Whether things are going well or going badly, sometimes we all end up in some kind of a rut. It’s easy to get into because it’s a lazy way of going about your days; it feels comfortable. If things are going well, who wants to mess with a good situation? When things are going badly, sometimes it’s hard to see your way through the trees towards trying something else to change it up so you just let it go, hoping it will change on its own.

Stagnation is never a good thing, good or bad. If you allow things to just occur without trying to find ways of keeping it going or stopping it, eventually it will do what you don’t want it to. This isn’t to say that change for change’s sake is a good thing; if things are going well, you don’t want to drastically change them up. However, constant tweaking, or at least consistently thinking of new ways to keep things fresh, can help you to stay on top of your game, and make the process of getting to where you want to be fun.

Often I talked about establishing goals, then creating plans on attaining those goals. I wondering how many of you actually tried to do it. Come on, fess up; do you do anything new, or believe it’s nonsense? Did your business, career or life grow without goals, or do things stay stagnant, or even decrease?

I’ll tell you a secret. I always take my own advice, but I don’t do it all the time. However, I’m always reminding myself that it’s time to do it again. In the Syracuse area, we have lots of gray days at this time of the year, and it’s easy to fall into a malaise where you don’t want to do anything except get through your day and get home. Of course when you get home that second part is already taken care of, but it’s not all that satisfying without something to shoot for.

You have to believe you deserve it, then go out and get it. You will succeed; you just have to believe it.
 

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The end of 2011 is pretty much here and it’s time for my annual look back and look forward. I’m changing some things up this year. I’m not going to go through my 2011 goals because I didn’t come close to hitting any of them. Frankly, they were pretty audacious, and in retrospect I realize that I didn’t have anything in place to help me get to any of them.

That leads me to the upcoming year and the goals I want to set for 2012. If there are any lessons I’ve learned from the previous years is that the types of goals I’ve set for myself have left me feeling kind of like I wasn’t successful because I didn’t even have a chance to reach those particular goals.

See, one of the things about having goals is being able to come up with a plan for attaining them. When I looked at last year’s goals for instance, I realized that if I’d had an opportunity to actually complete all of them I’d have been a very tired guy, even if I’d have been a financially successful one. Or would I? I think if that stuff had all come through I could have burned out, and then I wouldn’t have worked all that well and probably wouldn’t have been able to continue at that pace.

Even though I’m still big on having goals, I’ve realized that I need to plan them differently and address some issues that, even 10 years later, I still have some problems with. I need some process goals. And thus, different goals, still measurable, but of a much different standard.

1. This year I will honor what I’m worth and stick with it. A lot of my rates will go up if only to stay consistent across all platforms. I will still offer discounts here and there, but only for complete packages and not one and done deals. I might have a sale at some point in the year of my products, but it’ll be a short time period and then back to the norm.

2. This year I will have a marketing calendar that I believe I can stick to. One of the problems for sole proprietorships and small businesses in general is that we forget to consistently market ourselves. No one calls if we don’t market. Sure, I have this blog and my newsletter, but that’s not going to get it done. I need a marketing script and process for the different things I do that’s not too complicated and that I’m comfortable with. If it takes me all of January to figure it out, so be it.

3. This year I will definitely finish my second book and get started on that third one. I’m working on a compilation of early newsletters and blog posts for the second book, and I’m about a third of the way through the first edit. I need to schedule my time to work on that along with the other things I do.

4. I will increase the article frequency on this blog to raise my profile and influence on the search engines. I’ve actually already started the process of trying to write 4 or 5 posts a week on this blog, mainly posting during the week, and traffic has improved a little bit. That all helps the online portion of my business.

5. I will do more networking this coming year. This one is easier said than done. I’m great with individuals and crowds when I’m getting paid for it but when I’m not, I’m like a fish out of water. I get to the point where I just don’t want to leave the house unless it’s for business, and since I work from home most of the time it means I stay in a lot. But I have to get our more, even if it’s only to give me more things to write about.

Those are much different types of goals than in the past. They’ll be measurable by me, but nothing specific, and except for the last one fairly easy to attain. Well, at least once I start making sure I plan my time on a daily basis. I need to take care of the personal self as well, and I may be a part of a 4-month diabetic study which could start me in the right direction.

Those are my goals; do you have any you’d like to share?
 

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“Everything you done to me has already been done to you.” – The Color Purple

This past weekend I spent some time catching up on some TV programs that I’d recorded but hadn’t had much time to get to. Some of them were 8 months old and that included many of the final shows of Oprah Winfrey on regular TV (since she really hasn’t gone away, having her own network).

