think of the Best-Case Scenario Imagine what will happen when you have the courage to move out of a certain situation into a better one. Imagine yourself in a better job, a better relationship, a better way of life — if you took action. What would happen? Like before, you will experience some degree of discomfort, but it's in the pursuit of a greater good. 3. Be Flexible and Accepting When you move out of situations that aren't helping you, there will be a rough adjustment period. Accept it as part of the process. Once you do, the better off you'll be in adopting the changes to your new lifestyle. 4. Understand it's necessary The final crux to everything is changing your worldview and how you view things is absolutely necessary at some point in time. You cannot stay the same forever. Having the willingness to change makes everything 10x easier.

Sim Campbell has made it his mission to examine what it means to live an expansive and fulfilling life in the modern world as an emerging young man. He talks about this on Unstoppable Rise, a site dedicated to relentless personal development with a strong philosophical slant. You've read Everything Works Until It Doesn’t: How to Flow with Change, originally posted on Pick the Brain | Motivation and Self Improvement. If you've enjoyed this, please visit our site for more inspirational articles." https://www.pickthebrain.com/blog/everything-works-until-it-doesnt-how-to-flow-with-change/

Don't be afraid to teach! Teaching others, whether it is teaching a child to tie their shoe or teaching a colleague at work to operate a new piece of complex machinery, is empowering. We don't have to be experts ourselves to be ready to lend a helping hand when someone needs it.

  You should get plenty of exercise. Over the years, studies have shown that exercise increases serotonin in the brain. This can make you a happier and more energetic person overall. It's also great for your body image and can make you think more positively about yourself, which is great for depression.

  Help others! Learn CPR and basic first aid skills through your local Fire Station or community center. By helping someone who is in danger or injured, you are also helping yourself. Helping someone will else give you a sense of pride, purpose, and inspiration. There's a chance you could even save another person's life, contributing to the fullness of your own life.

  If you are having difficulty coping with the effects of depression, you may find peace and guidance from joining a depression support group. Sometimes our friends and family members do not understand how depression can affect us; reaching out to a support group allows you to gain the support of people who are undergoing the same things that you are.

5 Simple Ways To Knock Out Stress

yourdost.com

"Stress. One of the most commonly used words in our everyday vocabulary. It almost feels natural to say, “I’m so stressed!” or “This is stressing me out!” since every one of us experiences varying levels of stress at different points in our lives. If you’re not sure how stressed you are, check out the 7 signs that …" http://yourdost.com/blog/2019/08/5-simple-ways-to-knock-out-stress.html

Keep a journal. When you embark on a journey towards personal development, make sure you record all of your thoughts, feelings, and ideas. Not only will it be a joy to look back on when you reach your goals, but it can be a useful tool if you find yourself going astray. You can look over your journal and find what led you to where you are and see exactly how to get back on track.

  To access your subconscious mind and find hidden solutions to your problems and questions, write in your journal each night before bed. Write about your day and ask yourself, in writing, how you might have improved problematic situations. Once you have written your questions, let them go. Your subconscious mind will unravel them overnight and may present you with an answer in the morning!

  For many people, retreating from a conflict is the standard response. Unfortunately, this habit does nothing to resolve the problem or prevent similar issues in the future. Try to practice keeping yourself in the conflict while continuing to engage the other party with questions that can help to resolve the problem. Unlike simply retreating and giving someone the famous "cold shoulder", this approach forces you to work through your concerns and avoid creating further resentment.

  Take half an hour and write out every good quality you feel you have. It's important to understand who you are as a person. What are your key characteristics that you feel you exude? You will want to increase the level at which you offer those good qualities to the world. By writing them out, you are essentially beginning an action plan for personal development.

