How to Fix Your Problems Faster

In an earlier article (How to Get Exactly What You Want), I mentioned that problems are absolutely inevitable in life, especially so for the kind of people who want to take a proactive approach to improving themselves and their situation. The challenge I touched on was that the impact of those problems hinges on your expectations around what the problem means – whether it’s a good thing or a bad thing.

If you expect your problem to be a “bad thing” – in other words, a situation that’s just going to hold you back and cause trouble, it’s probably not likely to be one that gets fixed very quickly at all. You’ll have so many negative feelings associated to the problem that you’ll find yourself wanting to avoid dealing with it as much as possible, which ironically tends to not only make the problem bigger, but often spawns new problems as a result.

The problem here revolves around the word “problem” itself – or at least how we come to think about what they are. When you saw this headline, what was the meaning you associated to the word “problem?” Did you think of a few issues in your life that are causing you trouble? Did you hope that this article would help you deal with the stress a little easier?

It’s pretty likely that you did, since the title of this article itself is a “loaded” title. “How to Fix Your Problems Faster” implies that something is broken or not working out right, and needs to be fixed. While in a sense that may be true, it’s not necessarily the perspective that’s going to put you in the best frame of mind to deal with the issue.

Seeing your problems as a difficulty to be overcome makes things, well, more difficult than they need to be. In fact, it may make it seem impossible to “fix,” if you’re viewing the problem as being big enough (at least in your own head). And when you make things more difficult on yourself, you’re not going to get resolution on them very quickly.

But what if you could take all of the negative emotion and depression out of dealing with your “problems?” You can, but it involves deciding that you’re going to change your definition about what a problem is in the first place. A quick look at the dictionary gives two basic definitions for the word “problem”:

• A question to be considered, solved, or answered
• A situation, matter, or person that presents perplexity or difficulty

Note the huge difference here. The second definition is what you’re most likely to think of when you hear the word “problem.” Words like perplexity and difficulty don’t make things easier on you – they just put you at a disadvantage from the start.

But look at the first definition: A question to be considered, solved, or answered. That’s a perspective that fits more in line with your math class in high school. Your teacher gives you some math “problems,” and you solve them. They may be perplexing or difficult, but you solve them anyway, usually with a lot less stress than you feel working on your own personal “problems.”

Here’s the interesting thing, though – when you sat in class staring at a math quiz, you had a very valuable piece of leverage on your side: You knew that there was a specific solution to the problem. No matter how difficult the problem might have been, you never had any doubt that there was an answer to it (whether you knew it or not). So all you had to do was wrack your brain trying to uncover what that magic number was.

This concept has everything to do with your ability to solve the other “problems” in your life quickly. Think about it – if you have doubts that you can come up with a solution to your problem, that will sap the speed and intensity at which you apply yourself to getting it resolved. You might lose heart when faced with the fear that the problem is too big for you to handle.

But if you have a clear, unshakable expectation that a perfect (or at least useful enough) solution is out there, waiting to be uncovered, that will transform the way you attack the situation. You’ll become more motivated, because now it’s a treasure hunt, or a jigsaw puzzle … it’s just something you have to wrangle with until – inevitably – you figure it out and resolve the situation.

And just think of the word “resolve.” For a moment. To resolve a problem is simply to “re-solve” it. If you imagine that the solution is out there – that it’s been figured out before – you can have an easier time getting to it. You have more faith that you will find it, and you have more motivation to find that answer much, much faster than if you just wandered around waiting for something to happen.

This isn’t just positive thinking – it’s realistic thinking. It’s a rare problem that doesn’t have any solution – and your problems surely have at least one acceptable solution. It’s your job to believe it’s there, and to dig for it, never losing hope that you’ll find it.

Three decades of experience have shown me that it’s not what you hope for in life that’s what you get – it’s what you strongly expect that ends up happening. In other words, you have to assume that you’re going to eventually find the answer you need. Don’t be surprised how incredibly well this works when you try it.

What also makes this whole process easier is to proactively decide what the problem means to you in the first place. It can either be something to hinder you, or to make you stronger. If you choose to look at it as the latter, you’re going to have a much easier – and faster – time resolving it. But that’s a topic for another article.

So decide ahead of time that you’re going to assume every problem you have is just a question whose answer you will inevitably uncover. Drill it into your mind until you get the results you want. You’ll thank yourself for it.

How To Prevent Self Doubt

In an earlier article (How to Get Exactly What You Want), I talked about how important it was have a solid expectation that you will accomplish your goals, no matter how difficult they may seem at the moment. Some people call this confidence, but it’s really more accurately defined by the word “expectation.” I’ll explain in a moment.

This expectation of success is critical because if you allow self-doubt (the expectation of failure) to creep in, you erode your chances of actually taking action on a consistent basis. That lack of action, rather than any setbacks in particular, is what keeps you from making progress on your goals.

Life’s too short to let that happen, so let’s look at the reason people struggle with self-doubt and some quick steps you can take in the next ten minutes to make sure you don’t get derailed from the things you want to accomplish.

Where does self-doubt come from?
Well, it basically comes from two levels of negative expectation – first, an expectation that the goal itself might not be possible, and second from an expectation that even if the goal is possible, it likely won’t be possible for you in particular.

Everybody thinks thoughts like these to some level on a daily basis. Let’s focus an effective, two step process on how to defuse their power to create self-doubt in the first place.

Step 1 – Remind yourself that the goal itself is not impossible for someone to accomplish.

There’s a lot of silent “self-talk” that goes on in your head on a daily basis. There’s a part of you that looks at the unlimited possibilities in front of you … and then there’s that other part of you that tells you to be “reasonable,” that the bar is set too high, that the goal just isn’t really achievable.

Now, the problem most people face is that they aren’t even aware that this conversation is occurring. They’ll just go through the motions and wonder why sometimes they’re motivated to take action, and sometimes they aren’t. That may describe you (and I know that it has described me at many times in my life, so I’m speaking from personal experience here).

The key to preventing self-doubt, though, is to take immediate and total control of that conversation. To learn to actively listen in to the quality of conversation going on in your head and to take command when it’s not going the way it needs to be.