No matter what some people wanted to say, she was quite a motivational presence on TV for over 25 years. I didn’t really know who she was until the late 1990′s, and didn’t become a more consistent viewer until the early 2000′s. I didn’t watch every show, but I caught a lot of them.

She talked often about empowering oneself and not allowing someone else to bring you down. Indeed, in her final show she quoted the above from the movie The Color Purple, which she was in, though this particular phrase was uttered by Whoopi Goldberg’s character. In this instance, the phrase is about dealing with people who have treated you badly and in some way threaten to continue treating you badly, but you’ve finally figured out how to get away from it and not let it trouble you anymore. In essence, if someone is abusive to you then they’re also abusive to themselves, and thus you don’t have to worry about dealing with them because they have to deal with them, and you can move on.

It reminded me a little bit of a post I wrote some years ago where i talked about dealing with what other people thought of you and how, once you realize that particular thing is their problem, it’s easy to overcome and continue trying to progress. I even revisited that concept last January because I don’t think we hear it often enough, sometimes being more “content” to wallow in other people’s opinions of us than in what should be our positive beliefs about ourselves.

If you’re dealing with someone constantly putting you down, no matter what it is, realize that it’s their problem, not yours. They’re the ones living through the misery they’re trying to put on you. Don’t fall for it; just move on, do your thing, beat the odds, and be proud of your own accomplishments. Don’t waste time on a hater, who’s main hate is on themselves.
 

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Brian Tracy tells the story of a company that needed a repair person to come in and help them diagnose a problem they were having with some of their equipment. The man came in, spent a day going over everything, then the next day came in and put a big “X” on a gauge. He said if they repaired or replaced what was there, the problem would be solved. They did that, everything worked, and they were happy.

via Flickr

Until two weeks later when they received an invoice for $10,000. The manager was aghast, so he wrote the man asking for an explanation. The response was simple: “It’s $1 for the X and $9,999 for knowing what the problem was.”

Back in September 2008 I first broached this subject of worth in a post titled Let’s Discuss Worth, Shall We? In that post I talked about my figuring out what I felt I was worth to a particular client that I’d helped find more than $750 million in annual revenue versus what I was getting paid, and how if all things were equal I would have been valued for what I’d done instead of paid as a, well, glorified employee.

Three years later and thought processes aren’t all that much different, although reasons are. Back then I felt that I deserved more because of what I’d done. The way I should have been thinking was “look at my experience; I should ask for what I want up front as the beginning of a negotiating process and then see where it takes me.” The results possibly would have been the same in that case as the client was in the verge of going bankrupt and there was no guarantee that I would have found as much money as I did, but it’s still a major learning lesson.

I tend to believe that most of us believe we’re worth what we’re told we’re worth at other times. I remember talking to a couple of different life coaches about the subject of deciding what they were going to charge clients. The one guy was charging close to $500 an hour for his services, which I found incredible at the time. The lady was charging $35 an hour for her services, which I also found incredible.

Their reasons for charging what they did were much different as well. The lady felt that, one, people wouldn’t be able to afford anything much higher than that and two, that she wouldn’t get any work if she charged more. The guy felt that if he charged more then whatever clients he got would take what he was offering them seriously and would work harder, which in the long run helped them more than they could know until they got where they wanted to.

It’s a strange dichotomy when one looks at these two examples. How one judges their worth seems to be a personal journey that’s hard to figure out. On the other side though, I tend to believe that anyone being truthful with themselves has a concept of what it would take for them to live independently, worry free for life, with no money worries regardless of what they wanted to do with their money… within some reason of course.

I tend to believe that for most of us there’s a major connection between worth and independence. I set my independence figure at $10 million; not that it’s all I’d love to accumulate in cash but that’s my independence figure. At my age and that much money I know I never have to work again, even if I have to buy a new car every few years and I actually get to build the house I really want. I don’t have extravagant tastes, and I know that after I get my big ticket items I’m not going to spend more than $100,000 a year; not even close. So my $10 million figure is my independence peak.

What does that say about my worth? Well, when I was an employee my goal was to be making my age in thousands every year at the very least. Once I got there, then surpassed it, I wondered if that was all there was. Could I do better; would I do better?

I have come to realize that we get to judge our worth based on two principles. The first is what people are willing to pay us for what we do. If someone is willing to pay me $150 an hour for something then I’m worth that. If I only ask $30 an hour then that’s what I’m worth. If I work enough hours that $150 an hour could help me reach that $10 million pretty quickly; actually, at my age now I still wouldn’t hit it, but I’d get more than halfway. At $30 an hour I’m never going to get there unless I hit the lottery. So, it behooves me to shoot for the highest figure I can get.

