Improving my life

Company Update

2008-03-07T04:35:00.000-08:00

Poor show I know, but setting up a company takes an amazing amount of effort. However, we've now got the basics well in place and have been going for over 18 months now, and everything is going well. Back to blogging then methinks!!

For those that are interested, the company can be found at http://www.yardassociates.co.uk!

How to set up a new business

2006-09-19T07:05:00.000-07:00

Firstly, apologies for my lengthy absence. I’ve been really surprised by how much work is involved even in just setting up a business, let alone getting it ready to trade. But now, after about 3 weeks, we’ve finally managed to get everything set up and ready to go. And it feels worthwhile (now), although there were definitely times during the weeks that it could that I doubted what we were doing. This should mean that I now have time to resume my previous posting habits of at least every couple of days. More importantly, I should have more to write about these days too.

So on to this post. My plan with this blog has always been to a) improve my own life and b) share the things that I am doing to allow others to improve theirs too. On this basis, I’m going to run through the steps we’ve followed to get the business up and running and ready to trade. Therefore any readers of this blog will hopefully be guided by the steps I’ve taken.

One of the things I’ve noticed during the set up of this business is that there really isn’t that much (free) help available. There isn’t really a site that says “right, you want to start a business, you need to do this, this and then this”. Maybe this might become such a guide, although I’m sure this first draft will not cover everything. That said, if anyone has any questions on this then feel free to contact me and I’ll include my experiences where I can.

The Business Plan

As I wrote previously, the most important part of the new business start up is to get the business plan written and reviewed. We’ve produced a couple of iterations of our business plan, and we are now at a stage where we can show the business plan to other people, and they understand and agree with it. However, it’s taken a few iterations to get to this stage. As a result, I now know exactly what different people are looking for from a business plan, and it’s important to ensure that the plan is written to cater for all of these people.

The most important areas we’ve found are the executive summary, which should give readers a good idea of what the business does, and the financial projections, which will be the first section that banks/investors will look at.

Incorporating the company

Note: this section only applies to companies incorporated in the UK. I have no idea how the incorporate a company in the US! Presumably it will be fairly similar however….

For UK customers, there is a simple and very effective method for incorporating a company, namely to use a company forming agent. Typically, I’ll always avoid paying for something that I could otherwise do myself. However, in this case the benefits both in time and convenience far outweigh the relatively low costs involved.

We used a company called Quick Formations to incorporate our company, but there are literally hundreds of similar companies all ready and willing to do this work for you.

The Inland Revenue

The Inland Revenue was one of my biggest concerns, since the punishments can be quite severe for not doing everything by the book with these guys. However, I was pleasantly surprised to receive a letter from the Inland Revenue a few weeks after incorporating the company, explaining the situation and providing the forms that need to be filled in.

Accounting

Importantly (as I’ve discovered), it is essential to ensure that all of the items paid for and all invoices sent out/sales received are logged from the very beginning. We fell into the trap of paying for items out of personal funds, only to lose VAT receipts and the like, meaning that we can no longer attribute these costs to the company without recovering and accounting for all of the items spent. Therefore I would recommend that you start keeping a good record (we use an Access database) of all of the cashflows involved from the very beginning.

Website

The website took us a while to produce. The company we’ve set up is a web consultancy business, and so we’d expected that producing a website would take a matter of hours, maybe a couple of days. Unfortunately, the worst part of this production was thinking of and agreeing on a brand for the business. And we still haven’t sorted it, so we’ve had to produce a holding page until we can finalise the site design and content! For those who are interested, the site is currently available at http://www.yardassociates.co.uk .

Following the production of the website, the next key problem was deciding which of the many hosting companies we should choose to host the site. Anyone looking for advice on this would be ill advised to listen to any particular recommendations. From our research, we’ve found that the majority of hosting companies provide the same services at broadly the same cost. My recommendation would therefore be to do a simple Google search and find one that you feel comfortable with. (In case you are wondering, we ended up going with Streamline who can be found at http://www.streamline.net)

Bank Account

This one was also quite simple. These days, all of the major banks are bidding for business banking accounts, and there are numerous benefits that are offered by the banks as a result. We went with Lloyds TSB, simply because logistically it was the easiest (we both already had LTSB personal accounts), and managed to get fee free business banking amongst other benefits as a result.

