Author: CLFurlong

I choose more. I choose and want it to be more than just another typical day. The day can be anything you make it. 

An adventure, a challenge, a struggle or a grind, the day will follow your lead. Your attitude, perspective, willpower and self-control is all part of the day, but more so part of you. How you react, how you choose and how you decide is all going to indicate and dictate the next turn you will make and the next direction you will follow. 

The question to ask yourself is what will you choose. What will you decide and how will you react?

Will you make it a typical day or an extraordinary day?

Writing in a journal reminds you of your goals and of your learning in life. It offers a place where you can hold a deliberate, thoughtful conversation with yourself. – Robin S. Sharma

5 Reasons Why You Should Be Writing In A Journal:

1. Journals help you have a better connection with your values, emotions, and goals

2. Journals Improve mental clarity/help solve problems/improve overall focus

3. Journals improve insight and understanding

4. Journals track your overall development

5. Journals facilitate personal growth

Now it it’s your turn.

You can ask yourself how can journaling best be of use to you? Will it enable you to vent your emotions? To help achieve your goals? To help clear your mind? What do you think ? How about you give it a go and answer it for your self.

Here is some insight of my own journal:

I crave and long for inspiration, for ideas, for innovation, greatness, beauty and just plain old simple quality. I see the idea behind it, the very core of how it attracts, how it draws in attention. This inspiration, this idea and attraction… I seem to find and see it in the simplest of things. It drives me to chase something bigger and something greater. Not just an idea but an actual way of life. Essentially a lifestyle. A way of being, a way to inspire, motivate and encourage.

What if you could take it, create it and make into something more. Pure thought into pure action. Liquid idea’s into fluid and tangible realities. A game changer. You could make it happen and make it real. I will and I can. I will succeed.

What is all this about?

This is my inner thoughts, my night’s, my dreams, my snippets of a journal, my dreams. In short it is how I want to succeed. But more so how I want to aspire to be more. I can and I will.

What I am I really getting at?

Inspiration, dreams and aspiration are hidden within all of us. Some of it is obvious, some of it is yet to be ignited. But deep down there are desires and passions driving us. Maybe momentarily or maybe entirely – but they are there. We need to let these desires be whatever they are and let them drive your heart.

If you have something you are passionate about and that you enjoy. You should chase it. You should follow it. You should make it happen. 

Want to start a journal?

These two are excellent ways to get started:

• The Five Minute Journal (buy | info)
• I personally use the Rhodia range

You Sir, You Madam, are better than you think. You have come so far, you have failed, you have succeed, you have pushed and you have grown! Each day is a battle, each day it can be hard to see the results… But each day of progress whether it is little or big has made you into something GREATER! Don’t stop today!

It’s another Monday, another chance to push and grow. The year is getting on so quickly and we have only 4 months left till we check in and see how far you we conquered this year. So don’t slow down, don’t back off and don’t give up. Push through today, smash through tomorrow and continue to kick through the goals.

Speaking of goals – make sure you have these in order, especially for the remaining 4 months. If you don’t have these identified, follow the below steps and make it happen!

1. Get clear on what you want – what do you want from your goal.
2. Surround yourself with positivity and support
3. Focus your energy (physical and mentally)
4. Visualize your dreams
5. Stay close o your goals – review them and know them.

Waiting around for the perfect time or when things are ‘better’ to get your act together is never really going to get you moving and shaking. Waiting around is pretty much just killing time. If you want to make some ripples, make a difference and succeed further than before. You need to take action. You need to make it happen.

There is nothing wrong with occasionally killing time, as long as disconnecting from reality won’t hurt you. Sometimes we just need to separate ourselves from everything around us and allow some distractions.

But putting off and continuing to make excuses to avoid taking action is a problem. I get it… it is your life and you can live it how you want. That is fine. But my point here is… you have potential, you have what it takes and you can do whatever it is want, as long as you put your hands to it. Your passions, goals, dreams and aspirations, you can make these all happen – as long as you get up and start putting some actions into motion and some decisions set in stone.

“One day you will wake up and there won’t be any more time to do the things you’ve always wanted. Do it now.” – Paulo Coelho

In this world, you benefit from what you create with your own two hands. Unless you make life better by yourself, chances are it won’t get better on its own. Even if a miracle is to occur – most of the time you need to act on asking the big man upstairs!

Everybody wants advice but nobody wants to do the work. If you cut the time you spend deliberating in half and spent that time actively pursuing what you want, how much farther ahead do you think you’d be? Answer honestly but don’t agonize over it.

What’s that? You want to make it to the same spot or above and beyond… You want to aspire more and continue aspiring?

Well I am glad you asked – here are 11 top tips of advice that if utilized correctly, they can steer you in the right direction:

1. Get Over Your Fears

The more you face your fears, the stronger you will be. Embrace one today!

2. Give Yourself Challenges

Learn something new everyday. Even the little things you learn can be extremely valuable. Write down what you learn.