The way to start doing this is to decide to look at the situation objectively – that is, to take yourself out of the equation. Instead of thinking about what you can or can’t do, look at the goal and remind yourself that it isn’t impossible for a human being to accomplish. Surely someone on Earth could do it (or has done it already).

The way to make this work is to simply rehearse a statement that you can use to interrupt the pattern of thinking that’s holding you back from feeling 100% confident that you can achieve your goal. Let’s say that your goal is to become completely financially independent in the next 12 months.

While that can appear to be a daunting task to many, it’s certainly not imposible. People do it all the time. So perhaps your statement would be something like this: “It’s not impossible to become financially independent in 12 months or less. It’s been done over and over again.”

Now, why did I choose to say “It’s not impossible …” rather than the more positive sounding “It’s possible …”? The answer is because I don’t want to give you a chance to make excuses to use the word “but.” You see, we often think “Sure, it’s possible, but .”

When you say “It’s not impossible …”, you subtly prevent yourself from the opportunity to come up with a good excuse to doubt your ability to make it happen. You’re forced to admit that there’s not some immovable, unstoppable force that’s preventing you from ever accomplishing your goal. Your focus is on the fact that the potential exists, regardless of how you “feel” about it at any given time.

Don’t make the mistake of taking this step for granted, because it’s absolutely essential. The generalized beliefs you have about life – what’s possible and what isn’t – completely drive your actions on a day to day basis. Like a puppet’s strings, they dictate where you can go. So you have to be sure and get them right and never lose sight of the fact that you can do almost anything.

Sidebar: Just to clarify things, this isn’t positive thinking I’m talking about here. I’m not saying you’ll succeed because you’re saying “I think I can.” What I’m talking about is realistic thinking – focusing on facts, not emotions. Looking at things objectively. Taking the personal fear out of the picture and acknowledging your potential as a human being – not as the collection of skills and experiences you call “you.”

So to sum up this first step, you need to have a strong statement (or a set of them) that you can focus on to keep your mind firmly rooted in reality – the reality that your goal is by no means impossible. It may be hard, and it may demand more out of yourself than you’ve ever given, but it’s not impossible. In fact, with the right effort and strategies, it’s actually inevitable.
Once you’ve objectively framed the goal in your mind this way, and you are utterly convinced that your goal isn’t impossible to achieve, you’re ready to move on to the next step.

Step 2 – Remind yourself that the goal itself is not impossible for you – in particular – to accomplish.

This is where a lot of people get in trouble. We say, “Sure, it’s possible, but not for me.” This is where we move into the magical world of excuses, where every obstacle seems permanent and much too hard to overcome. We view ourselves as relatively powerless to change the situation:

In reality, though, we have an enormous amount of power. When we focus on our limitations, whether it be time, money, talent, whatever – that’s when we hand that power over to the side of us that says “you just can’t do it.” That part of us that focuses on what we can’t do has a long list of all the reasons why we’re not up to the task, and it’s pretty hard to refute it. You know the feeling I’m talking about.

So the trick of it all is to turn the tables and create a solid list of all the reasons you can do it – and why you, in particular, are just the person to get it done. It’s not unlike writing a resume. When you want to apply for a new position, you think long and hard about how you are going to verbalize why you are more than qualified to do the job. You list your skills, your education, your resources, and most importantly, your experience and successes.

When you hand that resume to a hiring manager, your expectation is that they will look at it and say, “Wow, this person is just the one to get the job done.” You can create that same feeling of confidence by writing a resume for yourself.

To do this and do it right, you really need to set aside some time and do some hard thinking. You need to brag on yourself and remind yourself of all the skills you have that you’ve taken for granted. All the resources you have that you can leverage. All the experience you have that you can draw from.

There’s so much more than you acknowledge right now, because you’ve let the challenges of your goals turn your focus to your shortcomings and limitations. But now it’s time to strike back.

Now you have to actually do this.
This is the important part, if you really want to overcome self-doubt forever. You have to take this advice and actually put it into action. Read over this post and do the work, and you’ll start seeing results immediately. And if you don’t feel like doing it now, or you’re saying to yourself, “That may be possible for you, but it’s not for me,” book mark this post and read it every day. Eventually you’ll get fed up with the excuses and decide to take action.

When you do take action, please send me an email at dave@davenavarro.com and let me know how it’s working out. So don’t lose the momentum – go ahead and start working on this now. You’ll thank yourself for it.

Interview With Dave Navarro (With Sam Heyer / Lee Raito)

I’ve been doing a few interviews over the last few months and will be posting them to this blog.

This first one is an interview I did with Sam Heyer and Lee Raito of Long Run Marketing. Sam’s a marketing expert who is helping to orchestrate the launch of a great new book on how Branding your online business can take your profits to a new level.

Lee’s a financial expert also helping on the launch. Both are great guys & you should listen to the interview not just for what I have to say, but for their insights as well.

Grab the interview & enjoy. Please send any comments if you have them to me at dave@davenavarro.com!

Interview with Sam Heyer and Lee Raito – Right click to download

All the best,
Dave

How to Build a Million Dollar Business

If you’re starting (or running) your own online business, you’re likely looking for every way you can make your first million. You’re researching niches. You’re exploring search engine optimization. You’re looking for joint ventures, writing articles, gearing up for that ebook … you’ve got a lot of ideas about how to meet your financial targets.

Well, before you spend any more time looking for how to make that first million, you need to be aware of ten things that can make you lose it – forever. Pay very close attention to what you’re about to read, because it’s going to tell you whether you’re on the path to a great year of income for you or a year of frustrating and fruitless effort.

You’re about to take a quick “pop quiz” that will instantly tell you whether or not you’ve got the structure in place that you need to turn your million dollar idea into a million dollar payday. Answer honestly, and if the answers aren’t what you’d hoped they’d be, then you need to have a plan of action to take care of them. Here goes:

Pop Quiz: Do You Treat Your Business Like A Business?

