What steps can you take to move your dreams out of your head and into the real world?

1. Know you can do this

If not you, then who?

Don’t undermine yourself by thinking you’re not smart enough, connected enough, or whatever you might decide makes you the wrong person to undertake your dream.

If you need someone to show faith in you and lend you some strength and belief, go get it – from a smart friend, colleague or coach.

2. Dream big

Intoxicate yourself with the vision of your dream manifesting. Get high on seeing how amazing it’s success will be.

Ensure the dream is big enough and write out a bold statement of intent that includes the benefits it’s success will bring. If it’s a book – what difference do you want it to make to others? If it’s a charitable venture – who benefits?

3. Get practical

This is the time to sit down and get very focused.

It’s important to stay inspired but it’s also vital to get on with the work of making it happen, step by step, day by day, week by week.

4. Inspire others

Your dream will require the support of others to make it happen.

Ensure your vision is not perceived as a ‘vanity mission’ but a grand, generous venture that will benefit all. Check that your colleagues all have a personal vested interest in co-operating on the mission.

Read over the chapter, Inspire Others in The 7 Rules of Success for more on this.

5.  Have fun now!

Don’t withhold relaxing and celebrating until some far-off completion date.

Fuel yourself along the way with minor celebrations of your success. When your team meet, meet in great places so the mission is anything but dull. Hard work doesn’t have to be grim.

Keep your morale strong by staying light along the way – however serious your mission.

Never has the trend for owning your business been more in the spotlight.

Never before have so many people, en masse, decided that corporate life or working for someone else is just not where they want to be anymore.

If you are part of this growing trend you will need to know how to flourish in a competitive environment.

You will need to know how to add value and contribute something different in order to make yourself stand out from the crowd. The good news is that there is a tried and tested way that all the most successful businesses in the world having been using as their number one power tool for decades.

Niching

Niching is where it’s at as far as successfully marking your business is concerned. Take a look at the Fiona Harrold site these days and you’ll see that all of the coaches specialise in one or two particular areas.

Mine is Divorce and Relationship and Time Management/Business Training.I have two niches, which work well for me. Any more would require extra admin skills that I just don’t have time for.

The point is that niching has grown my business exponentially and instead of the other coaches on the site becoming my competition, they are actually my allies. (More on that in next week’s newsletter).

Defining your niche, your unique selling point, is not just important it is absolutely vital. Without a defined niche, you will be wearing too many hats as you try to satisfy all of the people all of the time. You will burn out, become disillusioned and lose your focus.

Define your niche

You will begin to forget the reason you went into your business in the first place and you will slowly but surely grind to a halt. What you want to be to be doing is satisfying some of the people all of the time. Defining your niche is the simply the best way to do this.

Many people tell me that they don’t believe in niches because that they are limiting.

Surely if you focus on just one group of people, you are waving the possibility of so many others customers goodbye? Interesting point, but one I believe which is based on the enemy of all good business ideas, fear.

The fear is that there is not enough to go around, or you may miss out on something. Fear is what keeps people out there floundering while others are focused.The fact is that once you have defined your market you are much more able to focus on satisfying the needs of a specific group of people.

For example, lets imagine that you have worked in the corporate world for most of your career managing teams of people in one guise or another. You train as a coach and a reiki therapist and start coaching and reiki-ing anyone who seems willing. You do ok, but there are a thousand other coach/therapists doing the same.

Then you remember the reason you left the corporate world. You were stressed, with little time for your family and friends and your body hurt physically and mentally. Think about it. Guess who your best clients would be? People just like you!

Contacts

And, as you were part of the corporate world for so long, guess who will have the contacts and the understanding of this world that other coaches and therapists don’t have? You.

These people are in pain for the same reason you were. There are so many companies with budgets for the health of their workforce just waiting to be spent.

Why would they spend it on you? Because they want a mentally and physically healthy workforce. The top reason for attrition in companies is stress. How valuable would your services be?

You don’t have to put all the skills you have accomplished over the years to one side. The smartest thing you can do is to combine all you know with your new knowledge and create a niche for yourself that allows you to focus on a specific group of people who need you. This applies to every new business I can think of.

Soul-Searching

Knowing what your niche is however, takes a little bit of soul searching.

