Category: Success Attitude

The snow finally melted to reveal a spring-like day. The calendar called my wife and I to activity—to act on our plans for the blueberry bushes to grow fruit.

Positively successful people understand that it’s a process to grow personally and professionally. They Work Positive with themselves and their business to bear fruit.

They do these five spring things to grow:

Purpose

For our blueberries, the purpose is for me to step outside around 6AM each day in July and August to pick for my breakfast. In the evenings, we purpose to pick and put in the freezer for after growing season.

What purpose do you plan to achieve? Whether it’s a personal one like being happier, or a professional one like making more money, first define your purpose. To positively succeed, your purpose is relevant; something you care deeply about which hooks your commitment. State your purpose clearly and write it down to read each morning.

Prepare

A week ago, my wife and I pushed through over a foot of snow to feed our horses. Now we’re working our blueberry bushes. Really?

Yes, because we understand the cycle of growth. We know that to reap later we sow now. We prepare for winter to leave and spring to arrive so we clear away the leaves and amend the soil. We fertilize and prepare for berries.

The positively successful prepare for growth. They understand this cycle takes time and refuses to be rushed. To prosper and bear financial fruit later, your business markets better to attract new clients and amends customer relationships. These sowing efforts mature into reaping results later when you prepare for it, despite the cold adversity in which you find yourself now.

Prune

Blueberry bushes require pruning for new growth. The long-term viability of the plant requires annual evaluation to cut out the overly mature, less productive canes and stimulate the new growth.

What personal habits and professional core habits need pruning? What isn’t producing the returns they once did and need to be eliminated? What new growth is emerging that needs more time, energy, and attention?

Yes, it’s challenging to prune the familiar. Yes, as with the plant, your business may appear to die when cut closely. Yes, you are made to grow and will in more productive ways.

Partner

We know our purpose and prepare and prune accordingly. Only with our partners the sun and the rain do our blueberries grow.

Likewise, you must invest in partners. You may can do everything your business needs, but not all at once. Collaborate with those who commit to your purpose. Like the sun and rain were made to provoke growth, so your partners are present to grow your business. Create fulfilling jobs for them. Invite them to solve problems at a profit with you.

Persist

My wife and I know our purpose and prepare, prune, and partner accordingly. The fruit requires a persistent presence throughout the growth cycle to feed the bushess and harvest in season.

So it is with you and your business. You believe in more growth by regular feeding of your business dynamics. You cultivate by pulling weedy bad habits that crop up. Even when you can’t make rain, you find water. You persist regardless, committed to your purpose.

How will your business grow this year? Purpose, prepare, prune, partner and then persist as you Work Positive with the positively successful!

About the Author:

Dr. Joey Faucette is the #1 Amazon best-selling author of Work Positive in a Negative World (Entrepreneur Press), leading Positive Success expert, & speaker who helps business professionals increase sales with greater productivity so they leave the office earlier to do what they love with those they love. Discover more at www.ListentoLife.org.

Ever find yourself striving to Work Positive and your Eeyore Vampire boss is doing everything he can to prevent it?

You’re in good company. Negative bosses—Eeyore Vampires—swoop in with alarming consistency on our coaching clients despite their best efforts to Work Positive.

How do you deal with them to increase your sales with greater productivity and get out of the office earlier?

Here are 3 Positive Strategies to Deal with an Eeyore Vampire Boss:

Select Your Battles

Your attempts to prove yourself right on the battlefield of negativity with your boss are like trying to put out a fire with gasoline. Resistance is futile. You waste precious resources, get tired of the war, and acquiesce to the dark side.

Instead, select your battles. The one battle you can win every time is the battle for your mind. That’s the one place where you have the final answer.

Consistently choosing to actively replace negative thoughts with positive ones is your antidote to the mental erosion of your boss’ negative barrage. Create a dynamic list of positive thoughts about business to crowd out the negative messaging of your Eeyore Vampire supervisor. Keep it on your tablet and smartphone for on-the-go reinforcement so you win the battle of your mind.

Set Your Boundaries

As you win the battle of your mind, you increase your odds of winning by setting boundaries in your relationship with the Eeyore Vampire boss. The most positive results-producing boundary you set is with the time you spend with him.

Get in and out as quickly as possible whether on the phone, an email, or in person. Invest the obligatory time—he’s the boss—yet treat him as if he has the flu. When you’re with someone sneezing and coughing, you back up and out of the room asap.

