Risk Management Consultant – helping you minimize your spiritual, financial and physical risks!
A business group conducted a study on infidelity in the workplace. Not surprisingly, they concluded that extramarital affairs in the workplace ultimately led to breakdowns in other areas of life.
Continue reading “Little Compromises Turn Into Big Problems”
Mortgage protection life insurance is an important financial planning tool that allows families to stay in their home after a loved one dies.
Most homeowners understand having life insurance is important to protect the family when they are gone. Most homeowners also want to make sure their homes are safe should they die unexpectedly. Continue reading “What Is Mortgage Protection Insurance? Do I Need It?”
Today this picture popped up on my Facebook memory timeline. This picture was taken right after I baptized Tommy Tate. What a joyful occasion! It’s moments like these that I will remember for the rest of my life.
This picture made me stop and ask the questions, “How do we have real freedom? What is the #1 most important thing in life?”
Allow me to answer these questions in this post. I’m reminded of the mission statement of Victory Church –
Loving God, Loving Others, and Passing Our Faith to the Next Generation! Continue reading “How To Have REAL Freedom”
I ran across a great article over in the Entrepreneur magazine. Here is a summary: Being an entrepreneur is challenging. Every day is a constant battle with uncertainty and doubt. But it can be a lot harder if you don’t actively make yourself a bigger priority than your business. Continue reading “8 Things Entrepreneurs Need To Do Daily To Care For Themselves”
How serious are you about improving yourself? There are many ways to improve yourself, but what are the most important things you can do to improve you? No one else will find time to improve you, but you.
You will desire to increase your value if you are looking to move to the next level in your life. I don’t know what your next level is, but I do know that we should always be moving up or forward in life. How do we do this? Increasing our value in life.
What is value? Value is adding worth, raising the level importance, being beneficial, or making something more significant.
You have heard it said, “You cannot give what you do not have.” There are people who possess good hearts and the desire to give, yet they have very little to offer. Why? Because they have not first added value to themselves. Making yourself more valuable is not an entirely selfish act. When you acquire knowledge, earn a new skill, or gain experience, you not only improve yourself, but you also increase your ability to help others.
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You may or may not know this about me, but I’ve always
been an entrepreneur at heart. And I’m proud to say I just made an important decision.
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Allow me to share 3 ways to increase your value and improve your life.
You must find time to improve you. No excuse known to man is good enough to stop you from investing in yourself.
It’s important to set aside a little time daily to invest in yourself. The question is, “What will you be doing during that time to invest in yourself?” And the answer should be, “Whatever it takes.”
You will be researching and learning during this daily time you will set aside. Just remember, if you don’t spend the time investing in yourself no one else will. So you do “Whatever it takes.”
Your value begins to rise as you gain more knowledge and experience through this time you spend investing in yourself.
Many people think they can do it on the own, but they couldn’t be more wrong. You need a team to do anything great in this life. You have probably heard the phrase, “It takes a team to achieve the dream.” Possibly you heard it this way, “Teamwork makes the dream work!”
Improving your value in life is an important matter and should not be taken lightly. Another phrase I grew up hearing was “You are whom you hang around.” In some cases that statement may not be true, but in most cases it is quite accurate.
You need to be around people who will be able to increase your value. It is impossible for someone to add value to your life if they haven’t discovered their own value and purpose.
I am not encouraging you to disconnect or disassociate with people that are already in your life, unless those individuals are pulling you down or decreasing your value. There are some people who will drain your value and you won’t know it until it’s too late. Why subject yourself to the pain of living with regrets because you surrounded yourself with the wrong people.
So surround yourself with the right people who will give you the right advice to increase your value and improve your life.
Don’t get so caught up in self that you forget to help someone else. I know you cannot help the entire world. No can help the entire world, but we can do little small things to give back.
At the end of the day, we were created to serve and help others. Whether it is parenting, helping out at your church, blogging, helping a senior citizen carry groceries to her car, or feeding the homeless; do something and do it consistently. And don’t ask for any pay from it. Everything changes when start thinking about compensation. Do it out of the goodness of your heart. You will have plenty of opportunities to receive great compensation if you are helping other people. The money will come.
You may be pressed for time, but I promise whatever it is can wait. This will be a great opportunity for you to help someone, but more than anything you will be helping yourself. You will discover God speaking directly to our heart during these times of helping others. He will reveal greater opportunities for you to increase your value and improve your life.
