Starting A New Business? Here Are Some Of The Quickest Ways To Gain Confidence As A New Entrepreneur

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The Subtle Art of Starting Over

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Starting Over from Scratch

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8 Simple Tips for Eliminating Excuses When Starting an Online Business Around Your Passion

Everyone wants to get paid to do what they love.

But not everyone is ready to make it happen.

Excuses are everywhere. They can take control of your life unless you transcend them.

You hear people whine, complain, and justify why they can’t do something, but in the end, there’s no one holding them back, except themselves.

There’s nothing you need. And there’s no one you have to be in order to begin your journey. No matter what you think is holding you back, you can start.

Here are 8 simple tips for eliminating excuses when starting an online business around your passion:

The simplest and most neglected tip is the cold hard truth. Look at your life. Look at how your excuses are holding you back.

Are your excuses really stopping you, or are you stopping yourself? You may be afraid. You may have your reasons. But is this the path you want to be on?

Imagine sitting on your deathbed and looking back. What would you have done differently today if you could go back?

You can take action despite your excuses.

I make a living doing what I love. I still have excuses every single day. I could give up, but I don’t.

I refuse to settle for a life I know won’t fulfill me. Often, when I take action, my excuses disappear.

They’re only there for a brief moment before I start. It’s getting started that’s the hard part.

Look for proof to the contrary.

If you think you’re not good enough, look for evidence of where you are good enough. Excuses are never rock-solid. They are made up, so they can be dissolved.

It all comes down to how badly you want to start an online business around your passion.

It’s not going to happen overnight, but it is worth the work.

There comes a point where you’re so sick of making excuses that you’ve had enough.

This happened to me just before I started doing what I’m truly passionate about. I was making excuses. I wasn’t living up to my potential.

But one day I’d had enough, and I just started. I didn’t know what I was doing, or if it was going to work, but I was going to try anyway.

The source of all excuses is fear.

Instead of focusing on why you can’t do something, focus on what will happen if you keep making excuses.

What will your life look like 5, 10, or even 20 years from now if you let your excuses stop you from truly following your inner calling?

Think about what your life will look like if you said goodbye bye to your excuses and pursued your dreams.

A more Zen-like way to eliminate your excuses is to stay present with each excuse. When an excuse comes up, notice it, breathe, and let it be.

Don’t analyze, try to figure it out, or try to get rid of it. Just let the excuse do its thing. Observe it with the same fascination as if you were to see a panda on a walk in the woods.

Each excuse is a thought, and you are not your thoughts. How could you be? You couldn’t be aware of your thoughts if you were your thoughts. You are the awareness behind your thoughts.

You don’t have to give your excuses power. Instead, focus on your breathing.

Shift your perspective from seeing the world as hostile, to seeing it as an adventure, because that is what life really is.

You’re on this planet to experience life, to face challenges, and grow as a human being. It’s through challenges that you evolve.

We aren’t made to settle for mediocrity. We’re made to constantly evolve.

Last, but not least, you have to take responsibility for your life.

If you want to build a business around your passion, only you can make it happen. No one is going to do it for you.

There will be no red carpet. The stars won’t align. And no magic solution will appear.

Start with what you have, and start now.

You can do this, if you truly want to.

If there’s anything I’ve that I have learned from making a living online, it’s that success is not an overnight thing.

It takes time. It’s a struggle, but it’s all worth it.

If you don’t know where to start, find someone you trust and learn from them.

Let your excuses pass you by. You don’t have to give power to them. Let them go, and start moving toward the goals that both scare you and excite you.

Fulfillment awaits.

Are you ready?

Featured photo credit: Cute young girl sitting in an egg chair via Shutterstock

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The Habit of Starting

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Get the Most Out of Your Week by Starting it on Sunday

Make Sunday number one in your book.

As we head into the weekend, I can’t think of a better way to celebrate it than to do my part in shortening it for you.

Okay, that’s not really my intent.

But look at a calendar. You know, a paper-based one. One of the first things you’ll notice is that the first day of the week isn’t Monday. It’s Sunday.

So why is Monday considered the “beginning of the week” then?

One of the more obvious reasons is that many of us start our “work week” on Mondays. Sunday seems to roll into the weekend as a result. So Mondays often bear the brunt of being the worst day of the week because there’s so much to do, so much to get back to doing — and sleeping in usually isn’t an option, either.

It doesn’t have to be that way. What if you could go into Monday with less of a sense of burden and in a more relaxed and open state of mind? What if you could have already accomplished some of the things that were really important to you by the time Monday arrived?

Well, you can. Just start treating Sunday as the first day of the week and it will not only improve your Mondays, but it will improve your week as a whole.

So, how do you get started?

While paper-based calendars generally start on Sundays, calendar options like Google Calendar and native apps such as iCal allow you to make Mondays the first day of the week. You’ve likely enabled this.

