Today I've been thinking about New Year's Resolutions.
I'm not going to make any.
Rather, I'd prefer to view my life as something I can start afresh whenever I like. Instead of resolutions, I'll be setting goals.
My main goal is to be debt-free by December 2007 (excluding my student loan).
This is going to be an interesting one because I love shopping and, currently, saving is hardly amongst my favourite activities. However, financial independence is something I dream about and is the one thing that would make the most positive difference to my life.
So, here are some ideas I've got for achieving financial independence:
Hmm, shockingly ground-breaking…(!)
I'll be able to do this, so long as I focus on the fact that I want to do this, rather than seeing it as an imposition on how I'd rather live my life. Yes, choices, not restrictions.
Another reason for making sure Ethical Beads is a runaway success.
In this entry, I'm exploring why I'm sad, how to be happy and my thoughts about what I want to do in my life, where I want to go and how I want to get there. I hope you find it informative too. To that end, I've included some links to sites I've found useful, with brief summaries and/or reviews.
Career, life plans, aspirations, hopes & dreams
Aside from the seemingly obvious, what do you absolutely, totally, without-a-doubt, enjoy–no, love–doing? Something that just sends shivers through your spine when you talk about it?
If you're not overwhelmingly emotionally-connected to your business, you're in the wrong industry.
Trizoko: What's the absolute best feeling you've ever had?
Entrepreneurship
For me, entrepreneurship is the only way to go. Entrepreneurship, to me, means I'm completely in charge of where my life goes, the buck stops at me, it's my responsibility to make sure I do everything that needs to be done or delegate it to the right people.
For me, it's important that I get to do a massive variety of things. At the moment, the things I most love doing are being on the Internet, talking to people, writing, thinking up new ideas, playing around with new ideas and just generally being creative. Hence, All Things Bright.
For me, I've got to be highly stimulated by something in order to be passionate about it. I can work really hard on a project 'if I have to', but my best work definitely comes out when I desperately want to be working on it. Why's that? Because my creativity pours out when I'm loving what I'm doing.
Gratitude, or How to be thankful
Dwelling on things that have gone well can help pick you up, he says. "You have to thank your lucky stars about what goes right on a daily basis. Whenever you get the feeling of being negative about things, just take a moment out and remind yourself of the stuff that has gone well. It could be anything from a conversation to your garden looking nice, or that it didn't rain on you when you were out on your bike. It's an extremely powerful technique.
The Guardian: Why do some people enjoy life and others don't? (How to be happy)
I had been thinking about writing an entry about things for which I'm grateful, but I thought a list would make pretty dull reading for you.
However, reading the article I've just quoted above, I'm re-convinced it's a good idea. By breaking up the list in to bitesize chunks, it'll be easy to make it interesting and/or insightful. Consequently, I'm going to write on this theme each day at 43 things.
I'll be doing this every day for the next 30 days (and then I may carry on). The first one is: Thank you for friends. In future, you can read these at Say thank you, by Kx; they also appear in the Thanks box, in the sidebar to the right, between the Subscribe and Pages boxes.
How to be happy: Useful links for you
- Depression Cure: How to be Happy!
1. Place conditions on your happiness leads to unhappiness.
2. Blaming others leads to unhappiness.
3. Decide to be happy.
I can easily accept that 1 & 2 are true; but 3 seems a little tricky.
- The Guardian: Why do some people enjoy life and others don't? (How to be happy)
"Positive psychologists believe optimism can be learned, that we can teach ourselves to see a half-empty glass as half-full. All we have to do is spend time mulling over all the things that have gone right for us, rather than dwelling on what has gone badly."
- Trizoko: How to Best Spend a Minute
"When you think of one thing that makes you thankful, another sucka pops up. And another, and another, and another — until you fully appreciate what a sweet life you really have."
- How to be happy: Happiness is an inside job. Here are ten ways to claim your joy
"The best thing I gained from that college experience was a determination to work at being happy. I still work hard at it. I'm prone to worry and sometimes forget that happiness is largely my responsibility."