Fundamentally there are three things you need to know.

• The first thing you must do is to discover your Outcome. What do you want to achieve? What would be the ultimate result of all your endeavours? What do you want to achieve as a result of your outcome?
• The second place to look is to discover your purpose. What purpose does running this business honour? Ultimately will this business provide you and your customers with that will fill a need in their lives and yours?
• And finally you need to know the right actions to take that will move you towards your goal and be sustainable for the future.

As well as all of the above, any niche you choose must align with your own personal values and have in place personal boundaries that will work for you. You may be changing careers and building a business because your personal boundaries were trodden on in the past.

Discipline

Working for yourself can be an almost round the clock exercise unless you are disciplined in your approach. You don’t want to find yourself back in a painful situation of your own making. The Know Your Niche Workshop draws on the best in personal management to show you how to stop this happening.

My suggestion to any of you out there in the process of starting or building your business is to decide who your clients are going to be.  When Marks and Spencer’s ran their unsuccessful marketing campaign “Exclusively for everybody”, sales when down.

Why, because nothing is exclusively for everybody except the air we breathe. Making sure your marketing clearly attracts the clients you want is a skill that must be learned in order for your services or products to sell to the right people.

I know the excuses you can give yourself for not moving on. I know how easy it is to convince yourself that what you’ve got is not so bad after all. That if you move it might be a huge mistake, frying pan into the fire stuff.

And I also understand that the older you get the harder it gets: the more there is to lose. Add to that a growing fear of job uncertainly, and sometimes I know it’s easier to keep your head down in the job you’ve got than risk change.

I also know how staying in the wrong job can deplete you, how it can relentlessly take away your energy. How this feeling can spill over and start to take away your zest for life in general. I know how being in a job that depletes rather than enhances your energy can be like living a slow death.

I’ve looked at the painting by Edvard Munch, ‘The Scream’ and felt a resonance! And the scary thing about all this is that sometimes it can happen and you don’t even notice.

I know about being in the right job, too. The ‘click’. The feeling of flow – that what you do matches what you want to do. Where that irritating clich?, ‘problems are opportunities’ is true! Where rather than hearing clanging, discordant notes in your head, you hear harmony. Where time flies, and it’s a positive feeling.

There’s a huge difference between being in a satisfying job and an unsatisfying one. Below are my top tips to help you avoid being in the wrong job.

1.Rate your satisfaction at work right now

Anything below 7 is a warning sign. If you’re operating below 5, it’s simply unacceptable. You deserve to give yourself better. Ask yourself, is this a temporary dip, or has it been going on for some time? We all have temporary dips, but if yours is something more long term, don’t ignore it. Don’t let it become a habit. Habit breeds tolerance!

2.Work to keep your satisfaction rating high in your current job

However you rate your satisfaction at work, it’s worth putting the effort in to improve it. If you’re one of the highs, beware complacency. If you’re a low, think of how can you be part of the solution rather than the problem. Do a reality check – is it the job, or is it you? Who do you need to talk to about this and what do you need to say? What can you do to make your current work more enjoyable? What goals can you set yourself to inspire you? How can you connect more with people? How can you do more of what makes you buzz?

3.Accept that the need for change is natural

As human beings, we need change. We atrophy if things stay the same. What was challenging and enjoyable before, may constitute rut territory now. As your life moves on, often your work needs to as well. That may mean changing jobs, changing companies, changing careers. It may mean it’s time to set up on your own. What does it mean for you?

4.Have courage

Change isn’t easy, especially when you’re thinking about it. It’s okay to feel scared. There would be no need for courage if you weren’t scared! If you’re worried about what you’ll lose if you leave, what will you lose if you stay? If everyone thinks you’re successful, so what? What do you think? What looks great on paper isn’t necessarily great in reality. What have you really got to lose? Do some big picture thinking.

5.Take action

Ignoring negative feelings, panicking, distracting yourself or feeling guilty don’t help. They just fuel the problem. The famous mystic and poet, Rumi, said ‘Counterfeiters exist because there is such a thing as real gold.’ Think about it. No matter how it seems, you always have choice. Do what you have to do.

