Imperfect Mondays

Here’s one I wrote this morning:

I woke up feeling a little groggy this morning, with grey sky and little, but a 65% rating on my sleep capacity – thanks to my new friendly app, Sleep Cycle. If you haven’t downloaded this already, then do it now! It has a funky alarm, and some disturbing sleep aids.

In spite of all of the fore mentioned challenges,  I am readily excited and expectant for a great week ahead – I refuse to accept anything different! …And you know I mean business when I wake up before my alarm; currently fighting the urge to stand up, in public, and shout; ‘BABY YOU AIN’T SEEN NOTHING YET’ at the top of my voice. Not that I would EVER do that…

Hey, it’s Monday; and all I’m suggesting is let’s take this bad boy week, by storm!

OK, no more cheesy rock songs after this…

You’ve got talent; use it.

If you haven’t witnessed Jack Carroll yet, let me introduce you…

I love when he said; “In comedy, a lot of the time, you’re weaknesses are your strengths.” I believe this is true for many areas in life; that every hardship, difficulty, and disappointment in life can be turned to work itself back together for our good.

This got me thinking on how knowing your strengths as an individual, as a business, or even as a brand is crucial to achieving good success. Whilst good success is great, and many people subscribe to the dream of obtaining good success; very few are aware, or go after great success. There is a difference:

To obtain good success you must have some awareness of the value you hold, but to achieve great success you must understand how to use it, and use it effectively. …Just like Jack.

 

 

Being a light

Being a light to the world requires action, requires energy, requires substance.

I could go on, and probably will in posts to come; however, today I thought I’d like this cool little fella share a word that if you press play will surely speak to you. Now it’s great to be inspired and encouraged, but go do something with it.

‘Create something that will make the world awesome!’ Are you doing so already? Well what can you change, what can you do to make your team, company, life, relationship better? Remember what is great today, will be good tomorrow if you let things go and don’t continue to invest in staying fresh.

#kidpresident

What does your walk say about you?

Inspired on way to work this morning, I saw a guy with a black jacket and swagger like he was fresh out the hood that just happened to catch my attention. And that got me thinking…

What does our walk say about us? Not just your psychical walk, although that does share something about where you’ve been.

In psychology they say body language is 80% non verbal.

So what about your life, your business, your relationship?

How do these areas affect your walk in life? And how do you choose to walk?

Do you walk with confidence? Do you walk in faith believing that the best is yet to come and you have the power to change whatever needs changing, or the power to be thankful for what you’ve got on the way to where you’re going?

Not everything in life needs changed btw – which is Scottish for by the way.

Maybe you should stay and work at that marriage instead of chucking it in the bin at the first sign of work. It doesn’t have to be marriage either, it could be any relationship or business. Yet, for some chucking it may be the key adverb. Life is not a dress rehearsal. As Michael Jackson would have said; THIS IS IT.

The truth is, and this is a true reflection on my belief, and my thoughts today that in order to be who you want to be, you have to become who you want to be, before you see it.

So if you’re not quite there yet, then learn to walk the talk.

Don’t just talk the walk.

As they say, ‘action speaks louder than words.’

How is your walk today?

Talk about being anti-social? Try anti-digital.

 

So it would seem that rather than making good strides forward and including their customer base in the dinning experience, whilst increasing their reputation. This particular restaurant, in LA, has decided to work against that with their 5% discount offer, when you leave your phone at the door.

Featured in The Stylist weekly magazine, I spotted this weird and wonderful story on the train home yesterday. I wonder what you think of leaving your mobile phone at the door of a restaurant?

Perhaps some make like the idea, but in my experience the majority of us can’t get enough of our phones these days. Irrespective of age, or gender, we are apart of a digital shift, or didn’t these guys get the memo?

Hey, I could be totally wrong here. This could work. In my  opinion is probably will work, for a short while at least, but only for a small number of people. Those who don’t have Facebook primarily.

Just when I thought we were beginning to see a wave of folks, (i.e. companies) embracing the social surge of digital media; que the above article.

What’s your thoughts? Would you take the plunge and leave your phone at the door for 5%?

 

The possibility of the impossible, being made possible…

We all have a purpose. We all have a set of gifts unique to us, with desires, beliefs and values that are meant to work together and lead us in the direction of our destiny. Unfortunately, due to fear, uncertainty and what appears to be unquestionable risk has meant that many do not venture out to life the full and abundant life they were meant for.

