Last week I attended a seminar where they talked about the importance of diversifying your financial portfolio. Any good IFA worth their salt will tell you that you should never have your investments in one place, or even in one type of investment, i.e. stocks & shares, property, ISA’s, the list goes on. Financial wealth is determined by the number of sources of income you have. The more sources the more financial wealth you can acquire.

This got me thinking about Emotional Wealth. Do we allow ourselves to have a diverse portfolio of emotional wealth? Before I carry on, I think it important to give you how I interpret emotional wealth. Assuming that financial wealth is being financially abundant, that gives one freedom to have the life they want, I see emotional wealth as something that ensures we have balance in our lives and have many more good days than bad days. As a starting point I believe it starts from within, understanding how our emotions impact on all our parts of our lives. Being emotionally wealthy is about have numerous sources that feed our emotional well-being.

The diversification of your financial portfolio is dependent of your mindset and attitude to risk. Does your emotional wealth depend on your mindset and attitude to risk? Well maybe. The sources of achieving financial wealth have already been mentioned, what could be the sources of emotional wealth?

Well for starters I would say

These are the ones that I can think of. Are these in order, well they are in the order I thought of them. Mindset and risk play a part in the number of sources you have. For example from a finance point of view if you are risk averse you are more likely to put your money in a savings account than into stock & shares. If your personality allows you to take more risk you may invest in the stocks and maybe property. How does this relate to emotional wealth?

If you are risk averse you maybe reluctant to have many sources, i.e. the fear of all these people letting you down, or them judging you would be too painful. Allowing yourself to be open to others can be a risk for some. However once you start to communicate and start contributing the joy and reassurance this can give you is invaluable.

Social Media is something relatively new, however here to stay. When you look at the activity of social media forums, there is an overriding contribution to emotional wealth. Social media has allowed us to be more open about our needs in the business community. This is shown by the number of people giving testimonials, recommendations or generally saying nice things about each other, without the attachment of wanting anything back.

One immediate tool that has allowed this is twitter. By only allowing up to 140 characters you have to be succint in your message. Follow Friday (#FF, where you recommend people other’s could follow) feeds ones emotionally well-being. When someone recommends you to thousand’s of others, that they could follow you, it makes you feel good.

One of the sources of emotional wealth I mention is advocates. An advocate, in this context, is someone who speaks and recommends you when you are not there. Ultimately this is the role social media plays. The different platforms that are available, twitter, facebook, ecademy, linkedin etc, allow us to communicate not only to people we know, but to people we don’t. If they read or see something that interests them, there is a chance they would want to share this with others (how keen are you to tell your friends if you’ve been to a nice restaurant or seen a movie you liked).

Two things happen when this occurs, one you feel good (increase emotional wealth) they like you, as you have not attached anything to this recommendation( their emotional wealth increases). The likelihood is they will do the same for you and recommend you to others.

Do we need multiple sources to be emotionally healthy, no, however like finance, if you do have multiple sources the chances are, that most of your emotional needs will be met. This includes business. It is very easy to think that emotional needs are only valid in personal relationships with your spouse, children, family or close friends. We all know this is not true, to be emotionally wealthy within your work setting is essential.

Various surveys show, when you feel valued in your place of work, performance increases results are better and morale is high, all because the emotional needs are being met.

With the demands we put on ourselves to be successful in what we do, it is essential that we are emotionally wealthy. So like an IFA would do a financial health check, conduct a emotional health check on yourself, or better still get an expert to do it. Looking at the list above, how many of these sources do you benefit from? Can you think of other areas where you can increase your emotional wealth.

The kids are back at school, hooray!!!

Working from home for 2 years now, it took me about 6 months to get used to being my own boss, and working when I wanted to work. But when it comes to schools holidays, all the rules change.

I have 3 beautiful children Sapna (13), Milan (11) & Suraj (6) as you see on the right.

When they are at school its great, I set them off in the morning, (well my wife does, same thing yeah!) and I then  fully focus on the task at hand.

Last week was half term and, well lets just say, it was different, no different to other holidays, just that I felt different. My wife works 4 days a week, so I took one day ‘off’ to be with the kids, the other daysI was working talkingsome time to be with them and the kids we either doing some homework, or playing on the Wii.

By Thursday there had been numerous occasions when I was either on the phone or working and they were either shouting, playing loudly or just generally being happy.

Now the sound of children playing and being happy is fantasitic, but when you are in that moment looking to focus it can be quite frustrating.

It all came to a head on Friday, they were having a difference of opinion about playing on the Wii, it was about 3ish and I came downstairs, to find out what was going on and then in a moment of complete lack of awareness I said the most stupid of statements.

“Don’t you know I work from home?”

The look on their faces, well I wish I had a camera, their expressions were one of, ‘and your point is’. It was in that moment that it was my issue to deal with that fact it was holidays, not there’s to be quiet and how to behave when I am working at home.