The second is how much I think I could work to attain bigger dollars and what am I willing to do to get there. Could I sustain a lifestyle that had me working 16 – 20 hours 7 days a week but make that kind of money? I think not. Can I only work 10 hours a week at a slightly higher rate and get to my goal? No way. So, I have to be willing to be somewhere in the middle, have a quality of life while still striving to get to where I want to be.

And if I don’t make it, or if you don’t make it? As long as you’re pushing forward, as long as you’re figuring out your worth and striving for it, life will be pretty good. And who knows, maybe we’ll all learn that we can be independent at a lesser amount that we can still reach. Wouldn’t that be wonderful?
 

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Everyone has a period in their lives when things aren’t going quite right. I had that period from May through early September when I had three major things going on in my life, two of them financial, one of them personal.

I’m not a religious person, so I don’t have religion to fall back on. I do have certain faiths in my life, though, based on a few things. One, I have my normal mantra which says that every day is another opportunity to start anew. Two, I have my belief in the laws of attraction, to the point where one says that what you manifest is the type of thing you bring into your life.

That second one is tough to deal with sometimes. For instance, I could pretty much agree that the two financial issues I did manifest in some fashion because I trusted people that I thought would treat me differently than it panned out. Not that one of them didn’t treat me fairly but I had beliefs that didn’t come to fruition and thus had some financial difficulties for a longer period of time than I had expected. Luckily I have more ways than one to make money but I shouldn’t have had to go that route.

But did I manifest my grandmother first injuring herself, then going into a nursing home and eventually passing away this summer? That’s a tough one to swallow, and I’m of the opinion that one can’t really manifest when bad things happen to someone else, no matter how connected they are.

And yet, it does seem that when it rains it pours, and the timing certainly made it seem like things were falling apart. There was a period where work was sporadic, as I had constant trips out of town, meeting with doctors, hospital personnel, nursing home personnel and of course taking care of my mother, who felt guilty for some of what was happening to my grandmother, which had nothing to do with her but it was an emotion I understood because I think I felt some kind of guilt when my dad passed away even though I had nothing to do with that.

How does one get out from other so many bad things when their general faith is shaken? Although it’s not easy, one does it by finding the good things that are happening and by remembering good things that have passed. Last week on a different blog I reviewed whether there was anything to be thankful for at Thanksgiving. I began the post by highlighting some of the bad things that have happened in the last year, then found a lot of good things that happened in the year, way more than the bad. Nothing tops my grandmother passing away, but things were fine with her the first half of the year, and other good things happened as well.

That’s the thing about faith in general. Sometimes it doesn’t make sense to others, but if you can push forward through the bad times, you’ll find a lot of good things are happening as well. When you can capture those good things, they help to offset most bad things. Positive motivation is always a strong thing when you can find those things in your life that have worked out for you.

How do you handle things when your faith is shaken, no matter what it is?
 

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“When you know better you do better.” ― Maya Angelou

I was watching the program Oprah’s Life Stories last night, but not the live show she had on. Instead I watched an episode I had taped where she had brought back some former white supremacists that had been on her show in 1989 and had changed their beliefs and opinions over the years.

She led off the show talking about her relationship with Maya Angelou, someone she admired as a young girl and then got to meet because of the show, and how even as she saw her as a mentor she saw her as a friend. She talked about things that happened in her early life when she was a teenager and how she hated that part of her life, and how Angelou had said the phrase above to her as part of some counseling and mentoring.

You know, everyone has made some kind of mistake in their lives. Some mistakes are big, some not so big. I’m lucky in being able to say that I’ve never made any big mistakes in my life, but I could have easily gone another way. But there was always something in me that said I had a better purpose in life, and that it wasn’t really only about me.

I’ve had some ups and downs and that’s also to be expected. All of us get to have the opportunity to figure out what we want to do in our lives. I usually state two phrases over and over. The first is kind of based on the Nike phrase, although I really wasn’t thinking of it when I started saying it: “Just do something.” The second phrase I believe is purely mine, but if someone comes up with it elsewhere let me know, and if I’ve never heard of that source before then I’m still claiming credit for it: “Every day you have another chance to start again.”

None of us have to be what we were or are if it’s something we don’t like. We all have the ability to change and get better and be better and have greater lives. And something amazing happens; when we get better we make those around us better and happier. No one grows without making others better, and no one grows fast without making others happy in some way either. It’s all about keeping the faith in yourself and giving others the chance to have faith in you as well.

