Kim Lerner

Pain may sometimes be the reason why people change. Getting flunked grades make us realize that we need to study. Debts remind us of our lack of income.  Being humiliated gives us the ‘push’ to speak up and fight for ourselves to save our face from the next embarrassments. It may be a bitter experience, a friend’s tragic story, a great movie, or an inspiring book that will help us get up and get just the right amount of motivation we need in order to improve ourselves.

With the countless negativities the world brings about, how do we keep motivated?

Try on the tips I prepared from A to Z…

A – Achieve your dreams. Avoid negative people, things and places. Eleanor Roosevelt once said, “The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.”

B – Believe in YOU, and in what you CAN do.

C – Consider things on every angle and aspect. Motivation comes from determination. To be able to understand life, you should feel the sun from both sides.

D – Don’t give up and don’t give in. Thomas Edison failed once, twice, more than thrice before he came up with his invention and perfected the incandescent light bulb. Make failure as your steering wheel.

E – Enjoy. Work as if you don’t need money. Dance as if nobody’s watching. Love as if you never cried. Learn as if you’ll live forever. Motivation takes place when people are happy.

F – Family and Friends – are life’s greatest ‘F’ treasures. Don’t lose sight of them.

G – Give more than what is enough. Where does motivation and self improvement take place at work? At home? At school? When you exert extra effort in doing things.

H – Hang on to your dreams. They may dangle in there for a moment, but these little stars will be your driving force.

I – Ignore those who try to destroy you. Don’t let other people to get the best of you. Stay out of toxic people – the kind of friends who hate to hear about your success.

J – Just be yourself. The key to success is to be yourself. And the key to failure is to try to please everyone.

K – Keep trying no matter how hard life may seem. When a person is motivated, eventually he sees a harsh life finally clearing out, paving the way to self improvement.

L – Learn to love yourself. Now isn’t that easy?

M – Make things happen. Motivation is when your dreams are put into work clothes.

N – Never lie, cheat or steal. Always play a fair game.

O – Open your eyes. People should learn the horse attitude and horse sense. They see things in 2 ways – how they want things to be, and how they should be.

P – Practice makes perfect. Practice is about motivation. It lets us learn repertoire and ways on how can we recover from our mistakes.

Q – Quitters never win. And winners never quit. So, choose your fate – are you going to be a quitter or a winner?

R – Ready yourself. Motivation is also about preparation. We must hear the little voice within us telling us to get started before others will get on their feet and try to push us around. Remember, it wasn’t raining when Noah build the ark.

S – Stop procrastinating.

T – Take control of your life. Discipline or self control jives synonymously with motivation. Both are key factors in self improvement.

U – Understand others. If you know very well how to talk, you should also learn how to listen. Yearn to understand first, and to be understood the second.

V – Visualize it. Motivation without vision is like a boat on a dry land.

W – Want it more than anything. Dreaming means believing. And to believe is something that is rooted out from the roots of motivation and self improvement.

X – X Factor is what will make you different from the others. When you are motivated, you tend to put on “extras” on your life like extra time for family, extra help at work, extra care for friends, and so on.

Y – You are unique. No one in this world looks, acts, or talks like you. No one has the same dreams as you. Value your life and existence, because you’re just going to spend it once.

Z – Zero in on your dreams and go for it!

I hope these tips on motivation and self improvement have opened your eyes up to what you are doing and what you CAN  be doing to improve.

I would LOVE your feedback!   Tell us what you need to work on!

Do you have big dreams and great aspirations for you and your business?  Unfortunately, our dreams remain just that – dreams. And our aspirations easily collect dust in our attic. This is a sad turn of events in our life. Instead of experiencing exciting adventures in self actualization, we get caught up in the humdrum of living from day-to-day just barely existing.

But you know what? Life could be so much better, if only we learned to aim higher.

The most common problem to setting goals is the word impossible. Most people get hung up thinking I can’t do this. It’s too hard. It’s too impossible. No one can do this. However, if everyone thought that, there would be no inventions, no innovations, and no breakthroughs in human accomplishment. How boring life would be!