Well, now you have to go back into each application and change it back. It’ll take some time if you’ve got a lot calendaring apps (both online and off) on the go, but doing the work now will go a long way to shifting your mindset going forward. Whether your actual workweek starts on a Mondar or not, I strongly encourage you to make Sundays the first day in your calendar apps.

Now that you’ve shaken up things in your calendars, shake them up in your workflow. Most people will see that Sundays are quite open when it comes to work, so start to move some of the items that are set aside for Monday to Sunday. If you work from home, this is going to be a fairly painless process. If you don’t, you may have to do some further tweaking.

You may want to go so far as to ask your superiors if you can start working Sunday through Thursday rather than the usual Monday through Friday routine. In some cases, this won’t be possible based on your role at the office, the type of business you’re in or the like. But if none of those obstacles stand in your way, give it a shot. There’s plenty of avenues to take when pitching the idea.

You can pitch that Sundays would be very productive for you because of the lack of distractions in the workplace. Your flow won’t get interrupted – and that’s going to boost your productivity significantly just on its own. You can also mention that Mondays will be more productive for you by virtue of handling some of the usual Monday tasks on Sunday. This could serve to make you a huge asset to have in the workplace on Mondays; while others are struggling to get going, you’ve already put a day’s worth of work in. Ask if you can try it for a month and see where it leads.

That said, don’t mention how Fridays tend to be unproductive in general and because you’ll be off on that day and working Thursday you won’t fall prey to that practice. It could backfire on you in that your boss will assume that Thursdays will become your Fridays. Use positive wording; it goes much further with an ask such as this.

Cost: While your employer could see some real benefits from letting you start your workweek on Sunday, you could see some as well. For example, if you have kids you could end up saving on daycare costs if you have Friday off instead of Sunday.

More Free Time: Don’t think that you “lose a day” of the weekend with your family, friends or significant other because you’re working Sunday. If you work from home you can curate your work schedule so that you’re spending the time you need on your work rather than work for a set amount of hours in a row. If you don’t work from home, you can arrange to work a schedule that allows to maintain some social time with family and friends on Sunday because the time you arrive and leave isn’t as important as the time you spend at work. There’s more flexibility because you’re not going to have to be present when others are – in fact, you’ll probably be working solo.

Clarity: A shift like this allows you to really get clear on what you’re doing, how you’re doing it and – most notably – when you’re doing it. By starting your workweek on Sunday you’re going to notice other things that you can fine-tune about your work. The focus generated by Sunday will carry over throughout much of the week, and impact the quantity and quality of your output — for the better.

I used to hate Mondays. Not anymore. Starting on Sundays has freed me from that trap – and, yes, it is a trap. The negativity that Monday brings along with it can really be detrimental to your productivity over the long haul. It’s hard to believe that one day can do that, but it can – and it does.

Shift the start of your week to Sunday and you’ll have more sunny days ahead. And everyone could use a little more sunshine in their lives, right?

Mike Vardy is an independent writer, speaker, podcaster and "productivity pundit" who also dishes the goods at Vardy.me. You can follow him daily on Twitter, listen to him weekly on ProductiVardy, and read more from him eventually at Eventualism.

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Internet dating and the science of fire starting

The New Yorker has a fantastic article about the psychology of online dating.

The piece explores how the big names of internet matchmaking attempt to strike up sparks between you and millions of other people and how they play off what attracts people in face-to-face encounters.

Psychology, maths and the economics of truth are used to bring people together, with each dating site having a different theory about how attraction works

It is tempting to think of online dating as a sophisticated way to address the ancient and fundamental problem of sorting humans into pairs, except that the problem isn’t very old. Civilization, in its various guises, had it pretty much worked out. Society—family, tribe, caste, church, village, probate court—established and enforced its connubial protocols for the presumed good of everyone, except maybe for the couples themselves. The criteria for compatibility had little to do with mutual affection or a shared enthusiasm for spicy food and Fleetwood Mac. Happiness, self-fulfillment, “me time,” a woman’s needs: these didn’t rate. As for romantic love, it was an almost mutually exclusive category of human experience. As much as it may have evolved, in the human animal, as a motivation system for mate-finding, it was rarely given great consideration in the final reckoning of conjugal choice.

The twentieth century reduced it all to smithereens. The Pill, women in the workforce, widespread deferment of marriage, rising divorce rates, gay rights—these set off a prolonged but erratic improvisation on a replacement. In a fractured and bewildered landscape of fern bars, ladies’ nights, Plato’s Retreat, “The Bachelor,” sexting, and the concept of the “cougar,” the Internet promised reconnection, profusion, and processing power.

Unsurprisingly, many dating sites now employ psychologists to optimise their hook up algorithms and the article explores the thinking and the practice behind the process.

A great read.

Link to excellent New Yorker article on internet dating.

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