All of my business objectives for each new year are connected to a long term strategy. How many of you have a long term vision or strategy for your life? Do you know where you want to get to, who you want to be, what you want to have?

Without this in place, a New Year’s resolution is merely wishful thinking and it’s no wonder we get bored with it by February.

At Cadbury Schweppes, once we have our long term business strategy – our goals – we then set our annual objectives; what we aim to achieve in the coming year. The difference with these is that they are exciting.

Energise

We use phrases and words like “be the best,” “exciting,” “superb products.” The reason we do this is that we have to energise over 60,000 employees to help deliver the objectives.

On a personal level, you could say that “this year I want to get fit.” This sounds very dull. How about “I want to be superbly fit and healthy and be in the best shape I have ever been in my life.” A bit more exciting!

Think about how you would communicate your New Years resolution to 60,000 people and get them excited.

Implications

Finally, you need to think about the implications of not achieving your resolution. In the corporate world the pain is clear – our share price goes down, we get less bonus, I look bad to my boss which impacts my promotion chances… and so on.

For each of your new year’s resolutions you need to understand the implications of not achieving them and you need to feel bad – if the visualisation of not achieving your resolution doesn’t make you cringe, worry, get you angry or instil any other reaction, it isn’t a resolution you are going to act on. So change it.

If you do this well you will have a set of objectives that are aligned to a long term vision which will be so exciting that you will act on them and see them through right through to the end of the year. Now isn’t that worth the effort?

Time is really the only capital that any human being has, and the only thing he can’t afford to lose.
Thomas Edison

It’s only March and already many of my clients are panicking that the year is almost a quarter over!  Where did the time go?

Maybe it’s me but doesn’t it seem to go quicker than it used to? Well, I know that’s not the truth, but I also know that we are all trying to cram so much in to our waking hours that we just cant afford to spend any time on activities or with people who waste our time.

Where Did It Go?!

So if you have ever wondered where the day went or you are a person that often seems to run out of time no matter how well you’ve planned, take heart, you are not alone.

I have discovered exactly what is happening and I’ll tell you this, every day all over the world, many many people are experiencing the same strange phenomena.  There are insidious little monsters that slide into our lives with the sole intention of stealing our most precious asset, our time.

No, truly!

They come in through the back door in the shape of people and tasks that get in your way. I call them the Time Thieves.

Do you ever get the feeling that whole mornings or afternoons have been “stolen” from you? Have you ended the day bemused, wondering where the hours disappeared to and berating yourself for your lack of productivity?

No one is ever truly safe from the Time Thieves because they work subliminally. They arrive uninvited and before you know it you’ve been “burgled” and there’s no 3 star policy to allow you to claim back the time. It’s gone, never to return.

However there is an answer.  There is only one tool has ever been effective in allowing you to take control of your time so that you can recognize and eliminate the time thieves. It’s a way of noticing how your time gets taken from you and it’s called “The Art of Self-Management.”

Master Time

Self-Management is key in mastering the time in your life. Unless you can trust yourself to create strong boundaries, and know when and what to say yes and no to, those time thieves will get the better of you every day. In order to discourage them, you’ll need to stay focused on your outcome and become adept at your communication.

Whenever you open your mouth to speak, you have the power to move towards the life you want or move away from it. The power of language as a major asset in self-management cannot be underestimated.

Unless you can articulate your needs honestly and responsibly you’ll be victim to the timewasters who’d rather you did what they wanted instead of what you want. Self-management is a discipline that you must commit to.

But my experience is that many people wait until they are so put upon, so overwhelmed and so uncomfortable that they become self-managed as a means of survival.

By recognizing the pitfalls, you are able to anticipate and negotiate and manage your time. If you take a moment to think honestly, you probably already know what your own personal time thieves look like but there may be some you have not yet identified.

One thing’s for sure, successful people are self-managed people who spend their time wisely. They know how much their time is worth to them both financially and emotionally and they only invest it in what’s most important.

Paid Time

For those of you who are exchanging your time for money, the following analysis is for you because it will let you know exactly how much your time is worth so you can decide where to invest it.