If you do anything today. If you have ever been told that your dream was a fad, unattainable, or impossible, then I urge you to listen to this clip and consider that if you are hungry enough to achieve that dream, to live with a purpose that extends beyond our own lives and leaves a mark – that’s what they call legacy – then let this woman be an inspiration and an encouragement to you that it IS possible to go against the grain and the labels society tends to put on us, and see our dreams become a reality.

“Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. Life is either a daring adventure, or nothing.” (Thanks to a good friend who posted this on his Facebook Post) Don’t let the circumstances of life push you around, decide that irrespective of your past or current situation that you can and you will do whatever it takes to fulfil what is on your life.

The world may tell you it’s impossible, but I would urge you to listen to the clip below and be as tenacious as Helen.

3 ways to be more productive

There is nothing more satisfying than to feel like you’ve achieved something each day. It makes most of the bumps on the journey of life feel, a little less bumpy.

When we accomplish even a few small tasks (like writing this blog to publish for a later date, before leaving for work), we set ourselves on a path the teachers and psychologists call ‘flow.’

If you want to be more productive next week, set yourself some planning time this weekend, and ensure you act on the following:

1. Make a list – there is power in writing things down. Make a list of everything big and small you want to achieve next week, or if you’re feeling ambitious – over the year. Be realistic though, if your goals are big, then break them down into steps, to ensure you don’t overwhelm yourself.
2. Keep the list – don’t throw it away and forget about it – that would defeat the purpose. Keep it in front of you every day. Life can get clogged up with all kinds of stuff, so it’s good to remind yourself of the goal.
3. Check it off – don’t forget to check off items when you achieve them. It really is the best feeling in the world when all three of these keys are in sync.

Try it and let’s see how you go. Have a great weekend folks. I will have a cracking blog for you on Monday – don’t miss it.

Do one thing, and take a step

Once you decide what it is that you want to achieve this year – no matter how small, or large it may be; do something that will take you in that direction.

It’s easy to overwhelm ourselves with what we want out of life if you are someone with big dreams, but start by choosing to take one thing and work to see that accomplished. I suggest we make that one thing big, and then work it back into steps. Look at what you need to do to get there. Every destination requires some level of steps to get there.

Think about it… to gain access to a flat on the fifth floor, you are required to climb a minium of five floors to get there, and depending on the structure of the building you either need to take five set of stairs, or sometimes 10, or sometimes more.

Ask yourself these few questions to help you achieve your goal:

1. Where am I?

2. Where do I want to be?

3. What steps are required to get there?

Choose do so one thing today, but be careful… do NOT mistake activity for productivity, and always check your progress.

Free is no substitute

Giving away free samples and gifts are all great if your business is built from a place of trust and integrity, but if you can’t provide customers with a service that is sustainable, then you shouldn’t think that giving away free tickets to a concert is going to be enough to keep people buy in.

Gimmicks’s don’t work. As the consumers choice increases, our expectations in what we look for in any one supplier will inevitably change – and this is more than an economic issue.

Surfing for content

Picture supplied by the National Archives and Records Administration.

 

How do you surf content when there is so much of it going around? With social bookmarking websites like Digg, and Redit losing ground, where are we ‘the consumer’ looking for information?

 

Are we looking to flasher, more socially adapt aggregator apps like Flipboard, Hootsuite, Timeline and Twitter for content of interest.

Brian Solis, a fellow social media expert is famously known for the following statement, ‘News no longer breaks, it tweets,’ and this is true. However; what if I’m not looking for the latest news story; but the top trending outfits, or some true life story like the kind of articles you get in a woman’s glossy magazine (i.e. Marie Claire, Company and so forth).

 

And how do we make our decisions about where to shop online when there are thousands of online shops to choose from? Do we take them largely from the recommendations of friends and family – like Facebook tell us, or do we venture out and find new shops to shop in, new books to read, and new photographs to like?

 

I’d love to hear how you go about finding the content that interests you?

 

  For example, I am a huge Marie Claire fan, but I very rarely buy their magazine for multiple reasons, at the moment. Still, I enjoy reading their articles and in a moment I decided to look for something interesting, I found myself overwhelmed by choice.

 

  Looking to my iPhone and flicking through my apps, it seemed Flipboard was the obvious choice. It’s neat display, magazine style app is easy to share and combine with several of my key social networks allowing me to stay in touch with various magazines, blogs and networks at any one time – This is great, but it is only one app. Have you found others?

 

  How do you locate interesting content? Do you have to do anything at all, or do you find it’s all laid out in front of you via Timeline, and other newsfeeds?

 

  Leave your thoughts below, or on @leemac85