What if I told you that YOU are you’re own worst enemy? Would you be offended  or would you smile and agree, because you know it’s true. It’s true for ALL of  us.

You can tell a lot about a business person by the way they spend their time.  We all spend our time in various ways. Many business owners and senior  executives tell me that there is not enough time in the day to get everything  done. Personally, I have a belief that there is always enough time in the day to  do all of the things that are WORTH doing. The key is to identify what is worth  your while.

Sometimes activity can be a kind of anesthesia for the pain of not achieving  the results you want and deserve. Action is always better than procrastination.  However, more activity is not always better than less.

What about ‘make busy’ activities? If you’ve ever spent your day stuck in  back-to-back meetings, answering routine questions from your team, responding to  emails, troubleshooting, emptying the in-tray or tidying the office, you know  exactly what I mean by ‘make busy’.

It is easy to spend large amounts of time on ‘make busy’ activities. In fact  it is possible to spend ALL your time on these activities, creating the  magnificent illusion that you are hard at work, simply because you feel flat  out. You are working hard but you have very little (in financial results) to  show for it. Your day is full of tasks and you get home exhausted – so you must  have put in a hard day’s work, right?

Unfortunately, these habitual and ‘make busy’ activities can keep you trapped  where you already are – just simply maintaining, not growing. By filling your  days with these tasks, you are in effect avoiding the very activities that you  know will really move your business or career forward and produce tangible  results – what we might call ‘productive activities’. These activities rarely  happen automatically. They require focused attention. And, all too often, they  get relegated to ‘tomorrow’ or ‘sometime soon’.

A great many business owners and senior executives, while they like to think  of themselves as entrepreneurial, would rather do anything other than face the  thought of ”productive activities”. They probably have these things on their  ‘to do’ lists, but after another day of busyness, they just say to themselves –  again “It’s OK, I was really busy. The business planning review will have to  wait for tomorrow.”

The problem is this – and believe me, I have seen it played out many, many  times: if you are waiting for the right or best time to do these critical  ‘productive activities’, that time will simply never come. Tomorrow there will  be more ‘busy work’ to do, and your unproductive habits will fill the rest of  the day, and the cycle will start all over again.

Today is a new day – the past is over and has no relevance to today or your  future. Successful people are not without problems or challenges. Successful  people simply refuse to carry the SAME dilemmas or hurdles for months (or years)  on end. They seek solutions, face impediments, overcome obstacles and move on.  They make time to focus on ‘productive activities’. They rise above the ‘noise’  of busyness, create ways to focus their mind on the things that really matter  right now, and get on with the job. They set specific goals and they monitor and  take action based on the financial trends in their business. They don’t try to  do ‘everything’, they focus only on the very things that will give them the most  leveraged and positive result. They rarely blame external circumstances when  things go wrong and they take responsibility every day for what they choose to  spend their time on.

Success is achieved with less not more – and it’s actually easier than you  think. Working like a dog to avoid dealing with problems and keeping yourself  immersed in ‘busy work’ – now THAT IS HARD WORK! Why would you choose to do THAT  when you could simply take a step back and choose to do the 1-2 things that you  know would move your business forward right now?

Isn’t it time to start taking it easy? It worked for The Eagles in the ’70s  and it can work for you in your business (or career) right now!

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/4936506

“The pessimist complains about the wind; the optimist expects it to change;  the realist adjusts the sails.” William Arthur Ward

I was reminded of this brilliant principle last week when I spoke to one of  my business coaching clients. There can be no doubt that we are living in  interesting times…. the global financial crisis has impacted overall spending  and consumer sentiment – and this has hurt many small businesses around the  country. It’s no good hoping that circumstances will change – in order to  survive we all need to dig deep and find creative ways to work smarter not  harder.

Jim Collins, in his book, “Good to Great,” talks about this very interesting  paradox that he calls “The Stockdale Principle”. According to Collins, “you have  to be realistic about your current situation and yet, stay optimistic about the  future”.

General Stockdale was the highest ranking American prisoner of war in Hanoi,  Vietnam. Over the years he began to notice an interesting phenomenon – optimism  could in fact be a liability. His fellow prisoners (who were the eternal  optimists) constantly set themselves up for disappointment. They set huge  milestones – “we will be rescued by Christmas” – but those milestones came and  went year after year and with it… their will to live.

