It seems that business and stress go hand in hand. Many entrepreneurs expect some level of stress before they even get started. Well, that doesn’t have to be the case. Learn to be stress free as you achieve your success.

It is not a big secret that no one has discovered yet. Some people just don’t pay much attention to the mind-body connection. Trust me, there is one. How do you think those monks in the mountains achieve such a high state of consciousness? The only secret is that it takes practice to get good at it.

Your mind may be looking forward to working the business, but your body may not. It takes a lot of stamina to run a business and a home. Learning to balance the two isn’t easy but plenty of successful entrepreneurs are happy in a business that they love with a family that loves and supports them.

Get Moving

A healthy body equals a healthy mind and attitude. When you exercise, endorphins are released into the bloodstream. These are “feel good” chemicals that lighten your mood, improve your focus and lead to a more positive attitude about life. If they could bottle it there would be none left on the shelves.

You don’t have to hit the gym everyday to get this benefit. Try an exercise like yoga or taking walks with the family. Getting outdoors (especially for home business owners) also provides a healthy dose of vitamin D from the sun. Vitamin D helps with calcium absorption in the body for strong bones.

A body, that feels good and moves well, increases your confidence level. A confident person is better able to handle challenging situations within their business. Creative solutions to problems come more readily.

Get Support

The second way to relieve stress is to have a healthy support system. You may run the business, but you couldn’t do it without the family in your corner. It takes a lot of time and effort to grow a new enterprise into a successful one. That is time away from your family.

But, if you love what you do and who you do it for, you will be more likely to strike a balance that is agreeable to everyone. Good communication is the key to dealing with business and family issues.

Schedule Your Time Wisely

Set up a schedule for business and family. Refuse to sacrifice one for the other unless absolutely necessary. Remember, you are the boss and you can set up your business to suit your needs. What doesn’t get done today will still be there tomorrow.

A healthy boss makes for a healthy business. You can focus on your success in business better if you are already enjoying success in life. No matter what, remember that YOU have control. Run your business, don’t let it run you.

What do you find helpful to deal with your business stress?

We will always make mistakes. The keys to overcoming your mistakes are to:

• Learn the mistakes.
• Know what you did incorrectly.
• Accept that you made a mistake.
• Use the mistake to better yourself and your business.

Not until you are willing to embrace those things, will you be ready to find out the hidden treasures that can be found when mistakes are made.

As a business owner, you know all about mistakes. You made little ones as you got started. For some, too many mistakes and they find that the business life is not for them. And, maybe it isn’t.

Being in business for yourself requires a thick skin. You will have customers that are impossible to please, competition that seems to outdo you at every turn and unsuccessful marketing strategies. But, you live and learn. You will only be able to continue building your business if you have the right attitude – a positive one.

Turn your mistakes into big money.

It is human nature not to want to feel isolated. That extends to the business world. A business owner, who is brave enough to point out the mistakes they have made and how they learned from them, will have a following among other entrepreneurs. You can take that on the lecture circuit and gain a wide audience.

Networking is a part of doing business.

Your connections can be helpful when sales are slow or when you are looking to put together a new business venture. Targeting budding businesses with your brand of sage advice is one way to turn a negative into a positive.

What about customers? Maybe you hired someone who wasn’t the best at customer service. Every business owner knows that poor customer service can break a business. Instead of sitting back and brooding about your misfortune, take action.

Use this opportunity to revamp your customer service policy. That employee may be better in another area of your business. This may be the time to automate your customer service with autoresponder messages, a FAQ section on your website or an answering service.

Challenges force you to take a look at your business. Is there a way to improve an existing process? Of course there is. Use a mistake such as sending the wrong product or a failed online checkout process to make changes that will increase sales in the future.

What sets you apart?

You are willing to learn from mistakes (by using suggestions like those above) to continue to move forward in your business pursuits instead of leaning on them like crutches. Excuses rarely accomplish anything good. Mistakes can sour your mood. Shake it off and find out what you can learn from them to make your business a success.

I was reminded today of the thin line between winning and losing.  As I (sadly) watched the Wisconsin Badgers basketball team lose a 12-point lead to Michigan State, and eventually the game, it showed clearly what they do differently when they lose compared to when they win.

Execution of fundementals.

They missed easy shots, they threw the ball away, they got lost on defense… all things they did very well for the last 5 games (that they won) and the first 30 minutes of today’s game.

How can you relate this to winning at what you do?

1.) Define What is Winning for You

Winning can be different things for different people.  For instance, if you’re a writer – a win for you may be publishing daily blog posts, or finish the next chapter in your book.  It might also be scoring a top 10 search result from great SEO writing or even creating a million dollars in sales from your next sales letter.

