what is success to you? for basketball coach john wooden, it wasn’t the common answers of material possessions and status. it even ran deeper than his 10 national championships and over 600 wins. as we hear in this ted talk, wooden defined success as “peace of mind which is a direct result of self-satisfaction in knowing you made the effort to become the best of which you are capable.” for more of his views on the topic, check out the video above and his “pyramid of success” below.
I graduated college….now what?
In my own experience, after college graduation I quickly found that working for someone else for the next 45 years (45 years!!!!!) until retirement was not my idea of fun or success. Further, we live in times where relying on one source of income is as risky as flying a plane with one wing. Consider this. You live in a bathtub. Water is your wealth and cash flow. You want to fill your tub. To create wealth & stability, doesn’t it naturally make sense to turn on more than one faucet? Perhaps, as many faucets as you can properly manage? What if your sole faucet is diminished or worse yet cut off completely? What if your tub gets a leak? The issue is many people still rely on their jobs as their only faucet or source of income. For financial security we have to diversify our income sources.
Gone are the days of the ancient blueprint: earn good grades, graduate college, get a good job, and live the American dream. The American dream is filled with debt, spending more than we earn, expecting more than we work for and looking outside of ourselves for solutions to problems that only we can fix.
So what alternate sources of income are available while still maintaining my 9-5??
No matter the state of the economy, there is always income to be made from real estate. Whether the market is up or down, people still need shelter.
Multi-level or peer to peer marketing companies offer a great opportunity to run your business with minimal investment. As with anything else, do your research and consider reputable companies.
Luckily, we are in the information age which opens up countless doors. If you have good information, that people are interested in, with a little creativity, marketing, and a means of standing out from the masses, posting ‘information’ on the internet can generate revenue. Just ask Arianna Huffington or Necole Bitchie. Creating the next popular site or blog, while extremely competitive, is a viable option.
Great reading resources:
Rich Dad Poor Dad or The Cashflow Quandrant by Robert Kiyosaki
Think & Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill
Your First Year in Network Marketing by Mark Yarnell & Rene Reid Yarnell
The Art of Influence by Chris Widener
Crush It by Gary Vaynerchuck
The Slight Edge by Jeff Olson
Success Magazine, Editor Darren Hardy
anything by Jim Rohn or Brian Tracy
Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand (Okay this just happens to be my favorite book & probably the favorite book of anybody who’s read it. Check it out.)
Like with anything else, good results take time and effort. But the right amount of persistence and hard work can yield a big payoff! Cheers to your wealth!
Alice Dymally is a graduate of Princeton University. She is presently a credit risk analyst for OneMain Financial, an Independent Beachbody coach, and budding real estate investor.
click here for more 100% life.
written by jenna goudreau, forbes.com
1. Life is short. Never stay in a job that isn’t personally rewarding.
“Most people misunderstand the relationship between passion and career choice,” says Holland. He believes the current fixation on loving what you do is misguided, as you’ll have better career outcomes if you choose a profession that you’ll excel in. “Passion alone is not a sufficient condition for making a living.” Similarly, business owner Rodger Roeser says that entry-level workers believe their first or second job will be “all wine and roses,” and often leave after only a few months if disappointed. “It’s this entitlement mentality,” he says. “If I see resumes with four jobs in two years, I won’t hire them.”
2. They aren’t paying you enough to do that.
“If you actually believe that you’re too good to do something, you’re fooling yourself,” says Roeser. Young workers who thumb their noses at menial tasks are often perceived as immature and unwilling to be team players. By completing small tasks with integrity and attention to detail, you’ll earn the trust of supervisors and work your way towards bigger projects.
3. It’s who you know. Network, network, network.
“It’s important to stay connected,” says James Tarbox, a professor of management at San Diego State University, but smart networking hinges on quality rather than quantity. “It’s about the strength of your connections.” You may have 700 friends on Facebook or LinkedIn, but how many are willing and able to help? Craft a more targeted networking strategy, and also ask yourself: Am I a good referral? Consider how best to position yourself to your network.
1. I’m sorry
2. Here’s my understanding of how I hurt you
3. I will never do this again
4. I want to make this right by …
5. Please forgive me
2. Take yourself out of harm’s way.
You can’t easily lash yourself to a mast, but you can selectively avoid temptations. If you want to lose weight, it makes sense to remove your favorite high-calorie foods from the shelves, and to tell the waiter at restaurants not to bring the bread. If you want to get challenging work done, turn off your email entirely for designated periods of time rather than try to resist its Pavlovian ping.
3. Whatever you feel compelled to do, don’t.
The more powerfully driven you are to take instant action, the more likely you shouldn’t. When the pull is intense, it’s likely you’ve activated your fight-or-flight physiology. That’s great when you’re actually facing a life-or-death situation and need to react instantly. In most life circumstances, it serves you better to reflect before you react.
4. Sleep as much as you must to feel fully rested.
For nearly 98% of us, that means at least 7 hours a night. “Fatigue,” said Vince Lombardi, “makes cowards of us all.” Specifically, it undermines our capacity for self-control, and we’re more likely to default to instant gratification. The best sleep ritual is not just to choose a precise bedtime, but also to begin winding down at least 30 minutes before turning out the lights.
5. Do the most important thing first in the morning.
That’s when the vast majority of us have the most energy and the fewest distractions. Our energy reservoir diminishes as the day wears on, which is why it’s so difficult to get to the hardest work late in the day. Conversely, the more focused you are, the higher the quality of work you’ll do, and the more you’ll get done. I often get more important work done during the first 90 minutes of the morning than in the rest of the hours of the day put together.