Bringing in Business

With all of the logistical stuff finished, it becomes time to actually start trading and to start winning some customers. Fortunately, we already had a strong contact base to work on initially, and have started to make some ground into winning some business. And this is about as far as we have got.

This has probably been the busiest 3 weeks I’ve had in ages, and it has amazed me how much there really is to get done before you can even think about trying to win clients. As a rule of thumb, I’d recommend at least a month before you generally even start looking for business, and maybe 3 months before any cash comes rolling in.

I hope this has proved useful to some people. Certainly it would have proved useful to me as I was working on starting up my business. I will continue to update this as I learn more and more lessons in the future.

More Love in the World

2006-08-24T01:23:00.000-07:00

Love is a very strong weapon. If you have people that love you in your life, there is no obstacle that cannot be overcome, no problem that is to big, no issue that cannot be resolved.

I was contacted by a fellow blogger recently asking me to promote their blog http://1millionlovemessages.blogspot.com

If anyone needs to be reminded of how powerful love can be, then please give 1millionlovemessages a visit, and maybe post a message of your own.

The Million Pound Savings Club

2006-08-22T01:42:00.000-07:00

I read an interesting article yesterday posted by Bryan C. Fleming at http://bryancfleming.blogspot.com/ in which he proposes a million dollar savings club. The point of this club is to get people saving their money, by starting with a very small daily amount. Unfortunately, Bryan is saving $3 a day, and so for people in the UK, dollars are hard to come by! For which reason, I've decided to team up with him and start the million pound savings club.

The rules are as follows:

- You save £3 per day in cash
- Split the £3 into three piles: one for saving, one for investing and one for giving away
- Feel free to increase the amount at any time you choose. Obviously, the more you are saving then the more this club will have an effect on you

As a result of this, it is anticipated that a number of millionaires will (eventually) be made out of the habits learnt from saving this small amount.

The club starts on August 23rd, and I'd love to hear from you if you are going to join us.

Global Reach

2006-08-21T07:12:00.000-07:00

Those who have been reading this blog will understand that one of my real aims in life is to reach numerous others around the world and ultimately inspire others to improve their own lives. On this basis, I'm thrilled by the success of my blog to date and the lobal reach that it has achieved, in spite of the fact that it's all in English. I've had Google Analytics running on the blog for some time, and have become intrigued with the geographic map provided by Google. Here it is below:

This graph really proves the power of blogging and the internet in general. How else would I ever have managed to tell my story to people in every continent? How else would I have managed to spread my word across the whole of the US? And how else would I have found many of the friends and readers that now regularly contact me from some of these countries worldwide?

As a result, this blog alone is now helping me to achieve one of my life ambitions, and fills me with pride when I log on to Google Analytics and check my blog's performance.

If you'd like to help me improve my life, then please tell your friends and relatives about this blog - especially if they live in countries that so far haven't visited me. The more orange dots, the better!

Intention Manifestation Update

2006-08-21T07:02:00.000-07:00

In recent posts, I have written about intention manifestation and the effects it has been having on my life (see Intention Manifestation), and considering whether the effects were caused by myself or indeed as a result of my intentions. I have seen some drastic results of late, results that have convinced me further of the effects of manifesting these intentions. We set up a company recently, which was the first step towards more independence, but hadn't really moved it much further than simply setting the company up. Then recently, a number of events occurred which caused this to progress a lot more quickly and in a specific direction, the most obvious of which being the fact that I will soon no longer be employed by my current employer. In addition, some of our contacts have recently met up with us out of the blue, and this has led to a number of decisions being made that will set the company moving in the right direction, and with the support of a number of already established partner companies.

All of this has occurred without much cause-effect on our behalfs. Of course, having the ambition to pursue these opportunities and the motivation to make the most of them has improved the results, but I believe that the events themselves are definitely the result of some well formed intentions.

