From my last post I wrote that its possible to have a good and exciting life. And you don’t need to have all you need or want for your life to be exciting. Hope we agreed is a vital key to living a  good life. Setting goals that are reasonable and achievable is important as well.

You then need to have think of how to maintain your weekly plan. You work 9-5 every week day but you need 2 hours before and after work for commuting. You may decide to use public transport for the whole time in order to use 30 minutes out of your travel time to work on your goal.

An example is if your goal is to write a book. You may want to use some of you redundant time to invest in your goal. Everyone including you have 24 hours in each day. Some have mastered how to make the most of the time available to them while achieving greatness and others feel like there is not time to do anything while they waste minutes on nothing.

Here are a few time wasters that you may want to watch out for:

• Reading and replying emails
• Catching up on social media like Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest…
• Watching your favorite show on TV
• Surfing on the internet generally and lots more…

If you do you research properly you will find that there are many people around the world today that make more money each time they do any of the things above. As a matter of fact some even make money as you simply browse. Why can it be you making the money?

I am not saying not to do any other the things above but give yourself a time line. If you watch TV 2 hours every night and 1 hour of Facebook  that 3 hours right there that you can take 30 minutes out of to pursue your goal.

Don’t make the mistake of planning to use the whole 3 hours but start small and be discipline at it and then you can gradually increase. Its easier to maintain something small that be discouraged that its unattainable.

The most important part now is continuity  When your daily task is small and simple, continuing will be easier.  Before you know it you already have 3 out of 7 chapters of the book. This kinds of result will encourage you to continue and eventually finish.

You see what I was talking about earlier: hope. Many people are tired about their lives and others feel like life is really unfair because they don’t have any project they are working on and so they use all the time they have to focus on the negative things that happen everyday.

Your thought life has a lot to do with the way you see life. If you spend more time thinking about your goal and more time achieving it, you will cut off some stress from your life. Your hope for a great life will increase daily.

Enjoy!

I always like to say that life can be sweet if only you can be open to the possibilities  There are many people out there that are really enjoying their lives. This does not mean that they have all that they need or want, as a matter of fact not having all you need or want is a good way to enjoy your life. Why? Because you have found a reason to keep going. Hope is the word here. With hope I can assure you that you will wake up daily excited to work, that if I work a bit more today I will get closer to achieving my desired goal.

For example, if I write another paragraph in my book today I will get closer to publishing a likely best seller and then I can pay off all my debt and then I can build that house I have always dreamed about from scratch. You see, hope my friend will give you a very good life.

I hear someone saying but I have always being hopeful but life is hard, good things never happen to me. I have tried different things but I have never got any good result. Yes, I believe you, you are not the only one that feels like that. I have felt the same way for year and as a matter of fact I still feel like that sometimes. Are you thinking; then what gives you the right to write a blog post like this? Hope!

My reality is that I have not written a best seller, I have not made my millions, I don’t have any fantastic product out there that is making me some good money. However I hope to get all these within the next few years. How do I plan to do that? I plan to write down my goals. From daily goals to weekly goals. I have always been a very careful person. I have tried to write goals in the past.

Many of these goals I achieve for a few weeks and even months, but then I get either carried away or tired and I am not able to record a whole year or years of achieving many of my goals. So because of this I am careful not to put annual goals.

Being too careful I know is not too good but I am not a huge risk taker personally, I go for the easy stuffs. So I find it easier to accomplish easy tasks. There is no point I think having a goal to write a book each year if I don’t have that plan on how to be able to achieve the easier tasks. Like what I will do daily.

This daily plan has to be reasonable. I have to be able to inculcate it into my normal routine. For example, if I work 9-5 on every week day, I have to look outside my employer’s time in order to achieve my own goals.

Many people are not comfortable listening to others criticize them. They find it hard to progress with such people around them. I used to be one of the people I am talking about. I was very discouraged each time someone did not like my work or idea.

