Neuro-Linguistic Programming talks about the importance of being able to re-frame things to put them into a different light.

One example that I have thought of recently (and will test out shortly) is on retail customers. When a customer walks into a store and after being asked a few things says they are 'just looking', an idea is to turn around and say 'No problem. However if you want to touch any items you will have to ask permission first (with a wink)'.

The idea is to snap people out of the thinking that their saying will elicit the same response it normally does. They might feel a little surprised that it has a different effect and what they have said is now framed in a different context, allowing you to progress further with your discussion with them.

If anyone else tries this out let me know how it goes.

We all live busy lives.

A few months ago, things were really quiet for me. I was on holidays before entering my final year of study, work had wound up for the year and there was not much to do.

Now however things are different. I am studying full time which required attendance three days a week. I am studying a short course in NLP one night a week. I am learning to swim on another night of the week. I am working as a casual at a job to bring in a little cash flow for some upcoming expenses while also managing two businesses. Then, when I'm not doing one of these activities I'm trying to spend time with my family, my mates or my girlfriend.

Needless to say that life has become busy for me. And yet, despite being busy, I still have extra people pressing for my time. This could be either to catch up, to get involved in their business opportunity or to help them out in some way.

Unfortunately I am at a stage now where I say no to just about anything to cross my desk. It's not that I don't want to help people, just that what they want is not within my scope given my current involvements. As I scale back, I will be making more room for family, friends, etc. before I devote more time to additional business distractions.

Learning to say no is something that becomes easier. Here is some of my considerations at this point in time when saying no:

1. Family first: My family is my priority. No one gets preference over them. 'nuff said.
2. Cash flow: I'm not taking on any new projects unless they pay me cash flow. End of story. I'm only interested in lifestyle businesses that I intend to keep running until they decline or until I find something I am more passionate about. I'm not getting involved in any more businesses that are focused on high growth at this point in time.
3. Lifestyle: I'm wanting to learn new things that meet my goal list. That is why I am doing a short course in NLP and learning to swim. However that is also why I am finishing my degree. Three things of this nature at one time is too much. From now on, I think I will opt to take on no more than one of these kinds of tasks until my degree is finished. From there, I may increase it to two, or shorten the involvement time.
4. Traction: In relation to business unless I'm starting something myself I am only interested in projects that are already moving and have a proven growth record. Just starting is no longer of interest, there needs to be a continuing growth pattern.
5. Appreciation: I know I have knowledge and that knowledge is useful. I am not interested in giving that knowledge away for free nor am I interested in providing it for people or businesses who do not appreciate it.
6. Overlap: I'm only interested in doing things that match my goals and the current projects I'm involved in. If it is too far out of the scope it will distract me too much from my current involvements, which makes me less productive.
7. Travel: More and more of my involvements are requiring me to travel. One job requires me to travel an hour each way and one of the businesses I am involved in takes me around the country. Every time I go to university it takes me two hours to get each way. I would rather do things closer to home for less pay and have more time. Therefore, travel is always something I need to take into consideration.

Busy people always get more offers than those who are not busy. But busy people also have to learn to say no. Sometimes making a decision and saying no is better than making no decision at all, even if it isn't the right decision in the long run.

Find out what is important to you and what needs to be right with something in order to say yes. Make sure it aligns your goals. Then be willing to say no to things that don't match your goals and criteria.

What have been your experiences in saying no to people and projects in the past?

There is so much ambiguity around the topic of investment to render the word useless.

Modern society has us sitting around, trying to determine what is the best path for investment. Should we invest in shares? In property? In our superannuation? Our career? Our own business? The more choices we have, the less action we take. Procrastination more often than not puts us in a worse situation than if we had taken any action at all.

There is however one investment that can reap huge dividends for anyone...

At a recent Pitch Club event, I was talking afterwards to a guy named Chris who had started his own business. As the conversation developed our discussion entered the topic on spending money on yourself. Chris told me that one of his friends had just been through a major process of doing so himself. He had spent $10,000 of his own money fixing up his teeth, had been going to the gym and made his body into a powerhouse, had got a better job and much more! To top it off, he had started teaching people in through his own business how to do the same. The benefits this had given Chris' friend both to his personal confidence and success was outstanding.