How to deal with losing your job

2006-08-16T01:17:00.000-07:00

Things happen for a reason

I found out recently that the company I'm working for probably aren't going to afford to pay me next month. Given my current financial situation, this means that I will have to leave slightly earlier than I hoped that I'd be going. However, rather than see this as a negative, the new and improved me has taken it much more as a positive. It appears that these things happen for a reason, probably a result of the intentions I've been manifesting starting to work their magic! Here are a couple of reasons why:

It's just money

Of course, the biggest concern that most will have as a result of losing their job is that their income will stop. This is naturally a worry, since this would cause some issues with maintaining your lifestyle, paying your bills, and so on. However, none of these problems matter since they can all be overcome.

There are other revenue streams that can be exploited, providing enough cash to cover bills and the like. Plus, governments tend to help you out if you're in financial trouble. And lifestyles that require large amounts of money are probably wasteful anyway!

The job offers are rolling in

Amazingly, it's not until you put some focus on the fact that you need a new job that you realise that you can quite easily get one. Already, within a week of my news, I've found that recruitment agencies always have at least two or three relevant jobs there waiting, and these are progressing nicely. Plus, the jobs seem to be less pressured, less stressful and less demanding than my current job, which will give me more opportunity to start working on my other revenue streams.

The company offers are rolling in

In addition, we've been chatting to a few more people recently with a view to starting this business of ours. And suddenly we're making more ground with it than we have managed in the three months previous to it. Another revenue stream lined up means another potential life improvement on the way!

An opportunity

Of course, the changing of a job provides each of us with an opportunity. For me, it has allowed me to step back and review the things I want to work at to provide me with my income. And armed with this opportunity, I am now using my spare time to learn more programming languages so that I can eventually provide all of the technology used in my ventures. On this basis, the prospect of losing my job has actually driven me to learn more skills that I can use in the future.

Dispelling the myth

Of course, for those that didn't believe it in the first instance, having a full time job and working for someone else doesn't provide you with any security at all. By putting myself in charge, I will be in control of the revenue streams that I rely on. I can add new ones, fund existing ones or kill loss making revenue streams. On this basis, the security becomes my own, and only I can be the one responsible for losing it all.

Focus, intention and a kick in the ass

Most importantly, the recent news has provided extra focus in my life in terms of moving more quickly into the things I choose to do. My intentions are becoming clearer, and I can now see many of the essential tasks I need to complete over the next month to push me on in my life. I have managed to achieve more things immediately, because the focus has once again moved onto myself and the benefits of these achievements are once again my own.

Plus, it's given me a kick in the ass. The approach I decided on for this quest of mine was a sound one - clearly I would have been a fool to give it all up immediately and aimlessly jump into a massive life changing event. However, this new event has given me the clarity to see that whilst I had taken a wise step in approaching with caution, the comfort and security of a monthly pay cheque often dulls and dilutes our aims and targets in life. The swift kick in the ass that I was given has thrown these goals right back into view.

...in summary

It has amazed me how positive I am with this news. This is the first time that I will have left a job on anyone's terms but my own, but it has provided a certain amount of clarity and focus that was needed at this stage in my journey. My advice to anyone reading this is to embrace change, since it does happen for reasons that may be daunting, but will turn out for the best in the end. Whilst this seems like a distant reality at first, becoming positive and using this change to your own benefit will ensure that you grow and learn and push your life in the right direction.

The actual journey

2006-08-08T01:33:00.000-07:00

One of my main aims with this blog was to inspire real people to improve their lives in the same, similar, or completely different ways to the way I'm hoping to improve mine. On this note, I can now start to provide all of the readers here with some examples of things that I've actually achieved since starting this blog.

I started this blog at the same time that I started putting the wheels into motion with improving my life. Hopefully, when my goals start getting achieved and I am able to live my life in the ways that I want to, my story will provide evidence to those who doubt that this life improvement can be achieved, and give strength and confidence to those who are committed to improving their lives.

On this basis, it gives me great pleasure to tell you guys that I've achieved a huge step recently, in officially starting up my own business. We're not trading as yet, but we're now an officially registered business. Likewise, we've finished writing the business plan, and so are ready to start putting into place some of the new online initiatives that are planned for the short term. The beauty of this is that I can still continue to work a full time job around this business - whilst this will be hard work during the implementation of these websites, once finished, they can increase my earnings without a whole lot of effort.