Time Cost Analysis

Take, for example, a person who earns £30,000 per year. Based on a 52-week year, this equates to a weekly salary of £576.92.  £576.92 based on a 40-hour week gives an hourly rate of £14.42, which works out to be 0.24 pence per minute.

Note though that these calculations are pre tax deductions and daily expenses. When you add those into the equation, your value per year and pro rata down the line will decrease.

So take a pen and paper and a calculator and work through the following steps to discover exactly how much your time is worth.

1. What is your yearly salary?
2. Divide your yearly salary by 52 weeks to reveal your weekly salary
3. Divide your weekly salary by 40 hours to give you your hourly rate
4. Finally divide your hourly rate by 60 to give you your value per minute.

You may, of course work more or less than a 40-hour week and you can change the calculations accordingly. Don’t forget to add in your travel time too.

As someone who is self-employed I realise that it’s not just my paid hours that count as work time. It’s not unusual for me to work a 60-hour week even though my paid hours are less. I have my admin, my bookwork, the service I offer my clients in terms of emails and pre-session arrangements, preparation for trainings, and more besides. I need to spread my salary across all my working hours to get a true picture of how much my time is worth.

So now you have a true picture of your financial worth, are you surprised at the outcome? I imagine there are all kinds of thoughts that have occurred to you as a result of this exercise.

Priceless Time

What about those of us who do not measure our daily lives in financial terms? People like parents or carers who might have little or no income. If you are one of these people, your time is Priceless Time. It just cannot be equated to money.

The emotional and physical energy you expend on a daily basis is immeasurable and my hope is that you derive satisfaction and personal fulfilment in all your daily tasks. You work with love and I have never found anyone who can put a price on that.

Whether you are paid or unpaid for what you do, you still need to focus on how much it costs you to waste your time on many “low yield” activities, which battle for your attention on a day-to-day basis.

You see, however meticulously you plan your day, when the time thieves arrive you’d better be ready for them and to do that, you have to understand what they look like.

Interrupted Time

The time thieves present themselves in the form of interruptions.  The average person gets one interruption every eight minutes or approximately seven per hour, or fifty to sixty per day.  The average interruption takes 5 minutes, totalling about four hours or 50% of the average workday.  80% of those interruptions are typically rated as “little value” or “no value” creating approximately three hours of waster time per day.

Ultimately you need to know where to build strong defences that will keep the time thieves at bay. You need to know what you can control and do something about it and know what you cant control so you can set time aside for the unexpected situations that will almost certainly arise at one time or another.

Five Steps To Foil The Time Thieves

1. Adequate planning

Make sure you take time out to plan each day and schedule enough time for the most important tasks. Planning properly means that nothing gets left out or forgotten, and allows you to focus your attention on the task in hand.

2. Self control

Chatting on the phone or doing the crossword may be more enjoyable than the tasks you have set for the day, but you’re not doing yourself any favours. Get the “must do” tasks finished first, then you can relax and really enjoy your leisure time.

3. Learn to say “No”

Inability to say no can leave you overburdened and over-committed. People-pleasing tactics normally end up causing more trouble than they’re worth, putting you under stress to complete an increased workload.

4. Think it through

Everyone makes mistakes, but proper forward planning, and the occasional double-check, will catch many of them at source. Never believe you are infallible – a few minutes spent checking something can save you hours of frustration in the long run.

5. Get organised!

Mislaying important items, disorganised diary-keeping, and general chaos will increase the amount of time wasted and can only add to your stress levels. Take some time out each day to get reorganised and ensure that things are put back in a place where you can find them.

Of all the things that you did , there was certainly one fabulous success (if you’ve not found it yet, look harder!), so now the big question is – how could you use the same strategies that gave you so much success in this area to guarantee your own personal success in the year to come?

Your best year ever

My gift to you for your happiest year ever is to share with you a strategy for successful outcomes that I have seen work with hundreds of clients year after year.  It’s exceptionally simple yet totally unique to you and if you use it, you can guarantee personal success.  It’s called…

PUTTNG THE COOK IN THE KITCHEN

If you ask a great cook how he makes a particular dish, he may very well say, well, I take a pound of this and some of that, put it all together and bake in a hot oven.  You are none the wiser. But if you ask the cook to retrace his steps and stop him at each ingredient along the way, you are very likely to discover his success strategy.