Here is what I have learned:
Do for others what they cannot do for themselves.
Ambassador and poet Henry Van Dyke observed, “There is a loftier ambition than merely to stand high in the world. It is to stoop down and lift mankind a little higher.” What a great perspective! Doing for others what they cannot do for themselves is really a matter of attitude. I believe that whatever I have been given is to be shared with others. And because I have an abundance mind-set, I never worry about running out myself. The more I give away, the more I seem to get to give away!
No matter how much or how little you think you have, you have the ability to do for others what they cannot do for themselves. Exactly how you do that will depend on your unique gifts, resources, and history.
Few things are of greater value to a prepared person than an opportunity. Why? Because opportunities increase our potential. Demosthenes, the great orator of ancient Greece, said, “Small opportunities are often a source of success. Help people win by giving them opportunities, and you will win with them.”
Provide others with small opportunities to succeed, and then acknowledge and reward their success.
For anyone who values financial security and ultimately desires financial freedom, creating at least one additional stream of income is no longer a luxury. It has become a necessity.
Diversifying your income stream is crucial to protect yourself and your family against the unavoidable ups and downs of economic and industry cycles. Because of the financial risks that come from relying on one source of income, such as a job or a business, consider creating at least one or more additional streams to generate cash flow.
Your additional income streams can be active, passive or a combination of the two. Some may pay you for doing something that you love (active), while others can provide income for you without your having to do much of anything at all (passive). You can diversify your income streams among different industries to protect you against major losses during downturns in one market and allow you to financially benefit from the upswings in another.
This truly is one of the not-so-obvious secrets of how the wealthy become — and stay — wealthy, which unfortunately isn’t taught to the masses. The good news is that it’s not magic. It’s not even complicated. Creating your next stream of income is a simple, step-by-step process, which you can arrange to start bringing you monthly income faster than you might realize is possible.
1. ESTABLISH FINANCIAL SECURITY. 
Now, this idea isn’t sexy, but it’s imperative: Don’t focus your time and energy into building a second stream of income until your primary source is secure. Whether you have a day job or own your own business, focus on establishing and securing a primary monthly income that will support your expenses before you pursue other steps.
2. CLARIFY YOUR UNIQUE VALUE.
Every person on this planet has unique gifts, abilities, life experiences and value to offer — and be highly compensated for. Figure out the knowledge, experience, ability or solution you have that others will value and might pay you for. Remember, what might be common knowledge to you isn’t for other people.
You and your personality differentiate your value from that of every other person on earth. Many people will resonate with you (and your style) better than they will with someone else offering value that’s similar or even the same.
Knowledge is the one thing you can increase very quickly. As Tony Robbins wrote in Money: Master the Game, “One reason people succeed is that they have knowledge other people don’t have. You pay your lawyer or your doctor for the knowledge and skills you lack.”
Increase your knowledge in a specific area, and you’ll simultaneously increase the value that others will pay you for, either to teach them what you know or apply your knowledge on their behalf.
3. IDENTIFY YOUR MARKET
Determine whom you are best qualified to serve. Based on the value you can add for others or the problems you can help people solve, who will pay you for the value or solution you can provide?
4. BUILD YOUR COMMUNITY.
Dan Kennedy says, “The most valuable asset you have is your email list, so focus on growing it.”
I don’t like to think of my email community as merely a list of names but rather as a group of individuals, each with their own hopes and dreams.
5. ASK YOUR COMMUNITY ABOUT THEIR DESIRES.
You can either guess or assume what people desire and need, invest valuable time in creating it and then hope your guess was correct. But remember: Hope is rarely the best strategy.
6. CREATE A SOLUTION.
After your community members tell you what they need, it’s your golden opportunity to get to work and create it. This could be a physical or digital product (a book, an audio, a video, a written training program or software) or a service (dog grooming, babysitting, coaching, consulting, speaking or training).
7. PLAN THE LAUNCH.
Think about how Apple rolls out its products. The company doesn’t just throw a product on the shelf or its website. No, the company makes it into an event. Apple builds anticipation months in advance, so much so that people are willing to camp out in front of stores for weeks to be the first in line.