Keep The Faith; yup, we need a little Michael Jackson in our lives today:

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I loved the Star Wars movies. My favorite character, of course, is Yoda, just as my favorite Star Trek character is Mr. Spock. I love the logic and the way both think in their respective roles. I can truthfully say I’ve learned a lot over the years by adopting a Mr. Spock style, if you will. When it comes to Yoda however, I was a bit older when he was introduced, so I’ve basically just enjoyed his sense of ethic.

However, there’s a line he uses in the second Star Wars movie (which is really the 5th, but I’m not splitting hairs) when the Luke character is working on his Jedi skills and Yoda gives him a task which he feels is somewhat insurmountable. Luke says “I’ll try.” Yoda says “Try? Do or do not; there is no try.”

I’ve thoroughly embraced that phrase for more than 20 years as kind of a goal in life. We all say that we’ll try to do something, yet we either fail or don’t even give it a shot. It can be hard to just “do” something first or second time out, or even ever.

I’ve started rethinking that line just a little bit. I think the message is a bit strong for many people. Many people won’t try something at all because they’re afraid to fail or look silly. Many people won’t even try because they’re not comfortable enough with whatever knowledge or skill they feel they don’t have. And many people won’t try something because they’ve had a bad experience with something similar; that’s probably the reason I don’t eat fruits and vegetables. lol

Sometimes “try” is a major step in a person’s life. Babies don’t immediately start walking; they “try” it out first. No one really knows what foods they will or won’t like; they “try” things out when they can.

Everyone is actually a “try-er” more than a “doer” because doing means you’re going to do something and that’ll be that, and you’ll continue doing it. Most gyms you go to give you a short period to try them out to see if you feel you’re comfortable enough to keep up with a workout regimen. That’s because they’ve learned that many people will balk at having to pony up a lot of money up front without knowing just what the experience of going to a gym on a regular basis will be like. Yet they want to encourage that first step, hoping the person will say “yes, I can do this.”

I tend to believe that when you have an evaluator with you, someone who has more trust in your skills than you do based on observation, that telling someone to “just do it” works wonders. I also believe that telling someone to “just do it” when you have absolutely no idea if they can do it or not, or what the ramifications might be to that person, is often reckless. Just because you might have a certain skill or talent doesn’t mean everyone shares in that talent.

So, for those of you who are hesitant, go ahead and “try”; who knows, maybe you’ll end up being a doer after all.
 

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In my last post on the topic of focus, I talked about making a list of points about focus, only to lose that list by doing something stupid on Excel. Turns out that what I’d done somehow was create a brand new spreadsheet which didn’t include anything; my original spreadsheet was just fine, with my list of thoughts about focus. It only took me about an hour to figure it out; shows what a lack of focus could possibly do to you.

However, having my original list still sitting there allows me to finally write the post I wanted to write, which is talking about ways focus can help you along the way. Without further ado, let’s look at the 6 things I came up with:

• Focus allows you to see all sides of a story. Many people believe there are always only two sides of a story, but they’d be wrong. Police will tell you that if you get 10 people together that all saw the same event that they’ll get 10 different stories. However, each story will have some elements that are exactly the same, and that’s how they’re able to focus and figure things out.
• Focus allows you to plan properly. How many times have you planned something, only to realize later on that you actually have something else going on at that same time and now have to reschedule? Or maybe you have 5 things to do that have different levels of importance, but you work on the first one that comes to your mind? With focus, you can determine what’s most important, what’s the one thing you can knock off quickly, etc.
• Focus allows you to concentrate. Many of my days are spent going here and there online, getting to whatever captures my imagination at the time. Also, when I go to the store sometimes I find myself walking around because I forgot to make a list of what I was going to the store for. When I’ve focused on the task at hand I’m more efficient in what I do and things work better.
• Focus allows you to figure things out. I don’t know anyone who can fix things properly without focusing on the problem and then focusing on the solutions. Have you ever noticed how hard it is to think when you’re hungry or worried about someone else?
• Focus allows you to get things done. When I write the things I write, or put together my outlines, even when I’m making an egg sandwich, focus lets me get things done in the proper order so that no calamities will come my way. Every once in awhile I surprise myself by my finished project because it always feels good when something you’ve focused on has been completed.
• Focus allows you to calm down. This is the biggest thing focus does for you. When you’re focused only on one thing it can’t bother you anymore, mainly because you’re progressing, and progress always feels good. Focus eliminates distractions, which also makes you feel better. Having the ability to focus means the ability to achieve, and I don’t know anyone who’d frown at that.