- eHow: How to Be Happy
"Happiness has different meanings for everyone; we each have to define and seek it for ourselves." Step-by-step instructions on how to be happy!
Last week, I made a detox health kick pledge, committing to a healthier lifestyle of fruit and no fast food. I intended my pledge to last for one week (although I forgot to state this) and so, now it's time for a review!
Difficulties? Not really
Surprisingly, it wasn't that hard to stick to. I have a real problem with eating unhealthy foods (hence the pledge), but once I decided to tackle that problem, it started to fade. Now that I've made a conscious decision to be healthier, suddenly the universe is giving me a helping hand.
The biggest difficulty I had was forcing myself to buy fruit – as opposed to just buying smoothies or mooching off my parents' fruit. Nothing wrong with their fruit, only they only buy the same things all year round and it gets dull (bananas, oranges, apples). I spent ages debating whether or not to buy some blackberries. I finally did buy them and they they were gorgeous. Yummy!
Surprisingly easy
By far my favourites (aside from smoothies) were yoghurt-covered raisins (available from most health stores). Sugary, of course, but a good snacking alternative to sweets & chocolate!
Shock announcement
Well, not much of a shock if you read the title of this entry…! :) But I'm considering becoming vegan. I hadn't told anyone apart from Ian until now, because it has this reputation as being some mad, extreme diet and you should have seen the reactions I've experienced on account of vegetarianism. Yikes.
As part of the universe lending me a helping hand, Steve Pavlina recently posted an article, Why vegan?, which combines his personal journey with information about the benefits of cutting out animal-derived products. It gave me the push I needed to visit some excellent vegan resources, my my favourite finds being:
I've been vegetarian before (for approximately a year, I think) and was considering going vegan at the time. As Steve attests, becoming vegan is much harder than becoming vegetarian. Especially true for me, I'm sure, as I haven't eaten red meat since I was a young child anyway and I really love cheese (and chocolate and coffee and etc.). When vegetarian, I pretty much just replaced chicken & fish with dairy…
But I digress.
Ways to encourage myself to be healthy
I'm very resistant to eating fruit & vegetables; I seem to have trained myself to believe I dislike them, whereas if/when I try them, I find I do like them. I love peppers, for instance, as well as Pink Lady apples, mushrooms and blackberries. I do get bored of them if I eat them a lot though.
Action: Surround myself with a wide variety of fruit & veg I know I love. Buy random new ones occasionally to discover new favourites & keep it interesting. Buy fruit that's in season for cheap treats that taste at their best.
I'm incredibly lazy & also busy. One reason I often cite for not eating more fruit & veg is the time it takes to prepare.
Action: Prepare lots in advance. Buy pre-prepared. Make time!
I'm poor. I'm picky. I'm just not in the habit, etc.
Action: Stop making excuses!
In summary, starting today, I'm extending my health kick pledge for a month – until 18th October.
- No fast food restaurants
- Fruit/veg, once daily minimum (excluding fruit juice) – big push for three daily!
- Bonus: Once a fortnight, no food restrictions at all
Posted on 18 September '06 by Kathleen Bright, under Pledges. 5 Comments.
I kickstarted my health kick by buying the book: "Stay Healthy. Be Lazy: An Easy Detox" (aff).
It's quite expensive (well, it is before the 33% currently available at Amazon). However, I bought it anyway because I really believe it will help me. Unlike other healthy-eating books, this one aims to get you to do little things that you're likely to do. Just like Innocent smoothies themselves, it's a more painless way of being healthy.
- No fast food restaurants
- Chips, once weekly maximum
- Fruit, once daily minimum (excluding fruit juice, but not smoothies)
Wish me luck & please do send healthy-eating tips – I need all the help I can get!
Posted on 10 September '06 by Kathleen Bright, under Pledges. 5 Comments.