8. FIND A MENTOR.
The best way to cut your learning curve and achieve a specific result is to find people who’ve already achieved what you want and then model their behavior. Rather than try to figure it all out on your own, find someone who has already achieved what you want, determine how this person did it, model this behavior and make it your own.
While you might seek a relationship with a face-to-face human mentor, you could also hire a coach, read a book or articles by an expert or do web research. After some consideration, you may decide to make this your first step.
Schedule time to begin implementing these steps, one at a time, and within months you can be enjoying the benefits, the perks and the financial security and freedom that comes from having multiple streams of income.
If there is one thing that holds millions of people back each day from growing as an individual, achieving high levels of success and becoming the best version of themselves, fear is definitely at the top of the list.
High achievers, regardless of occupation, understand that taking risks and massive action is a vital part in getting from where you are to where you want to go. And that goes for life — and in business. But often these risks are met with fear, which can cause people to question their ambitions and prevent them from taking action.
One thing I want you to understand is that fear is absolutely normal. Even the best experience fear from time to time. The key is to not let fear hold you back and prevent you from taking action and go after what you want in life.
Here are three ways to overcome fear immediately.
1. REWIRE YOUR BRAIN. Rewiring your brain is one of the surest ways to overcome your fears and develop the courage that is needed to get to where you want to go. Develop mantras and affirmations that build you up and increase your self-confidence. Read uplifting books to help interrupt the negative inner dialogue that goes on in your mind. Beginning as a child, we are told negative things that we can’t do, be or have. If you don’t take the initiative to rewire your brain, life will do it for you.
2. HAVE A WELL THOUGHT OUT PLAN. We begin to worry and over analyze situations when we don’t have detailed and well thought out plans for our life. Set extremely clear goals with a detailed plan on how to achieve those goals. After you have a well detailed plan, take action.Taking action towards meaningful goals helps to relieve stress and gives you a huge sense of enjoyment. Fear creeps in and paralyzes us when we don’t take the
time to plan our lives.
3. DO ONE THING EVERY DAY THAT SCARES YOU. Living in our comfort zone is not the best way to live. Not doing the things that frighten you will increase the likelihood that your fears will become bigger – and taking over your life. It can even be something small that you choose to do, but do something daily that scares you. Step out of your comfort zone and work on becoming comfortable with the uncomfortable. When you form the habit of doing something daily that scares you, your courage grows little by little. Soon enough, the barriers that once were holding you back vanish and your potential maximizes tremendously.
Making the bold decision to not let fear hold you back anymore is one of the best decisions you can make to ensure future success. It’s not something that happens overnight, but taking intentional action and running towards your fears daily will give you a promising result in the long run.
Everything that you want in life is past your comfort zone. Don’t let fear be the reason you lived a half-lived life.
To one degree or another, just about all of us are unsatisfied with ourselves and our circumstances—and that’s not necessarily a bad thing. A certain amount of dissatisfaction is necessary if we’re ever going to make progress. To become all that we can be, we must dream of being more than we are. The problem is, too many of us stop there, in the dream stage. Why do you suppose that is?
More often than not, it’s because we don’t think we have what it takes to turn our dreams into reality. And we’re usually right about that. We can make some changes by sheer willpower or working harder, like reaching a new sales quota or dropping a dress or pants size. But what about the bigger changes, the changes inside that we know would make us so much happier and enable us to truly make a difference in our corner of the world? It’s that kind of change that is usually most elusive.
We’re not good enough, we tell ourselves. We have too many flaws and make too many mistakes. It’s just not in us!
Jesus summed it up so simply when He said, “With men it is impossible, but not with God; for with God all things are possible.” The secret lies in putting ourselves in God’s hands and letting Him do the impossible for us and through us and sometimes in spite of us. We’re small, weak, and incapable, but there is a very big and strong and capable God just waiting to help us.
A dream without a plan is soon exposed. As Warren Buffet has said, when the tide goes out, you discover who’s been swimming naked.
Dreaming is good when it leads to a learning agenda that directs our intentions towards what’s most important to us. John Kotter has said there are two kinds of people in the world: (1) those who accept their life, and (2) those who lead their life.
Some people just get up, look at their life, and hope (dream), something good will happen. The successful person says, “I’m going to make something happen. I’m going to build on trust; make that relationship work; take control over the things I have influence over; lead my life; create a personal learning agenda that will help fulfill my dreams.”