Self-investment truly is a beneficial cause.

Money is not the solution to all the problems we believe it to be. A few years ago, I wanted to quickly become a multi-millionaire so I could spend time traveling, working out at the gym and teaching others to become a success in their lives and helping out in my local community. Since then I have learned the following:

1: I don't want to travel all the time, and I don't need millions to do it.

2: I can work out at home and still get results I like. Even a gym membership is affordable on an everyday salary.

3: Success is not necessarily measured in dollars for everyone. I have managed to conquer depression, give up smoking, overcome a number of fears and much more that others would deem as 'successes'.

4: I can help out in my local community whenever I feel so inclined.

One thing that was interesting is that the benefits that I receive from doing these things are extremely high and pay great dividends. The other point was that I didn't need to accumulate an amount of cash or investments first to be able to do these things.

Imagine the benefits on my career and businesses if I did these things first?

Self investment is a great way to increase your results in life. There are a myriad of ways to invest in yourself (which I will discuss in a future post) but for now just think of a few and ask yourself: 'How could self investment improve my chances of reaching my potential?'

Friends are one of the most important things in our lives.

Second to a relationship with God, friends and family are the highest priority and focus in all that I do. I enjoy spending time with them, watching them grow and learn lessons, experience new aspects of life and more. Friendship is truly great to have.

However, one thing I am noticing (especially in my generation) is that we are spending more time trying to build our number of friends (IE: Quantity) rather than spending time developing existing relationships we have (IE: Quality). As a result, we can often be perceived as having a high number of friends and being 'well connected' when really we can feel alone.

The best way to prevent feeling lonely is to focus on quality relationships. Having five lifelong friends who experience both the ups and downs with you are a lot better than going through life with 5,000 acquaintances.

Quality friendships builds a number of different character attributes. Here are my five P's that I have observed come from having quality friends:

1: Persistence: Friends that are around for a long time can often become annoying. Learning to be persistent and to continue building friendships despite any issues that arise will develop a lot of good character traits that will benefit all parties involved.

2: Patience: Quite often we can become frustrated with others. I have a really close friend who is great to be around but I can get a little impatient with at times due to his opinions. However, I am continually working on building my patience levels so that I can get past this and appreciate the value that this friendship as in my life.

3: Positivity: It doesn't take much to begin looking for and finding faults in others. However, this trait destroys relationships rather than building them. It is better to look for the best in people and to encourage them in those areas.

4: Personality: Having friends you see multiple times a week creates personality. When I see friends I haven't seen for a few years, it can be quite easy to strike up a conversation and to spend time discussing what we have been up to in our lives. It is a lot harder doing this with people you see regularly, as there isn't as many changes. Learning to create an interesting personality to express new aspects of your daily life with people can be a great benefit, while also reminding you that celebrating little wins is worthwhile.

5: Pleasure: The pleasure of friendship only comes when you have someone you can experience a lot of life with. Life is to be shared. We could all become billionaires and have everything we wanted but it would be useless if we did not have company to enjoy it with. Being able to experience the pleasure of a true friend in life is a priceless achievement.

Building quality friendships begins by making an effort. What have you done today to take action on building your relationships with some of the people that matter the most in your life?

I'm hearing from a number of people subscribed to this site via email that they are receiving multiple posts in a single email.

Unfortunately this is not meant to be occurring. You are meant to be receiving one email a day. It seems to be a feedburner (the software used for my email subscriptions) and I am looking for how to fix it.

Thank you for your patience, and if you have any knowledge on this issue please let me know.

At the time of writing this I have just sat down at my computer after having a McFlurry. An interesting thing about McDonald's is the way they have their brand logo on everything. You can look at any piece of McDonald's packaging (serviettes, spoons, bags, boxes, etc) and you will see their name or logo.

Just as McDonald's leaves an imprint of themselves on everything around them, so you can too in reaching your passion in life. Leave a little bit of what you do in all your conversations, in your email signature, on your business card, your website, your local charity or church, anything. The more exposure you have in the world the better.

I just finished reading 'How to sell your way through life' by Napoleon Hill.

Definitely was an interesting read. The more of Hill's stuff I read, the more I find him being a new age type of guy. But nevertheless, he does make some valid points. Overall I would have to say it is a good read and worth the time if you can see past the new age content.