____ I schedule (and keep) “business hours” every week
____ I have set aside a budget for my business needs
____ I have a written project plan, even if it’s basic
____ I set (and meet) specific deadlines for projects
____ I do whatever it takes to meet my deadlines
____ I have a powerful, “expert” mentor who helps me
____ I am regularly accountable to someone for my goals
____ I know how to powerfully motivate myself to work
____ I am persistent in the face of business obstacles
____ I am consistently producing *something* of value

____ Total # of Yes Answers

Now take that number of yes answers and multiply it by 10. That should give you a rough percentage of how likely you are to make some money in the next year. Now, that’s just an estimate – but let’s be honest – the *only* way you’re going to build a full-time income with your business is if you do whatever it takes to answer “Yes” to all ten questions in this quiz.

That’s the “bad” news (and it’s really only “bad” because on one level or another, we really wanted this whole thing to be a lot easier, didn’t we?). But wealth requires work. There is no easy, no-work involved, 100% turnkey way to wealth, regardless of what some internet marketers tell you. You’ve got to earn your money by doing the work.

The good news, though, is that it is 100% doable for you to get your piece of the internet pie. It’s 100% possible for someone with no prior internet experience to jump into the level playing field and start building more income every month. The only thing that can prevent you from making money are the “No” answers to the quiz you just took.

Don’t make the mistake of focusing on having the greatest idea, the greatest product, or the greatest marketing for your business. That will trap you in “paralysis by analysis,” where you’re always thinking and never taking action.

Instead, focus on having the greatest discipline. The greatest commitment to your deadlines. The greatest network of people who can encourage you. The greatest follow through. The greatest perseverance. The greatest level of accountability to keep you on track.

Focus on being great at the things that result in follow through and you’ll be setting yourself up for an incredible income stream. Even “average” products make millions for those with above-average follow through.

Treat your business like a business and it will reward you tenfold. Dabble at it and you’ll pay the price in disappointment. But if you’ve read this far, you know that’s not where you want to be. So get your pop quiz score closer to 100%, starting today, and reap the rewards of a lot of great paydays.

How to Get Exactly What You Want

J. Paul Getty was quoted for his formula for success: “Rise early, work hard, strike oil.” By now you know I’m a huge supporter of the practice of rising early (and if you’re not, you probably should be). But regardless of when you wake up, the other two actions in this formula are “work hard,” and “strike oil.”

When I first ran across this quote ten years ago, I had to laugh, because it looked like Getty was saying you have to work hard and hope to get lucky. But a decade later, I can see the more relevant meaning, and I’m about to share with you why Getty’s concept, perhaps more than anything else you might ever read, could be what gets you everything you want for the rest of your life.

In short, it all comes down to your personal expectation as to whether or not you’re going to strike oil. That’s it. That’s where it all starts. I can say this because that’s how reality works – you’re not going to get anything if you don’t work hard to achieve it. But you’re not going to work hard in the first place unless you have a strong enough expectation that you’ll be successful (or at least be successful at learning from the experience).

This is just how life works. Your motivation to take action, and to follow through until the job is done, is directly proportional to your belief that you will succeed. (Side note: In some cases, the belief in success isn’t even necessary – instead, you might be motivated by the fact your action will serve a higher cause, such as a ‘failed’ protest sparking a larger public awareness down the road).

If you break this concept down to the simplest parts, what you have is this: When you believe strongly enough that you will succeed at something, success is practically guaranteed – not because your belief creates the result, but because you don’t give up taking action on a massive level until you get what you want.

When you believe that success is inevitable, you are able to put aside the idea that “failure,” in the conventional sense, is a bad thing. Instead, it’s just a specific attempt that you can learn from. Another life lesson to be accepted and consumed, not feared.

When you believe that success is going to be the end result of you never giving up, then you are going to attack your objective with a greater energy, a greater passion, a greater work ethic. You’re going to be excited about what you’re doing, because you know that it matters. You know that whatever it is you’re doing, it’s adding value that will eventually translate into the result you want.

That unwavering belief lets you focus your thoughts on questions like “How can I … ?” rather than “Why can’t I … ?” The perspective of certainty gives you the ability to see obstacles as not these things that stand in your way, but instead as challenges that fuel your growth.

I experienced this myself as a ten year old kid in Brooklyn, New York. A horrible turn of events led to my mother getting murdered, my father going to prison for life, and me ending up all but homeless until I was taken in by a relative who was both an alcoholic and a drug user.

Years later, after I escaped the constant surroundings of drugs and violence, people remarked to me how surprised they were that I had avoided getting involved in drugs, alcohol, or any of the gang activity that was so pervasive during those years. Rather than any of that, I pretty much was a straight-A student who stayed out of (too much) trouble.

I always found it a bit humorous that while some people believed it was a solid foundation of strength that kept me on the straight and narrow, the thing that really kept me safe was that I didn’t really accept the idea that I could get involved in any of those things in the first place. I just didn’t know any better – I thought I was supposed to avoid them!

I just didn’t see it as possible or reasonable for me, so I never thought about it. Those things were problems “other people” got involved in, but not me. In fact, I viewed the daily challenges I faced as tests that were there to make me stronger, so one day my life could make some kind of difference. And poof – that’s exactly what happened. :

The point of all this is that all of my actions were driven by a firm belief that I would succeed eventually. That I would get through it all and come out okay on the other side. That I would strike oil. And it’s no different than the mindset you have to adopt to make any of your goals/dreams/objectives a reality.

There’s an old saying, “What would you attempt if you knew you could not fail?” While it sounds good on the surface (and it is, don’t get me wrong), it’s not perfect. Sure you could say what you would attempt if you knew you couldn’t fail, but that doesn’t help you when your brain is shouting, “Hey dummy, you’re probably going to fail, don’t you realize that?” The original question is a good start, but it needs to be taken a step further.

Instead of wishful thinking about what “could” happen, I’ve found a better question is more along the lines of “What will you attempt knowing that you will ultimately succeed, despite all the ‘failures’ that are sure to come along the way?”

Because, face it, life is going to throw some pretty rough stuff over to you. You’re going to have a lot more “go wrong” than you’d ever hoped for. But striking oil is about drilling deeper, even if you hit a few rocks along the way. In fact, the expectation is that you have to do a lot of drilling before you tap into that pocket of oil.

So let’s talk about setting expectations. An expectation, in it’s most literal sense, is a certainty that a specific result will occur.

If you’ve got a major goal that want to achieve, you need to have at least five things straightened out before you can really attack it full force.

#1 – You have to have the expectation that you, specifically you, can achieve this goal.

