entrepreneur

What Do You Want?

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Chalkboard: What do you want?
What do you want? Do you even know?

“The first step to getting the things you want out of life is this: Decide what you want.” – Ben Stein

To truly know what you want is not an easy question to answer correctly. Henry Ford once said that, in the beginning, if he had ever asked his prospects what they wanted they would have said “a faster horse”.

To know what you truly want is often tricky but it’s worth the effort to seek out an answer because it can reveal what you’re truly passionate about. That can set the path for how your entire life unfolds.

In my own experience my dad comes to mind. While just a teenager he saw a family member greatly relieved from excruciating pain by an osteopathic physician and he immediately knew what he wanted to do with his life from then on. After a successful 35-plus year career helping thousands of his patients get relief from pain he retired as doctor of osteopathy. Only one of two in our entire city.

He was one of the lucky ones.

Many wander through time “sheep-walking” as business blogger Seth Godin calls it, and never making the decision to end the cycle of getting a job, staying at it for a while, growing tired of it, then landing another, and then repeating.  All the while never quite hitting that high note. Only to one day get past the point of no return. Always missing that point of critical realization and now too late to make a difference. Too late to ever know the answer to “What do I want?”.

I think that, like my dad, in a way I was one of the lucky ones too. I knew I wanted to become an entrepreneur. But I wanted to find something new and then offer it to the world. I did actually find something but, of course, I just never knew that it would take me to the age of retirement before I could finally see it being accomplished in any real degree of scale.

But now that it’s coming to fruition it’s my passion and my hope that it helps deliver many people to a place where a new self belief can thrive so that the great question is finally answered for them before too much time has passed.

That’s why I’m soon launching my next new project. I’m  calling it “Human Potential 2.0”. It’s being positioned to re-tool what has become known as traditional self-help or personal growth. The original model, which began 100 years ago, was to help us realize our own human potential. But over the years it has lost it’s power to effect useful and lasting change that matters.

I intend to fix that by reassigning our focus to more authentic intrinsic elements. To foster a fundamental change that I’m convinced must come about in order to make better choices in how we view ourselves.

For example the fantastic but widely under-reported bio-medical discovery, now almost 20 years ago,  that confirmed the fact that humans are dual-brained – one in the head which can think but not feel and a lesser known one in the gut that doesn’t think but feels everything.

With this project we’ll begin with another great quote, this time from Theodore Roosevelt: “Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.”

Most of this instruction is not too difficult to grasp. The “Do what you can… where you are” parts are no great mystery. Most of us know how to work hard and most should know who they are. The tough part begs another great question…

What is it that you really have?

Answering that is in essence what Human Potential 2.0 is all about. Because if we can answer that question in a way that resonates with our own thinking/feeling dual-brained personage then that will lead us to refine what it means to know what our passion is. And knowing your true passion leads to a tremendous sense of hope for the future.

Watch this space for my upcoming posts on this subject and the accompanying video series that follows.

More power to you.

Skill Of The Creative

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The simple paperclip can be a doorway to a creative moment
The simple paperclip can be a doorway to a creative moment
Photo: Flicker – chrisdlugosz

The ultimate skill of the truly creative person is their ability to survive change no matter how varied it may be.

Acquiring and then expertly utilizing already structured knowledge is the attribute of the very learned.

The creative person is uniquely interested in newness.

That, coupled with a passion for what they do, fires a gut-drive infused with persistence that sustains a vision that never changes.

It’s different than a dream.

It makes the timeline from start to finish,  even if it’s very long (and it often is), seem more bearable.

Even when it looks like failure is following failure yet again this drive wins out because it won’t let them give up easily.

Another word for a creative person like that is “entrepreneur”.

In the 1920’s, and for many years after, Napoleon Hill interviewed one hundred and twenty-five of the most financially successful men of his day.

Know what he discovered? The top two attributes for their success was their persistence and determination. Not intelligence or connections. Too bad Hill himself never nailed down exactly what the nature of persistence and determination was and how to get more of it into your life. He instead got wrapped up in laws and lists of principals. More head brain work for you to do.

All that is a far cry from finally finding out what exactly it is that allows some to survive long periods of discomfort and to maintain a motivation through it all. For creatives who want to ‘make it’ on their own terms it’s as essential as air.

More power to you.

David's signature in what looks-like handwriting. Sort of.

Wait Problem

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Famous Quotivations # 9 – Jan 28 , 2011 [display_podcast]

“I couldn’t wait for success so I went ahead without it.” –Jonathan Winters

running man in front of large clock face
Do you have a wait problem?

Know what I’ve noticed over the years?

A lot of us have wait problems.