So it really is moving - this is only one really small step in the bigger picture, since this step will only really move me slightly towards financial independance. However, it is proof that with enough intention and belief, we can start to change our lives in the ways we want them to be changed.

Intention Manifestation

2006-07-28T08:17:00.000-07:00

I hadn't really come across the intention manifestation model in any great detail until I began looking to improve myself personally. Previously, I'd read a few bits and pieces on the topic, but had never really been convinced by it completely. Being a very analytical person, I'd always paid more attention to the cause and effect model, where the belief was that by planning the tasks required to achieve my goals would ultimately see me succeed in these goals. Unsurprisingly, I never really made that much difference to my life in terms of improving it. OK, I'd managed to improve my career and earn more money, but I was obviously lacking a large part of the focus for improvements.

After discovering the personal development blogs and information available, I read through Steve Pavlina's Cause-Effect Vs Intention-Manifestation article, which really explained a bit more about the intention manifestation model and the realities behind it. In his article, Steve explains that the model can indeed be used for life changing developments on a huge scale - but that the effects are seen in much smaller increments. Suddenly, this realistic explanation and approach made the model seem that bit more applicable to me.

So I have been putting this model into practice in my life. As I mentioned previously, I'm a very analytical type of person, and so found myself still looking towards the cause-effect model. So I combined the two. Some of the goals I want to achieve have definite steps involved to achieving them. These goals I planned in detail, wrote down and am working towards achieving. Some of the larger goals have been intended on the hope that the intention-manifestation approach works in this case.

In truth, I have already noticed a lot of action on a number of these fronts. Some of the larger goals which I have set appear to be moving in the right direction already. Indeed I have seen actual results already. However, whether or not this was in fact just the result of intention-manifestation, I'm yet to decide.

The truth is this - whilst adopting this intention-manifestation technique has undoubtedly been of benefit to me, I'm not sure that it is entirely this that has been responsible for the improvment in my circumstances. Don't get me wrong, as a technique it has given me the motivation and belief that I obviously craved to enable this stuff to work. However, the most improtant change I've noticed has been in myself, which has in turn reaped the rewards and completed goals I'm telling you about.

From this, I've decided that there are a number of improvements in me that have ultimately already begun improving my life and achieving my goals. These are:

Inspiration

Motivation

Intention Manifestation

Planning and Goal Setting

Desire and Enthusiasm

Calmness (through meditation and improved self control)

Stepping back and analysing the current situation

Improving my sleep patterns

Doing the things that I'm passionate about

All of these things added together have helped to improve not only myself, but also have driven me, without my realising, towards achieving some of the most important goals in my life.

Using Blog Services.....

2006-07-26T09:15:00.000-07:00

In spite of reading that I shold avoid doing so, I decided to use a free blogging service to start this blog. Blogger have kindly provided the storage, the URL, the template and so on for me, and I've got somewhere to instantly post my blog posts. This seems like the perfect situation surely? As a naive new blogger, I certainly thought so.

However, I'm approximately 2 weeks into this blog, and have learnt the error in my ways already. I don't have the level of control that I require over this blog (which I was warned about by Steve Pavlina in an article he wrote about blogging). I have a few things I'd like to try out with my blog, but can't really achieve with a Blogger blog. Plus, I've been reading quite a bit about blog architecture, and it is quite obvious that the blog architecture used by Blogger is not going to support what I want to do with this blog in the future.

Then something very important struck me - when I started this blog, the intention was always to host it on Blogger temporarily and then pay for some hosting. If I do that now, I'll need to let the few people that have linked to my site know that it's moved. But let's say I move it in 6 months time, by which there will be (hopefully) many more visitors and links to the site. I would effectively have to start building my traffic figures all over again - not a good idea if, like me, you hope that your blog will generate some income in the future too.

Host it now!

There are a number of excellent options available for hosting a blog - one of the best that I've seen is the recommended option on WordPress which is reasonably priced hosting option which also includes an installation of WordPress as a part of your hosted service, saving you the trouble of having to set up and configure the software. More details can be found here.

So if you are just starting a blog, and either want it to generate an income or want to host it separately at any point in the future, make the effort to do it now, before you waste any of your time.