In order to create your own personal success strategy, you’ll need to take yourself back to the moment you decided to do the thing that gave you your greatest success and write down each and every step you took along the way to get there.

1. What happened just before?

Do you remember what led you to decide that you must now take action?  You probably had a thought and perhaps it was something like “enough is enough – I just have to do this” Go back to that thought and write down what that thought was.

2. What was your desired outcome?

After the initial thought, you almost certainly created your desired outcome in your mind. You knew exactly what it was you wanted and this time you were determined to achieve it.  What was that desired outcome?

3. What was your strategy?

In order to achieve your outcome there will always be a strategy. Even though it looks like outcomes and accompanying strategies are different, in essence your own personal strategy is always the same and can be used for all your goals in life.

Here’s an example of a client taking her driving test that she had failed 4 times previously but wanted to pass in order to achieve independence:

• Studying the Highway Code every night for 40 minutes
• Driving with experienced driver four times a week for one hour
• Extra focus on difficult manoeuvres
• Paying more attention
• Changing behaviours (e.g. mirror/signal instead of the other way round)

This same strategy could be used for studying, buying a new home, or creating a sustainable relationship. The basic ingredients for her are:

• Know my Outcome
• Research
• Practise
• Focus on difficult areas
• Paying more attention/listening/understanding
• Changing behaviours that don’t work in that situation

4. How did you do it?

Take some time to write down now every step you took that led to successful achievement of your outcome. Don’t miss anything out, put yourself in your own ‘kitchen’ and retrace your exact steps.

5. SUCCESS!

The last part of this strategy is to ask yourself “which of my values were honoured by successfully achieving my outcome?”  I imagine that virtually all of them were, so just take a moment now to write down which values were honoured by your fabulous success. Now you know that you have truly been successful because you have honoured you!

Taking it forwards

This is the basic strategy for achieving success in everything you do.  If you want to make some comparisons, look at outcomes that have not been successfully achieved and retrace the strategy you used.

Notice where you crashed and what you would now do to create success.  Follow your own personal success strategy in every area of your life and have the most fabulous and successful year!

I’ll bet you can remember several occasions when something went really well every step of the way. You made the right choices and decisions and achieved the result you were looking for.  It may have been passing  your driving test, starting up a new business, creating new relationships or changing your career path.

Whatever it was that gave you the results you wanted, it happened as a result of a great strategy that worked for you.

The most successful people in the world know exactly how to invest their time to produce the most effective outcomes both financially and socially.

They use a proven formula that never fails, combined with tried and tested strategies that underpin everything they do. Having trained people to make the most of their time for 10 years, I want to share these secrets with you and show you how you too can be in control of the time in your life.

Over the years as a coach and trainer I have had the opportunity to study the behaviours of my most successful clients.

Success

What is it they all have in common that allows them to achieve in the way that they do? How is it that these people are able to turn their dreams into reality and maintain consistent results over a long period of time? Are they more intellectual than others, do they have degrees and incredible qualifications, perhaps letters after their names?

Certainly not! As in the majority of fabulously successful people in our world, they share an attitude that has allowed them to accomplish amazing things in the shortest possible time.  The majority of my successful clients know just this:

• They know what they want – their outcome
• They know why they want it – their purpose
• They know what actions to take to make it happen
• And most importantly:
  They know how to control their emotions so that nothing stands in their way of achieving the results they want.

Emotions?

Yes emotions. Let me explain. Isn’t it the truth that when you are doing work you love or spending time enjoying yourself or taking part in some absorbing activity that time goes past in a flash?

Isn’t is also true that when you are struggling with the mundane, doing work that has little value or challenge for you, or spending time with people who you are not thrilled about, time goes by, often painfully, slowly.

Clock Watching

I know people who just wait around the whole week for Friday to arrive because they are either overwhelmed with the stress of their daily lives, bored to tears, or both! And isn’t this all about your emotional reaction to the time in your life.

Time is an emotional issue. Daily distractions like e-mails, web surfing, paper shuffling and fire fighting are all creating emotional reactions to the moment that eats up our time and takes us away from our most important outcomes.

