Grow You

Goal Setting For Success

July 5th, 2009

You’ve probably heard people say in the past that “you can achieve anything if you set your mind to it”. You’ve probably also heard people talk about “goal setting”. It all sounds rather obvious, doesn’t it?

But it really does work. I know it to be true because I’ve done it myself. And believe me, I’m a natural skeptic who doesn’t believe in the Law of Attraction or anything based on “faith”.

A year ago, I set myself a goal to emigrate exactly one year later. And I’ve achieved that. Now I’ve set myself a new goal to put a big deposit down on a house in 2 years from now and to earn close to $100,000 by the end of the year.

So set yourself a goal today. And really believe that you can achieve it. Most people are just resigned to being “realistic”. And this attitude is the key reason why they fail, not due to so-called “uncontrollable events” or other lame reasons.

Posted in Success | 7 Comments »

Learn A Language By Watching Television

June 26th, 2009

Well it’s been nearly 8 months since I last spoke on my progress learning a new language (in this case, Dutch).

Those Michel Thomas CDs really helped although it took me a while to get through most of them. The listening and speaking part is easy, I’ve just been lazy in “finding the time”.

But what has also really helped me is to try to watch everything on TV (English language programs) but with Dutch subtitles. Unfortunately, most DVDs do not contain them (they often have French, Spanish and German though) so the best way to find them is by downloading TV series that contain “Dutch subs” or “ondertitels”.

Anyway, this technique will work for all languages, not just Dutch. I find that by reading the subtitles and listening to what I obviously understand, I am able to pick up easily new vocabulary and in context too.

This is totally different to the way most people learn languages using subtitles. Usually, you have Americans or British watching the occasional foreign movie with English subtitles. But often, it is really difficult to clearly hear what is being spoken because it is spoken quickly, colloquially and often with slang. But listening to your own native language being spoken instead is very easy. Also, foreigners learning English also read subtitles in their own language. Clearly this works, but I think there are great advantages to my technique.

Also, you quickly assemble vocab for many commonly used phrases that are repeated over and over during the course of the movie or TV series which really helps to reinforce the learning. There is no rote learning or assembling wordlists required at all. And because 70% of any conversation is formed with the 1,000 most common words, you can quickly be well on your way to getting the gist of almost any conversation.

As I now live in The Netherlands, I can tell you that this has really helped. I advise you to combine it with Michel Thomas like I have. Sure, I can’t do the usual school routine of talking about my hobbies but I am capable of going shopping, asking for help etc. with reasonable confidence. Not bad considering I’ve never had a single formal Dutch lesson.

Posted in Language Learning | No Comments »

How To Eat Healthy

February 8th, 2009

Recently I’ve been eating a bit healthier. It’s the start of what I hope to be a successful overcoming of my addiction to food. You see, that’s what people who are overweight really have as a problem – an addiction to food. Eating lots of food becomes necessary just to feel normal in the same way that people who are addicted to cigarettes must have a ciggie regularly just to feel normal.

Tips

Anyway, here’s how I eat healthier. I remind myself that I must eat at least one of the following food groups every day:

some kind of protein, preferably fish (I like to eat cooked mackerel that comes in a tin – an easy source of omega 3 fatty acids).
some kind of fruit (smoothies are great for this).
some kind of “good” fiber like oat bran or wheat bran (good for lower cholesterol).
some kind of carbohydrate – preferable low GI.
some kind of vegetables (this is my hardest one because I simply don’t enjoy eating them, especially greens!).

Good Diets

I’m overweight and I know my diet is not good but frankly many people who don’t look overweight eat unhealthily too. They are still at some increased risk of heart attack, stroke or cancer.

The bests diet to eat is the Mediterranean Diet, The Okinawan Diet (similar but more fish) or the Raw Food Diet (all cold food, no meat).

Although I would really love to be able to eat only raw food, I can’t see myself pulling it off – the temptations of modern day foods and recipes would make it difficult to eat.

Breaking The Addiction

Like I said, being fat is being addicted to food. It’s no secret to me but to the rest of the world it seems to be. How can I overcome this addiction? That’s the million dollar question. I’d love to hear your advice

Posted in Diet, Health, Weight Loss | 9 Comments »

Progress Of My 2nd Income Plan

January 11th, 2009

One of the best ways to improve yourself, your wealth and your long term wellbeing (as well as that of your family’s) is to have a second income. Why not just get all your income from one employer, you might say?

The Reason Why

Most people are reliant on a single source of income usually as an employee of a company, large or small. We seem to have long since moved on from where you didn’t need any money to survive! In days gone by we would forage for our own food and it didn’t need 8 hours a day to do it either.

But these days most people rely on getting money from one employer. We do everything in our power not to upset them in case we are fired. And now that the recession is hitting hard and companies are downsizing and laying off workers, practically everyone is afraid of losing their job.

Why not diversify with a second source of income? In fact, the phrase “second income” is a bit of a misnomer. Why not have 3, 4 or even 10 different sources of income? Not only will you lower your risk of loss if any of them goes belly up but you could potentially double or triple your present income or even more.