Based on my personality, I have a slit perfectionist trait and so I struggle with trying new things and when I do, I still found it hard to share my ideas so when someone did not accept every bit of it, I felt bad which is like confirming why I did not want to share in the first place-its not good enough!

Many times people came with their own candid opinions on how to improve my work or some interesting questions in order for them to understand what I was doing. However I interpreted it as not good enough. These kinds of comments and contributions did not go well with me. I would listen but really I was mad on the inside. Next was that I would really loose my desire to try. And then return to my shell.

I will tell myself, why don’t I go back and keep working in order to have the best idea before sharing with anyone. So I put all my efforts and then as soon as I got stronger to share, I did only to get the same results again. And most times I gave up.

Many times the problem stemmed from low esteem.  Comments from people I was intimidated by caused more havoc than others. If you don’t have a solid knowledge of your purpose, this is bound to happen. Everyone that comes around becomes a competitor. However the more you know who you are the more relaxed you will be about criticisms.

For example, if you made a nice meal and then someone you are intimidated by comes to say you should have added orange instead of lime. You are likely to feel really bad and shut down. Asking why orange might have been better would not be on your mind. You might automatically think they are trying to intimidate you the more.

Many people today fight this battle. Do you have people in your life that are obviously better than you in some ways? The problem here is not whether they are better than you. You need to know that there are so many people out there that are better than you at most things. Until you compete in the Olympics or any other global competition and come out as the best in the world, you have to accept that there are many people that are better than you.

For example there are people that have written better blog posts than me. Even on this same topic, I am sure someone out there has done a better job. So the point is not whether you are the best or not. The Master Potter must be smart to have given each one of us unique finger prints and DNAs. Your focus must be on your uniqueness. Ask yourself, what’s unique about me?

There may be another person with my name somewhere on the planet, may be another one with similar features, someone with the same credentials but there is no other person that is completely like me.

The questions now is whats unique about me? Everyone that desires to live a purposeful life must be able to ask themselves this question. A good tip is to list your skills, your habits, think about what you like to do on a normal basis. No one else is like you. To know more about this, watch out for my free book; Becoming You.

As you continue to study yourself, you will begin to discover why the Master Potter made you like you are and that will increase your confidence daily. As your confidence increases, your ability to receive criticisms will also increase.

You need other people to get the most out of your life. First you need other people’s input to create your best product yet and since you cant buy all your products, you need customers to buy them. If you aim at success in anything you do you will need your critics.  Why do you want your friends and family to buy your product? Because they simply want to support you or because they are proud to be identified with your success and willing to share it with another person.

All of us have natural critics. You are surrounded by people that have been put there to criticize you constantly. Example is your spouse, children, parents, siblings, step families, cousins, the list goes on. Most huge companies you see around start from a single person but as soon as they can afford to they hire another person. This way they buy new opinions and new skills.

Your natural critics will give you free input from their own unique mind and skill bank. In order for you to succeed you need to use this free service. Imagine building a house and getting a free contractor. Why would you say no?

The good thing about a free service is that you don’t have to take there suggestion but you can use it to improve your own. If you take every criticism like this it wont bother you. However you will notice a lot of improvements in your life. You will begin to polish your own ideas with other people’s contributions. We can also assume that at least one of your potential clients will think the way your critic thinks.

And Yes, I agree that most of the people that I call your natural critics are the same set of people that might annoy you the most. But imagine getting your clients review about you before they buy your product. Imagine knowing exactly what your clients are looking for and designing your product to for their needs. You will sell better this way.

Even if you fight with them, don’t let it end there. Use their comments like one from a potential client and polish your plans the more. Also because these people know you more than your potential client will, you need to also learn to categorize their comments into negative and positive.

Work with the part of the criticism that can be used to build you and your product up. Trash the negative immediately, the part that can destroy you and kill your zeal. I personally believe that every criticism has these two parts. If you don’t believe, I can prove this to you. I challenge you that I will show you the two sides of every criticism.

Go ahead, allow your critics to work. You need them.