This one is a biggie. People typically have a lot easier time believing something is “possible” than believing it’s “possible for them.” They don’t fully believe that they will be capable of achieving a goal because they are missing something – the time, the talent, the resources, whatever. They have an unwritten expectation that they will not be one of the people who “has what it takes.”

That’s a load of garbage. If you believe that, even just a little bit, then it’s going to seriously damage your ability to take action. You’re never going to give 100% and stick with it until the job is done. If this is you, you need to fix this first.
#2 – You have to have the expectation that you will close the resource gap, no matter how wide it is.

This one is also a biggie. It’s easy to look at a large goal and feel like the distance between it and you is too wide. After all, how can you compete with the biggest successes in the world, who are already established? You can find out how by studying the people who do it every day, like skinny, broke college kid Michael Dell who took on IBM and Hewlett-Packard (and is still winning). If you’re reading this years from now, a hundred other stories just like his will have come and gone.

You have to, have to, have to believe any resource gap can be closed. A lack of time, money, manpower, connections … it all doesn’t matter, because there’s a number of creative solutions out there that you’re going to come up with to overcome all that.

If you don’t believe the resource gap can be closed, it won’t, because you won’t take full-out action to make it happen. But if you have the expectation that it will eventually be resolved, guess what’s going to happen. (Again, stay tuned for an upcoming article on how to do just that. I’ll link to it here when it’s ready).

#3 – You have to have the expectation that you will find a solution to every problem that will inevitably come your way. Every one.

You can’t guarantee a problem-free life. But you can guarantee that you see a ‘problem’ as an opportunity, so rather than being drained by the challenge, you are energized. Chew on this and decide how you’re going to make this shift in thinking. (In the meantime, bookmark this post and check back later to find a link to an upcoming article on how to do this.)

#4 – You have to have the expectation that every action you take matters. Every damn one.

This is critical. When you think taking action won’t matter in the long run, you simply won’t do it. But when you recognize that action accumulates – that the pyramids are built brick by brick, and every one matters, you’ll be willing to take action even when you don’t feel like it and your heart’s not in it.

Remember, everything you matters. If you don’t think it does, then you need to make that shift as well. Stay tuned for an article on that.

#5 – You have to believe that you can accelerate the process of getting to your objective.

This one’s my favorite. As you improve the discipline of following through and taking action on a consistent basis, you’ll want to find new forms of leverage to make the journey to completion a lot shorter. This is what “Million Dollar Leverage” is all about.

By holding onto the firm expectation that you can find ways of leveraging all your resources, you’ll be subconsciously looking for ways to make that happen, and as a result you’ll find a lot more of them. And that will get you to your goal faster. Much faster.

So, I hope I’ve sold you on the power of expectation to get what you want – to strike oil, whatever that means to you. If not, then read this article again and again until it sinks in. And then put your expectations to the test and get them correctly aligned. It’s a bit of work, but if you do it you’ll start seeing better results than you’ve ever seen before in a lot less time than you might imagine (unless your expectation is to see results right away .

So get a pen an paper and get your expectations put in writing so you can drill them into your brain and use them to your advantage. Do it now – you’ll thank yourself for it.

How to Stay Focused

Focus is a skill that can be learned by anybody. It’s like learning to tie your shoe or to drive a car. As long as you’re diligent at working on building the skill – even when it’s more challenging than you’d like it to be – you’ll inch ever closer to a level of focus that lasts exactly as long as you want it to.

In other words, however much trouble you might think you have with keeping focused, it’s like a wall that’s going to come down one brick at a time if you work at it. Nothing can prevent you from getting more focused, starting in the next five minutes after you read this article. Where you go from there … well, that’s up to you.

Before you read any further, you need to know that this article isn’t going to be a bunch of tips on how to get a little more organized or how to try a little harder to keep working on something that is important to you. There are plenty of places on the internet that you can get your little top ten list of productivity hints.

If you’re just looking for a quick fix, then this article (like most on this site) probably isn’t for you. But if you’re looking to start building the long-term habit of consistent, powerful focus, then keep on reading.

When most people talk about getting more focused, what they are really talking about is avoiding distraction, or working on fuzzy goals, or some other negative behavior … but in reality those are just symptoms of a deeper issue. Focusing on those areas is like bandaging a bullet wound – if you don’t remove the bullet, stopping the flow of blood is a short term solution at best.

So let’s talk about what focus really is. It’s not a rugged determination to stay the course against any and all temptations. It’s not the mysterious ability to tune out the rest of the world while you work on one thing. Those are just the end results of focus, the fruit of a seed that gets planted beforehand. And that seed is called an unwillingness to settle.

You see, when you make a decision to do something – whether it’s something as big as losing 50 pounds, or something smaller such as just cleaning the house up, that decision carries a certain unspoken level of commitment with it. When you decide “I’m going to do this,” sure, you’ve got an emotional desire to accomplish the outcome, but there’s also a hidden factor that you probably don’t acknowledge: your willingness to give up other things, even temporarily, to make that decision an achieved result.

And that’s where the heart of focus lies. When you start on that action, and a “distraction” pops up, there’s a little conversation that goes on in your head. And in that conversation you make a choice: you either settle for giving up working on the task at hand, or you stand up for yourself and say, “I’m not willing to give up working on this worthy goal for this. I’m not willing to settle for less.”

This is a big deal. It’s bigger than willpower. It’s bigger than raw motivation. It’s simply the willingness to cling to how important your goal is, and how much less important a distraction is. Because when you can put the two actions in perspective relative to each other, you can make focus a no-brainer activity.

Take this article for example. I’ve committed to write a certain number of articles this month, no matter what. Today I’ve got to finish this article. It’s important to me, because this blog is a crucial part of my “early retirement” strategy. I’m not willing to settle for the lesser distractions that have been tugging at me. Each time one comes up, I say to myself, “I’m not delaying my first million dollars for that.”

In this way focus is no longer an effort in “trying hard.” It’s an exercise in reminding myself why I don’t want to delay taking action. And notice I say delay, not avoid, because there are many worthy “distractions” that are calling to me right now.