6. Eat energy rich foods in small doses at frequent intervals.
Food – specifically glucose – literally fuels willpower. Unfortunately, the body can only make use of a limited amount at any given time, so we need to refuel at least every three hours. Sugars and simple carbohydrates provide a surge of energy that doesn’t last, while lean proteins and complex carbohydrates provide a steadier, more enduring source of energy and therefore willpower.
7. Do one thing at a time.
With so much coming at us so relentlessly – emails, texts, people, and information – we assume the only way to get to it all is to juggle multiple tasks at the same time. In fact, moving between tasks creates something called “switching time.” When you shift attention from one focus of attention to another, the average time it takes to finish the first task increases by at least 25%.
8. Work in sprints.
Human beings aren’t meant to operate like computers, at high speeds, continuously. Rather, we’re designed to pulse between spending and renewing energy. The ultradian rhythm refers to a 90-minute cycle inside us, during which we move from a state of higher physiological arousal progressively down towards fatigue. Focus intensely, ideally without interruption, for no more than 90 minutes at a time. Then take a real break, for at least a few minutes, to relax emotionally, give the mind a rest and physically recharge.
not too long after steve jobs died yesterday, i kept seeing the quote “stay hungry. stay foolish.” it came from a 2005 speech that jobs delivered for stanford university’s commencement. he shared stories about his adoption, dropping out of college (and dropping back in), business ventures and finding out about the pancreatic cancer that ultimately ended his life. the tales provide good life lessons and some insight into our modern-day thomas edison. check out the full speech above and read along with the transcript after the jump.
i caught this excerpt from james baldwin’s the fire next time on dream hampton’s blog. while it was written as a personal letter to the author’s nephew, it gives outsiders an idea on how much things had changed between blacks and whites “on the hundredth anniversary of the emancipation.”
“Dear James:
I have begun this letter five times and torn it up five times. I keep seeing your face, which is also the face of your father and my brother. Like him, you are tough, dark, vulnerable, mood—with a very definite tendency to sound truculent because you want no one to think you are soft. You may be like your grandfather in this, I don’t know, but certainly both you and your father resemble him very much physically. Well, he is dead, he never saw you, and he had a terrible life; he was defeated long before he died because, at the bottom of his heart, he really believed what white people said about him. This is one of the reasons that he became so holy. I am sure that your father has told you something about all that. Neither you nor your father exhibit any tendency towards holiness: you really are of another era, part of what happened when the late E. Franklin Frazier called “the cities of destruction.” You can only be destroyed by believing that you really are what the white world calls a nigger. I tell you this because I love you, and please don’t forget it.
turning lemons into lemonade sounds easy in theory, but it can be hard to make sweet and sour goodness out of life’s problems. nevertheless, it is imperative that we learn how to handle stressful situations in order to preserve both our physical and mental health. knowing this, harvard business review consulted two stress management experts, justin menkes and shawn achor, and put together a good 5-step blueprint for creating positives out of negatives.
1. Recognize worry for what it is “When you hear about stress being unhealthy it is so often because people aren’t getting to a place where they are seeing worry for what it is: a feeling,” says Menkes. The heightened reaction — tension in the body, heart racing — is an indicator of how much you care about the task you are about to do. In fact, according to Menkes, how much stress you feel is directly correlated to the importance of the activity. “If it didn’t matter, you wouldn’t worry,” he says. Once you understand worry as an indicator rather than a symptom of dysfunction or a cause for panic, you can react to it more rationally. Plus, remember that stress is not unending. “Feelings by definition are fleeting. They feel like they will be eternal but just give it five minutes,” says Menkes.
2. Then, reframe the stress Once you’ve recognized what worry is, you then need to adjust your mindset. Achor’s research shows that how you view stress determines its effect on you. “Our brains work much better at positive than at negative, neutral, or stressed,” he says. When you are negative and worried, your brain goes into “fight or flight” mode, which limits your ability to think. If you are positive and concerned, then your brain turns to “broaden and build” thinking which allows you to process more possibilities. Which direction you go in is up to you. “When people have a stress in their life, they can attempt to see it as a challenge, instead of a threat,” says Achor. This mental shift will allow the feeling to be activating rather than paralyzing.
lynda gratton, a professor of management practice at london business school, put together a list of things to help protect your livelihood going forward:
1. Don’t be fooled into walking into the future blindfolded - the more you know what’s in store, the better able you will be to meet the challenges and really capitalize on your options. So keep abreast of the forces that are shaping work and careers in your part of the world and think about how they will impact on you and those you care for. Making wise choices will in the end come from your capacity to understand – don’t rely on governments of big business to make the choices for you.
2. Learn to be virtual – we are entering a period of hyper technological advancements – avatars, holographs and telepresence are all just around the corner. If you are a young ‘digital native’ you are already connected to this – but if you are over 30 the chances are you are already behind on your understanding. Work will become more global and that means that increasingly you will be working with people in a virtual way – its crucial that you learn to embrace these developments and don’t let yourself become obsolete through lack of technical savvy.
3. Search for the valuable skills – think hard about the skill areas that are likely to be important in the future – for example sustainability, health and wellness, and design and social media are all likely to be areas where work will be created over the next decade. Also remember that jobs that involve working closely with people (chef, hairdresser, coach, physiotherapist) are unlikely to move to another country.
4. Become a Master – don’t be fooled into spread your talents too thinly. Being a ‘jack of all trades’ will mean you are competing with millions of others around the world who are similar. Separate yourself from the crowd by really learning to master a skill or talent that you can develop with real depth. Be prepared to put your time and effort into honing these skills and talents.