Find Your Ideal Job and Build Your Dream Business

www.leadershipnow.com

"IS IT POSSIBLE  to have your cake and eat it too? If there was a way to find your ideal job and build your dream business, would you consider both? Most people see this dichotomy and feel that they need to choose one dream over the other. The reality is that you can have both dreams so long as each doesn’t harm the other and enhances your lifestyle. Having worked with more than 10,000 entrepreneurs, innovators, inventors, hobbyists and side hustlers, they often struggle with when it is appropriate to leap from the job environment into the entrepreneurship maze. The presumption is that one has to sacrifice entrepreneurial dreams in order to be successful at a specific career choice. The truth is that you can have both and I strongly encourage aspiring employee-preneurs to review the following five reasons to consider maintaining your job in the first few years of building your business. 1. Learning from Both Work Environments: When you work as an employee and have a side entrepreneurial business, you can learn from both environments and both environments can benefit from each other. Often the entrepreneurial pathway is a lonely pathway and sole-preneurs in particular find themselves trying to navigate, learn and network to gain knowledge while building their business. Realizing that you can gain education from both environments allows an opportunity for you to thrive as an employee and manage a successful side hustle. 2. Business Ownership Strengthens Your Employee Net Worth: In most positions you rarely get the opportunity to experience the functions associated with the roles of a Chief Executive Officer, Chief Financial Officer, and Chief Marketing Officer, as well as manage the day-to-day requirements for customer engagement and retention. As a result of limited job functions in a large corporate environment, it doesn’t give you the full breadth of work involved in successfully managing an enterprise. By exploring the entrepreneurship maze you will quickly immerse yourself in all these functions, which will give you a better picture of the business itself, as well as an appreciation for the company that employees you. 3. Position Yourself with a Better Financial Portfolio: Quitting your job and then applying for a small business loan is a recipe for disaster. Often lenders expect borrowers to be fully collateralized. Having a successful employment position strengthens your probability of obtaining a loan or line of credit. While there are a lot of targeted small business funds that don’t require full collateralization, obtaining funds from your financial institution will be challenging if your debt to equity ratio does not meet their criteria and you don’t have a secondary source of income they can secure against the loan. In addition, being employed allows you the flexibility of investing in your small business without the stress of adding more debt into your current financial portfolio. Having the availability to set aside a few hundred dollars each month towards your business is significant when you have to consider paying for licensing, website development, social media support, etc. 4. Don’t Put Your Financial Eggs in One Basket: Diversifying your income allows you to mitigate financial risk and maximize your ability to make more money. Most people rely on their employment position for sole source income and if that position is compromised they may have a difficult time replacing those funds in a short period of time. Creating other opportunities to generate more money provides an additional financial cushion for investments or as an emergency fund program.  The key is to target business concepts that don’t impose too much time on your part but produce a sizable financial return on your investment. Examples may include selling products online, starting a consulting business, or purchasing a semi-absentee franchise opportunity. 5. There Is No Need to Rush the Process: Most entrepreneurs believe they have to rush things to launch a company because they may lose out on the business opportunity. This may actually be a recipe for disaster. Rushing into a business concept without a proper feasibility review including competitive research, market analysis, and customer input is rushing to an unproven plan. Spending time building the foundation of the business allows for validation and a chance to identify the strengths, weakness, opportunities and threats of the proposed concept. Once the business has reached a certain consistent income you can decide whether to leap into the business full-time or hire others to manage the business. Ironically many of the Fortune 500 companies today began with entrepreneurs that started their business concept while working for an employer and then transitioned to their business slowly. Skin in the game does not mean you have to quit a job to explore a business. It means you have to be willing to invest time, money, or both in order to build your side hustle into a fledging small business operation. The great news is you don’t have to sacrifice either opportunity to benefit from both opportunities. You can have your cake and eat it too. * * * Kedma Ough is the author of Target Funding: A Proven System to Get the Money and Resources You Need to Start or Grow Your Business. One of today’s most respected authorities on small business funding and entrepreneurship, she is a nationally renowned business coach and funding expert and winner of the Small Business Administration (SBA) Small Business Champion of the Year Award.  As a small business consultant and educator, she has guided more than 10,000 individuals through a wide range of business advising and is a past contributing writer for Entrepreneur Magazine. When she is not running around as a live superhero, she enjoys time with her family and traveling the world. Ough is a proud fifth-generation entrepreneur. * * *   Like us on Instagram and Facebook for additional leadership and personal development ideas. * * *" https://www.leadershipnow.com/leadingblog/2019/08/find_your_ideal_job_and_build.htmlhttp://www.leadershipnow.com/cgi-bin/mt/mt-atom.cgi/weblog/blog_id=1/entry_id=1751

Look at the changes you will need to make on a daily basis and actions you need to take daily in order to reach your goals. Turn those actions into daily habits. Once you get used to doing the same action daily it will make your goals easier to reach over time.

  To healthily administer self help in regards to bipolar disorder, make sure that you establish a daily schedule and stick to it. This is important because it removes any stress that is caused by uncertainty in your life. Having a schedule will help to put your overall life in order.

  Do not dwell on your problems. Think about the solutions for them. If you are constantly thinking about all of the things that are wrong in your life you will not find any happiness. If you take the time to think about how to resolve those problems you will eliminate them altogether.

  You must be able to concentrate and focus if you plan on being successful in this life. No one can make it in this world by just talking and offering opinions all the time. You must be able to listen, and you must be able to take time to learn about new things in a concentrated manner.

  As you seek for a better tomorrow, the information here can assist you in making your dreams a reality. Holding onto your education, motivation and essential strategies help you make a concrete plan and stick to it; without such structure, moving forward may be more difficult than you can manage. By holding onto these strategies–and most importantly, to hope–you are setting your path toward a better, happier outlook.