Negativity is like the flu. Sales decrease with less productive and you work longer hours. Your boss is the carrier. Avoid him as possible.

Adopt a “must go” attitude. Invest only as much time as is required with your Eeyore Vampire boss.

Steer Your Boat

You’re winning the battle for your mind by giving the Eeyore Vampire boss as little time as possible. In those times when you must talk with her, steer the boat of conversation.

She will talk about what you’re doing wrong and search for what’s not going right—the “sickness model.”

Steer the boat of your conversation to the “wellness model.” Your rudder is this phrase: “Yes, you’re right, and yet…” “Yes, you’re right” acknowledges there is room for growth. “…and yet” transitions to your positive results while avoiding “but” which is a mental stop sign of disagreement. Steering the conversation in this way empowers you to focus on the positive and filter out the negative as much as possible.

Yes, you can positively deal with your Eeyore Vampire boss as you select your battles, set your boundaries, and steer your boat of conversation as you Work Positive in the negative world.

About the Author:

Dr. Joey Faucette is the #1 Amazon best-selling author of Work Positive in a Negative World (Entrepreneur Press), leading Positive Success expert, & speaker who helps business professionals increase sales with greater productivity so they leave the office earlier to do what they love with those they love. Discover more at www.ListentoLife.org.

Spring is here!

Warmer weather, flowers everywhere and a fresh feeling in the air.

Whether you are celebrating Easter or Passover or any other seasonal festival, the chances are you’ve been doing some cleaning and sorting, organizing and maybe disposing.

I love that it’s the perfect opportunity to think about what we really need; what we don’t have space for and what we can let go of.

It seems to me that this is so important when it comes to running a business.

It’s also what happens in a good coaching session.

I want to explore this on a few levels.  Will you join me?

So let’s take your physical space.

How do you feel when you go into your office and sit down to work?

Is the space comfortable and clutter free?

Do you feel stressed about the filing you need to do or the drawers filled with papers that you haven’t yet sorted?

Does your office become a storage place for toys, bags or junk belonging to other members of the family?  I can really relate to this one!

And let’s consider your mental and emotional space.

Are you living in stories of stress and overwhelm?

Do you have a scarcity mindset – are you worried about having enough income or the rising costs of your business and life?

Do you work too hard and support your clients, family and friends without considering your own needs?

Well, spring is here.

It’s time to clean up your life!

Here are 3 simple ideas – no excuses, do it today!

1. Take a morning to sort out your physical space. Clean out the drawers, tidy your table and get rid of the items that should not be there. You’ve been avoiding this forever, but it’ll only take a few hours to sort out.
2. Acknowledge that we are living in an abundant universe. We don’t have to create abundance, we simply have to recognize and open up to what is already there. Once you truly accept this, you’re life and business will change.
3. Create a practice of daily gratitude, and I mean a practice, not just a thought. One way is to take a moment during your daily family meal to simple say thanks for something great that happened that day. Another is to keep a notebook beside your bed and write down 3 reasons your grateful when you wake in the morning and when you go to sleep at night.

Even if you take me up on one of these simple ideas, it will change your life. I’m not kidding; it will literally change your life!

What will you commit to today? What are you cleaning up in your life? Share it below!

No one can ever say that having a home based business is boring! Between quieting barking dogs, refereeing your children’s fights, and answering the phone and the doorbell, it can sometimes be hard to get anything done — no matter how well you visualize, set goals, and plan your day.

And it can be equally easy to be too hard on ourselves, blaming ourselves for not being more organized, focused or motivated. But that just increases the pressure — it doesn’t solve anything! Sometimes it helps to just stop, put the “to-do” list away, and look instead at the big picture.

I find these three “mantras” help me get back in balance when I’m feeling stressed, overwhelmed or just plain tired:

1.    If you aren’t making mistakes, you aren’t moving fast enough. I don’t know if I’m typical, but I certainly know I’m not alone in wanting to always present a professional, polished image to the world. Whether it’s an important email message, a change to my website, or a new article, I want it to be perfect. It’s often hard to stop tweaking and improving, and just let go. And yet that’s exactly what will help me succeed faster.

Everyone makes mistakes — your clients and colleagues included — and they are likely to be much more forgiving of your mistakes than you will. Set a time limit, and when that time is up, stop tweaking and move on!