There’s the several emails that just popped into my emails about two product launches I’m involved in, each with the potential to put me in front of about 2 million people each. For a brief moment I almost paused writing to respond to those people. But then I stopped myself.

I reminded myself, “Those actions are important, but what’s more important is following through with what I’m doing. Because that’s the skill that’s going to set me up for life. I’ll get to those emails later. (In fact, I’ll close email for now entirely). I don’t want to settle for being a weaker person just to satisfy a craving to get progress on those projects right now. I’ll get to it after the time I’ve scheduled to update my blog.

Again, this is a big deal. When you are working on the projects that are important to you – whether it’s for a personal goal or a business goal – potential distractions are going to come into your field of vision constantly. In order to build a rock-solid, unbreakable focus, you have to decide – and I mean truly decide – that you’re simply not going to settle for what distraction will cost you.

Sure, that sounds simplistic – and I can safely assume that four out of five people reading this will dismiss it as such. But it works. It’s powerful. It takes the “work” out of willpower and discipline. And that’s why it’s so useful.

So let’s get this applied to your situation, right now, where you are. Let’s think of a goal you’re not making traction on, at least not the way you want to.

Now, you chose this goal for a reason. You want the end result. Now you have to start getting leverage. The way to start doing this is to really think about what you’re settling for if you choose to do anything other than taking action. Think of what you’re delaying. Think of what you’re losing out on. And make yourself unwilling to even consider settling for it.

Here’s an example for a popular goal – losing weight. You need to make time to hit the gym, but work is busy. And the stress of being busy and overweight is driving you to distraction. You’re chatting with co-workers. You’re surfing the web. You’re taking long lunches instead of going to the gym.

In light of this, what are you settling for? You’re settling for being overweight another day, another week, another month. You’re settling for having less energy than you want. You’re settling for being afraid to wear the clothes you want to.

So now you need to crystallize this into something you can say to yourself when the moment is right. You need to make time for the gym, so when you’re at work, you decide that you have to be on the ball, accomplishing more work in less time, so you can free up the time to hit the weights.

So when you sit down to do your work, you go full force. But then someone drops by to pick up a conversation. In the past you would have weighed an emotional decision – Hey, I really want to talk to this person & get my mind off of things … when instead you could say, “I’m not going to settle for running behind and missing my chance to start losing weight. I’m not going to trade my waistline for a casual conversation. I’m not going to trade a great body for a chance to have a forgettable time with my co-workers.” Then you tell your co-worker you can’t talk right now, and you get back to work.

Of course, this is just an example – you could apply this to any goal, any area of your life. It’s just the simple practice of telling yourself that you’re not going to trade progress for whatever it is that’s beckoning you. You’re simply not going to trade it. You’re so focused on the value of the end result that everything that threatens it loses its luster. Practice this enough and it will become an unconscious habit, one that will trigger automatically.

And that’s it. There’s more to developing focus, to be sure, but this is the foundation. Fail to develop this core skill and your efforts at being focused will likely frustrate you (until you decide you’re not going to settle for it, that is).

So pick up a pen and a piece of paper and get to it now. Write out a solid statement (or a few of them) that you can say to yourself when distraction comes up, or even if you feel your drive and productivity flagging. Tell yourself what you’re not willing to give up, or even delay, and get back in the fight. Handle other things later. Do what you need to right now.

Master the art of telling yourself you’re not going to settle for anything less than total focus in the face of distraction. Get started now. You’ll thank yourself for it.

How (and Why) to Build a Quick Project Plan

If you’re running an online business for profit (and not just as a hobby), then one of the most important things you have to do is focus on following through on as many revenue-generating activities as possible. However, as many online businesses are “unstructured and unaccountable” – meaning that you tend to work alone most of the time and no one is holding you to a certain level of performance – it can be very difficult to manage getting these things done on a consistent basis.

As I help internet entrepreneurs in my coaching practice with their follow-through skills, I see a common pattern among those who have been struggling to bring their business to profitability: the people who have taken the short time to write out their project plans (even in a simplistic way) get things done at a much faster rate than those who don’t. It’s clear that a good project plan is a key ingredient in the recipe for success.

The reasons for this are pretty simple, though they can fall into the category of things that are “so obvious we ignore them.” A good project plan tells you three things:

1. Exactly what you should do next
2. Exactly when it should be done
3. Exactly what you should do after that.

Again, it’s so simple that it tends to be ignored. In general, most people tend to ignore simple and helpful advice (like “eat sensibly and exercise”) and prefer to chase after complicated advice that sounds more “guru-like” (like a 300-page book about the latest fad diet). But in this case, you need to appreciate the simple pleasures of the project plan, because they will make you a lot of money.

A good project plan is so important because it helps you bypass a number of obstacles that drain online entrepreneurs of a resource that is absolutely critical to their profits: their time. These obstacles steal your focus, your effectiveness, and ultimately your ability to make money because they cause you to make less than optimal use of the limited time you have to build your business.

I’ll explain how these obstacles work as I step you through a quick-and-dirty project plan that could easily help you achieve five to ten times what you are accomplishing now (and in a lot less time than you would imagine, I suspect).

Let’s start at the beginning. A lot of online entrepreneurs (and maybe even you), have a business plan that looks a lot like this:

1. Get on the web
2. ???????
3. Profit

I know, that looks goofy, until you see how true it is. Substitute “write an ebook” or “start a blog” and you’ll see it can be a pretty applicable example. Far too many people jump into a business “to make a lot of money” without ever stepping through the process of making a detailed plan on how to get there.

And this kills their business. Because they are always focused on the goal (to make a lot of money), they tend not to get bogged down in the details of “what to do next.” And so they spend a lot of time surfing the web, going to seminars, buying products … and not enough time building up their own practice. Then they wonder why they aren’t making any money.

This may describe you, or it may not. Just take a look at the last 90 days of your business and ask yourself honestly how much time you spent taking specific action on things that were designed to create revenue. If you’re truly honest, that may not be as much time as you wish you had spent.

Now, I’m not trying to depress you with all this. I’m just trying to illustrate that there’s a reason why you might not be taking action at the level you need to – you might be lacking a project plan, and because of that, you fall into Trap #1: You’re not exactly sure what to do next.

