My Essay Blog

Your life changes the moment you make a new, congruent, and committed decision.

- Anthony Robbins

All stories of success have one common element. You guess right, that is Passion. Passion for what they want to achieve. Enough passion to keep their eyes from wandering away from the goal. Total passion to finally see them through.

Passionate beliefs often make great sacrifices look easy and are the foundation of success. Goutham Buddha, at the age of 29, followed his urge for knowledge. He left his wife, son and kingdom to be one with the sufferings of normal human beings. After going through hardship and pain he finally experienced enlightenment. More than 1500 years after his enlightenment, the Talibans may be out to destroy his statues, but Buddhism remains one of the strongest religions in the world.

Che Guevara, inspite of being an Argentine, went to Cuba and fought its battle of independence for the sake of his ideology. And then he quit his top ministerial posts in Cuba to fight for African countries before coming to Bolivia and meeting his end. Che, of course, failed in most of his wars against oppressors, yet he achieved what he always wanted.

It was this passion for being unique that made a young boy stand at the centre of the Sydney cricket ground and tell his father “I shall never be satisfied until I play on this ground” and then not just playing there but creating history as Sir Don Bradman. He was passionate about his game and ended his career with a record average of 99.96 runs.

Aung San Suu Kyi’s passion for a non-violent struggle for democracy has won her a Nobel Prize. Stephen Hawking’s incurable motor-neuron disease couldn’t stop his passion for Physics and the universe. ‘Being kicked out of school’ Bill Gates passion for winning made him world’s leading business tycoon. All the self-made millionaires on the globe scripted their success stories out of their passionate goals. Not only did they know what they wanted but they are people who believed passionately that they CAN.

If you think you CAN you are right. Just be passionate about it. And if you lack passion, then develop it because success never comes till you are passionate about it.

Many of my coaching clients are coaches themselves, and quite a few of them have asked me how to promote their coaching business online. Here is some of the information I have shared with them. Use these tips and ideas to promote your own coaching practice online, get more clients and make more money:

- Have a Professional Web Site. In order to attract online clients, you need to present a very professional image online. People who find your web site will equate the professional look and feel of the web site to your own professionalism, since the web site is the only piece of information they have to evaluate your business.

The web site should have professional look and feel and have information about your business, as well as your products and services. There should be a way for customers to contact you, as well as subscribe to your newsletter.

- Explain What You Do on Your Web Site. Not everyone knows what a coach is, so in addition to calling yourself a coach, make sure you explain what a coach does. For example, if you are a dating coach, explain that you help men and women find that one perfect person.

If you are a career coach, tell your web site visitors that you help them figure out the perfect career, and then you help them find a job that reflects their career choice. And if you are a business coach, tell them how you can help their business succeed.

- Publish a Newsletter. Not everyone who comes to your web site will immediately become a coaching client. Not everyone who comes to your web site will buy your products immediately. You need means to keep in touch with people who come to your web site, but are not ready to hire you or purchase your products.

A newsletter is a great tool to keep in touch with your web site visitors, share information with them and educate them about your products and services. Make sure that you have a newsletter subscribe form on every page of your web site, and that you offer a compelling reason for your web site visitors to subscribe to it.

- Optimize Your Web Site for Search Engines. Search engine optimization is the process of modifying web page content and meta-information to improve the search engine ranking of the page. Successful search engine optimization will greatly increase the number of visitors that come to your web site since over 70% of people who are looking for products and services use search engines to locate them.

- Publish Your Articles Online. Publishing articles is a great way to show off your coaching expertise, as well to drive traffic to your web site. When you write and publish your articles, other web site owners pick them up and publish them on their web sites, while giving you a link back to your web site.

Use the five techniques we outline above to drive targeted clients to your coaching practice. Effective promotion of your coaching practice online will make a difference between your coaching web site sitting idly and a coaching web site that drives leads and clients for your business every single day.