My Plan

There are two ways to make money on the internet. They both involve having a minimal website but you definitely don’t need to be a programmer – I’m not.

Affiliate

Half my plan is to make money as an affiliate. This means promoting products owned by others in a similar way to a car salesman selling cars that belong to the dealership.

The commission percentage that you can get varies greatly.

The worst commissions are on physical products. This is because profit margins are already squeezed tight and any extra sales that you can bring will still involve costs of manufacture and delivery to the product owner.

The best commissions are on information products that are delivered digitally such as educational pdf guides and downloadable/streaming videos. As broadband becomes available in more and more households and at higher speeds then video in particular is going to become even more popular.

There are many places to sign up and register to promote products as an affiliate but one of the most popular is Clickbank.

Create a free blog at Blogger.com. Choose a few products from Clickbank to promote on the same theme and then write a blog on that theme and link to these products throughout. You could do one on golf, high blood pressure, gambling or anything really.

Product Owner

You can make a lot of money as an affiliate and many people get rich this way but it is even better if you can make your own product. The reason is that if you make your own product then you can offer affiliates to go out and there and promote it for you.

You’ll give up some of the profits of your product but you’ll get back way more traffic. For example, say you have a $50 product and you can only sell one per day through your own efforts. That’s a profit of 50×30= $1,500 per month.

But offer affiliates 75% and if they bring you 10 times the traffic then you’ll make 0.25×50x30×100= $11,250 per month, over 7 times as much money!

The beauty of making your own information product is that it is much easier than you think. To get some idea, check out some of the products that people have made here: CB Analytics.

Progress

So far I’ve dabbled into both being an affiliate and a product creator. However, over the next month I am going to seriously ramp up my efforts. Stay tuned to find out how well I do.

Posted in Make Money Online | 3 Comments »

Eckhart Tolle – Power of Now

November 10th, 2008

I recently acquired the book “Power of Now” by Eckhart Tolle.

It seems that Oprah has been gushing all over this guy for some time but this had passed me by as I rarely watch it, here in the UK.

I was actually introduced to his works whilst watching the RSD Blueprint seminar.

With both the text and the audio versions, which one should I use? At the moment, I don’t have the time to dedicate to several hours of uninterrupted reading plus I figured that listening to the audio would be a nice way to introduce myself to his teachings.

The great advantage of this audio book is that you do not get some famous narrator reading his book aloud – you get the real Eckhart Tolle so I reckon that this can only help to get the message across.

I fired up my old X-Box and began to listen whilst driving around racing circuits in Forza Motorsport.

I have not yet finished “Power of Now” but the message to me is quite clear already:

thoughts arise from our obsession with the past (which we cannot change) and the future
such thoughts give rise to negative emotions
negative emotions give rise to physical ailments (manifestations)
the way to overcome all of this is to live in the “now”, without thoughts
most people in this world do not live in the now, they are obsessed with the past and the future
the original message of most religions is to live in the now

If you want to read this book online, you can get it at Google Books.

If you prefer a physical copy you can feel and touch, I’ve included a link to Amazon below.

The Power of Now

Eckhart Tolle

Best Price $2.00
or Buy New $15.61

Posted in Beliefs | 6 Comments »

Paul McKenna’s Instant Confidence

November 1st, 2008

I recently picked up this title from one of the UK’s most famous “hypnotists”. This guy was famous here in the UK years ago but has disappeared from the map in recent years.

He originally started by doing stage shows, always with an improvement angle although he did often go for amusement too. I remember when Nigel Benn fought Chris Eubank several years ago and apparently McKenna was in his corner, or at least this was claimed.

Anyway, McKenna has since moved on to pastures new and appears to have conquered America and, although he no longer does the entertaining style of hypnosis, he has a new forte – self development. I have since learned that he is big into NLP too.

I came across this and wanted to know if there was more to it than simply his name – and the reviews I found on Amazon looked very good indeed.

I have a number of self improvement books and a huge list to get through, so I am very keen on audio and video and think that they can be more effective in specific applications, so I’ve only listed to the audio that comes with this program.

It’s a 30 second audio, best listened to with headphones – this is because you often hear 2 McKennas! One in each ear.

It sounds much like a hypnosis script – you go into a deepened and relaxed state and Paul gets you to visualise the better “you” in situations. If you have a particular goal in mind e.g. to find a woman or make lots of money, then I think you are best off by visualising specific rather than general situations.

I was quite surprised at how “active” it was. I felt myself early on thinking – woah, what am I letting myself in for! But I just let myself get deeper and deeper. You don’t fall asleep or into a trance and you are fully aware, but like someone told me about hypnosis generally, you feel more “focussed” on the task at hand – increasing your confidence and really feeling it.

Anyway, upon waking I definitely felt invigorated. I noticed just wandering around the house and doing the cooking I was much more extrovert than normal!