3. Love what You Do

Steve Jobs says that if you don’t truly believe in what you are doing, you are never going to be completely satisfied in your life. Do what you love and you will love what you do.

4. Plan Your Financing

Know your expenses, abide by a budget, plan to save, set saving goals, identify your priorities, diversify your savings, automate transfers and then watch your savings grow. Let your money work for you.

5. Be Willing to Take Risks

You never know if something is going to work unless you try. If it doesn’t work, learn from it and try something else.

6. Know what You Want

The clearer your vision is, the better able you will be to see it and see what you have to do to make it happen. Embrace your vision and follow your dreams.

7. Listen to Complaints

Bill Gates has said that your “most unhappy customers are your greatest source of learning.” They can teach you what you are doing wrong and help you to succeed. This is the same for feedback/constructive criticism.

8. Learn from Your Mistakes

Your mistakes are your best teacher, as long as you are learning from your mistakes. Identify you have made one, reflect on it, then apply a plan to move forward. But this time you will be smarter.

9. Take Action

If you don’t do anything with your ideas, you aren’t going to be as successful as you want to be. Walt Disney said that the “easiest way to get started is to quit talking and start doing”. Don’t be an all talk and no action kind of person…

10. Put In Your Time

You need to work hard, and put in a lot of hours to be successful. Steve Jobs once said, “If you look closely, most overnight successes took a long time”. The more time you spend working on your success, the quicker it will happen. 

11. Set Goals

Remind yourself every day about your goals, and each time you do so, jot down a way that you can reach those goals. As you progress, mark out your milestones. Once you accomplish a goal, give yourself a pat on the back and move on to the next one.

This is all great… but as Guy Kawasaki said  

Routine by nature makes you more productive and effective. Instead of running around with a vague idea of what you want to accomplish, the right lifestyle routine can turn you into a productivity monster and someone who will keep on keeping on. Like an attitude, how you set your routine will have a ripple effect across your life and day. An active, productive and well paced routine; will keep you inspired to grow, it will challenge you and keep you moving. A lazy routine may create a slow, unhealthy and inactive lifestyle, which in the long run inspires unhealthy habits.

Here is a list of 5 points of why routine is important and key to uplifting your day:

Routines Create Structure

Most people either don’t know what they want or don’t have a focused way of going about getting what they want. Having a routine eliminates both of those problems by forcing you to do a few things:

1. Know what you want.
2. Figure out how to get it.
3. Add that activity somewhere in your schedule.

Once you have those three steps in place, you’re farther ahead than 90% of people flitting around from task to task with no real outcome or goal in mind.

Routines Eliminate Distraction

With a routine, you have a game plan. Set it up, get stuck into it and if you have formulated it correctly you will be following your routine seamlessly, so much – you will adapt to it like a passion. Your time will fly. But any good routine requires your diligence and self-control to complete the task at hand.

You Don’t Have To Think About Work – You Just Have To Work

The best benefit to creating routines is that you don’t have to think about work – you just work. I think the number one productivity hack in the world is simply deciding what to do.

By creating a routine and having exactly what you want to accomplish laid out, you take the guess-work out of “what” to do and can focus on just doing it. You’re no longer thinking about all the work that you have to and how you’re going to do it – you can simply go ahead and get it done.

You Can Find Your Rhythm

Ever been in “the zone?” That place where everything is easy, you zoom through work, and obstacles seem to scatter out-of-the-way?

Chances are there were a certain set of circumstances and surroundings that allowed for that to happen and helped you perform optimally. A routine lets you take those circumstances and creates a scenario where they happen regularly and predictably – making “the zone” that much easier to find.

This makes finding that zone more likely to happen more often, and when it does happen, lets you perform better – being more efficient and more effective across the board.

A System For Your Life

If you think about it, a routine is nothing more than a system for your life. Just like programmers create a certain program that will execute a function whenever it runs – a routine creates an environment and structure to your life that lets you execute certain tasks at will.

Meanwhile, implementing them seemingly melts any obstacle in the way, since you’ve created a routine that eliminates the distractions in your day and lets you focus on only the tasks at hand that you must do.

“You will never change your life until you change something you do daily.” ― John C. Maxwell

Today I wish to challenge your thinking, your dreams and drive by asking you to start asking yourself questions each day to help you discover whether or not you’re fulfilling your full potential and working in the careers we love.

Here are 6 questions that Steve Jobs’s daily exercise can challenge us to ask ourselves:

1. Does your work make you smile?

Smiling at work reminds you that you’re doing something, however small, in your daily routine that you find fulfilling.

2. How tired do you feel at the end of the day?

Going to bed with the feeling that you’ve accomplished something means two things: that you’re using your talents in a way that you find fulfilling and that you’re contributing productively to the world around you.

3. Is your work rewarded?

Working in an environment where you feel valued not only contributes to your professional success, but helps you to avoid bringing bad vibes into your home and squandering your “downtime” with thoughts about overwork or office politics.