Remember that scientists were baffled when they took a look at the humble bumblebee. Theoretically, they said, it was impossible for the bumblebee to fly. Unfortunately for the bumble, bee no one has told it so. So fly it does. On the other hand, some people suffer from dreaming totally outrageous dreams and not acting on them. The result? Broken dreams, and tattered aspirations.

If you limit yourself with self-doubt, and self-limiting assumptions, you will never be able to break past what you deem impossible. If you reach too far out into the sky without working towards your goal, you will find yourself clinging on to the impossible dream.

Try this exercise. Take a piece of paper and write down some goals in your life. Under one header, list down things ‘you know you can do’. Under another header, write the things ‘you might be able to do.’ And under one more, list the things that that are ‘impossible for you to do.’

Now look at all the headers strive every day to accomplish the goals that are under things ‘you know you can do’. Check them when you are able to accomplish them. As you slowly are able to check all of your goals under that heading, try accomplishing the goals under the other header-the one that reads ‘you might be able to do.’

As of the items you wrote under things I could do are accomplished, you can move the goals that are under things that are ‘impossible for you to do’ to the list of things ‘you might be able to do.’

As you iterate through this process, you will find out that the goals you thought were impossible become easier to accomplish. And the impossible begin to seem possible after all.

You see, the technique here is not to limit your imagination. It is to aim high, and start working towards that goal little by little. However, it also is unwise to set a goal that is truly unrealistic.

Those who just dream towards a goal without working hard end up disappointed and disillusioned. On the other hand, if you told someone a hundred years ago that it was possible for man to be on the moon, they would laugh at you. If you had told them that you could send mail from here to the other side of the world in a few seconds, they would say you were out of your mind. But, through sheer desire and perseverance, these impossible dreams are now realities.

Thomas Edison once said that genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration. Nothing could be more true. For one to accomplish his or her dreams, there has to be had work and discipline. But take note that that 1% has to be a think-big dream, and not some easily accomplished one.

Ask any gym rat and he or she will tell you that there can be no gains unless you are put out of your comfort zone. Remember the saying, “No pain, no gain”? That is as true as it can be.

So dream on, my friend! Don’t get caught up with your perceived limitations. Think big and work hard to attain those dreams. As you step up the ladder of progress, you will just about find out that the impossible has just become a little bit more possible.

Remember.. you must be uncomfortable to be comfortable!

Comments are appreciated.

Why Email Marketing Still Beats Out All Other Internet Marketing Tactics

Internet marketing is a confusing and complex world. By the time you’ve invested your energy into one technique for attracting new clients and orders, a new technique or trend comes along. And that can be pretty frustrating.

But one thing most businesses – and marketers – overlook is the sticking power of email marketing. In fact, most so-called marketing gurus are obsessed with the next big fad only to get you to spend your precious money to buy into it, when all the while, you could simply focus on email marketing.

The proof is in the pudding. Most people have had email accounts for longer than they’ve had Facebook (or any other social networking) accounts. And most people still use email – although people now see email as a more private mode of communication than in the past.
But email is still a foundation of most people’s online lives, now more than ever. Think about it; whenever you set up a new account online, how do you verify your identity? Your email address. When you have a new comment or friend on Facebook, how do you get notified? Email. When the latest thing has come and gone, email will be there, for a long time.

Why is email marketing particularly important for the home business?

I mentioned earlier how email has become a more private mode of communication. That makes getting someone to share his or her email more difficult.

With a strong landing page that personally resonates with your audience, and a simple but effective call to action, (such as an email opt-in form), you only need that person to visit your website once. From that point onwards, you can communicate with your audience directly and consistently – through email.

It’s important you respect the trust your visitor has placed in you by sharing their email address. Provide them with regular, meaningful information that always relates with them at a personal level and ultimately connects their goals to your solutions.

If you do that, you’ll be amazed at one of email’s most forgotten treasures – the potential it has for viral marketing. If your subscribers love what you give them, they’ll share it with others. A simple click on the forward button is all it takes.

And that’s the beauty of email marketing. You control the flow of traffic to your online business. Only email marketing can give you that. Not Google.

Sign up for the Hip Chicks eNewsletter (to the right of the screen)  and learn how to use email marketing to benefit your online business!