I hereby commit to a minimum of one hour specifically writing articles for my blog. Why? Read on.
Steve Pavlina recommends using journals as a tool for working through mental blocks, for example, "Type a question like, 'Why am I feeling unmotivated to achieve this goal?' Then type whatever answer comes to mind." This approach is not suitable for all blogs, but this sort of Q&A is the perfect combination for All Things Bright, being as it is a personal site about entrepreneurship etc. I'm considering making this a regular feature, so do let me know whether or not you like this article and if you want to see more like it, just comment or email me. I highly recommend Steve's posts about this: Journaling as a problem-solving tool and Motivation for smart people, sans chest pounding.
Goal: 25 December 2006, I am making £500/mth as an entrepreneur
"Why am I feeling unmotivated to achieve this goal?"
I need to be courageous!
I fear failure. Why? If I do nothing, I gain nothing (in fact, I fall behind). If I do something, I fail or succeed. If I fail, I learn something, therefore I gain something. If I succeed, I learn something & achieve my goals, so I gain even more. It's a no-brainer – the only risk is doing nothing!
Make More Mistakes, exists to encourage me to think about mistakes I'm making & why, particularly in the area of entrepreneurship. The hypothesis is that making mistakes is a great thing (hence, make more mistakes) because if you're not making mistakes, you're not failing, which means you're not pushing yourself hard enough. (I recommend Eric Allam's 5 reasons for embracing failure too).
However, I still have that fear. Why? I know that I'll only realise my complete potential as an entrepreneur when I overcome fear of failure. Perhaps I fear something else.
Maybe I fear success.
"When I succeed, what will happen?"
I will need to maintain a regular & frequent updating schedule. I'll need to live up to the quality of my past writing. I'll need to innovate & execute lots of ideas. I'll need to exceed expectations. I'll need to keep moving onwards & upwards.
These are all things that I look forward to, as the trappings of success; they also represent extra work. By becoming more conscious of these side effects I will think of creative solutions, thereby dealing with my concerns.
One of the solutions I've identified is to be more organised & plan ahead. My last post for Make More Mistakes took me four hours, but I didn't start it until very late, so it was late and I was shattered; I experienced a lot of anxiety about this even though I love writing for my blogs.
I need to write well in advance, allowing myself to come back to the posts, edit them and then just publish when the time comes. One problem with this is that I wrote this post some time ago and recently Darren Rowse has written about this same topic in Marinating Ideas into Blog Posts, which makes it seems like I'm propagating the 'Echo Chamber' (i.e. just blogging about what other people are blogging about)…
Here's a question for you: How does one reconcile writing articles well in advance with other bloggers publishing simialr articles independently before you manage to post yours?
As it is, I tend to spend hours and hours researching with nothing to show for it at the end, even though there'll be lots of ideas in my head, which can be quite de-motivating. No more.
Each day, I spend at least an hour writing articles for my blog; this does not include research time.
Posted on 31 August '06 by Kathleen Bright, under Pledges. 2 Comments.
1 August 2006 – 1 August 2007 : I am buying no clothes for a year.
Since I graduated, I've been enjoying earning more money than ever before in my life and a significant part of that was buying new clothes. In returning to student life, I return to frugal & thrifty living.
Of course, there are some small exceptions (for example, I'm obliged to buy uniform twice a year for work), but, in the main, no retail therapy!
There are numerous excellent reasons for this:
- Being rich is not only about making money, it's also about saving it
- Balance is an important aspect of life – having splurged, I'm now er… de-splurging
- I'm re-aligning my actions with my aims; I will still be spending money, but instead of spending it on liabiities & other products that depreciate, I'm investing in myself & spending on other assets. For example, spending money on books, thus contributing to my knowledge & personal development
Worth doing? Not? Let me know what you think, along with any additional reasons for doing this – it won't be easy, so all varieties of motivational support very welcome!
Posted on 25 August '06 by Kathleen Bright, under Money, Pledges. No Comments.