Wow, 3rd update today - I'm on a roll :P

According to Happier.com, these are my top 5 strengths.  (They should know after I completed their 240-question questionnaire!!). 

Creativity, ingenuity, and originality
Thinking of new ways to do things is a crucial part of who you are. You are never content with doing something the conventional way if a better way is possible.    

Humor and playfulness
You like to laugh and tease. Bringing smiles to other people is important to you. You try to see the light side of all situations.    

Judgment, critical thinking, and open-mindedness
Thinking things through and examining them from all sides are important aspects of who you are. You do not jump to conclusions, and you rely only on solid evidence to make your decisions. You are able to change your mind.    

Fairness, equity, and justice
Treating all people fairly is one of your abiding principles. You do not let your personal feelings bias your decisions about other people. You give everyone a chance.    

Forgiveness and mercy
You forgive those who have done you wrong. You always give people a second chance. Your guiding principle is mercy and not revenge.

Now I just need to focus on practising these strengths daily!  But how?!

Exactly 2 months ago (29 Jan, 09), I blogged about "Finding My Three Quarters".  I was making around R5,000 a month passive income.  That is to say, I wasn't putting in any hard hours to get that R5,000.

I'm half way to R20,000 so this post is about finding the next 2 quarters.  Pretty exciting stuff!

What happened?  Two of my sites started getting the traffic they deserve.  By no accident, mind you.  The one site has undergone (and is still undergoing) a LOT of optimisation to get it to this point and the other is being actively promoted by one of our affiliates.

Groovy stuff huh?

Now I could still go ahead and try make up the remaining 2 quarters of my desired passive income by building 30-Day-Challenge sites (see my previous post) but it's obvious to me that focusing on what's already working would be a wiser investment of my time.

So keep that in mind next time you wanna make more money - figure out what's ALREADY bringing in the most significant amount of money and focus more attention on THAT. 

Also remember to work smarter not harder. 

As a web developer (or webpreneur), working harder means bookmarking your site more, commenting on more sites, submitting to more article directories, writing content, etc.  Working smarter means helping your site's visitors bookmark your site, encourage THEM to write more content, add a weekly newsletter that runs itself, automate posting GOOD content to Twitter, Facebook and the likes.  I'm hoping you're getting the picture by now :)

For the first time (EVER) in my entire life, I'm experiencing what it means to be "organised".  However, I'm not the one organising my life, Tanya is.  Once a day we meet up and we go through my work items and then she helps me decide what gets done, etc.

Now, please understand, I (just about) never studied for a single exam in my life.  I can count on my hands the number of times I prepared for an exam and I did that by reading over some notes the night before.

In fact, everything in my life has been "winged".  I seem to trust that things will just work out and, for the most part, they always do.  The difference is that I end up being stressed about how they will work out.  So planning does have its benefits - you stress a little less about how something will get done because you've already figured it out.  Of course, this comes at a price - you need to sit and think before you sit and do.

The most important change in all of this is that Tanya's forcing (whipping me and everything - serriusss!) me to plan my projects.  This is new to me because generally I (rather successfully) "wing" everything.  Right now I have a massive project that I'm planning and it's taking me most of the day just to plan it.  Tanya says that planning is 80% of the project.  I hope she's right.  It almost feels entirely wrong to be doing all this "planning" when I could be klapping bugs but I trust in her.

Wish me luck :D

So Ally mentioned something about self-assessing once every 6 months and I think it's very wise so I'm putting my goals down in writing out in the open and, somewhere around June, I need to come back and see just how much of this I've achieved and what I haven't and what I need to change to get back on track...

Business Goals...

1. Get FreeArticles.co.za back over the R5,000 hump.


2. Push GuitarForum.co.za over the R5,000 hump as well.


3. Go under debt review and stop getting calls from banks and things ;)


4. Push SpotOnForex.com over the R20,000 hump.


5. Push IconFarm.co.za over the R1,000 hump.


6. Push iThank.co.za over the 1,000 users hump.


7. Revive JogMyMemory.co.za and push it over the R1,000 hump.


8. Develop semi-confidential projects that are potentially worth over R100,000 per month.


9. Get R1m funding so I can get other people to do the work
necessary for some of these and so I can finally realise my vision of
Maxiware CC being a solid web development and internet technology
research house.

Personal Goals...