No, I’m not talking about the heavy kind of weight. To be sure, obesity is certainly reaching critical mass here in Canada and in the US, but what I’m talking about is a problem that has gripped almost all of us no matter what the size label says.

The wait problem I’m talking about is metered by the pendulum not the tape measure and it’s probably more virulent than you would think. In fact the number one reason for highway deaths each year is speeding in an attempt to beat the clock.

So, why are we going so fast? We can’t wait to get to where we’re going.

See the wait problem?

We can’t stand to wait for anything so we surround ourselves with things that deliver quickly. Microwave ovens, email, rapid transit, TV and internet with high-speed cable, and, of course, pizza.

Clearly, we hate waiting. We want stuff and we want it now.

Instant gratification has become the new normal. Too bad our immune system, the one that looks after our thinking not the one that takes care of our body, hasn’t kept up to this speed increase. It’s been a mindset immunity massacre.

As a result all the old methods of personal development, the ones that were authored way back in the 30’s and 40’s, don’t work near as well as they once did They we’re never designed to overcome such a high level of uncertainty.

One of the most devastating effects of this bias for all things instant is when it comes to success.  When a new entrepreneur doesn’t see their dream unfolding quick enough it tends to kill their motivation to carry on. They loose the ability to muster enough passion and persistence to keep running the business efficiently and learn from their mistakes over the long haul.

The problem with success is that the timeline to it can be long and arduous. Take for example the prolific mystery author Steven King. He wrote every day for nine years before he sold his first novel. Marie Curie spent seven years living in poverty in Paris while studding and researching radio activity. Michael Faraday worked as a lab assistant for seven years before he was even allowed to do his own experiments. And finally, Walt Disney was fired from the Kansas City Star newspaper in 1919 because, his editor said, he “lacked imagination and had no good ideas.” Thirty-six years later on July 18, 1955 Disneyland opened to the public and approximately 50,000 guests attended the Monday opening day.

Studies show that, on average, fifty percent of all start-ups fail during the all-important first five years of being in business. Same for relationships (What’s that? You refuse to make me happy every single day? I’m outta here!)

Sure, you shouldn’t have to wait for success to happen but don’t quit trying new things to make it happen. Consistently working every day toward the end goal is key to getting through the dreaded timeline and the learning curve on the road to success.

It could well be that success in anything is always going to be further than you think. But what if the reward of knowing that you could do it on your own is worth the wait?

It’s Friday. Consider your self quotivated.

David's signature in look-like handwriting

 

PS: Is this about you?  Do you have a wait problem? Is success running away from you? Maybe you should check out my new book “The Gut Brain Balm – How to get more of the success and happiness you deserve by learning to love the ugliest brain your world has never known.”

 


 

End Of Rope

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Your rope has a knot in it
Tying a knot when you’re at the end of it might be key to hanging on

 

“When you come to the end of your rope, tie a knot and hang on.”  -Franklin Delano Roosevelt

Quotivation Day #3  November 26, 2010

Today’s quotivation  is from Franklin Delano Roosevelt (January 30,  1882 – April 12, 1945 also known by his initials, FDR) was the 32nd President of the United States and a central figure in world events during the mid-20th century, leading the United States during a time of worldwide economic crisis and world war

His message re-iterates the long standing dictum that all motivators promote: Don’t you quit!

The one thing that get’s people to a place where they make the decision to give up is, not really so much about how tough it is, but the length of time that must be endured between the starting point and the successful finish point.

The sad truth is none of us like unending pain. We’ll do anything to avoid it. In fact, one thing that researchers know about humans is that we are not all that rational when it comes to what discomforts us.  We actually hate to lose more than we like to gain and that is a factor that kills a lot of new entrepreneurs from continuing to pursue their dream of financial and  time independence as well as personal autonomy.

Of course the entire personal development industry is dedicated to correcting this problem. But they are just about out of rope themselves. That’s because over the last 100 years the message “don’t you give up” has been so over-repeated that it’s lost most of its ardor.

As usual the old 80/20 rule applies. Only 20 percent can ever get to the point where they overcome enough to actually call it a real success the other 80 percent are left hanging.

But I like working with the end-of-the-ropers. For one thing they have usually come to the point where they have rejected a lot of the extraneous BS that is so common in the personal development industry.

All I have to do then is deliver real truth for a change. Not some wordy truth but a gut-based strength type truth that they can both feel and see as well. A truth that’s tied firmly to the one single enduring attribute that guarantees that we finish what we start every time: PERSISTENCE.

So… if you’re nearing the end of your rope here’s how you can tie a big knot in it and find the key to surviving over time.

More power to you my friend.

David's signature