So I was checking my email this morning and I found a really cool thank you letter from someone who I hadn’t actually met before.

So you’re probably wondering… if I had never met him, how the hell did I deserve the thanks?

Check this out to get the story:

Since filming the vid, I had a few more exchanges with Dean. Very cool guy with a great story.

THE BEST PART…

His product that he had some success with, was all about a topic I am currently needing advice and coaching on. He sent me a copy at no cost cuz he’s cool like that.

It’s all about outsourcing and Virtual Assistants. AWESOME TIMING!! I can’t wait to read it but in the mean time, go check out his offer here:

Building a Killer Business With VAs

(not an affiliate link )

Let me know what you thought about this overall topic in general. Is there someone you need to thank or acknowledge?

How many times have you set a goal and failed to reach it?

Personally, I have lost count.

Sometimes it was because my goals were too aggressive. Other times I lost interest in the goal. And then another portion of the time, I was pretty much sabotaging my achievement of the goal.

The following video explains why.

Please leave me your comments and let me know what you think

This blog is the very first website I built as an entrepreneur. It actually used to be an old school HTML style site and then I turned it into a blog in 2009.

As I have evolved my online business, I have started dozens (if not hundreds) of websites and projects.

In the mean time, I have kind of let this blog grow a little stale. I update it once in a while but it had lost my focus for a long time.

The original reason I built this site was the same reason I became an entrepreneur. To share my insights, inspirations, ideas, stories and philosophies about personal development. To use this site as a tool to motivate and inspire other people who wanted to become entrepreneurs… or anyone who wanted to take their life to a new level.

I decided I had lost some of that vision and I want to re- “ignite” it.

Starting today, and every Friday moving forward, I will be publishing Friday Ignite! This will be a motivational style concept that will come out every Friday to get you going into your weekend on a high note.

Here is the first video for week 1. Please leave any comments you may have:

I have been neglecting this blog for the past couple of months but it does not mean I have not been working on new ideas, techniques and so on. In fact, I have been immersed in some really exciting personal growth studying that has been really helping in many areas of my life.

I have resurrected my study of the book “Psycho Cybernetics” by Maxwell Maltz.

In my opinion, if you only read one personal growth book… this should be it. I have picked up so many ideas and strategies that have helped me in huge ways in my life.

One of my favourite lessons learned I discuss in this video. Check it out:

One of the biggest things I see people struggling with, whether I’m coaching or even just people I meet in general, is that they know what they *should* be doing to improve certain things in their life… but they don’t actually *do* it!

In some cases, these people have read and studied a wide variety of self improvement topics. So lack of knowledge is not the issue. The issue is lack of follow through. And in my opinion, the reason there is a lack of follow through is because there is no real forcing function.

I am just as guilty as anyone else when it comes to not always following through on the things I know I should be doing to reach my goals.

I also learned something important a few years ago….

When achieving a result is important enough, there are things you can do that ENSURE you will take action. One of those things is declaring your intention publicly. That is exactly what I’m doing today and I hope it inspires you to do something similar:

CLICK HERE TO SEE THE MEMBERSHIP SITE I AM WORKING ON FOR THIS CHALLENGE

CLICK HERE TO SEE THE MEMBERSHIP SITE I AM WORKING ON FOR THIS CHALLENGE

I have been wanting to blog about this topic for some time now. For the past 6 or 7 weeks, I have spent all of my “study time” immersed in the work of Tony Schwartz from The Energy Project.

I am almost done his book called The Power of Full Engagement (not an affiliate link, second book in the list) and it has been one of the most powerful, life changing books I have ever read.

In a nutshell, his work is all about energy management and helping people perform at elite levels by understanding how energy impacts performance. I intend to share more information about his work but for now I wanted to start with a REALLY cool video I found about The Energy Project and how he was able to help a group of high school students tap into their own potential

I’d love to hear your thoughts on this. Do you know about energy management already? How do you maximize your work time and your renewal time? Is this your first time hearing about The Energy project?