The reviews I have read say that you should listen every few days for a few weeks to get the best effect, so this is what I think I will do – listen twice a week for a few weeks. In the meantime, I am going to look into EFT tapping techniques as a way of increasing confidence and removing anxieties in social situations. Interestingly, Paul is into this too and apparently he demonstrated it on the Ellen show, a tapping technique to lose weight.

Perhaps in a month’s time, I will try one of Paul’s other programs on weight loss. We don’t see it here but I understand that he has a TV show in the US about this. However, I’ll be looking for audio again instead.

Instant Confidence

Paul McKenna

Best Price $19.81
or Buy New

Posted in Hypnosis, Self Esteem | 6 Comments »

Checking My Progress

November 1st, 2008

It’s useful to check where you are every once in a while, to put things into perspective.

If you recall in one of my previous posts, My Dutch Progress, I had recently come by the Michel Thomas Dutch Foundation course.

I completed 4 CDs out of the 8 but had to take a break for personal reasons I won’t go into at the moment. Unfortunately, I feel that I have lost track a little so, when I resume my studies, I will start again from CD1. Really, I should be trying to learn a little Dutch every day and not study in bursts – this is something I need to address soon…I shouldn’t be putting this off…..

I’ve compiled a list of various programs I have that I intend to get through in the very near future:

Paul McKenna audios (losing weight, better confidence etc.)
Eckhart Tolle – Power of Now (book and audio)
Real Social Dynamics’ Transformations (audio)
Paul Coelho – The Alchemist (book)
Listening Reading in Dutch
Holosync

Quite a varied and interesting list, don’t you think? I thought I would give you a taste of what I will be writing about on here in the days and weeks to come.

I’ve decided to dedicate one hour of active time per day to my self-development. That doesn’t include extra opportunities that I may have in the future such as listening to audios while on the train. However, I prefer to give my full attention to my activities – active rather than passive learning.

Posted in General Self Improvement | 92 Comments »

To Your Health

October 10th, 2008

I read somewhere that you must look after your health first before anything else.

Think about it – you can improve yourself in many ways – perhaps learn self-hypnosis, NLP, learning a language, increased confidence, public speaking skills, spirituality and more.

But if you don’t have your health then all of this could potentially be a lost cause. You need health not just to survive but to get the best out of life generally.

I have a problem of general anxiety about my health and have a couple of problems anyway which I’m getting checked out – best to just speak to the doc rather than ignore them, trust me.

To your health!

Posted in Health | No Comments »

My Dutch Progress

October 7th, 2008

I thought I would update you on my language learning. Well, I decided to pull my finger out and start learning my no.1 priority language – Dutch.

I already had some language materials but I recently acquired the new Michel Thomas foundation level Dutch series.

I’m not sure if you’ve heard of Michel Thomas before but he is reverred for his language teaching methods. Actually, I don’t think he’s a god or anything but his methods are pretty good.

As you listen to the tapes, it is like sitting in a classroom with a teacher and two other students. The method of gradually introducing pieces of the language is great – as they say, you truly do not need to write anything down at all. This is a great method for my lazy approach

Anyway, there are 8 CDs lasting approximately 12 hours. I’ve completed the first CD and I want to try and do one CD a day – that’s a little over an hour a day. After that, I’m going to do Pimsleur Dutch and then read a textbook I have called Colloquial Dutch. Then I’ll try the L-R method I spoke about earlier.

Michel Thomas Method: Dutch Foundation Course (Michel Thomas Method)

Phew! I don’t want to get ahead of myself as this is just the start but I hope I can keep this up!

btw below is the first part of a documentary that followed Michel Thomas before he produced the CDs – you can see for yourself his teaching methods which are the same on the CDs.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XQ3xvL22hLE

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FGtCmFsKRk4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5g56SViDNQI
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=skaVVZDVFT4

First part below:

Posted in Language Learning | 1 Comment »

When Do You Work Best?

October 4th, 2008

I think it’s important to understand when you work at your best.

In the workplace, this is slightly easier. When you work for someone, you have an automatic motivation to work – else you will lose your job.

Personally, I used to get in some good work between the hours of 10 and 11. After lunch I slowed down but I often had a late afternoon revival. From what I hear, this pattern is fairly normal and common.

But working in the evening is a different matter altogether. And right now, I am working from home with no one to push me – and my most productive hours are strange by some people’s standards.

I seem to get a lot done very late in the day e.g. at 11pm. I’ve always been a bit of a night owl and revel in staying awake till 3am which I do quite regularly. I have never been and probably never will be an early bird.

So how does this help my time management? Well, I am still learning as this way of life is new to me but something I have tried recently with good results is to do routine work late at night whilst watching television! Previously, I would have attempted such work during the day and then tried much “meatier” stuff in the evening but to no avail.

This way, I can do the “meatier” stuff earlier and then the routine stuff later i.e. higher productivity!

Personally, I find that what matters is to try different things out and then stick with what works for you. There are no shortcuts to trial and error unfortunately.

Posted in Productivity | 1 Comment »