Whatever your situation is, clearly define what a win is for you.  Most of the time it won’t be like basketball – or any other sport – where a final score at the end of the game is the final answer.

2.) Know Your Fundementals

For the most part, the fundementals that lead you to success in your venture will most likley be related to two things: work ethic and skill.

Work ethic could be things like perservering through the times you don’t want to work (write, program, sell, recruit, etc.).  It’s these instances that make and break people.  If you can maintain persistance, chances are you can excel at what you’re doing.

Skills can obviously be learned, focused, and refined.  If you feel like you need a new skill to win – by all means go learn it – but be careful that you don’t overwhelm yourself with learning new things and lose all focus on developing business.  It may be possible that taking on a partner to bridge the gap of your skills is the better option.

3.) Create a Game Plan

Having skills and work ethic can only take you so far.  Without knowing how and when to execute, you could be a real talented nobody.

How does your week look?  Write down some broad guidelines for how you spend your time each week.  Time management is typically the biggest key between people who get ahead, and people who don’t.

How many calls do you make on what days?  How often to your write and how much?  If you don’t know what to expect from yourself daily, weekly, monthly and long-term – no one else will know either.

Leave room for refining your schedule – as things change and it’s not fair to yourself or your family to be completely inflexible.  

4.) Keep Score
 
Keeping score in the business of winning at what you do can be tricky.  It’s not always fair to get down on yourself if you miss a writing appointment or don’t get through as many sales calls as you planned.  However, if you have your game plan set – you’ll be able to keep score easier, knowing if you lost a day or won a day.  

At the end of a week or month, you’ll have a clear idea of where your weak spots are and can adjust to get better.

5.) Believe

Every post on Good Plum can really come back to this.  If you don’t believe you deserve to win in whatever it is you’re doing, there’s nothing you can do to get there.  It’s cruel but true.  It doesn’t even matter what you say outwardly.  Saying, “I believe I deserve to be successful” doesn’t mean you will be if it doesn’t resonate within the core of your soul.

If you have work to do in this area, keep watching Good Plum for posts on the law of attraction, or do some research on your own.  The work you do increasing the level of belief you have in yourself will pay off in multiples down the road.

Good luck!

Daily or weekly reflection happens whether you do it actively or not.  Our minds are always reflecting back on what’s been done, and then internalizing the effects of those events.  In an extreme scenario, a child who’s father leaves at a young age obviously goes through reflection – both immediately and long-term.  The immediate reflection, done subconsciously, affects how that child treats other situations through their life.  This is refraction.

Keep in mind, that refraction is a term that I personally use.  I’m not sure if it’s used by anyone else with the same definition, but as long as you know what I’m referring to that’s really all that matters.

My goal is to consciously reflect and refract as much as possible, so that the subconscious reflecting and refracting that is going to happen whether I like it or not tends to follow more closely what I am consciously doing.  Below are a few notes for you to absorb about reflection and refraction:

- Daily, consciously feel the effects of your day.  Accept them for what they are.
- Look for decisions or thoughts you would change, feel how the outcome may have been different.
- Accept that you cannot change what has already happened, but be thankful you will make a different choice next time.

To be clear, refraction doesn’t necessarily mean you made a wrong choice and you need to change, though it can mean that.  Refraction can also deal with a situation you feel that you could be catapulting into a bigger, better situation – but you’re just not taking action.

Feel free to leave comments and questions below.  This is a newer topic I’m still figuring out how to write clearly on.

Watching in pain this afternoon as the Wisconsin Badgers basketball team struggled against Purdue, I realized that something in basketball translates very well to personal development: Finishing.

The Badgers struggled all day (and for the past few weeks for that matter) to finish (score) when they got close to the basket.  Not all necessarily due to lack of effort, sometimes the defense was too good, sometimes it’s just plain bad luck – if you believe in that sort of thing.

The result of not finishing is simple: you lose.

Similarly, in your own development or business life, finishing what you start helps you win.  Assuming the decisions for what you’re starting are the right things for you to do – if you finish them,  of course, your chances of succeeding multiply by infinity.

Finishing simply consists of completing the actions as laid out in your plan to start with.  If you’ve decided to start a successful blog, for example, you obviously won’t win if you never write.  Finishing takes a few things: persistence, endurance, and the skill to accomplish it.

Persistence

You’re going to run up against defense when trying to accomplish goals.  These hurdles, if ignored or left to halt you, will certainly keep you from what you’re doing.  Have the persistence to get knocked down and try again, finding another way to do it are the only ways to break through.

