What's Really Holding You Back

When I saw a brief interview of Valorie Burton on a TV news show, she got my attention enough for me to buy her book "What's Really Holding You Back?"  I am very glad that I did.

I strongly recommend this book for everyone, especially if you feel that you are in a gap between where you are and where you want to be.  Even if you believe that you are where you want to be in life, I still recommend the book.

In this book, Valorie, gives chapter after chapter of great advice on gaining and maintaining balance in your life while moving forward with your career and your life goals.  She speaks of five main focus areas and they are:  your relationships, your career, your finances and resources, your physical health and environments, and your spiritual life.

If you are a Christian, you should find this book especially enriching.  You can find it at this link at Amazon.com or probably in your bookstore.

The Referral of a Lifetime

I recently read this book by Tim Templeton which is a very cleverly written book about improving your business relationships to change your fortunes.  It is a fictional setting but it offers many factual business ideas designed to transform the way that you interact with business partners, associates, customers, friends, and more.

Without gettng into a lot of detail, the author leads you to clearly examine your prospect list, organize them, and communicate regularly with them.  But it is a lot more than that.  If you are involved with customers, prospects, or relationships of any kind, I recommend this book.  http://amzn.to/nCm1T1

Just about every waking moment ...

... of your life offers you an opportunity to reach out to someone else and let them know that you care.  It will make a big difference to them.  Politics aside, differences aside, apprehensions aside, let someone know that you care by understanding them, by listening to them, by showing that you care.

Everyone needs others.  It takes an effort to understand others and to communicate even when it is difficult.  But we all need to have mentors and advisors and it may often be you.  So, don't miss the opportunity.

Your time is valuable ...

Many people like to be do-it-yourselfers.  Power to you all  I admire people who can fix things, and build things, and make all the arrangements for things all by themself.  These are talents.

Here is how I see it, though. Your time, every minute of it, is an investment.  If you feel that doing work by yourself around your home is the best investment of your time, then that is great.  If you feel that you need to take control of situations and see them through to finish and that works for you, then fine.

Just keep in mind, that every moment you spend trying to maximize your savings by doing it yourself, you are not doing something else that just could be a better investment of your time.  When you look at the big picture, always consider what the return on investment of your time will be.  Your time is actually more valuable than your monetary wealth.  Spend it wisely.

A great investment ...

One of the best investments that you make in life is being nice to other people.  I know this is true, not necessarily from my own behavior, but certainly from my observation of others.

If your standard operating procedure is to be nice to everyone on every possible occasion, you are the winner and your investment will pay great dividends.  Being nice is not always the default behavior for people, myself included, but when we make the effort it 1) feels good, 2) usually impresses others, and 3) usually comes back to you.

If you know people who are generally nice and kind to others, try to be like them.  Find out what it takes to be that way because when you make the investment of time and effort to be nice and kind to others, your investment will grow over time.

I don't need to define what being nice and kind to others means.  You already know that.

When is too busy ... really enough?

As I work with a variety of clients and co-workers, the repeated theme that I am hearing is how busy everyone is.  I get it.  I am too.

This is where balance is important.  We can work wire-to-wire while at work, after all, isn't that what we signed up for and isn't that what our employers expect?  Yes.

However, we need to deal with that busy work life with a balanced life.  We need to set aside our cares and worries of the work day at the end of each work day.  We need to spend a great quality of time at work versus great quantities of time at work.  Our days must be balanced with work and personal life.

This is not easy because employers demand a lot from workers today.  Don't overdo it!

Staying Focused

I believe that it is important for everyone to stay focused on what is important.  Staying focused among other things means staying focused on being your best self and working on your career.

I am amazed by the amount of controversy that is generated by certain recent news stories that have no bearing whatever on the majority of people. Yet, the news services decide what you should think about.

Rather, you decide what you want to think about.  If we put as much effort into our careers as we did on certain news stories, that would be great and we would all benefit from it.

Even political stories basically waste our precious time and attention.  We have no affect on most political decisions, so, why do we spend so much time thinking about and arguing about politics.  I have not been exempt from that either.

Think about the things that make you your best self and work on those things with passion.  That advice goes out to me too.