4. Do you have any regrets?

Sometimes you’ll succeed, sometimes you won’t, but it’s far better to try to fail than to spend your life wondering whether or not you would have succeeded.

5. Does your work consume your life?

Find ways to fill your life with variety to give yourself a reason to face each day with something to get excited about.

6. Do you feel stimulated?

Nothing compares with the satisfaction of setting yourself a task and completing it.

We all have fears, there is no doubt about it. It really just comes down to how we manage and handle these fears…

People are confident; some are too confident, some are confident enough, while others are lacking.

The Answer?

Face your Fears

The process is straightforward.

1. Find the area in which you lack confidence.
2. Force yourself to repeat this act again and again until the nerves subside and you begin to relax.

So if you lack confidence when talking to people you find attractive then make as many approaches as possible.

If you lack confidence speaking in front of an audience then sign yourself up for a speaking group and get practicing every week.

And if you lack confidence in your creative work (writing, painting, making music etc) then put it in front of other people and let them give you their feedback.

Do the thing you fear again and again until you fear it no more. 

The good news is that this really works.

The bad news is that you’re going to have to DO some work.

Throughout childhood, adolescence and adulthood, you’ll attempt certain activities and receive an emotional evaluation on how you did. If the response you receive is ridicule, rejection or failure, the unpleasant feelings you experience, depending on their severity, will warn you away from partaking in that activity again.

Frequency makes all the difference and the more often you face your fears, the weaker the negative response will be.

This all applies the same for your dreams and goals. You keep pushing, you keep giving it a go and as you keep failing and trying again, you will succeed.

So today when you first don’t succeed, today when you don’t feel confident. Do it again. Learn, adapt and grow.

Don’t get me wrong, I understand that sometimes a sleep in is much-needed. After a long week, a long day, sleep is important for recovery. But as soon as you find yourself awake and you are fighting between 5 more minutes or getting up and facing the day ahead – I think you need to ask your self the question…

Might you consider making your passion your work?

Nicolas Cole started his love and his passion back when he was 15. Back then he loved to play video games – so much he gave up every other pursuit in his life, including his skills in hockey, so that he could play more video games. 

Now to the contrary, his father who is a renowned spine surgeon and his mother an active performer and teacher, both placed a heavy emphasis on grades and a strong work ethic. While at the same time they also encouraged doing what he loved and following his passions.

They said – it was a better quality of life being a poor, happy artist, than being a rich and unhappy businessman.

Being naturally creative, Nicholas said he had made his decision stating he will be a professional gamer. 

In response he was told that his passions… “they should be, you know, something respectable.  Like music!  Like performing!  Video games aren’t a passion.”

Obviously he disagreed and he stuck with his heart, even when there were attempts from both his parents to derail him from his ambitions of becoming a professional gamer. 

By the time he was 17 (2 years later) he was one of the highest ranked players of an online game in North America and he also had a blog of 10,000+ daily readers. He was being paid to write. He made more money writing about video games than a dead-end job at the ice cream parlor down the street his parents forced him to get so that he would “learn life lessons.” 

The key message here was he was happy. He took the core of what his parents had taught him, doing what he loved and to be the best at what he did and he applied this to something he loved doing everyday of his life. 

You want to become successful, you want to make money, you know you’re smart and you know you are capable, but the work you’re doing isn’t make you happy.  So who are you doing it for? 

If you can’t get yourself to do the work, that means you aren’t doing what you love. – Nicholas Cole

You’re doing what someone else loves.  You’re following their dream.  You’re trying to be someone you’re not, and you know it.  Deep down, you know it.  Because when you’re doing what you love, you can do it forever.  You forget to eat and poop, you’re so focused on it.  You stay up all night doing it.  You wake up excited to do it.  You can’t stop doing it because you can’t stop being YOU.  That’s what it’s like living in line with your passions.  And suddenly, it’s not work.  You’re just doing what you love.

Do what you love.  Do it relentlessly.  Do it with so much heart and excitement that people call you obsessed and try to tell you to stop. You’ll accomplish things you never knew you could accomplish. And you’ll be happier than you’ve ever been in your entire life, because you found success on your own terms.

As per Cole’s website (http://www.nicolascole.com/about/)

Today – 

Nicolas Cole is a writer, musician, entrepreneur, and creative strategist.  His work has been published in TIME, Forbes, Fortune, Inc Magazine, Thought Catalog, Huffington Post, and Business Insider.  He is a Top Writer on Quora with over 3,500,000 million article views, and is the author of the eBook series “Skinny to Shredded.”  He has helped a variety of fitness coaches, professional bodybuilders, physique models, personal trainers, gyms, and health and fitness brands with their marketing strategies.  He is currently working on his debut memoir titled “Confessions of a Teenage Gamer,” detailing his years becoming one of the highest ranked World of Warcraft players in North America.  Cole is best known for writing about self development.