During the holidays it is up to me to adjust my week, not the children.  The reason I do what I do is for more choice and so my family get the best of me.

Do you adjust your day when its schools holidays? Do your children act differently.

Love to hear your stories

If you ever feel like giving up on something, think again. Its not about how many times you fail, but how many times you keep getting up…

Since the turn of the year, most of my thoughts about taking my business to the next level have focused around social media. Thinking about this objectively, this got me thinking, is this just a fad or is it here to stay?

Some facts…

1. Average person spent five and a half hours on social media sites in December 2009, up 82 percent from December 2008. AC NIELSEN

2. Marketers will also be spending more time and money on social media sites in 2010 – Alterian

5. Facebook is still by far the most popular social networking site worldwide, with 206.9 million unique visitors in December

6. 67% of global social media users visited the site during that month, spending an average of about 5.5 hours there per month, up from just three hours in December 2008.

7. Twitter received 18.1 million unique visitors in December 2009, up from 2.7 million in December 2008 (a remarkable 579 percent rate of growth).

8. Time spent on blogs and other social media sites increased 210 percent year-over-year, and the average time spent per person increased 143 percent.

9. Australia led the world in time spent on social media sites with 6 hours and 52 minutes per person, United States was second (6 hours and 9 minutes) with the United Kingdom close behind (6 hours and 7 minutes)

10. 20 million people are online on SKYPE at peak time, 445 million subscribers in Q1 2009, 30% usage for business purpose, 3.1 billion call to mobiles and landlines in Q3 2009, More than 190 certified hardware products.

11. Facebook available in more than 70 languages with 900+ employees. Facebook banned in Syria and 70% users live outside US. Features more than 350,000 application. Over 2.5 Billion photos uploaded monthly and faster growing demographic is women over 55. More that 300,000,000 users.

12. Approximately 150,000,000 videos on YouTube. 70% of the registered users are the American. Every minute 20 hours of video is uploaded. Localized versions for over 22 countries in 19 languages, total times of videos watched in 9300+ years. Estimated revenue of between $120 – $500 Million.

13. 54% of respondents said social media was ‘increasingly important’ to the overall marketing mix, with only 14% believing it to be ‘critical for success (Alterian Research Study)

14. Social Media has overtaken porn as the #1 activity on the Web

15. If you were paid a $1 for every time an article was posted on Wikipedia you would earn $156.23 per hour;

16. 25% of search results for the World’s Top 20 largest brands are links to user-generated content.

17. Hitwise UK reports indicate as top three sites for the week ending 16/01/2010: Facebook (51.60%), YouTube (16.10%) and Bebo (2.26%) (social networking category).

18. 51% of journalists read blogs for story ideas.

19. 28% of top search engine results are Social Media sites.

20. Universal McCann reports that 77% of all active internet users often read blogs.

21. Delicious (bookmarking site), has more than five million users and over 160 million unique bookmarked URLs.

22. According to Compete, In Q4 2009 Digg saw a 91% increase in traffic, while Stumbleupon and FriendFeed recorded a huge increase of over 180% and 3100%, respectively, as compared to 2008.

23. Wikipedia currently has more than 13.5 million articles in more than 250 different languages. The site attracts over 60 million unique visitors a month and it’s often hotly debated that the information it contains is more reliable than any printed Encyclopaedia.

24. There are overall 234 million websites as of December 2009. 126 million blogs on the Internet (as tracked by BlogPulse)..

Data compiled by Sorav Jain: Social Media & Digital Marketing Blog

It’s all about your attitude, that’s the difference between whether you will succeed or fail. So true. However how many of us listen to our body?

As part of the coaching and sales training I do,  I talk about the fives levels of listening, as penned by Steve Covey

5 Levels of Listening:

• Empathic Listening – Listening/responding with both the heart and mind to understand the speaker’s words intent and feelings. Listen for what is not being said
• Attentive Listening – Paying attention, focusing on the speaker’s words/comparing to your own experiences.
• Selective Listening – Hearing only what interests you.
• Pretend – Giving the appearance of listening
• Ignore – No effort to listen

This relates to when we listen to others. However how often do you use these levels when listening to your body? Most of us, if we are honest with ourselves ,use selective listening, i.e. when it suits us.

When we are hungry, we eat, we listen to our hunger pans, or sometimes not. When we are thirsty, we drink, or even when we are not. When you have an important decision to make, or coming up to an important meeting, do you listen to what your body is saying to you? Part of my work with the Enneagram, studies the link between listening to your body and the mind.

The easiest way to start to listen to you body, is learning to listen to your intuition. The video below by Judith Orloff explains how you can do this.

A simple exersise you can do that shows you how the body ‘knows’ is this.