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I was putting together my plans for writing this particular post. I had decided to write on the topic of focus. I pulled up Excel and started making a list of the things focus will help you do. It wasn’t a bad list from what I remember.

I say that because I heard a noise. Initially I was going to ignore it but the back of my mind kept working. This make me freeze on my spreadsheet; what was that tickle in my mind that suddenly had taken my mind off this topic of focus?

Once my mind wandered I was in trouble. Accidentally I erased a line, and I hit the keys I thought would put the line back; after all, I’m very good with Excel. Instead, another line disappeared; wasn’t I supposed to hit Ctrl-Y? I hit it a few more times, and all my lines left. When all the lines were gone I remembered that it’s supposed to be Ctrl-X; ugh.

I hit that; nothing happens. Well, that’s not actually true. One of the cells highlights telling me I can paste something there. But I hadn’t highlighted anything; my spreadsheet was blank again. I had done it; I’d erased my entire outline for this article.

I had lost focus and done the wrong thing. I lost focus on topics for an article on focus; how ironic. Of course, my mind had finally figured out that the sound I’d heard was a message being sent to my smartphone, which was in the other room. Had the phone been with me I’d have immediately known what it was and I might have kept my focus. Instead, my mind decided on trying to figure out, or focus on, identifying that sound.

Focus is a strange thing. If offers us to many benefits if we can stick with it. Yet our minds seem to determine what it’s going to focus on and sometimes that’s that. We’ll be trying to work yet there’s that noise driving us crazy. We’re trying to sleep yet there’s something nagging us in the back of our mind. How come it seemed like we could do many things at once when we were young, and now sometimes we can’t even finish a sentence because our mind goes elsewhere?

So this article on focus goes a different direction. Instead of benefits of focus, I’m going to mention the one true way I know how to focus, which I hadn’t employed and thus allowed myself to be distracted, then get confused.

The only way focus really works is to figure out what the best thing is for you to do to help avoid being distracted. For me it’s usually having music playing in the background. It doesn’t have to be loud but it does have to be something I like. I’ve found that when I pop on Windows Media Player and start playing the type of music I might be in the mood to listen to at that moment that my focus really zeroes in well. Even if I find myself humming or singing along with the music, I’m very focused on my task at hand. Even a ringing phone won’t throw me off.

I’m not sure why that works but I believe something like this works for everyone. Maybe you need white noise to help you focus. Maybe you need a TV in the background to help you focus. Maybe you need total silence, which is hard to come by, to help you focus. Maybe you need a visual thing to focus on, such as a lava lamp. Whatever it is, see if an interesting kind of distraction, one that you’ll eventually block out, will help you concentrate.

As for me, I have turned on some music, and I feel better already; ahhh, Beethoven!
 

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Last week was a strange one for me. I lost a client and I lost the opportunity to bid on a client. I got some initial interest in a book I’m working on. I did an experiment where I only drank water for the week. I heard from my mother that my grandmother is actually communicating again, not overly but enough to have cracked her first joke in 3 months. And I saw the Harry Potter movie at a midnight showing and want to see it again.

Every day our minds get pulled into many different directions. If the accumulation of good or bad dominates, that will tend to push you in either direction, and then you can get locked into it so deeply that there’s no getting out of it.

Even working from home, my days aren’t all that much different from anyone else’s. I have days that go well, days that go badly, and days where there’s a mixture of both. I try to stay even keeled no matter which direction things go, but I’m not going to lie and say that my mind never gets hijacked one way or the other.

There’s a reason we see all these tales about the “dark side” of things. It’s been proven that it’s easier to wallow in negativity than it is to uplift yourself. For every 24 good things you hear, that one bad thing you hear can shut you down for the day sometimes. It doesn’t even have to be anything overtly mean; that’s how insidious it can be.

Sometimes people want to know why something that might not be a benefit to them occurred. It adds to allowing ones mind to be hijacked in a negative direction. This past week I read about people who want to find out why someone subscribed from their newsletter or blog, or why someone turned down their Facebook invitation, or even looking to see who has dropped them from Twitter or the new Google+.

I asked all of them the same question; why do you want to know? The standard answer, at least for newsletters, is that people say they can’t improve if they don’t know why people leave. I always say then just concentrate on the people you still have and work on keeping them happy. It’s more positive and uplifting because for the most part those people are going to tell you nice things, even if they have a criticism or two. And let’s be truthful; if someone’s criticism was that they didn’t like your red logo, are you really going to run out and change it?

What types of things hijack your mind and upset you, and what do you do to overcome them, if you can?

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