There’s no question we will all come upon road blocks when attempting to finish, but having persistence gives us the knowledge that we will not let those blocks defeat us.

Endurance

Persistence is only as good as the amount of endurance you can maintain.  Persisting through 1 or 2 setbacks may not be enough if some cases.  To finish what you start, you must endure through the tough times.

Much of what you need to have endurance is gained simply through un-waivering faith that in what you’re doing is the right thing to do.  If you have any doubts at all – persistance and endurance will never organically surface.

Skill

Of course, to accomplish anything at all – we need to have the skills to actually finish the job.  Or do we?  If you don’t feel you have the skill involved to get past a particular part of your goal, that’s ok, just look for someone else to help.

Whether it’s through a contractor or an employee, hiring to your weaknesses will pay dividends when you’re trying to finish what you started.

Get to the basket and finish.  Finishing what you start is not only a good habit to develop, but when put in practice, makes you an unstoppable force that breaks through anything you set your mind to.

What types of things do you practice to make sure you are finishing what you start?

Self Improvement

There are many ways to lose your sense of self-esteem despite of how trivial it could get. But whatever happens, we should all try not to lose our own sense of self.

So what does it take to be a cut above the rest? Here are some of the things you can think and improve on that should be enough for a week.

1. Know your purpose
Are you wandering through life with little direction – hoping that you’ll find happiness, health and prosperity? Identify your life purpose or mission statement and you will have your own unique compass that will lead you to your truth north every time.

This may seem tricky at first when you see yourself to be in a tight or even dead end. But there’s always that little loophole to turn things around and you can make a big difference to yourself.

2. Know your values
What do you value most? Make a list of your top 5 values. Some examples are security, freedom, family, spiritual development, learning. As you set your goals for 2005 – check your goals against your values. If the goal doesn’t align with any of your top five values – you may want to reconsider it or revise it.

The number shouldn’t discourage you, instead it should motivate you to do more than you can ever dreamed of.

3. Know your needs
Unmet needs can keep you from living authentically. Take care of yourself. Do you have a need to be acknowledged, to be right, to be in control, to be loved? There are so many people who lived their lives without realizing their dreams and most of them end up being stressed or even depressed for that matter. List your top four needs and get them met before it’s too late!

4. Know your passions
You know who you are and what you truly enjoy in life. Obstacles like doubt and lack of enthusiasm will only hinder you, but will not derail your chance to become the person you ought to be. Express yourself and honor the people who has inspired you to become the very person you wanted to be.

5. Live from the inside out
Increase your awareness of your inner wisdom by regularly reflecting in silence. Commune with nature. Breathe deeply to quiet your distracted mind. For most of us city slickers it’s hard to even find the peace and quiet we want even in our own home. In my case I often just sit in a dimly lit room and play some classical music. There’s sound, yes, but music does soothe the savage beast.

6. Honor your strengths
What are your positive traits? What special talents do you have? List three – if you get stuck, ask those closest to you to help identify these. Are you imaginative, witty, good with your hands? Find ways to express your authentic self through your strengths. You can increase your self-confidence when you can share what you know to others.

7. Serve others
When you live authentically, you may find that you develop an interconnected sense of being. When you are true to who you are, living your purpose and giving of your talents to the world around you, you give back in service what you came to share with others -your spirit – your essence. The rewards for sharing your gift with those close to you is indeed rewarding, much more if it were to be the eyes of a stranger who can appreciate what you have done to them.

Self-improvement is indeed one type of work that is worth it. It shouldn’t always be within the confines of an office building, or maybe in the four corners of your own room. The difference lies within ourselves and how much we want to change for the better.

When you hear the word “coach”, what comes first into your mind? Do you picture a basketball team with a man/woman shouting out directions? Or perhaps a football team with a man/woman pacing to and fro and calling out the names of the players?

Coaching is no longer reserved to sports teams; it is now one of the key concepts in leadership and management. Why is coaching popular?

Coaching levels the playing field.

Coaching is one of the six emotional leadership styles proposed by Daniel Goleman. Moreover, it is a behavior or role that leaders enforce in the context of situational leadership. As a leadership style, coaching is used when the members of a group or team are competent and motivated, but do not have an idea of the long-term goals of an organization. This involves two levels of coaching: team and individual. Team coaching makes members work together. In a group of individuals, not everyone may have nor share the same level of competence and commitment to a goal. A group may be a mix of highly competent and moderately competent members with varying levels of commitment. These differences can cause friction among the members. The coaching leader helps the members level their expectations. Also, the coaching leader manages differing perspectives so that the common goal succeeds over personal goals and interests. In a big organization, leaders need to align the staffs’ personal values and goals with that of the organization so that long-term directions can be pursued.