Conversely, the prisoners who looked at the painful day-to-day reality they  were in and channeled their energies to the right places survived. This is not  to say that the second group were pessimists but rather realists that maintained  an unwavering faith in the end game, and a commitment to survive despite the  brutal fact of their incarceration and torture over a period of years.

Here’s how Stockdale put it in his own words:
“I never lost faith in the  end of the story. I never doubted not only that I would get out, but also that I  would prevail in the end and turn the experience into the defining event of my  life, which, in retrospect, I would not trade.”

How many of us would look back on seven years of detention – with regular  torture, dismal living conditions and an uncertain future – as an experience we  would not trade? Do you regard the greatest obstacles or challenges in your life  as the defining moment that shaped who you are today or do you choose to look at  them as an excuse or reason why you have not achieved more?

Have you ever sat back and thought how this distinction between optimism  versus reality could apply to your business/career or your life in general?  Where in your life are you ignoring reality in favour of being optimistic and  missing a crucial opportunity to take action?

Take for example my business coaching client that I mentioned above. She has  an employee who doesn’t take responsibility for her actions, doesn’t pay  attention to details and is often defensive and reluctant to take direction and  feedback. This employee is negatively impacting the entire work environment as  everyone gets caught up in the drama of it all. My client doesn’t want to let  the employee go and is resisting doing what she knows that she must. She hopes  that it will somehow improve without any action on her part – she is now  learning the distinction between reality and optimism. When she sees the  difference for what it is, then and only then, will she become decisive and take  action.

Another area where it’s easy to be blinded by optimism is in the financial  arena. Do you have detailed financial reports, KPIs and cashflow forecasts in  place to drive your decision making or are you simply relying on your optimism  instead of reality? Failure to effectively plan in this area (especially in  these tough times) could lead to a cash crunch and the demise of your  business.

Take a moment today to examine your relationship to optimism, pessimism and  realism. Success belongs to those who operate from both sides of the Stockdale  Paradox. The key is balance – knowing when to accept reality and take  appropriate action AND never losing faith in the end of the story. If you can  walk this delicate line of balance and responsibility, you increase your odds of  making good decisions and this will lead to your inevitable success and  breakthrough results.

In life, we will all experience setbacks, disappointments, loss and  challenges. What separates successful people from the rest is how you deal with  those inevitable struggles. This is a very important distinction and it is what  divides the winners from the losers. You must never confuse faith that you will  prevail in the end – which is something that you can never afford to lose sight  of – with the discipline to confront the brutal facts and reality of your  current situation, whatever that might be.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/2884021

Without a doubt, the number #1 question I get asked by clients is ‘how do I break a bad habit like procrastination, worry, insomnia, negative thinking or smoking’? There are a million examples of ways that each one of us holds our own success back by ‘doing’ unproductive habits.

To make lasting change to deeply ingrained bad habits using willpower and positive affirmations alone is not realistic. Everyone knows that positive thinking is undependable and produces inconsistent results, at best. The self-image on the other hand underpins our level of emotional intelligence (EQ), which is now recognised as being an even more important measurement for success than the IQ.

It has been scientifically proven that our brain circuits take engrams or memory traces and produce neuro connections only if they are bombarded with the information for 21 days in a row. This means that our brain does not accept ‘new’ data or habit changes unless they are repeated each day for at least 21 days, without missing a day.

If you want to change a habit like refusing to let go of the past, spending all your time worrying about what might go wrong, overeating, biting your nails or spending more than you earn,
it can be done but it will require consistent effort on your part, every day for at least 21 days. In order to do it, your success rate will improve significantly if you can replace that old habit you no longer need with a good and productive habit that will support you to achieve your goals and find someone to help keep you accountable.

And remember, no matter where you are in your life right now – the choices you have made or the experiences you have had – “I have a belief that it is never too late to become the person you were meant to be!”

Right now you are probably asking yourself “how does she know that?”.

I haven’t even seen any of your press releases… and that’s OK, I don’t need  to. I already know the answer. Trust me!

First of your press release is WAY too long…

Second, you don’t have any bullets in them. Media people have the attention spans of mosquitoes and you need to feed your story idea to them in a press release with 30 second sound bites.