When you’re not crystal clear on what to do next, you open yourself up to a lot of business-killing risk. You’re less focused on what you need to do, so you end up chasing a lot of avenues. You spend too much time on the web, or on discussion forums, or in your email, and you have all these ideas on how to make more money, but you’re not narrowing your focus on taking enough action to make it happen.

In an internet-based business this is a particularly nasty trap, since anything in the world is just a click away. You can sit down to get some work done on a promotion, see a web page about marketing, and start clicking your way to 3 hours of web “research.”

And then you rationalize, “Hey, that research was important!” because it might help you make more money down the road … but at the same time, you just used up time that wasn’t spent making you money now. I speak from experience – I’ve been there, and I know how easy it is to do when all you have is a “project plan” that’s little more than an end goal.

To avoid that trap and make sure you’re focused on the most important activity at any given time, you need to add some detail to that project plan. Even a little bit of detail helps, as you can see in this before and after:

Before a clear project plan

1. Write an ebook
2. ???
3. Profit

After a brief project plan brainstorm

1. Write an eBook
1. - Decide what niche it will serve
2. - Create an outline
3. - Write Chapter 1
4. - Write Chapter 2, (etc)
5. - Proofread and Edit
6. - Submit to small review team
7. - Edit with their suggestions
8. - Package the eBook
2. Promote the ebook
1. - Build a mailing list
2. - Find Affiliate partners
3. - Find JV partners
4. … etc …
3. Profit

As you can see, just this little bit of high-level detail makes things a lot clearer, and serves the all-important purpose of telling you what to do next (and more importantly, what you should be not be focusing on right now). If writing an outline is your next task, then it is not surfing the web, not building your list, not researching marketing … in other words, you now have the single target that you should place your focus on.

If you can summon up the discipline to stay focused on one thing at a time, you’ll get a lot more done than if you keep jumping from one thing to another. It’s not a popular bit of advice, but it’s one that guarantees consistent (and often rapid) progress. And that translates into more money in the bank for you.

The good thing about a project plan is that it doesn’t have to be terribly detailed at first – it just has to be “good enough” to keep you focused. A ten-minute investment in sketching out the details of your tasks can return dozens of hours of productivity to the next few weeks.

I would highly recommend that as soon as you finish this article, you set aside ten full minutes to sketch out the details of a project that you need to make more progress on. You’ll start seeing the benefit almost immediately.

To take that new project plan to the next level, though, is going to require one more thing – an estimate of the time it should take you to complete that task. Remember from earlier, a good project plan tells you:

1. Exactly what you should do next
2. Exactly when it should be done
3. Exactly what you should do after that.

Why is it so important to put an time estimate next to each task? It’s to avoid Trap #2: Not scheduling a task to be done because you’re not sure how long it will take. Tasks with time estimates are much more likely to be acted upon and completed than tasks without them, because you can wrap your brain around it – it’s no longer a great big task that you have to get around to. Instead, it’s just a task that you can knock out in 90 minutes.

There are two important reasons for setting a mini-deadline in the form of this quick estimate. The first one is that binding your task to a specific time frame allows you to put pressure on yourself to get it done in that time (or less). If your task is to just “Write an outline,” you might have some trouble getting to it, finding the time, and actually getting it done. Or, it might take forever, as you work on it … and work on it … and work on it …

But if you set a time limit of two hours to sketch out that outline, for example, that’s a different story. Those two hours can be scheduled into a particular day, and when you sit down to do it, you can tell yourself to hammer it out – without distraction – and really get it done in those two hours. (And by having it done, I don’t mean having it “perfect,” but instead just “good enough” to act upon). Just having that deadline can be a tremendous source of leverage as you push yourself to deliver in the timeframe you set.

The second reason that the time estimate is important is because it’s a number you can learn from. You’ll find that many (if not most) of your estimates are off (if not way off), especially in the beginning. But that’s really okay. You’ll either realize that you’ve overestimated, – or more likely, underestimated – the time you need to complete a task.

But now since you have an estimate to compare it to, you can plan more realistically for the next time you have to take a similar action. This is a very valuable skill to have in your business since it will help you become more confident you can get a task done in the time that you have dedicated to it. And as you already know, confidence is one of the foundations for generating the willpower to follow through on your profit-producing tasks.

Now that you can see how to avoid the first two traps – not scheduling your next action and not binding it to a specific time block, you’re still going to have to bypass Trap #3: Hesitating (or stopping completely) because you’re not sure what to do next.

This happens to people all the time. They know they need to get up and take some action on their business, but they’re not sure what to do. They need to produce a product, but at the same time, they need to start learning more about marketing. Then they have to work on building their list, but at the same time, they need to start working on some joint ventures and partnerships … so what to do next becomes a minefield. Everything is important, and because of that, everything screams equally as loudly.

With a project plan though, you can see the big picture. You can see how everything fits in with the whole, and you can put things in an order that makes sense. So maybe you’ve put product creation first, followed by joint ventures, list building and marketing. Or maybe you’re working on all four things simultaneously, and you’ve just broken them into time blocks that follow each other so you’re making consistent progress across the board.

You’ve just given yourself a big dose of peace of mind because now that you’ve put things on a schedule, you don’t have to feel overwhelmed at the things you have to do (or feel guilty that you’re not working on something else at any given time). You don’t have to carry that stress, because you know it’s all scheduled. You know you’ll get to it. And you know you’ve already started knocking things out.

So, if you’re not sold on how important a project plan is, scroll way up and start reading this again. If you’re having any trouble following through on the actions that are necessary to build a profitable business, this is probably a subject that addresses one of the core reasons you’re struggling.

So take my advice and set aside ten full minutes, right now, to sketch out a project plan so you know exactly what you need to do, exactly how long it should take, and exactly what you need to next. Get to it and start taking action. You’ll thank yourself for it.

How to Set and Keep Business Hours

It’s easy to tell yourself that you want to build a business that will make you a generous full-time income for the rest of your life. But it’s a much more challenging thing to actually do it. No matter how easy some people try and make it sound, there’s a lot of serious work you have to put into making a business profitable.

As a personal coach, I often get asked the question “Why isn’t my online business making the kind of money I hoped it would?” Now, the reasons behind this are varied, but more often than not, one of the most common stumbling blocks tends to be that the person hasn’t set – and committed to – setting aside regular “business hours” to work on following through on their business activities. It’s a classic time management issue.