Coaching builds up confidence and competence.

Individual coaching is an example of situational leadership at work. It aims to mentor one-on-one building up the confidence of members by affirming good performance during regular feedbacks; and increase competence by helping the member assess his/her strengths and weaknesses towards career planning and professional development. Depending on the individual’s level of competence and commitment, a leader may exercise more coaching behavior for the less-experienced members. Usually, this happens in the case of new staffs. The direct supervisor gives more defined tasks and holds regular feedbacks for the new staff, and gradually lessens the amount of coaching, directing, and supporting roles to favor delegating as competence and confidence increase.

Coaching promotes individual and team excellence.

Excellence is a product of habitual good practice. The regularity of meetings and constructive feedback is important in establishing habits. Members catch the habit of constantly assessing themselves for their strengths and areas for improvement that they themselves perceive what knowledge, skills, and attitudes they need to acquire to attain team goals. In the process, they attain individually excellence as well. An example is in the case of a musical orchestra: each member plays a different instrument. In order to achieve harmony of music from the different instrument, members will polish their part in the piece, aside from practicing as an ensemble. Consequently, they improve individually as an instrument player.

Coaching develops high commitment to common goals.

A coaching leader balances the attainment of immediate targets with long-term goals towards the vision of an organization. As mentioned earlier, with the alignment of personal goals with organizational or team goals, personal interests are kept in check. By constantly communicating the vision through formal and informal conversations, the members are inspired and motivated. Setting short-term team goals aligned with organizational goals; and making an action plan to attain these goals can help sustain the increased motivation and commitment to common goals of the members.

Coaching produces valuable leaders.

Leadership by example is important in coaching. A coaching leader loses credibility when he/she cannot practice what he/she preaches. This means that a coaching leader should be well organized, highly competent is his/her field, communicates openly and encourages feedback, and has a clear idea of the organization’s vision-mission-goals. By vicarious and purposive learning, members catch the same good practices and attitudes from the coaching leader, turning them into coaching leaders themselves. If a member experiences good coaching, he/she is most likely to do the same things when entrusted with formal leadership roles.

Some words of caution though: coaching is just one of the styles of leadership. It can be done in combination with the other five emotional leadership styles depending on the profile of the emerging team. Moreover, coaching as a leadership style requires that you are physically, emotionally, and mentally fit most of the time since it involves two levels of coaching: individual and team. Your members expect you to be the last one to give up or bail out in any situation especially during times of crises. A coaching leader must be conscious that coaching entails investing time on each individual, and on the whole team. Moreover, that the responsibilities are greater since while you are coaching members, you are also developing future coaches as well.

It’s a talent that everyone has, yet they think they don’t. The power of innovation. If you’ve ever marvelled at somebody’s creative prowess, guess what, you can create and innovate too. It just takes time. Everyone is born creative. The box of crayons in kindergarten were not limited to those who possessed potential; because the truth is, everybody has potential.

You know how long it took to learn to ride a bike or drive or to never commit the same mistake again? It’s the same with innovation. It takes a  bit of practice and a lot of time before this mind function comes easily  when called. This article will teach you a few tips on how to bring innovation into your life.

Don’t listen to what other people say. Follow the beat of your own drum. Allowing for the input of other people will only bring cacophony to the music you are trying to make. If you have an original idea, don’t waste your time and effort trying to make people understand. They won’t. And the help you will probably get comes in the form of negative feedback. If all those geniuses listened to their peers, we would probably still be living in the middle ages.

Spend time on it. I cannot stress that enough, although, please do not mistake this tip to tell you to quit your day job entirely. Do not. This involves some tricky time management but with a little discipline you’ll be able to squeeze both in.

Exercise. Take a walk. Run a mile or two. Send all those endorphins coursing through your veins. Exercising certainly clears and relaxes your mind and allows for anything to pop up.

Record your dreams. Aren’t some of them just the craziest things that your conscious mind would never have thought of? If you’ve had these dreams before, and I’m sure have, this only shows you the untapped innovative power you have lying within. So jot down those notes. Those dreams may just create an innovative spark in you.

Find your own style. You can always tell a Van Gogh from a Matisse. You’ll know Hemingway wrote something by the choice of words on the paper. So it is the same with you. People will appreciate your innovation more because it is uniquely yours and that no one else would have thought of what you were thinking. That will let people see how valuable an asset you are.