The key to transforming dreams into reality is to set goals that can be broken down into doable steps. As Mark Twain said, “The secret to change is one step at a time.”
So how do you create a learning agenda that will help you fulfill your dreams? For starters, is there a gap between what you know or the skills you have and the information or the skills you need to actualize your dream?
Below are Seven Steps to turn your dreams into reality:
Determine your goals and ask yourself: Where do I want to be next year? What do I need to do to accomplish these goals? Your answers instantly become your learning agenda.
Some goals won’t require new skills or knowledge, but others will. What specific skills are needed to make your dream(s) come true? What skill that you already possess would you like to improve by 25% within the next year?
Is it going back to school? Enrolling in a training course offered by your employer? Developing a relationship with mentors and/or coworkers who can teach you new skills or insights? Look for that optimal source for every skill you decide you need to learn.
You now have the information, so start creating your learning plan. It should lay out the skills and knowledge you need to acquire. It should include a timeline of where and when you will go about it. And it should be in writing.
Don’t start with the hardest or the easiest. What is the most important thing you can do right now? Not every action is of equal value. Evaluate and then rank them according to value.
What is your W.O.W. (Within One Week)? What step will you commit to this next week? Let the fun begin—you are putting your learning agenda into action. The sooner you get going, the sooner you’ll learn the knowledge and skills you need to enjoy and achieve your goals!
We all have them. When you identify them they begin to lose their power. Don’t doubt your dream. I’m too young. I’m too old. I don’t have the time. I don’t have the money. These doubts are common to all of us. One of the best ways to fight your doubts is to be clear on where you want to go. You must take the first step. That’s what builds confidence. Every time you do something you didn’t think you could do, your confidence is built. Action leads to confidence more than confidence leads to action. It’s easier to act my way into a feeling than it is to feel my way into an action.
Stand up for who you are and what really matters to you. You can choose what you will believe, and it will shift your mindset to be clear on the action you will take. This action will be proof to yourself that YOU believe in where you are going. I am not talking about clicking your heals together, like Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz, saying I believe…I believe. I’m talking about putting a stake in the ground, and making claim to your life.
So go back and review these seven steps for creating your learning agenda. They will become part of your Doubt-Removal System. This will shift your mindset, and this action will deal with your limiting beliefs.
It’s been said that the two greatest days in your life are the the day you were born, and the day you discover why you were born.
Just to begin the discovery process, here are questions to help you discover why you were born – your life mission!
1. What makes you smile? (Activities, people, events, hobbies, projects, etc.)
2. What are your favorite things to do in the past? What about now?
3. What activities make you lose track of time?
4. What makes you feel great about yourself?
5. Who inspires you most? (Anyone you know or do not know. Family, friends, authors, artists, leaders, etc.) Which qualities inspire you, in each person?
6. What are you naturally good at?(Skills, abilities, gifts etc.)
7. What do people typically ask you for help in?
8. If you had to teach something, what would you teach?
9. What would you regret not fully doing, being or having in your life?
10. You are now 90 years old, sitting on a rocking chair outside your porch; you can feel the spring breeze gently brushing against your face. You are blissful and happy, and are pleased with the wonderful life you’ve been blessed with. Looking back at your life and all that you’ve achieved and acquired, all the relationships you’ve developed; what matters to you most? List them out.
11. What are your deepest values?
Select 3 to 6 values and prioritize the words in order of importance to you.(values listed below)
Achievement, Adventure, Beauty, Being the best, Challenge, Comfort, Courage, Creativity, Curiosity, Education, Empowerment, Environment, Family, Financial freedom, Fitness, Friendship, Giving, Service, Health, Honesty, Independence, Inner peace, Integrity, Intelligence, Intimacy, Joy, Leadership, Learning, Love, Motivation, Passion, Performance, Personal growth, Play, Productivity, Primary, Relationship, Reliability, Respect, Security, Spirituality, Success, Time freedom, Variety
12. What were some challenges, difficulties and hardships you’ve overcome or are in the process of overcoming? How did you do it?
13. What causes do you strongly believe in? Connect with?
14. If you could get a message across to a large group of people. Who would those people be? What would your message be?
15. Given your gifts, talents, passions, abilities, personality, experiences, and your values. How could you use these resources to serve, to help, to contribute? (to people, beings, causes, organization, environment, planet, etc.)