How to stay confident and positive.....

2006-07-26T01:35:00.000-07:00

For those people who have never been involved in starting a business or running a business, becoming self employed will seem like a rather daunting situation. Indeed those people who are currently employed will also hear of negativity and denial from employees and indeed colleagues. People will have concerns over their short term incomes, over the risks involved in setting up a business, or indeed will have concerns over the possibility of failure. And much of this negativity will be generated by colleagues, employers or even family around you.

This was of course a concern of mine. In fact, I'm still in full time employment at the moment. And more notably, I also find that there are times that these concerns over risk and failure attack me over and over again.

As I've mentioned previously, my initial inspiration for improving my life was from Steve Pavlina's website, a website which gives away free premium content that will inspire most. Reading Steve's website, and similar websites which I then found as a result, gave me the confidence required to believe that I could achieve all of the goals which I have set. I felt full of motivation to achieve everything I wanted, one of which was to become self employed and hence time independent. However, doubts were raised by others around me, and I suddenly found myself worrying about risk and failure in just a couple of days.

Fortunately, it didn't take me long to realise how to stay confident and motivated. You'll notice that there is a consistent theme in a number of similar personal development and entrepreneur blogs and websites. That's because the people who write these blogs are of similar mindset - they understand the value of being an entrepreneur and possess a certain entrepreneurial spirit. They are positive and motivated and convinced not only that they will succeed but also that like minded people will succeed alongside them.

I suppose the message is therefore to ensure that you are surrounded by these like-minded entrpreneurs. These people will never tell you that you might fail, but will fill you with confidence that you will succeed.

Take it from me, if you truly want to succeed at your goals, then you will achieve them.

Financial & Time Independence

2006-07-25T12:41:00.000-07:00

In this quest to improve my life, it has become apparent that there are two ultimate goals that will allow me to improve my life most. These two are financial independence and time independence.

Financial Independence

In order to achieve many of my goals, financial independence is a key goal. With financial independence, I will be able to fund the projects which I have identified as potential life improvements. I will be able to support my family in spite of not having to work for a single employer. And I will be able to gain time independence.

Time Independence

In addition, I see it essential to achieve time independence. By this I mean the ability to control my own time. Rather than having to appear in an office at 9am and be forced to stay there until 5pm, I want to be able to concentrate my efforts into the times where I am most productive. If I choose to work from 6am until midday, and then again at 4pm until 6pm, then I should have the option to do so. Likewise, if I feel the urge to work during an evening, it should be rewarded.

Achieving these two goals will give me the ability to concentrate my time and my efforts into projects that I see as important, as well as achieving goals that will have a positive impact on my life.

Motivation and Inspiration

2006-07-23T23:12:00.000-07:00

The difficulty with starting a journey like mine has always been maintaining the motivation to continue indefinitely. How many of us have begun things with the promise to ourselves and others that we'll continue indefinitely, only to finish a week or two later and move on to something completely different. Take new years resolutions, for example......

I've found that there are a number of ways to remain motivated - things that inspire me to continue with this life improvement journey when previously I might have already given up by now. So I'm going to share these with you :

Personal Development blogs

I find that going back to my original inspiration to start this journey also helps me to remain motivated and continue on this path. Reading Steve Pavlina on a regular basis not only improves my knowledge of these things and furnishes me with more ideas, but also keeps me motivated to continue on my own journey.

Keep getting up early

I used to be notoriously bad at getting out of bed in the mornings. I'd often push the boundaries to see how late I could get away with waking in the morning, finding myself rushing around aimlessly and not even thinking. Since I decided to get up a couple of hours earlier every morning, it has given me the time to think about what I'm working towards and bring it into focus every day.

Similarly, this has almost become a daily goal for me (in spite of the fact that my body is getting used to it), meaning that I wake up every morning having already achieved something important. This gives me one hell of a lift in the mornings!

Listen to the positive people

Truth be known, there are plenty of people out there who have not only achieved much of what I'm hoping to achieve, but they also write about it regularly, and urge similar people to do the same. Reading lots about these people helps to keep me motivated to emulate them.