1. Reach my 100 pushups goal and stay there or do better.

2. Take at least one week-long holiday somewhere pretty.  Can even be up the road, as long as it's pretty.

3. Pay everyone on time.

4. Help my mom, dad & sisters in some significant way.

5. Help other family as well.

6. Build a repertoire of really awesome songs I can play on guitar.  (Learn them first, duh :P)

That's it!  Let's see how I'm doing in 6 months :)

Failing is like phoning someone when they're in the shower.  Your first call might not get answered.  Maybe even your 2nd, 3rd and 4th calls but, if you're persistent, and you recognise failure as a stepping stone to success, your 5th call will probably get answered and you'll get what you were looking for.

It works like this:  The first time you call, the person you're trying to reach might not even hear his phone ring before the last ring and it's too late.  "Oh well", he says and he carries on showering without even opening the shower door.

The second time you phone, the guy you're trying to reach will be a little more sensitive to the sound of his phone ringing so he might hear the whole thing but maybe he just doesn't feel like running out, sopping wet, just to answer his phone.  The 3rd and 4th calls could go the same way, with the guy you're trying to get a hold of being too busy drying off, getting dressed and brushing his teeth to get to the phone.

But... by the 5th time you phone this guy, he's clean, dry, dressed and ready to take your call so he picks up and you get what you wanted -- and you have his FULL attention coz he knows you're SERIOUS about what you want.  He's also probably really sorry for missing your earlier calls so you could even get him to go that extra mile for you -- neat :)

Life and the universe is like that.  The first time you take action towards something you want, the universe might be a bit distracted.  The 2nd, 3rd and 4th times, it's moving closer and closer towards you BUT you can't see anything so you might lose faith and give up.  The trick is in making that 5th call because then, all of a sudden, everything seems to line up for you and you have a massive success -- potentially achieving more than you had originally set out to do.

All you need to realise is that each call (action) is bringing you closer to your goal and persistence is what will get you to success.

Sometimes it just takes 2 calls, sometimes it 4,000 but as long as you keep calling, you'll eventually get through :)  (As long as you have the right number ;))

Jim Rohn says, and I happen to agree, that the way to fix money stress is to have a lot.  It might not fix your other problems in your life.  It won't necessarily make you happy but your money stress will go away.

That makes perfect sense in my head!  Sure there are other ways of fixing money stress.  You could become a monk, you could convince yourself that you don't need the money, or you could live by a budget but, quite frankly, none of those appeal to me.  Okay, I lie.  The monk one appeals to me but I'm married, have 2 dogs, 4 cats & 2 rats.  I feel responsible to them to make money so I've chosen this path I'm on now.

And that's what brings me to the point of this muse.  Before I had financial responsibilities, I wanted to save the world.  I had a real fire burning inside me and there was nothing anyone could say that could turn it out.

In my mid-teens I was reading books about "Accelerated Learning", "Mind Power" and more.  Long before "The Secret" ever came out, I had at least a shallow understanding of its basic principles.

I dropped out of school and set out to conquer the world.  And, make no mistake, I achieved a lot in the 7 or 8 years that followed... 

I got my first real-world job (I'd been working for extra cash since I was 13), got my driver's licence, got my 2nd job, bought my first car, got medical aid, left the job scene to start my own business, had some tough months, had some flipping amazing months, moved in with the hottest girl alive, got household insurance, got married and lots of other stuff in between.

By my standards, I've actually been very successful and achieved much of what I set out to do when I first wrote my "Before I turn 30" goals-list.  I haven't quite "arrived" yet but I've certainly met and overcome many challenges that had others defeated.

But something else happened over these last 7 or 8 years.  I gradually became a slave to money.

Make no mistake, money is a wonderful thing if you earn it because you want it and the things it can buy but not if you earn it because you're afraid you might starve otherwise, or be uninsured and stand the risk of losing all you own, or lose your car, or lose something else.

When you're earning money because you're afraid of losing what you have, something happens and you lose your fire.  Heck, I'd say you lose your life.

I have big visions for my life and I fully expect to be a multi-millionaire within the next couple of years but the trouble is that in my daily struggle to survive, I often (not sometimes, often) lose sight of my bigger goals.

And that's why I think I am where I am today and I'm not where I could be.  Each time you lose sight of your goals and you get stuck into what you're doing day-in and day-out, you forget to do things that serve your higher purpose.  You forget to make that call, go to that meeting, answer that phone (I almost never do!), build that business, and the list goes on.

Instead, you avoid those calls, make just enough and, bit by bit, if you're not careful and you don't wake up to what's happening around you, your goals slip a little further away from you until, eventually, you can barely see them in the horizon.

That, my friend, is the scariest thing I could ever imagine for myself.  To fail to achieve what I've set out to do.  And if you're afraid of it too, I recommend you join me in my resolve to stop being afraid and to rekindle your passion for life because FEAR is what got us here in the first place.  Find that fire within you, remind yourself why you want the things you want and then set out every day to do a little something that brings you closer to your dream, your vision, your goals.

"Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light." - Dylan Thomas

This year I've learned to be INTERdependent instead of just
INdependent. Stephen Covey believes we "evolve" from dependence to
independence to interdependence and this last change has seen huge
improvements in my life. It takes a lot of strength and trust to hand
something over to someone else and have faith that it will work out OK.



I'm now more comfortable with LETTING GO of the stuff I'm not so good
at and finding partners to fill those shoes for me. I now focus on
creating (I'm a creator wealth profile) and the opportunities are
abounding.



Currently, I'm teaming up with a fellow entrepreneur who's a well-connected
marketing and business buff and I believe that single partnership is
going to catapult me from S-Quadrant to B-Quadrant (Google: Cashflow Quadrant by Robert Kiyosaki) because, together,
we're building a business that will mostly run itself and we have
nearly no competition that can match our resources.



That's just 1 partnership.



Then there's my guitar forum. My partner there will soon be using his
contacts in the music industry to find us advertisers. Even at R300 per
month to start off with, we'll be making money and building our name as
an effective place for music companies to advertise their wares.



And what do I have to do? Not much except trust my partners and create stuff - which I love doing! :)



I'm working with a friend and fellow developer on a few projects and my designer in PE
as well. With all these projects, I'd normally try do it all alone and
you know what happen, right? Nothing. I get overwhelmed and my projects
end up being shelved for months or years at a time. Now they're
actually going somewhere!


Then there's Spot On Forex. I build the
technical systems and set up marketing campaigns, Ivan does the really
hard (trading) work and I get 50% of the profit. Not a half bad deal
considering systems only need to be built once ;)  Even if I stuff-up while creating them, I'll eventually get them right and then I'm done.



Each system I build multiplies my income. Even if it's %0.5, that's
compound growth and so the next %0.5 will be worth even more to me.



I foresee myself being a millionaire before I reach my 26th birthday. Beyaddaful!



No I'm not boasting. I believe sharing these types of stories will give
SOMEONE out there hope and if I give just one person enough hope to
persist through whatever they're going through now, my whole life has
been worthwhile!



At school (Jeppe Boys) we often had motivational speakers and our
headmaster always tried to motivate us by sharing us stories from
Covey's, "7 habits of highly effective teenagers". Most kids hate that
type of thing but, for some of us, that was like drinking from the holy
grail and I've since held the belief that it's worth speaking to 1,000
even if only 1 listens.

5. Get wet. Cooped up indoors for far too long? Maybe you should hang out near a wet spot. "The air around bodies of water is full of energy-enhancing ions that help bring oxygen to the brain," says Dr. Pierce J. Howard, author of The Owner's Manual for the Brain. If the beach is a long way off and there's no pool near you, just open the bathroom window and get into the shower. This "wet session" helps energize and soothe your brain, which, in turn, leads to having clarity and a more positive view on things.

Five Happy Treats for a Stress-Free Life | Simpleology Blog

Who knew?
Right, I'm off to go have another shower :P  You lucky coastal bastards can go take a walk on the beach.  No wonder you're always so happy-go-lucky ;)

Wot? Me? Jealous?  Never!

I'm reading Dr DeMartini's Breakthrough Experience book and it's quite an eye-opener.  DeMartini says that when you accept the good AND the bad in your life as serving you, you enter a state of love.  He talks about being self-righteous and being self-wrongeous and how, when you bring them together, you act from something greater and open yourself up to performing miracles in your life.

What this means, in my life, is that when I'm perceiving the world to be against me, I'm simply being self-wrongeous and need to bring the two halves of my perception together to the point where I can recognise in what way the things I'm experiencing now are serving me and actually bringing me closer to my dreams and goals.

That's pretty profound and, if I use it in my daily life, has the potential to change things for good.  As DeMartini says, you need to know what you would love to have in your life (to the very last detail) and ALSO love what you already have in your life.  Acknowledge how it's helping you come closer to what you would love to have in the future.

A sort of self-acceptance of your current circumstances but not accepting that they'll always be the same but that they're serving you in achieving even greater things.

That's powerful stuff and helped me come out of a state of depression so maybe you should pick up his book and give it a read too if you've been in an imbalanced state of emotion.
<!-- technorati tags begin -->

Tags: DeMartini

<!-- technorati tags end -->

We all have the same 24 hours in a day, yet some people achieve so much more than others. What are their secrets?

Marketing Bullets
<!-- technorati tags begin -->

Tags: pareto, time management, creativity, productivity

<!-- technorati tags end -->