I was a panic attack and agoraphobia sufferer for over twenty years. During that time, having shared my life with this terrible twosome, I worked out a few ways of making my life more tolerable if I had to venture out into the big wide world. And I’ll share a couple of them with you here.

One of the things that I noticed about my anxiety related illness is that it seemed to turn the brightness on my vision up to the top. So much so, that viewing something like a large area of concrete on a sunny day was physically painful to me. But even on a dull day the sky seemed to be way too bright.

One way I used to combat this was simply by wearing sunglasses. I used brown ones and found them to suit me the best. I once tried gray and they were of no benefit whatsoever. An easy and inexpensive way that I discovered to pick a suitable color, that didn’t involve me leaving the house, was to order some transparent film from an arts and crafts store and I just held the different colored films up to a window and looked through them until I found one that had a calming effect. In my case this was brown or green, However, I also found that blue made me feel sad and red made me feel agitated. So I knew to avoid these colors at all cost.

Something else that worked for me was wearing a baseball cap. I found that the peak protected my eyes from the brightness of the sky and in situations where I felt particularly uncomfortable, I would pull the peak down so that only the ground directly to my front was visible. A combination of the sunglasses and the baseball cap made my journeys into the outside world tolerable. I did, though, get some strange looks on rainy days.

There was one other thing that I discovered, quite by accident. I was once on a camping trip and, whilst sitting in the tent, looking out through the window, I noticed how uncomfortable I felt. However, if I looked out through the tent’s mesh kitchen window/vent, the discomfort went away. This inspired me. Once I got home I went onto the Internet to see if anyone made mesh spectacles. It appeared that no one did and I even toyed with the idea of making some for myself. After some thought, I gave up on that idea due to a lack of the necessary wherewithal.

I never forgot the benefits that I’d seen by looking through the mesh and a couple of years later I did the same search again to see if some bright spark had had the same idea as me and started selling them yet. Still my search came to nothing. However, whilst carrying out that search I did happen upon the website that gave me the information I needed to eliminate my panic, anxiety and agoraphobia altogether. Can you imagine how I felt? After all those years of trying therapies that didn’t work for me, I’d actually found the cure.

If you would like to know more about what I used to retake control of my life, please visit my website. There’s a link in my “About the Author” section below.

Have you an idea about how you could improve your life but do not have the confidence to make that dream into a reality? Have you a plan that you hope to implement when you are a little older, possibly when you are retired? In this article, I write about a dream I had when growing up as a teenager, a dream I made into a reality when I was in my early twenties.

My name is Steve Hill and I was born in the second largest city in England, called Birmingham. The pace of life in Birmingham is quite hectic and the crime rate is fairly high. In saying this I am very proud to be a Brummie, the knickname for people who are born in Birmingham, and am very fond of the city.

My parents would take us on holiday each year to the South West coast of England to a county called Devon. We would stay in a place called Brixham which basically seemed to be the opposite of what Birmingham was. It was very quite, was very relaxed, had only a small amount of minor crime and the people were a whole lot more friendly. I enjoyed some superb holidays in Brixham up until the age of about sixteen and would often dream that one day, I would actually live there.

This of course was only a dream and I believed that I would probably make it happen when I had retired. At the age of twenty-three I was offered a voluntary redundancy package at the insurance company where I had been working since I had left school. This was a great opportunity for me to get paid to leave a company that I had been thinking about leaving for many years. I took the package on offer and then started to think about my next move, for example, where I wanted to work, where I wanted to live etc.

At this point in my life I had been dating a young lady for around two years. I had told her about my dream of one day moving to Brixham and she also seemed to share my passion for the area.

I then decided that I wanted to make the move now while I had the chance. Why should I wait until I am retired? Life is too short I thought to myself, I might not even live until retirement age.

My girlfriend was very up and excited about my idea of moving to Brixham and the move went ahead. I have to say that I loved living in Devon and there were not many aspects from my past life that I actually missed, apart from my friends and family.

