Dare to Dream!

By now we would have all had the choice to have kept or broken some of our new year resoloutions.

So this message is here to remind you we always have a choice and we can choose to be the directors of our lives or we can choose to be actors and be directed by life. Most of us here have more potential than we give ourselves credit for, great things come to those who plan for the future and believe in themselves.

Right now I want you to stop reading and visualise how you would like your life to be on December 31st 2009.
I want you to create a dreamboard on how you want your life to look at the end of the year. Now visualise what you want to achieve, who you want to be and the resources you will need to achieve your dream goal. Create a collage of pictures, or drawings to represent it. Get a clear picture of what you want and when you want it by in your life. Put your Dreamboard somewhere where you will see it every day - on your fridge or by your desk.

In study at Yale University in 1947, 3% who set goals achieved more, and accumulated more wealth than the other 97% who didn't set goals-combined!

Now put all your doubts and fears behind you and share what you have created on your dreamboard with your friends and family, starting with me, and lets finish strong together for 2009 starting out with the end in mind.

Look Into Your Heart

Our heads are often plagued with doubts and fears of our own abilities. We so very often focus on our weaknesses and limit ourselves when thinking too hard about setting our goals and often settle for less than what we are really capable of.

When we listen to our fears it affects the way we respond to others, the opportunities we accept and the ones we decline. It affects how we communicate and how we behave. Our fears make us smaller, make us defensive and closed off to new people or ideas.

By listening and following our hearts we can discover what we truly want from life and who we truly are. Our true potential lies in letting go of our fears and following what and who we love.

New Year is a time for new beginnings, for wiping the slate clean, for re-energising, refocussing and making decisions and commitments. This year when you are thinking about your goals for 2009 try to be more focused on who we want to be as a person than what you want to have.
Instead of thinking about what you are going to do put your energy into how you are going to be.

Set yourself the challenge of being loving and compassionate in every contact you make with another living thing. Set yourself the challenge of getting out of your head and into your heart.

This weeks nugget is an anthem you can use to keep reminding yourself of this commitment every time you need to.

Wishing you a Happy New Year filled with love, and the very best for a healthy and prosperous 2009.

What Does Christmas Really Mean?

At Christmas people rejoice, there is music everywhere. It is like a truce in the world we have created. A truce where fear and greed present in so much of everyday life are replaced for a few days by love and generosity as we celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ bringing peace to the world.

The days are full of family, friends, traditions and good spirits, instead of work, commuting and pressure.

Our thoughts turn to others, loved ones, community and our fellow humans.

Even the media choose to include more positive heart-warming stories.

As our thoughts turn to higher things the season of Christmas everywhere reminds us of our Savior Jesus Christ, love, giving, meaning and spirituality as we merrily follow old family traditions and new!

Imagine if life could be like that every day, or ask, why should it not be?

It is our choice, we have chosen the life we are living, we have chosen the society we have created. We could choose differently. You could choose differently.

We can live in peace, filled with gratitude and love if we choose to.

What will you choose to do, how will you choose to live in 2009?

On Christmas Day in 1914 British and German soldiers in France put down their guns, to get out of the trenches and meet each other. As German’s sang “Silent Night” the allies returned with “Peace on Earth to all Men”. For a day and in some places longer they exchanged gifts and stories, collected and buried their dead from no mans land and even played football together.
In the end they chose to go back to their respective trenches and continue to obey their orders to kill one another. Imagine if they had chosen not to, if they had chosen to continue playing football, if they had chosen peace, kindness and love.

Each of us this Christmas has that choice of kindness and giving.

This week’s nugget is a film of a recreation of that moment of choice.


Christmas in 1914 from Andy Sutton on Vimeo.

Commitment

We are amazing. We can achieve amazing things.

And to achieve the amazing we only need to do two things:

1 - Decide on the right thing to do

2 - Commit to it

Of course the key to being able to truly commit is to make sure that the decision we make on what we do is the right one for us in the first place.

Many of us allow our lives to be designed by coincidence and short term needs. It should not be a surprise if we find it hard to commit to decisions that are arrived at under these circumstances.

When we take a more active role in designing our lives we can identify what we are truly motivated by and, therefore, what we will find it easiest to commit to. One good tool for doing this is Neil Crofts Life Purpose e-book.pdf

Doing what we are most motivated by certainly helps, but it still takes courage and commitment to stick with the program, through ups and downs, good times and hard times. But the formula works - if you are absolutely committed to your life purpose you will achieve amazing things.

Just take a look at those who do achieve amazing things and you will see that they have followed this path.

This weeks nugget gives a really lovely perspective on commitment.

Making Connections

John Wannamaker said "Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don't know which half."

Whatever we do in life it is helpful to make connections with the right people. And usually it is more about who we connect with and how deeply than how many. What most of us need and seek are a relatively small number of significant connections.

This is true of business as well as our private lives. Of course we can meet great people in our local community, and in today's connected internet world we can also meet great people in other parts of our country and in other countries.

If we have a specialist interest or business, it may be difficult to find enough like minded people locally. So these days we can use the internet to help us to create our community.

One way we can do this is by proactively looking for people, the other way we can do it is by making it easier for people to find us.

To make it easy for people to find us we need to be able to describe who we are and what we are about, clearly and simply. This both helps us to be found and to be found by the right people.

My nugget this week is an e-book about how the internet is changing the face or marketing (the process of connecting people with what they want). Marketing is no longer the preserve of Soho Agency types, it is open to all of us, it is definitely worth learning about and David Meerman Scott is a great teacher. Down load it here now.

Making a Difference, Made Simple

How do you feel when you see those pictures of hungry children and orphans, when you see a news clip with a small child sitting quietly, flies landing on their face, big pleading eyes, skinny arms and legs - how do you feel?

Does it make you feel that you want to do something?

Perhaps you donate to a charity, or write to your MP or perhaps you just feel a bit powerless?

Perhaps you would like to do something, but no one seems to have any ideas that would really make a difference?

Perhaps you would like to do something, but work, commitments and life get in the way?

Perhaps you would like to but you don't have the time or the money?

How would you feel if you found a way to give food to starving children all over the world so that they had at least one nutritious meal every day?

How would you feel if you found out that, if you do this, and recommend it to a few other people each month, you could even make an income from it?

When I found out about this I was so excited I signed up for it right away along with my daughter and we started telling people immediately. So many people were inspired to join, that we were invited to go to Malawi by the founders of the Nourish the Children organisation.

While we were in Malawi we helped prepare and serve the highly nutritious food for the children. We saw the village and schools that had been set up by Nourish the Children to teach more efficient farming methods and we spoke with the families whose lives have been transformed by this program.

This weeks nugget is a little movie about our experience and how you can help feed starving children nutritious food every day.

Amazing!

Please join me in this worthy cause by providing nourishment and a future to these beautiful little souls.

Sign up now to feed a child - choose your country, go to NTC, select Vitameal donation click on ADP Checkout and start feeding a child today. €20.75 per month to feed one child or only €83.50 to feed six.

Make a difference today by getting in touch with Debbie:

+34 670 666 402 or debbie@justagreatlife.com

What Do You Care About?

Most of us adults in the western world spend much of our waking time working. Both for individuals and for society that is a huge investment.

Many of us end up working to pay the bills. We do jobs we don't love, with outcomes we don't care for because we need the money.

When millions of us spend so much time doing something we don't care about we cannot be surprised that we are not proud of the results.

Wouldn't it be great if we could spend all of that time and energy doing something we care about passionately?

What do you care about enough to make a living out of doing it?

One of the things that I am most passionate about is that we must not allow children to go hungry. I was thrilled when I discovered that through Nourish the Children it is possible to make a living AND feed hungry children at the same time.

I am now passionate about building a team of collaborators to help feed more children.

Watch today's inspiring nugget and then give me a call to discuss how this could work for you or e-mail me for your golden ticket to our Wealth, Wellness and Worth Conference Call every Monday evening at 7pm UK time or 8PM European time.