That’s if we even know our outcomes in the first place! Learning how to control our emotions about what happens on a daily basis is one of the fundamental keys to managing your time effectively.

Harnessing your emotions and taking back control of your time is a given for all successful people. How you react in the moment will either lead you towards your ultimate outcomes or take you off in the other direction.

Making Choices

I know where I’d like you to be heading and I want to make sure you know too at all times. The choices you make about what to do in the moment are your investment in your future.

A simple example like eating fattening food illustrates this perfectly. If I eat a cream cake right now, will I be fatter in one hour?

Probably not, it takes a while to kick in, so I might persuade myself that it really doesn’t matter. But if I continue to eat cream cakes regularly for the next week, pretty soon I’m going to see an expanding body. If I do this over an extended period of time, will I be the slim healthy person I want to be?

No.

The same with your time. Waste it over a day which turns into weeks or months and you’ll be making that New Year’s resolution all over again, only next time you’ll be a year older and clearly none the wiser!

Precious Commodity

Time is our most precious commodity in the work place and out of it. If we don’t learn how to focus on what’s most important on a minute-by-minute basis, hours and hours slip through our fingers and blend seamlessly into days of wasted time and future regrets.

There are no rollovers. What you waste today you cannot put into a “doggy bag” to use tomorrow. Its gone and with it the possibility of everything you could have achieved but didn’t.

In my work with global organisations like BP, Nokia, Lloyds TSB and Marks & Spencer’s as well with very busy entrepreneurs, the recurring phrases I hear from individuals is “how can I get everything done, with less resources in shortest possible time?” It doesn’t matter whom you work for or with or if you work for yourself.

Every business of whatever size will expect more from you in less time. Every person who wants to combine their career with a social life, a fitness regime, parental obligations and everything else they try to fit in, often feels that they are run ragged.

Get Time to Live

We are all in the same boat. And there is no more physical time for any of us. In the end Einstein got up at 3am so that he could fit everything he wanted to into his life. He had on average 4-5 hours sleep. I don’t know about you, but I’m not prepared to do that. I want a life where I get everything done and still have time to play.

Time is finite and precious – you can’t make more of it, but you can control how you use it. My online course, Time to Live, will equip you with the knowledge and the techniques you need to use time efficiently and to your best advantage.

This course teaches you the same techniques that I teach in workshop that I offer to major global enterprises, so that you too can learn the secrets of taking back control of your time.

When you follow the course you will:

• Find out where your time is going
• Learn how to plan, organise and prioritise your time
• Discover how to balance work and leisure time
• Set targets and timelines – and meet them!
• Foil the time thieves – make the most of your precious time.

This course is packed full of practical actions guaranteed to explode your personal productivity, achieve your goals and give you more time to live!

She’s working all the hours there are, for less money and taking a holiday is impossible without feeling guilty for all the things she should be doing for her clients. Having made the big step to self-employment, she can’t see where to go next to make it really work for her.

CHALLENGE 1

Get organised

Jenny has made the common mistake of thinking that running her own business was going to be easy. In fact, life is far tougher for her now than it was when she was an employee. Right now, Jenny is exploiting herself more than any employer could.

How to make it happen

Establish clear and written terms and conditions for your working life. Set your hours of business and stick to them. Jenny works from a spare room at home and finds herself working until 7pm at night and checking emails and the ansaphone over the weekend. This is unnecessary and stops her from ever switching off and relaxing. She needs to outline her working hours and business practises to her clients at the outset, explaining that out-of-hours calls are for emergencies only, and not feel in the least guilty about this. It is vital that she make her business work for her otherwise she may be tempted to give it all up and go back to working for someone else.

CHALLENGE 2

Get a strategy

Jenny is so bogged down in the day-to-day business that she doesn’t have a clear perspective on the direction she wants to take the business in. She needs to have a vision and big picture for Jenny Procter Communications with clear written goals and objectives.

How to make it happen

All successful organisations have morale-boosting, brain storming ‘away-days’ to plan for the company’s growth. Jenny needs to book a day where she can relax and plan the way ahead and feel fired up about her future. She needs to identify the type of clients and niche areas she prefers and attract more of these.