Third, no one cares about your product, service, company or book. You need to  react to what is in the news today! You aren’t doing that, are you? How does  what you have to sell relate to the latest sports scandal, celebrity melt  down, internet scam or politician who has accepted a free flight on Qantas?   Does your press release fix a major problem that listeners/readers have today?

Fourth, no one is reading your press release because you are mailing or  faxing them out in bulk and not following up. You need to electronically send them out to several places (both local media and big online services like  prlog.com) and follow them up with an actual phone call.

Finally, make sure you turn your press release into an article and send them  out to Ezine release companies, post them on your blog, mention them on social media (Twitter, Facebook, G+, LinkedIn, Pinterest)  and include them in your Enewsletter blast to your database. Remember, you will  be lucky if you receive a response to your first press release. The key is to be  short, sharp, newsworthy, interesting and persistent. Relevancy, follow up and  persistence are the 3 keys to your success.

Stay tuned for my next installment where I am going to show you how to write a $10m Press Release!

If you are like most business owners, you went into business because you are  passionate about AND good at WHAT you do… and you wanted the autonomy and  financial freedom of owning your own business. You were probably thinking, “as  long as I am good at what I do, how hard can it be to make a decent living and  support my family?” And you have probably discovered that it is actually harder  than you thought.

Here’s the problem…

You may be one of the 97% of small business owners who discover that although  you work incredibly hard and your sales seem to be increasing each month, you  have little to show for it financially. Perhaps you are already doing well but  you are unsure how to accelerate your results or expand your business? Or you  may simply be wondering why you are struggling to pay the bills lately even  though your accountant says that you are making a good “profit”.

One of the biggest problems is that business owners often convince themselves  that being busy is what business is all about. And you tell yourself “as long as  I work hard and do my best, there is not much else that I can do”. Everyone  knows that we’re supposed to work smarter, not harder, but the challenge lies in  knowing HOW to do that. And in the meantime, you may have found it just seems  easier to do everything…just in case it’s important, or makes a  difference.

So, if you’re supposed to do less, HOW do you figure out what is critical or  what will have the biggest impact?

In a typical 8-9 hour day, what percentage of your time and effort has a  positive and tangible impact on your bottom line? Do you strategically plan what  you will focus your time on or do you just try to cover everything on your to-do  list plus whatever emergencies pop up? The bottom line is this, if you cannot  read and understand your financials, it is difficult for you to say for sure WHY  your business is not as successful as you would like it to be. You may think it  is due to the fact that you don’t have enough customers or sales but you could  be missing the point completely. In fact, most of the businesses don’t need more  customers, they need more cash flow. And cash flow issues can often be fixed  without spending a dime on marketing.

And here’s the best part… all of the answers you need are sitting right  there in YOUR financial statements. You just need to learn how to unlock the  insights and use them to your advantage.

Every day that you put off learning how to unlock the insights in your  financials means that you are wasting at least 2-3 hours a day on tasks that are  not improving your bottom line. In fact, it could be the sole reason you are not  as successful as you would like to be.

This bad habit you have developed -of working way too hard and assuming that  success is somehow linked to the amount (not the quality) of work, will take  time to break.

Unfortunately, there are no quick fixes when it comes to breaking or  establishing new habits. In the 1960’s a highly regarded plastic surgeon, Dr.  Maxwell Maltz discovered that it took 21 days for amputees to cease feeling  phantom sensations in their amputated limb. From further observations and  significant research he established that it takes 21 days to create a new habit.  This part of the brain, the limbic system, is a slow learner.

Brain circuits take engrams (“memory traces”) and produce neuro-connections  and neuro-pathways only if they are bombarded with new information for 21 days  in a row. This means that our brain does not accept new data or information for  a change of habit unless it is repeated each day (without fail) for at least 21  days. Changing habits (whether positive or negative) can be done, but it takes  time and consistent effort.

Do yourself a favour and identify just one or two steps that you can take  each day that will enable you understand what your financial statements are  trying to tell you. Make a plan on paper – specific decisions and actions that  you can take to move forward in this aspect every single day for the next month.  Read a book, speak to your accountant, watch a webinar or spend some time  reviewing your statements and comparing the results to last year.

And remember to track your progress each day and find an objective person  outside of your business to hold you accountable to your plan, actions and  desired results.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/6047921