Music

When I'm working, I tend to find some music inspiring and certain music pieces motivate me to succeed. These will of course be different for other people, based on the key events in your life and your music preferences. Two pieces of music which currently provide me with inspiration are the Champions League Theme Music, and the music from the Harry Potter films. Finding your own inspirational music can help to improve your focus and achievements during work.

Pictures

I also find inspiration from pictures. In particular, pictures of my family and pictures of Canada inspire me, and I'm sure to keep these pictures around me whenever possible to ensure that I remain focused and motivated on achieving my goals in life.

Turn bad influences into positive energy

I find this to be another of my key improvements since I started this journey. Whereas previously negative influences (in particular work influences) would have either made me angry or negative too, I've learned to spin these influences on their head and turn them into a positive reminder of the direction that I don't want my life to move into. Let's take for example a boss that gives you a hard time at work. You can do one of a few things in these circumstances. You could become really negative, saying things like "he's the boss, there's nothing I can do" and resigning yourself to a workplace that is a complete misery. You could get really angry, shout and maybe hit, and end up leaving that job in disgrace (this is probably slightly better than the first :) ).

Or you could use his negativity and spin it into a positive manner. You could remind yourself that you'd hate to turn out like him, and do something about it. You could imagine his reaction on the day that you tell him you'll be leaving to pursue a life changing venture on your own. And then remind yourself that in 25 years, he'll probably be doing the same shit to a whole load of different people.

Summary

Positivity + inspiration + motivation = success

Discover your inspirations, and stay positive.

Getting up earlier

2006-07-19T11:13:00.002-07:00

One of the main problems that I've always found previously is that regardless of the number of good ideas I might have, I'd never have to time to implement any of these ideas. After all, there's the full time job, a wife and child to see in the evening, my favourite TV shows to watch....and the list goes on. As part of the goals I put together at the start of this journey, I decided that I needed to start achieving more of my goals around my job, and that the best way to achieve this was to start getting up earlier in the morning.

Previously, I used to get out of bed for about 7:45am and be out of the house by 8:10am, giving me just enough time to wash and dress myself and my son, get my things together and leave the house. I decided that I needed to give myself more morning time. I had tried this before - setting earlier alarms, asking my wife to wake me (she leaves for work at about 6:30am), and trying numerous other unsuccessful attempts at becoming an early riser. Why should this time be any different?

I found that it was different. By giving myself a reason to get out of bed, I found myself easily responding to my alarm clock and waking early. This focus on improvement in my life made the process of waking early much easier, ensuring that I achieved this small goal. Initially my goal was literally just to achieve the ability to get out of bed earlier, but I have progressed to being able to work on other projects in the morning now, as well as showering, eating breakfast, and generally relaxing more before I leave the house.

In addition, the positive attitude which I have adopted of late have helped in this area too. Whereas I would see the morning as a negative event whereby I needed to get into work, I am now able to appreciate the time I have before I need to leave the house. This has provided me with a massive change in my energy levels both in the morning and throughout the day.

On the other hand, I'm finding that i don't need to get to bed much earlier to sustain this early rising. I am now in the habit of going to bed when I feel like the time is right and I'm sufficiently tired, all of which are providing an excellent balance for me overall.

To summarise, my ability to be an early riser has been born out of the following techniques:

Set a time to wake up and stick to it

Focus on the goals and achievements that getting up early helps you work towards

Ensure some relaxation in the morning after waking

Go to bed in the evening when it feels the right time for you - don't set your bed time by a routine, a TV program or another person.

Reaching and Touching Others.....

2006-07-17T13:50:00.000-07:00

I have been constantly reviewing my set of goals since they were set, adding and amending goals, changing things around. It strikes me that although this list of goals has given me focus, the list will be ever changing as priorities change.

I've analysed my goals a little more, and there is a theme with many of the goals which I have set that involve doing things that will impact others. One particularly strong desire I have is to write a book - preferably fiction - and get it published. A book that will maybe bring some enjoyment to the people that read it in the same way that I enjoy reading books written by others. Similarly, my desire would be for this blog to provide inspiration to others and help people to improve their lives as I am doing with mine.

The point here is that I appear to have found another major goal for my life which is to influence, entertain and inspire others. With this find comes some clarity and some more momentum to completing this journey.