In Jenny’s case her favourite work has been representing NHS Trusts. She should exploit her existing contacts to introduce her to Trusts in other areas. She enjoys writing so could contribute a feature in a NHS magazine which would introduce her to the industry that she wants to establish herself in.

As she works on her own, she can only take on a few clients and must be strict about charging enough. She must be prepared to say ‘No’ to taking on lots of small clients who pay very little but still expect a lot in return.

CHALLENGE 3

Enjoy your life

Jenny’s original intention in working for herself was to have a better quality of life and spend more time with her husband, friends and family. She has lost contact with friends, rarely sees her family and a much needed fitness routine has never happened. It’s time to prioritise her life, not just her clients.

How to make it happen

Jenny needs to get back in touch with her old friends and find a few new ones as well. She is a sociable young woman who will benefit from more fun and stimulating company. She should discuss joint activities with her husband as they spend their weekends together doing routine chores.

New, challenging sports and activities are called for and travelling abroad for weekends will help fulfil Jenny’s goal of learning a new language.

Jenny’s dream is to work 4 days a week and have Fridays off. She should consider bringing in an assistant to free her up and do the admin that she loathes, such as invoicing and bookkeeping.

Above all, Jenny has to make this business work for her, otherwise she’ll end up deflated and resentful, and the worst thing is that she’d only have herself to blame! She is great at what she does and takes very good care of her clients. Now, she must take care of herself and her life as well.

When I first started working with Karen, it was obvious to me that she had heaps of unused potential, but her confidence and belief in herself had taken a bit of a knocking and she was feeling confused as to what the next step for her was.

But she committed to changing her life from one that simply wasn’t working on most levels, to one which is now fulfilling, exciting and challenging – Karen finally gave herself permission, albeit tentatively at first to dream – and dream big.

What makes Karen’s “re-invention” so remarkable, was, and still is, her willingness to investigate, take risks, and, being prepared to “get it wrong” before she found her “it.”

Karen is proof of how important it is to allow yourself the privilege of dreaming big and having the courage to take the action no matter how daunting, to make that dream a reality.  With that courage Karen has created a life  – to use her words – “full of purpose”.

Well done Karen, it was a pleasure to share your journey!

Karen’s Story

Prior to lifecoaching sessions with Rita, my life had reached an all time low. My partner and I had separated, my daughter had grown up and left home, and I had decided to give up my very long term hobby, horses.

I was in a property in a county I disliked, and felt I didn’t belong. My social life was zero and I had no contact with other single people. I knew I need to find a new direction, a new career, a new hobby but I didn’t have a clue where to start.

No Direction

There was nothing I was particularly interested in, just a few vague ideas of what I could do if nothing better turned up. At the age of 48 it appeared I had no further direction, or use, or passion to do anything. I certainly felt too old to train for a new direction.

Rita made me look at everything in a completely different way – the self fulfilling prophecy being one of the first things we tackled. My property was up for sale and until it sold I would be unable to embark on a new business.

Because I personally disliked the house and the memories it held I always predicted it would take a year to sell – naturally it did then take a year! Rita told me to put some love into the house, and so I did in small ways.

I made some small alterations to make it more homely and bought flowers, and when I had potential purchasers she told me to believe that they would actually buy and no matter what happened to keep these positive thoughts – it worked!

Next Step

The next step was looking at the things I thought I might do (I had no enthusiasm for these things but couldn’t think of anything better).

By thoroughly investigating all possibilites I was able to once and for all dismiss them. I did a lot of homework and even attended courses, ie I did my licensee exam, but realised I didn’t feel passionate enough to want to commit.

I cannot remember clearly at what point the seed for the idea for my dream life came about but at Easter this year I started looking at boats. I had a small involvement with them in the past – very much in a passenger sense.

The more I looked the more I got interested and excited. There was such a lot to learn and the people seemed so helpful and friendly. Rita encouraged me to look at the possibilities and not just discard them as out of reach or too bizzare. I had found my dream and my passion!

Fulfilling My Needs

After selling my house I have bought myself a beautiful 42 foot motor cruiser. It has given me a base back down South where I feel I belong and I now spend 3 weeks there and 1 week back with my daughter and father in the North.

My boat provides me with an interesting home which does not feel like a downward step from the large rambling equestrian properties I was used to – it is so different there can be no comparison.