After living in Brixham for a few years my father became very ill. I travelled up and down the motorway to visit him in hospital and eventually decided that it was now time to move back to Birmingham. This was because I wanted to spend as much time with him and my mother as I possibly could.

I will without doubt return to Devon and do not regret for one minute making the move when I did. Life is about living and about making your dreams into reality.

Timing is everything and public speaking is no exception. Long drawn-out presentations will only result in a bored, distracted audience and you’ll lose their attention very quickly! On the other hand, rushing through your material can give an impression of nerves, or your key points could be missed. Public speaking presents huge challenges for many people, but sorting out your timing can be the difference between a great speech and a mediocre or downright appalling presentation.

Break your public speaking presentation into defined chunks.

An effective method of preparing your public speaking notes is to organize each part into smaller sections. List your key points first and break the whole thing into short effective chunks, remembering to include an introduction and closing statement.

Timing your introduction is an essential factor in public speaking.

The people in the room you are addressing already know why you’re there (unless they’ve turned up in the wrong venue!). Successful public speaking begins with an effective introduction; whether you’re presenting at a seminar or conference, making a wedding speech or preparing an audio course, you have to capture your audience in the first few words. Keep your opening short and to the point, then move on to the main part of your talk or lecture.

List your key points clearly and avoid a public speaking timing crisis.

One of the worst things that can happen in public speaking is losing your place, especially if nerves kick in. Your carefully thought out timing has just been blown out and your presentation will no longer make sense, or you will lose your momentum and confidence. Your public speaking notes must be neat, well organized and easy to refer to quickly to keep your timing on schedule.

Pause and effect in public speaking.

Timing is of course not just about how long your speech takes, but how you present your words. In any public speaking setting, you want your audience to stay with you throughout your entire talk. Using effective pauses or a few seconds of silence (for applause hopefully!) will give your speech a more natural feel, and allow you time to check your notes.

Finishing off your speech.

Don’t waste your great lecture or talk by rambling on at the end. The most important aspect of public speaking is leaving your audience remembering what you’ve said and a long-winded ending will wipe out all the good work you’ve done up to this point!

Finally, when you’re timing your speech before any public speaking event, keep in mind that the duration is likely to be different in practice compared to talking to a live audience. Allow yourself a little more time to get through the presentation, and to answer questions if required. While public speaking can be a daunting prospect, there are excellent training materials and resources available to help you overcome all the aspects involved.

We are all faced with problems throughout our lives, some are small, others huge. Depending on how we deal with them, they can be overwhelming and devastate our lives, or they can quickly fade into the past.

Attitude plays a big role. With a difficult personal or work undertaking, consider all viewpoints, even those you think you don’t like. It just might provide relief from your fearful analysis of the situation. Don’t oversize the problem which is often a panic reaction. Discuss the actions that you could take with a friend or co-worker which can sometimes provide a good suggestion and some instant stress relief.

Lay out a procedure and slowly complete the first task. The next steps should be easier. Often we will keep on worrying after the decisions are made, which of course is of no help at all. If everything that can be done has been done then it’s time to follow through.

“Our plans miscarry if they have no aim. When a man does not know what harbor he is making for, no wind is the right wind.” Lucius Seneca (3-65)

Rejection can be an unpleasant experience, but it just lets us know that we aren’t perfect. Who is? Consider it a lesson learned, then forget it and move on with your life in a positive constructive manner.

To help solve a difficult problem or to cut down on worrying about making a decision, analyze the situation, determine what must be done and carry it out. In writing or on your PC:

Get all the facts.

Describe the problem in detail.

List all the possible solutions.

List the advantages and disadvantages of each.

Detail what you will do.

Follow through.

You have detailed the planning and know that you will proceed in a certain way, but will review it as required. Later. Now it’s time to think other thoughts.

“What we have to learn to do, we learn by doing.” - Aristotle (BC)