If you’re not making the kind of money you want with your business, then you have to ask yourself if you’ve set and kept specific business hours to take care of what needs to be done. If this isn’t a problem for you, then there’s no need to read further. Maybe you’ll want to check out other articles in this series.

But if this does describe the time management obstacle you’re facing in your business, we need to get to changing this right away, or the results could be pretty devestating for your bottom line (especially if it’s at an early stage of your venture).

To do this, let’s take a step back for a moment and look at why people resist the idea of setting aside specific hours to build their online business – and how to turn the situation around to your advantage and give you leverage over the situation. Basically it comes down to a common perspective people have about “business hours”:
I don’t need to set business hours.

The whole point of an online business is so I can make money on my own time. Setting business hours would be too restricitive.

Hmm … yes, and no. It is great that an online business is one that you can run from a flexible scheule, and a good-sized portion of the tasks can be handled on your own time … but be honest, are you really getting them all done? If you are, fantastic (and again, this article isn’t necessarily for you). But if you’re honest, there are probably a lot of things you need to do to build your business that aren’t getting done because of a number of factors.

It’s been my experience over the last two decades of studying how people work that what doesn’t get scheduled more often than not doesn’t get done. There are a million things competing for your attention every day, and if you don’t get serious about scheduling the activities that are important to your business, then they are very likely to be pushed aside in favor of some new urgency that plops out in front of you during the day. And then your business activities just become additional items on your “to-do” list that get pushed aside to another day … again.

When you set aside specific hours that you have committed to dedicate to your key business activities, you’re setting yourself on the path of massive follow through. But it takes some discipline to get things going. If you’re constantly playing a game of “I’ll work on it when I can get to it,” then you’re seriously hampering your ability to make strong, rapid growth for your business.

And setting business hours doesn’t have to be restrictive at all, even if you have a schedule that fluctuates wildly. You can ease into it by building what I call a “hybrid” schedule, or a schedule where one part is “set in stone” and the other side is more flexible.

Here’s an example for someone who says they have no time / very little time to get their business going. This is good for someone just starting out:

Step One: Look at the next seven days and try to find 3 to 5 hours that you can lock down as “100% committed” to working on your key business activities.

They don’t all have to be on the same day – you can split them as you like. The important part is to find somehwere that you can lock down that time. Maybe you can go to bed an hour later every day. Maybe you can set aside a copule of hours on Saturday and Sunday.

Realistically, you can find 3 to 5 hours you can fully commit to working your business that you can reasonably say won’t be interrupted by something else. It just takes the discipline to do it. Once you commit to that time, though, tell yourself that you will not let anything keep you from following through from “showing up” for those hours.

This will let you ease into the discipline of locking down time to run your business and guarantee you the space to get profitable activities taken care of.

Step Two: Come up with a flexible schedule to work in another 3 to 5 hours this week.

At this point, it’s good to set a goal of working in just a few extra hours during the week to give you some extra momentum. I say just a few because we’re easing into this discipline, so I don’t want to over-burden you and reduce the chance that you’ll follow through on building this new habit.

These extra hours will be part of your “flexible schedule” – time that you’ll fit into your day as your week’s schedule allows. This will be time you push yourself to follow through on, but on a day to day basis rather than putting it in your “set in stone” schedule.

The advantage of flexible scheduling is that it gives you the ability to roll with the uncertainty of the week, as your schedule may shift around from day to day. You may realize that you have an extra block of time freed up on a particular day that you can take avantage of.

Just make sure as the week goes by you get those hours of work knocked out, so you’re not faced with a load of work right at the end.

Step Three: Maintain or Increase The Workload

A key to your business sucess is going to be keeping the pace. You don’t want to let a week go by without hitting a minimum number of scheduled hours, or you’ll start to lose momentum (and for some people, they’ll never get around to recovering). So as you wrap up the week, you’ll be faced with one of two choices:

1. If you’ve had any problems sticking to your set-in-stone or your flexible schedules, you need to figure out how to fix the issues that became your obstacles. Make this your priority, and commit to meeting that work schedule for the next week.
2. If you were able to keep your schedule, now’s the time to increase the time you commit to business hours. Don’t go crazy – you may just want to push for a 30 or 60 minute increase – but do take some action to push yourself. You always want to be growing at this initial phase. Later on you’ll want to focus more on becoming more efficient than adding more hours, but for now, raise the bar a little bit.

For those struggling to get into a rhythm of solid and consistent business progress, this is a good template for moving forward and getting the ball rolling. And if you’re still reading so far, chances are these three tactics are something that you’ll want to start putting into action immediately.

So go ahead and schedule those business hours – and start following through on a lot more of the activities that will start making you more money. Do it now. You’ll thank yourself for it.

How to Get Past The Mid-Day Slump

If you’ve ever heard the term “circadian rhythm,” you may already be familiar with the internal clock your body uses to regulate your energy levels during the day. It begins rising from the time you wake up and greet the sun until the time you get ready for bed … except for this big pothole of lethargy smack in the middle of the day. You know it as the mid-day slump.

It’s the time people go for coffee breaks, or grab a soda, or just start to zone out. If that’s happening to you, you need to take action to pull yourself out of the slump. You don’t want to go for coffee or soda, because you’ll just get a brief caffeine or sugar boost that you’ll crash from before too long. But you don’t want to just grab a junky snack either. That candy bar might give you a short boost, but you’ll get the same crash afterwards.

Ultimately, you want to be the one in control of keeping your energy level high, and you don’t want to use crutches like sugar and caffeine to do it. The good news is that you don’t need them. Instead, you can use three strategies to counterbalance that mid-day slump.

#1 – Keeping your blood sugar level fairly constant.
When you eat food, your body converts it into glycogen, which ends up getting stored in your liver like gas in a gas tank. If you don’t eat something for a while, the glycogen in your liver is going to run out and as your blood sugar drops, you’ll feel that slump come on. You’re out of gas. And if you’re one of those people who doesn’t eat breakfast, that slump is going to be even more severe.