Improving Your Life - Getting Started

2006-07-16T15:03:00.000-07:00

I must admit, this was the most tricky challenge I've faced so far (albeit in a relatively short space of time). Following my initial discovery of the words of Steve Pavlina, I know/knew that I will achieve everything that I am going to set out for. The motivation and eagerness to succeed that is now within me is driving me like never before, and I recognise the benefits now of everything I am aiming for.

Before I move on to describe the methods I've used so far to get started, I need to iterate that these are my (relatively early) experiences. I do not pretend at this stage to be an expert at personal development, and this is in fact the first article I've written on the subject. My aim is simply this - that if I can show the journey I am making towards self improvement, and the methods I've used along the way, perhaps others might be inspired to improve their lives too.

Read Steve Pavlina

This discovery has proved to be the single most important inspiration to me. On reading Steve's website, I immediately became obsessed with achieving a similar sense of happiness and achievement in my own life. I want to be content and happy in the knowledge that I have continuously improved myself, my life, and the lives of others around me, since this will furnish me with a sense of achievement in my life. I also hope that one day someone might read some of the words I've written and become equally inspired and driven to improve themselves.

What would you improve?

My next step was to really work out what it is that I would improve. To explain my current situation, I am 26 years old, I have a wife and son and I adore them both, I have had a fairly successful career to date, I have a decent house, a car and we are financially fine. On the face of it, it would seem like I've no reason to concern myself with improving any of this, since for my age, I must be doing fairly well.

However, wife and son aside, much of this seems quite empty. I don't have enough time to spend with my wife and son, I don't feel that I really achieve a lot, and I don't feel that I give enough back to others around me. So on this basis, I began to consider the things in my life that I would improve.

I came up with a list of broad headings of areas where I thought I would like to improve. Things like my physical health, my personal learning (educational). I decided that I'd like more time to spend with my family, I'd like to travel a bit more. The list goes on.

What do these mean?

Looking at the list I'd produced, I realised that I wasn't clear exactly why I'd written down some of these things. It struck me that there had to be reasons they were on there, and so the next step was to clarify each of the points a little more. So with each of the list items as a heading, I wrote the sorts of things I'd like to improve in each of them. Under "learning" for example, I realised that I had regrets for having not completed my college degree, and completing a degree was one of the tasks here. As was reading more and indeed writing more, two tasks which have certainly come true of the last week. Suddenly each of these areas for improvement had some meaning specific to my own life, and I had an idea as to the projects I might have to complete to improve myself in the future.

What's stopping you?

My next thought was to question why I wither hadn't done these things already, or why I wasn't already doing them. If you've created a list of your own, I fancy the answer to this question will be fairly similar to my own answers - either I haven't enough money or I don't have the time. This led me to explore these two areas within my own list further. And the answer is obvious - a good place for me to start is to work towards both time and financial independence. After all, more time would give me the opportunity to complete my life improvement projects, and financial independence would give me the financial support I need.

Plan some tasks

Finally, I decided therefore that it would be a good idea to plan some tasks to start with. Time and financial independence are long term goals. However, it is possible to start working towards them now. I've decided to train my body to get up at 6am every morning. This will give me 2 hours every morning before I need to go to work, which will allow me to pursue and complete some of my website projects which I currently have on hold (in fact, the motivation I currently have has led me to complete one website project over this first weekend). The completion of these websites will ultimately result in an increase to my income, until eventually I can afford to leave a full time role to concentrate on my own businesses.

In addition, I've started to think about my personal organisation a bit more. I've come up with a few tasks here too - sorting out my personal finances will move me slowly towards financial independence. Sorting out my (home) working environment will allow me to be more productive at home. Improving my diet and sleeping patterns will give me more energy to complete the other tasks on my list.

Finally

I now have a list of goals to work towards. One of my key considerations through this was to make sure that I'm aiming high. I could have listed some easily achievable goals and completed them within days. But I would have always regretted doing this in the future.

By using the method above, I have managed to produce goals set at the highest level, but break them down into (not easily) achievable tasks. And it's this that has made me sure that I am going to succeed.