The main learning for me was that to make a sale you need to develop three things within the mind of the buyer:

1: Confidence: The buyer must have confidence in the person selling the product and his product.

2: Interest: The buyer must be reached through an appeal to his interest and imagination to develop a liking for the product.

3: Motive: The buyer must have a logical motive for making the purchase.

Sales (according to one chapter in the book) goes through three stages: Interest, desire and action. If you can master these (using confidence, interest and motive) then it would seem to me that you should be able to take action and successfully make more sales.

This is not just for the business owner. This is for every individual. Every day we are selling ideas of where we want to go for dinner, where we should hang out on the weekend, why our employer should hire us and so on. We should act accordingly and make sure we are doing our best to sell ourselves, our ideas and our products/services in all aspects of life.

Napoleon Hill definitely knew a thing or two about sales and these small points mentioned above along with the rest of the book's content are definitely worth a read.

I have had this list in various places for some time, but I thought I would put it on this blog as this is the place I frequent the most online.

My goals are:

- Learn to swim (started lessons 28th Jan 2010)
- Eat better
- Learn to surf
- Pay off my student loans
- Successfully complete my degree
- Get my motorbike licence
- Buy a motorbike
- Buy a house in Mornington, Victoria, Australia
- Save $10,000 in cash
- Buy a 13 inch Macbook Pro
- Write a book on entrepreneurship
- Write a book on reaching potential (First ten pages drafted)
- Build my own business I have full control over
- Build my investing empire (via Angel Investing and public shares).
- Get physically ripped
- Try kayaking
- Get into rock climbing
- Learn Krav Maga
- Travel to the USA

- Travel to Europe

- Travel to the Caribbean- Become famous for something

- A daily post on my blog (one year minimum)

Completed Goals (since starting this blog):

- Buy a newer and more fuel efficient car.

- Date a stunning and intelligent woman with a view for the long term.

- Engage in some form of social activity every day.

- Develop long term friendships with new people.

Persistence is a necessary skill for success in any calling in life.

One cannot finish studies, a job, a project or task without persistence. However, as much as persistence is needed, there is one thing that gets in the way which causes a lot of people to stop before they achieve their goals or complete their tasks. This problem can be identified in the following statement:

The start of something is more exciting than the end

Unfortunately most of us find starting a new project more exciting than finishing one. I found this recently with my degree. Being dissatisfied with the training, I was contemplating deferring indefinitely. However when I first started I was really excited and pumped to be getting into something new.

If we can identify our weakness in this area then we can begin to change our mindset towards it. If we acknowledge that we can only achieve success with persistence then we can begin to work on these projects until completion.

One of the best ways I have found to complete a task is to focus on things one day at a time. Today is all we have. Tomorrow is uncertain. The best thing we can do is to give what we are working on our best go today. The way to success is to keep doing this every day of our lives.

Plan for the future but persist through the unpleasant times by taking one day at a time. Alcoholics Anonymous tells attendees to focus on saying no to alcohol just for today. Don't worry about tomorrow. If a person does this for a year then they would have achieved sobriety, but it all begins by saying no in the moment on one particular day.

There are three different types of services we can use to make an income.

These services are paid different amounts. The master of all three has the ability to change his income as he sees fit, and has more options and work choices throughout his career.

The three services are as follows:

1: Brawn: The lowest paid of the three services. This is where typical labour jobs come in. There is nothing disrespectful about using brawn and those that do usually have good physiques and are able to develop a great reputation for reliability, honesty and being a hard worker.

2: Brains: The middle of the three services. Brains are where you are employed based on your knowledge and the skills you can provide to a business. This is where accountants, lawyers, etc. come in. Like the first category, people are able to earn an honest and respectable income through work. This work is generally less of a toll on the body but can cause a bit of 'brain drain'.

3: Imagination: The highest paid of the three services. Rather than merely providing knowledge, those who use their imagination come up with new ways to organise and apply their knowledge in a way that benefits everyone involved. They are the innovators, the pioneers and the entrepreneurs of the country.

Anyone can develop and master these three skills in time. Those who have command of all three can easily gain a position in a variety of jobs in the field of their calling.

What services have you mastered so far? How can you improve your mastery in those areas and in other areas? What results have you seen?