Don’t hide behind nifty gadgets or tools. You don’t need the most expensive set of paints to produce a masterpiece. The same way with writing. You don’t need some expensive fountain pen and really smooth paper for a bestseller. In fact, J.K. Rowling wrote the first book of the Harry Potter Series on bits of tissue. So what if you’ve got an expensive SLR camera if you’re a crappy photographer? Who cares if you’ve got a blinging laptop if you can’t write at all? The artist actually reduces the number of tools he has as he gets better at his craft: he knows what works and what doesn’t.

Nothing will work without passion. What wakes you up in the mornings? What keeps the flame burning? What is the one thing that you’ll die if you don’t do? Sometimes people with talent are overtaken by the people who want it more. Think the hare and the tortoise. Ellen Degeneres once said that if you’re not doing something that you want to do, then you don’t really want to do it. And that’s true. Sometimes you just want something so bad you become a virtual unstoppable. And that is passion. Passion will keep you going.

Don’t worry about inspiration. You can’t force it; inspiration hits when you least expect it to, for those unpredictable yet inevitable moments you should prepare. An idea could strike you on the subway, yet alas, you poor unfortunate soul; you have no sheet of paper to scribble down a thought that could change the world. Avoid these disasters. Have a pen and paper within your arm’s reach at all times.

I hope this article has helped you bring more innovation into your life. Keep in mind that you’re doing these things for your own satisfaction and not anybody else’s. But soon enough they will notice, and everything should snowball from there.

Who on earth has succeeded at the first attempt?!

A common misconception is the fact that people actually reach success overnight.  It never happens – not even sometimes.  It’s possible that some  may become famous overnight – but that hardly makes them successful. Most successful people faced a lot of failures before they reached what others call “the overnight success”.

But what is the secret behind the overnight success? How do successful people react when they fail? To reveal this secret let me ask you one question:

Why do you fail to reach your goals? Do you even know what the ONLY reason is behind your failure to achieve your goals?

You may have  hundreds of excuses… I know I did. But if you look deeply inside yourself, you will only find ONE reason behind your failure.

Simply, you fail to reach your goals because you decide not to try again!!! Yes, it all comes down to this ONE reason. All successful people faced a lot of challenges and blocks and they failed too many times until they achieve their aims.

But what separates successful people from failures is that successful people try again if at first they don’t succeed. They persist until they get what they want – it really is that simple.

You ONLY fail when you quit. As long as you are still in the game, you have another chance to succeed.

To sum up, the main secret to goal achievement is the TRY AGAIN concept.

“If at first you don’t succeed, try again.” – W.C Fields

It is that simple and that powerful.

If you have a burning desire to achieve your goals and dreams, then don’t ever give up. Let your desire and passion fire your soul and give you the power to stay in the game until you win.

Try again, try again and you one day you will have an overnight success!

What is a successful stay at home mom you might ask? I know when I tell friends that I feel like I am a SUCCESSFUL stay at home mom they question me with things like “HOW can you be successful if all you do is stay at home?” Well, my reply is usually something along the lines of “My children are happy, my family is strong, my house is clean, I’m organized and overall I have no worries.” If you are going to do something in life, do the best you can, right?

As a child I remember writing essays on “What I want to be when I grow up”. I’d often answer housewife because I thought it would be amazing to sit at home and do nothing all day. As an adult I have been able to be a stay at home mom and I do love it. The first few years were stressful, tiresome and so unorganized that I just didn’t think it was for me. It wasn’t that dream life I had often thought of as a child! After I had my second baby I found the key to success as a stay at home mom.

After having an emergency c-section with my second baby I began thinking about how unorganized and how stressful my life was. I thought about how much time it took me to do the simple chores and run the small errands I had each week. How was it so time consuming? WHY was it so stressful? I decided right then that it was time for a CHANGE. It was time to fulfill that childhood dream.

I wrote out a list of what I needed to do on a daily, weekly, and monthly basis. I also wrote out how much time I thought that each particular thing would take to complete and if it was something that required me be right there on top of it. After evaluating my list and reorganizing several things, I had a nice little schedule. I can get my list of things done in a manageable amount of time and still have time to do the things I want to do. I’m much more organized and I feel great. I’m not stressed over the things that need to be done because I have a schedule and I know when and where that particular task will be completed.

You too, can be a successful stay at home mom. Evaluate your life and see what changes you can make. You just might be surprised at how simple it is to become organized and stay that way. As a stay at home mom, I’ve learned that organization, patience and love are the only things required to become a successful stay at home mom. If I can do it with four children, I know anyone can!