What you want to do is make sure you keep your blood sugar level from dipping during the day. An easy way to do this is to make sure that you don’t go more than about three hours without having something good to eat – basically a half-time snack between each of the three main meals – breakfast lunch or dinner.

But not all snacks are created equal. Sugary foods and drinks are definitely out. But you also have to avoid highly processed foods like crackers, white breads and bagels, as their energy is metabolized too rapidly. Since they get converted to sugar quickly you’ll get that big burst that fizzles out, just as you would with a can of soda. You don’t want that.

What you want is a snack that will digest more slowly and give you a steady stream of energy. I’m talking fruit, nuts, yogurt, bran cereals, milk, as well as a lot of other foods. Rather than go into a big list of them right now, I’d suggest you do an internet search for the words “foods with low glycemic index” and you’ll get a lot of good leads.

The important thing here is consistency. Between breakfast and dinner, don’t let more than three hours go without getting some good food in your stomach. This will help reduce the effect of the slump in the first place.

#2 – Start drinking more water. Plenty more.
The other thing that will help you beat that slump is – you guessed it – water. The more hydrated you are, the less the slump affects you. So make sure you’re very hydrated, especially during this part of the day.

There’s not much more to be said about this one. A lot people hate to do it, but there’s no way around it. I’m not too thrilled about maintaining the fluids in my car’s engine, but I can’t avoid the impact I’ll face if I don’t. So no matter what, don’t let this one slip.

#3 – Shake it off – literally.
When that dreaded energy slump hits (and it will), you have to take immediate and full-out action to break it’s hold on you. There are a lot of ways you can try and shake it off, but I want you to really focus on the one that’s the most effective – walking and talking. It may sound a bit silly, but bear with me.

The number one way to shake off the slump when it hits is to get your heart pumping – to get moving. Get up out of your chair and take a 5-10 minute brisk walk, or walk up and down the stairs a few times if your workplace has a staircase. (To really get your heart rate up, walk them two at a time – the burn hits you fast). This has two benefits – first it breaks you away from whatever you’re focusing on, which is a relief, and second, it gets your heart pumping, which will definitely help your energy levels.

But walking alone often isn’t enough (usually because we’re internalizing complaints about the process!). You’ve got to do a little bit of talking to yourself as well. You see, a lot of the time we hit that slump it’s in part because we’re really not excited about whatever it is we’re doing at the time. That boredom amplifies the power of the slump, because we’re choosing to focus on something that just doesn’t excite us. So you’ve got to spend a few minutes as you walk thinking about what you can get excited about.

There’s got to be something. Maybe you’re working on a project where you have the opportunity to really look good in front of your boss. Maybe you can get excited about pushing yourself to have more self-discipline today than you had yesterday. Maybe you should just focus on being grateful to have a job, or to have a family you’re helping to nurture, if you stay at home. Everybody gets excited by different things, so you’ve got to figure out what works for you.

Now chances are, you may come to the slump thinking there’s nothing in the world that excites you at that particular moment. The thing is, that’s just not true. There’s something – you just have to dig for it. And this is a hard thing for a lot of people, because we’ve convinced ourselves that our mood is at the mercy of the environment and circumstances around us. Bit it’s not. You can totally get yourself in a great state if you truly focus on the good things in your life at that moment, and what you can do right then to make it even better.

So when you’re walking, if you feel that you don’t have anything to energize you, all I can say is you have to dig deeper. Don’t let yourself be held back by the misleading thought that you have to live in the slump. There’s something you can appreciate about your life, something you may just be taking for granted right now. Focus on being grateful, focus on being excited about whatever opportunity you have in the current situation – and believe me, there is one, even if you can’t see it at first – focus on that and you’ll pull yourself out of the slump.

This is a really important skill to master, because 50% of your slump has to do with your mental focus. You can run a marathon to get your blood pumping, but if you’re not supporting the mental side of this you’re going to be trapped in the power of the slump.

So that’s the focus you should have to defeat the mid-day slump. The first step is eating intelligently, so you minimize the slump in the first place. The second step is doing the walking and talking – get moving and support yourself with thoughts that empower you. That one-two punch will help enormously, but only if you really give it 100% when you try it.

Now, looking back at this, sure I could have given you a dozen little tips on how to shake off the slump, but I believe – and I think you’ll agree – that it’s really more important to focus on the cause of the problem than on the symptoms.

So get out your worksheets and make a plan for how you’re going to launch a pre-emptive strike against the mid day slump and banish it forever. Go to it and do it now. You’ll thank yourself for it.

Give it a try today & see what you think! You’ll thank yourself for it.

How To Keep Your Business PC Safe (Part 1)

Just thought I’d write a quick post here to reference a common danger I see for a lot of people who run an online business … the danger of having your online business come to a crashing halt because of viruses, data corruption, or adware/spyware.

How to Keep What you Browse for from Screwing Up Your Computer

Think about it .. if your business PC was corrupted – if it were shut down or taken out of commission … or if it just plain broke … how much would that cost you? How hard would that hit your business?

Too many people running their own online business don’t take the time to build in “disaster recovery” into their plan, even though it could wipe out your business in a heartbeat. So as someone who has experienced the pains of computer failure and data corruption in the past – and as a coach who helps online business owners avoid that pain in the future, I’m starting two series of articles: one for safeguarding your PC, and one for safeguarding your data.

In this first article on safeguarding your PC, I’m going to tell you about a great (and free) program that allows you to create a virtual computer on your PC that is completely isolated from your main computer (called your ‘host’ PC). Whatever you do inside this ‘virtual machine’ does not spill over into your host PC.

This program is great for doing research for your business and for downloading files – you won’t have to worry about cookies, spyware/adware or viruses getting onto your host PC. previously, this program carried a $200 price tag because the target market was high-tech companies (these ‘throwaway’ machines are perfect for programmers and software testers), but they’ve just released a free version that you can download and use for yourself.

To get this program, go to the VMWare web site and download the free VMWare Player. You will also need to download the “Browser Appliance”, a preconfigured Linux operating system that you can boot up and use to access the internet safely – and immediately.

This awesome program is free (but keep in mind it will take up about 1 GB of your hard drive space), and will be worth its weight in gold for how it can keep “badware” from mucking up your PC.

Give it a try today & see what you think! You’ll thank yourself for it.