Archive for September 8th, 2008

Reward your self for staying on track

Monday, September 8th, 2008

One observation I have made of small business owners is that they generally struggle with the notion of rewarding themselves, often associating reward with purely financial considerations. Associated with all the changes we are talking about there can be more than a little turmoil in the short term before greater balance kicks in. This is normal, but the turmoil can be disconcerting, and we need to give ourselves some rewards along the way.

I suggest making a list (yes, I know, yet another list!) of things you consider to be rewards. Some may be material objects, others may be more symbolic. This doesn’t matter— what does matter is that they are things you really like and want.

Add these rewards to the list of changes required to achieve your balance, at strategic places—so that when you change this habit, you get that reward. For example, your list might say that for one week you are not going to stay at work later than 6 p.m., no matter what. If you achieve this, your pay-off is to buy yourself a new fishing rod. Or, if you commit to going to the gym twice a week and you do it for a month without fail, you get to have a night out at your favorite restaurant. But you must make the change before you claim the reward.

This is part of the reprogramming process that you need to undertake. There are many names for ‘reprogramming’, and many ways to go about it, but it does work. We need to be rewarded—whatever that means to us individually—to really feel that what we are doing is worthwhile.

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Develop your plan of attack and put it where you can see it

Monday, September 8th, 2008

By now, we have achieved a number of key steps in the process. We have accepted the need to change; we have identified where we are going wrong, the bad habits we have formed and the daily distractions that stop us from being in balance. We have prioritised them, put time frames in place and been very clear on when we want these changes to be completed. The next step is determining what we need to do to make the changes happen. This is where we have to really spell things out. What actions do we have to take to make these changes happen?

An example that remains particularly vivid in my memory happened a few years ago. I had finally decided that I had to get fit and lose some weight. I was getting ever more seriously overweight and it was really only a matter of time till I dropped dead. (I had the right motivation.) So I made a list of all the things that stopped me from being fit, that made me put on weight and generally kept me in the shape I was.

Most of the things I wrote down were hollow excuses—no time, the business needed me or else it would fall apart, my clients would leave if I wasn’t there to answer their calls from early morning till late at night, I was too busy to take the time for a proper lunch break so I ate on the run, and so on. In hindsight not one of them was true, but I had learned to believe my own propaganda.

Then I set my goals. They were big, but most of my goals are. I wanted to lose 50 kilograms and climb the tallest free­standing mountain in Australia (which is 922 meters—not Mount Everest by any means, but in my mind there was little difference).

Then I set time frames to achieve each of these goals. Three years to lose the weight (this was based on professional advice) and one year to be able to climb the mountain.

The next step was the action plan to achieve this. I went to a gym where a team of personal trainers started the process. They looked at my overall wellbeing, my goals and the reality of my situation. I was never going to be a bean sprout-devouring kind of fell, so they developed a plan to suit me. We revised it often, always with my goals in mind. I pinned it up on my door at home, along with my goals, and I read both of them every morning as I walked out the door.

I am happy to say that both goals were achieved. For me, the biggest challenges in my life at that stage were overcome. I realized that I could apply the same simple processes to solving any problem, but specifically those that affected balancing my business and my life.

It is important to detail, step by step, the actions that you need to take to implement significant changes, and otherwise they rarely happen.

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Coffee: a Life Style

Monday, September 8th, 2008

Right now a cup of coffee is not just a drink but can more than like coffee value. There is slightly movement from a substation need become a life style especially when we see to the middle level up. We can found right now that people sit with relax situation and just spent their time with some friends in café and what they buy from that café? Just a cup of coffee and may be some snacks as friends.

The famous café like Strarbuck or Fashion café are just sample of big players that using coffee as one of the key. Beside big players we can see the local players as well and these players have big numbers than international players. The local café If already have a name in the local area usually have loyal customer and we will found in the holidays the traffic is higher than regular days. The key of their capital are espresso machines and their service. So it is not a strange if we found our friends play their laptops in the coffee café even they just buy a cup of coffee because it’s a life style.

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