Since we were kids, all of us have understood the value of practice. If you want to get good at hockey, reading, piano, singing, or any other engaged activity, you have to practice.

Practice is defined as the application of a skill repeatedly or regularly in order to improve or maintain one’s proficiency. I think most people would agree that the highest achievers in an area of life are those who practice the most.

How does this apply to our every day lives?

If you think about your overall quality of life, it is basically made up by the accumulation of moments. Each moment you are expending energy in a certain way. Sometimes you are in a positive state and other times you are negative; and there a varying degrees of intensity in between.

Most of the time, we are all operating on auto-pilot. What I mean is that we are going about our day and we react and respond to events based on how we have conditioned ourselves to do so. If we have spent the majority of our lives practicing an anger response when things don’t go our way, we have become very proficient at being angry. Likewise, if you have spent the majority of your life reacting with laughter to various events and circumstances, you have become proficient at maintaining positivity.

This is a great place for any person to begin when it comes to improving their life so that it works… on all levels.

How do you do this?

Start by doing a basic assessment of your results. Are you constantly in a state of stress or anxiety? Do you constantly feel frustrated or upset? For any result that is not positive, examine what you have been practicing in that area of your life. If your current result is that you get angry and upset whenever the slightest thing goes wrong, think about how you can practice changing that result. You can actually begin looking for the next “opportunity” for something to go wrong so that you can practice a new response. Just like learning an instrument or sport, it may not go smoothly the first time but it is a start. Then you do it again and again and each repetition gives you an opportunity to get stronger.

In a relatively short period of time, you can develop an entirely new skill set that serves you better and improves the overall quality of your life. Try it. Challenge yourself. And see how your results change over time.

Our world is full of variety. On any given day we can have both positive and negative experiences. Many of these experiences ultimately influence the way we see the world and the opinions we form about how the world works.

Everyone lives in the context of their own perspective. While one person may look at a snow storm and be excited about the possibilities to get out and have fun, another person might be full of fear because they had previously been involved in a driving accident caused by dangerous winter driving conditions.

The events and circumstances are neutral. Our opinions about them are not!

Since we all have our own way of seeing the world, conflict with family, friends, colleagues, etc… is inevitable. There is absolutely no way that you are going to process every event in the same way as the people in your life. When these conflicts and differences of opinion arise, are you prepared to deal with them?

While I do believe that a good debate can often lead to effective solutions of problems, many debates can turn sour and become more toxic than helpful. When this happens, it is important to recognize that the situation will likely end in a stale mate and that you don’t “need” to be right.

The “need to be right” can be harmful to your health. If you spend all of your focus and energy trying desperately to convince someone else that your perspective is the correct one, you are creating a huge amount of unneeded stress in your life. If you go into this mode of “needing to be right”, you should take a step back and ask yourself why. Why do I need to be right? Why do I need this other person to accept my way of thinking so badly?

This ultimately comes down to self esteem. If you believe in your heart that a certain perspective is 100% true, there is absolutely no need to force anyone else to agree with you. The sooner you can embrace this, the sooner you will reduce stress and create more happiness in your life.

Embrace the idea of not “needing to be right”. If someone is taking an aggressive stance with you and trying to force an opinion on you that you do not agree with, let it go! Let them be right in their head and you can confidently carry your own truth in your heart.

I have heard this kind of story so many times. Aspiring entrepreneurs REALLY hate their job, have an intense desire to make a change in their life and start their own business but they are discouraged by “well meaning” family members or friends.

If your relationship with someone is being threatened because you have the desire to make a major change in your life (business or otherwise), then I want to suggest you look into that. If someone really cares about you and it is a mutually respectful relationship, they should support you in any decision that helps you live a happy and fulfilled life.

Here are some of my thoughts…

As with any personal development discussion, we have discussed many concepts and ideas that will change your habits and ultimately your behavior. None of these changes will be long last without persistence and perseverance.

From Day 7 of our 7 Day Brainwash program, Brad and I share some of our thoughts on how to build perseverance into your mindset and make commitment to completion part of your overall game plan: