This is an incredibly lighthearted, casual video from an engineer at Google named Matt Cutts, but well worth the 3 minutes:

An extremely simple, unoriginal message – not unlike practically all personal development messages – yet thought-provoking, don’t you think?

What shall we try? What shall we do! Our options are endless.

This is gonna be fun.

Off to brainstorm 30 day challenges,
Your Geekiness

P.S. I have a friend 8 days deep into a really fun 30-day challenge of his own. Tell ya about it tomorrow…

Hands down, one of my favorite things about working for myself is the flexibility. To be able to work when you want, on what you want, is a beautiful thing. It’s energizing and good-scary and sometimes makes you want to pinch yourself just to ensure that you’re not actually dreaming the seemingly unlimited freedoms that lay before you.

It’s also incredibly liberating, and causes you to really look inside yourself. I’ve learned a lot the past eighteen months.

And by a lot I really mean A LOT.

Having the flexibility to work when you want, stated another way, is having the flexibility to not work when you don’t want.

And that, I argue, is even more of an amazing thing.

In the working world, with different levels of strictness, you are told when to be where, and when to do what. Unless you’re throwing up from the flu or using your precious vacation hours or, I don’t know, giving birth, you’re expected to be there. You’re expected to take care of those tasks for which you’re responsible.

Today, I wasn’t feelin’ it.

I wasn’t sick, I wasn’t incapacitated in any major way, I just…I just…I just didn’t want to work.

I was blah. I was ehh. I was lacking in focus and enthusiasm and energy.

Why? I don’t know. I just was. I mean, I wasn’t.

You know? It was “one of those days.”

Most of the day I sat on the deck, reading this:

Drinking this:
And, well, that’s about it.

There are reminders every day of how fortunate I am to be able to live this lifestyle, to have these freedoms. Sometimes I recognize those reminders, sometimes I don’t.

One of “those days,” regardless of the effects they have on my week’s to-do list, always remind me of my fortune.

And for that, I can’t help but love them.

There are a lot of opinions out there about what best defines a success. Having the most money, the best lifestyle, the most toys, the least toys, happiness, family, etc.

But those are all things one acquires after achieving so-called success. Right?

So what best determines success? Ignoring fear.

No matter your definition of success, it always takes change and forward movement to achieve it. You know the quote: “If you keep doing what you’re doing, you’ll keep getting what you’re getting.”

To stop doing what you’re doing, and to start doing something else, something different, takes guts. Change is hard. And scary. And everyone – everyone – has some amount of fear related to making it.

It’s those that will move forward regardless of that fear that will actually begin to achieve something.

Allow the fear to keep you from taking action and…those definitions you have of success? They’re lovely, but they won’t be yours.

If you can step through the scariness, then you can move towards the change, and you can start making your definition of success a reality.

If you are tasked with driving a car forward, using the rear view mirror might make that task rather difficult. And dangerous.

How do you drive a car forward, then? How do you make any progress? Easy. You look directly out the front windshield, not immediately in front of the car but not too far away either, you grip the steering wheel, focus, and put pedal to the metal.

An old analogy, of course, but an important one.

The past matters, I’m not going to say that it doesn’t. However, what happens in your future is entirely defined by what you do right now.

Do nothing, and that past will be your future.

Do a few things kinda halfheartedly and your future will be your past, plus a few hopes and dreams.

If you take major action? Stay openminded? Always be willing to make yourself uncomfortable? Be willing to change? Then you can turn that future of yours into an entirely different picture compared to your past.

But you know what you have to do to begin doing ANY of that?

Look forward. Not behind.

I want to go out into my community.
I want to go into a higher tax bracket! (Err, or maybe I don’t?)
I want to go to a place where Hubz doesn’t have to report to anyone other than himself. (And me, of course! Mua ha hahaa.)

I want to go to a place of higher learning.
I want to go overseas and down under.
I want to go to the land of successful, published authors.

It’s where I want to go. It’s affected by where I’ve been. But it’s not defined by where I’ve been.

Look forward. Not behind.

Where do you want to go?
And more importantly, what are you doing right now to get there?

If I were to have the opportunity to start my adult life over again, I would do one general, albeit very important, thing differently: go faster.

Much faster. Taken action earlier, made the decision quicker, pondered less, acted more. Gone after the bigger fish right off the bat, instead of piddling around so long with the small stuff. Waiting until I had “enough experience” or “more time” before I went bigger, thought bigger, acted bigger.

I spent too much time being careful and thinking small.

Maybe I would have learned even earlier than I did that you get what you ask for. (Err, get what you fish for?)

If I were to start over, I would have read Rich Dad Poor Dad earlier.

I would have taught myself sales and customer service and rejection and leadership via network marketing younger than the old – cough ahem cough – age of 26.

I would have obtained my real estate license sooner. Invested sooner.

I would have networked and prioritized my likeminded friends sooner.

Ohh, the places I could be now. *sniffle*

Sorry. I just turned 30 and I’m feeling old and nostalgic. Bear with me, I’ll get over it eventually.

Maybe.

Anyway, if I could start over with a clean slate at 22, fresh out of college, that’s what I would do.

More. Sooner. Faster. Earlier.

Is this what everybody says, though? I think it is. Hmm. What does that tell you?

I’m borrowing this quote from my current read, The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari, and it gets an entire post all on its own, it’s that good.

Trust yourself. Create the kind of life you will be happy to live with all your life. Make the most of yourself by fanning the tiny, inner sparks of possibility into the flames of achievement.
- Foster C McClellan

Each piece could be a quote all on its own. So today (not tomorrow or next week), take that step. A first step, perhaps. Create your ‘kind’ of life. Define your kind of life. Trust. Take that small idea and decide to act on it.

Trust. Act. Create.

Sounds like a good mantra for the week, yeah? Cheers to you!

——

Here is the Monk Who Sold His Ferrari on Amazon. It’s one of the few personal development parables I have ever read that’s not painfully corny. Definitely worth a glance. Also, it has Ferrari in the title! BONUS.

Want your business to grow this year? Making a big difference on the success of your 2011 doesn’t have to mean making big changes.

1. Throw out your New Year’s resolutions and annual goals. It’s January 19th; define five, specific mini-goals you would like to accomplish by February 15th. Then get to work.

2. Be honest with social media. In 2009 the masses were introduced to the social media world. 2010 they tested it out and tried to put every, single piece of it to use for their business. This year? Be honest about what fits best for you. If you don’t connect with Twitter, decide not to use it. If you get a lot of use out of MySpace, don’t be guilted into not using it. Be honest with yourself and the best use of your time online.

3. Send a gift to a networking contact for no reason. Write “Just because I thought you’d enjoy it” on the card. My recommendation? A book, of course.

4. Say no. You can do it, ready? Nooohhhhhhuuuuwahh. Try it again? Noohhuu. Nice! Now keep practicing.

5. Set aside ten minutes every day to learn something new. You pick the method – a non-fiction book, a blog, a trade magazine, whathaveyou. Do it either first thing in the morning or last thing at night, and discipline yourself to never skip a day.

6. Contact a local university and submit a job posting for an intern. You’ll be providing a student with valuable work experience and getting a second pair of hands for free in the process.

7. Answer the question – what do I have to offer? What specific experiences and knowledge do I possess? Write down the answer (or answers) and make a plan to develop a product around it. Be it a new email series for your clients, a weekend convention for potential customers, or even an ebook for your blog audience, you’re offering something new, building relationships, and adding an additional income stream to your business.

8. Every other time before you hit Send on that tweet or Update on that status, erase what you wrote and write a sincere promotion for someone else instead.

9. In the next week, identify two of the most common processes that occur in the everyday operations of your business. Pick one of them, step back from it for a minute, take yourself out of the equation, and find a way to automate that process. Everything can be systemized, you just need to figure out how. Make it happen. Put the system into effect immediately. If you’re feeling super-productive, repeat this exercise monthly.

10. Say “thank you” to someone – anyone – every day.

11. Once a quarter, if not once a month, spend a long weekend with the most likeminded friends you have. Travel across the country if you have to. If you don’t have friends with the same goals and mindset as you do, attend a networking event every week and network your face off until you find them.

So, what do you think? What would you add to the list?

Once in a while I run into a piece of writing that quickly, simply, and completely hits me to my core. You know, one of those that you don’t immediately forget upon clicking ‘X’ on the browser window? Yeah. This list from Robin Sharma is one of those. Robin is a leadership expert and author of a couple amazing, bestselling books; The Leader Who Had No Title and The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari. Listen up:

Thanks Robin. This is brilliant. You can find the full post on Robin’s blog here. Bookmark it.

I can see you sitting in front of your screen, by the way, nodding your head in agreement with most of these. Caught! Which ones hit you the hardest?

If you happen to follow me on Twitter you might have noticed lately that, uhh, I haven’t really been tweeting much to follow. I’ve been in class!

Nate and I have recently made things official: our first, solo, real estate investment property. Eek! We’ve had plans for years to get into real estate, and number 15 on my Life List is “Get my real estate license” so why not jump into both at the same time, right?

For 40 hours last week and 16 this week I’ve been sitting in a classroom in the middle of Kansas City, taking notes (actual, handwritten ones), and listening to a Southern-drawl’d teacher lecture on real estate laws, agency, and licensure.

Off the subject, but you guys, this teacher is a riot. He’s twenty minutes deep into a talk about general warranty deeds and fee simple title and then all of a sudden starts preaching about the business structure of Chick-fil-A. Earlier that day? A comparison between real property and personal property brought about the wonderful portrayal of fatherhood Laura Ingalls Wilder depicts in her Little House in the Prairie series. Don’t ask. None of us had any idea either. All of this between his accent that, sometime after hour 37 had several dozen, antsy, grown adults snickering until they cried. Dollars became DAWluhs and buyer came BIAar. It was awesomeness.

As I was driving home at the end of the week, I realized how rare of an experience I had. We purchasd the property we did right on the edge of barely knowing what we were doing. I enrolled to get my real estate license because I knew it would give us a leg up, but didn’t have any specific idea how or when or by how much. I hadn’t thought twice about anyone I might get to know during class, and five days later walked away with a half-dozen self-motivated, goal-driven, risk-taking, entrepreneurial friends.

It was a brilliant example of Ready, Fire, Aim.

Last week I realized that I need to stop aiming more often. In fact, let’s stop aiming more often…together.

You up for it?

More classroom “notes” to come. Stay tuned.

UPDATE: Diary From a Classroom, Part 2

I heard a quote the other day from BK Boreyko that struck a chord with me:

It’s only an advantage if you take advantage of it.

Moral of the story? TAKE ACTION.

What advantages are you leaving on the table? What business/relationships/money/success could those be turned into, if you decided to take action and make use of them?

Let’s do it now, shall we?

And that’s all there is to say about that. :-)