Day 4 of 31

2006-07-16T14:58:00.000-07:00

Day 4 of 31 in terms of consistent daily posting and today's post has proven to be a late one. It's now 23:00 (GMT) and I'm only just getting around to posting.

That said, today has been a productive day. I've progressed the task list to a first draft which will be fine for me to continue working against. And the whole thing seemed to flow out of me easily, although getting the first words down on paper proved the trickiest. As promised, I'll follow this post with my first real 'article' about how I managed to get started.

Task List Part 1

2006-07-15T11:13:00.000-07:00

I took my first steps towards completing the willpower task today, with me having started working on what it is that I'd actually change. I've bought myself a nice black notebook, no lines (I like to draw a lot of things rather than write). I went for a fairly expensive notepad too - leather bound and really nice to look at and hold. If this is to be the way I improve my life significantly, then I want to do it in style, not with a 50 pence notebook.

I'm hoping to have my willpower task completed by tomorrow. One of the things that I'm struggling with at the moment is being able to make order of the mess. As I've said already, I'm really motivated by all of this, which is unusual of late, and yet there's so much there for me to think about that it's all blurring into a single mess of tasks and projects and ideas.

So I've decided upon a rule for my journey.

Rule 1: I'm going to start putting deadlines on certain things. Not all things, but since I'm doing this in tandem with a full time job at the moment, I need to give myself targets for the important things.

So, the first deadline I've decided upon is tomorrow. By tomorrow, I'll not only have a big task and project list for me to work towards, but I'll also have written an article for visitors to this blog on how I managed to get started and put together the task list.

I look forward to tomorrow.

My Eyes Have Opened

2006-07-14T06:17:00.000-07:00

I didn't sleep very well last night - I went up to bed at about midnight as I was genuinely tired, but was lying there wide awake still at 2am. The truth is however that I thoroughly enjoyed it. The reason for my not being able to sleep is completely attributable to excitement and ideas for this blog.

It hasn't stopped there though. I've also been almost narrating everything I'm doing as if I'm writing a blog at all times during the day. Whilst at the shop earlier today, I could hear myself blogging about the new notebook I've bought and the diary to accompany it. That's another story for my first real article which I hope to write tomorrow as part of my willpower task.

The other thing I've noticed is a definite increase in my energy levels and a massive improvement in my mood. I'm suddenly really happy - almost ecstatic even. I'm itching to continue down this path of self improvement. I walked around Cardiff today (in Wales/UK) - I work in the city centre, so lunchtimes are extremely busy, with hundreds to thousands of others all walking around. And strangely, being in this environment made me very happy too. I was intrigued by the people around me. I wore a beaming smile, and paid detailed attention to everyone around me. And it's amazing how much you can find out just by watching others. The majority of people really looked like they wanted to be somewhere else, or with someone else. Occassionally I'd notice someone smiling and looking around like me, and I wondered whether these people had embarked on the same journey that I recently have.

I am motivated now like never before. I know where I'm going, and even the things in my life which could do with some serious improving all seem tiny now since I know that eventually I will make it.

I welcome you all to join me and succeed too.

Improving My Life

2006-07-13T09:41:00.000-07:00

This is my first post on my new blog, and thanks must go to the man who inspired this new blog. After reading Steve Pavlina's "Personal Development for Smart People" blog, I decided that maybe it was time to make some of these changes in my own life - they are all beneficial after all. So then I decided to write about it too.

Thanks must also go therefore to blogger.com, who spurned my initial blog address suggestions (changing-my-life and changingmylife both gone). This led me to realise that I'm not trying to change my life - losing a limb, becoming bankrupt or catching some sort of disease would all be ways of changing my life - I'm actually looking to improve my life, hence the change of heart and the new spangly URL. Surprisingly, a lot of people appear to be changing their lives, but not as many improving them......?!

So onwards with this project. Steve recommends 2 theories which I'll be using here, namely a willpower theory and a 30-day trial theory. So my first tasks are as follows:

Willpower Task: Create a list of goals, and plans for achieving them, that will lead to an improved life.
30-day trial Task: Post on this blog every day - which means success in other areas, as I'll obviously need something to write about!

Well here we go.....! Wish me luck!