I have an interest and a hobby with so much to learn which is fullfilling my need to keep my brain exercised. I have freedom to travel, I now find myself in an environment where I feel I belong, there are othere single people, conversation flows easily as we have much in common.

I have challenged myself both physically and mentally doing sailing courses and achieving certificates in competency.

Excitement & Challenges

By being back in an environment that suits me and amongst people that stimulate my mind I have now actually embarked on 2 new business ventures both with partners and I am finding both exciting and challenging.

My life has changed so much in one year – from being totally all at sea, I am now literally all at sea – but in the best possible sense! I thank Rita for guiding me so skilfully through the muddle of my thoughts and ideas and helping me to shed the limitations I had put upon myself and cut free from the baggage of the past.

Team spirit

As I listened to the post match analysis the recurring theme was one of team work and team spirit that gave the victory to the Europeans.  The team work and camaraderie is what gave them the edge over the Americans and it’s something we can all learn from.

When you have a team around you, people with the same goals and aspirations as you, moving in the same direction, accepting you for yourself, then you have something very special.

Positive energy

That teamwork will create a powerful positive energy that will just keep pushing you forward. The Europeans had that – they looked out for each other, motivated each other and celebrated the successes together. I think teamwork is a very overused and misunderstood phrase but this weekend’s exploits are a perfect description of true teamwork.

We are all on the journey to achieving indestructible self-belief. When we believe in ourselves 100% we can achieve anything we want. Having a team around you with the same value set and end goal will enhance your chances of success.

It stands to reason – many heads and hearts are better than one. Many of us think we have a team in our families, friends and colleagues but that is not wholly true. These people are often too close to us and so cannot be objective and non-judgemental. They will always feel as if they have to give you their opinion and a lot of times this can be destructive and dent our belief instead of enhancing it. They don’t do this maliciously but that’s what they do.

Building the right team

I’m not saying that you must ditch your family and friends – no, all I am saying that it’s important to build a team around you that is congruent with your goals and values. A team that guides you and works with you towards your goal instead of telling you what to do.

This is the team that will create the positive energy to boost your self-belief and take it to the indestructible levels. So are you ready for this team?

How to build an indestructible team

1. Surround yourself with positive people

Pretty obvious yes but still so many of us surround ourselves with negative people. Look at your current network and review it for positive like-minded people.

You can always create a new network of people – this website has hundreds of such people from the team of coaches to all the members of the bulletin boards - plenty of like-minded people focused on positive action!

Go on, create your own team – it could be just you and your coach or it could be 10-12 of you forming a success group. Try it and let me know how it is working for you.

2. Give as much as you take

In a great team people give as much as they take. I have always achieved my greatest successes by giving to others. Giving is about listening, motivating, supporting others – letting them take up some of your time and effort. You will find this rewarding and I guarantee you will also benefit from it.

We have become a take society and the people who give as much as they take do stand out and achieve success. So once you’ve built your team give a little and experience this great feeling.

3. Share successes

Great teams share successes. Be happy for other people and enjoy what they have achieved. Strong people do not get intimidated or disillusioned by others successes – they use this to energise themselves. It’s a natural feeling to look at someone else being successful and to be disillusioned with ones own situation. Instead use it to your advantage to motivate you and drive you forward.

The Ryder Cup team celebrated each players successes – the players that lost their matches could have looked down and depressed but instead they were jubilant and exuberant in the winning players efforts. That’s teamwork. Also sharing what you have done will energise and motivate others.

4. Communicate with your team

Once you have built a solid team around you, communicate regularly. Once per week at a minimum to share ideas, thoughts, feedback on actions etc. This keeps the momentum and ensures the positive energy is there and is building each week.

Communication may be just an email or it may be meeting, phone calls whatever – make sure you are consistent.

5. Be personally accountable

Teamwork is great but this is not a substitute for self-reliance. The team around you is there to support you but you must take action and move yourself forward to your dreams and goals.

The team will not do that. So you have to be self-reliant. You have to be accountable because it’s your life you are improving. Each Ryder Cup player played for the team but did not hide when their performances were not great – they made themselves accountable and took full responsibility. You must do the same.