2.    It doesn’t *have* to be done today. Many of my deadlines are self-imposed — and most of the time, no one else cares! So if you don’t get your newsletter out today or even this week — trust me, your equally-busy subscribers may not even notice if it’s late.

A stressed mind doesn’t function as clearly as a relaxed one — taking off the pressure by letting a milestone slip a few days can result in a better end product. And it may be easier and take less time to complete, too.

3.    It will get done when it is supposed to get done. It’s amazing how when I finally get around to doing a task or project I’ve procrastinated about for a while, something else aligns that makes the work easier and sometimes gives a better result than if I’d done it earlier. Or an opportunity arises to get someone else to do it, or even just drop it altogether in favor of a different project that’s more exciting, fun and profitable.

I find this mantra to be especially helpful when I’ve delegated a task and it doesn’t get done on time (aka on my schedule). I make that schedule myself — and I have the power to change the schedule. A stressed VA doesn’t work any better than a stressed “you”. So relax, let her know it’s ok, and both of you will feel more energized as a result.

A caveat: if you have a client project due tomorrow, these mantras won’t be of much help – your client expects, and you should deliver, a high-quality, on-time product. But if you can apply them consistently from the beginning, you’ll find it easier to get “in the flow”, where the work gets done almost effortlessly and before you know it, you are done – early!

It was mid-afternoon; I had a lot on my mind.

I suspect it was the usual mix of meetings, project deadlines, kids’ appointments, chores not yet done and the constant everyday clock ticking that told me, ‘get home quick.’

As I rounded the corner, leaving the center of the village, the old woman stepped out onto the road with her arm raised.

She was carrying two heavy-looking bags of groceries.  I only glimpsed her face briefly but her whole being looked hot and tired.

She probably needed a ride, help of some sort.  She didn’t look desperate, but concerned and in need.

I have a million reasons that make sense of my choice in that moment.  Busy, late, people waiting, work to do, stuff calling me away.

None of them matter.  None of them make it better.

I drove by.

An instant later I came to my senses and took the next turn that I could in the one-way road system so that I could go pick her up.  By the time I got back, she was gone.

I didn’t know her.  I had no obligation to do anything really.

But to this day (and it was years ago) I know that in that instant, I made the wrong choice.

Now maybe if she had been there when I got back I would have felt better.  It would allow me feel like a good citizen.

Sometimes, we just don’t get second chances.

I learned 3 really important lessons for my business from this story:

1. Be Present

As you get preoccupied by what you haven’t done, what awaits you or why you need to be elsewhere, life and opportunities pass you by.  There is no living elsewhere; it’s just here, in this moment, where you are.

We spent most of our lives thinking about the past and anticipating the future.  So often we let our past experiences project into the present and future.  This may work well for us, if we have lived a joyful, empowered experience in the past.  But so often this is not the case.

Our past disappointments and unmet expectations predict a disengaged and regretful future.  And for no reason at all.  The past IS NOT the present!  Be present in the here and NOW.  What you create today, in this very moment, is the reality you get to live. As simple as that!

2. Listen to Your Instincts

When you are truly present, your inner knowing will tell you what needs to be done.  Usually we can’t hear it because we’re too busy getting worried about what we need to do and the decisions we need to make.  Listen carefully, decisions become clear and choices are easy.  Just listen!

We spend so much time searching for teachers and guidance.  Yet the very best guide is inside of you.  You know what you need to do.  You have everything you need.  Take a few moments to get still, relax and when all is quiet and clear, ask yourself the question that you need answering.  Allow the answer to emerge.  Trust that answer, it will be perfect.

3. React Immediately

When you hear a clear, decisive voice – just do it.  Don’t wait around, don’t postpone or procrastinate, take action.  I heard Tony Robbins say once ‘never leave the scene of a decision without taking action that supports that decision’.  Immediate action is what makes the difference between possibility and regret.

When you know what you need to do, there is no reason to wait.

Often we get overwhelmed and frozen by the array of choices, challenges and opportunities in business.  This is what keeps us stuck and unable to make decisions and choices to move forward.

So next time you see something or someone that moves you – allow yourself be moved and take instinctive, decisive action.

Consciously go through these three steps.

Make it a habit and you’ll see a huge shift in your business.