Think of something that you can’t make up your mind about, or an important decision you have to make. Hold out your arm horizontal to the ground and think of each choice, (you need a partner for the next part). Think of choice A, imagine it, feel it, be it, now ask your partner to try and push your arm down.

Now think of choice B, imagine it, feel it , be it, again ask your partner to push your arm down. Which was easier? Which ever your body resisted the most, is the path you need to go down. Your body will naturally be strong with the choice that your truly want to go with. Your hesitation will be around some fear, confidence, or self-belief around the outcome.

By listing to our body more, we learn to trust our instincts and intuition and thus make decisions with greater confidence.

I love going to workshops and seminars, for several reasons. While I was in my 9-5 I went to many, both paid and free. However the reason I am in the fortunate position I am now, of running my own business, and being my own boss, is that I took MASSIVE ACTION (as I am sure many of you will be familiar!).

This last weekend I went to a workshop around attracting more clients, and I must say, I learnt a lot. However I made a commitment to myself that  I wouldn’t go to another until I followed up on my commitments I made and take MASSIVE ACTION around my goals.

This got me thinking,  what is the reason you go to workshops/seminars?

I see three reasons

1. Knowledge
2. Reinforcement
3. Networking/Joint Ventures

The title of the workshop and what it is going to give you is the obvious reason most people go to a workshop. We live in a society where we feel that we need more knowledge, “I am currently not getting what I want, so I must be lacking knowledge.”

Is this the case? Think of the last 5 workshops you have attended, did they give you ‘information’ that you already knew, but just not applied? I can certainly say this has been the case for me sometimes.

So what is it that makes us go back? Do we need constant reinforcement for what we already know, or is it more about developing our current knowledge? For me it is often the case of developing and fine tuning what I already know.

A few years ago I differentiated between whether I was consuming my time or investing my time, and I must say the percentage wasn’t in my favour. This for me was a light bulb moment, as soon as I consciously investmented my time, i.e. reading, networking, researching, communicating, listening, being a teacher, being a student, doing what I love, and not comsuming my time, i.e. TV, procrastinating, finding things to do to avoid what needs to be done; things started to change, I took MASSIVE ACTION.

What was a massive eye opener for me was the people you meet when you go to these workshops/seminars. By the very fact that they are there, their mindset would be very similar to yours, hence the opportunity to network with like-minded people is fantastic.

The opportunity to develop new connections for Joint Ventures is also great. Joint Venturing can take many forms, from joint marketing activity to promote complementary services, to looking for mentors who have already achieved what you are looking to develop.

These are some of my ideas. I would love to hear why you go to workshops and seminars.

The Children’s Society today (27/1/10) published a 2 year study on children’s well being. 7000 children aged between 10-15 years old were asked what made them happy and give them life satisfaction.

The report makes for some interesting reading. Although the focus is on children a lot of the findings could be attributed to the mass population.

The report found that stress, worry and anxiety were regularly mentioned as things that prevented young people having a good life, sound familiar! The findings of what made children unhappy were

• Family conflict
• The way they are treated by adults, in their own community and media
• Least happy with their appearance and confidence

Appearance and confidence is one of the major areas, that the report found to be  a source of unhappiness. 17.5% unhappy with their looks, 16% unhappy with their confidence. 115 unhappy with the amount of choice they have and 10.5% unhappy with the amount of freedom they have.

How much would this be applicable to the adult population? Would the figures be so different? You could envisage that these percentages would be much higher.

This new world of taking control of our lives and the amount of resources available now through the internet, demonstrates that to get what you want in life, is more about your confidence and how you are perceived, as well as what you know.

Schools have started to recognise the importance of developing children’s emotional awareness, through the PSHE( Personal, Social Health & Economic Education) and the SEAL (Social and Emotional Aspects of Learning) programs, however they don’t go far enough.

We all ‘know’ that if a child is happy, feeling good and confident they are more likely to perform better, the same as adults. The number of seminars, workshops and course that are available for us all to develop our confidence and improve our performance is huge. The question to ask, is why is this type of education an after thought in mainstream education?

The report also highlighted some really interesting good points, 66% of young people felt that their life had a sense of purpose, wonder if this would be so high for the mass population? Previous research has shown that having a sense of purpose is linked with well being. Having a life with purpose gives you direction and clarity.The report also showed that 63% of young people felt that their parents/carers understood them.

The feeling I get reading the report is that communication is the key. The report shows that on average families that “get along well together” were around 20% happier than those who do not, irrespective of if you were in a single parent family, living with step parents or living with both partners.

Working in both business and schools, with the teachers, I would say this is also true. When communication is flowing people are much more happier and confident. This is not saying that all things are agreed upon, however knowing there are clear lines of communication and everybody feels valued, means for a more productive working environment. The default position within the UK population is often around avoiding conflict or confrontation, this results in a communication breakdown, where people don’t express what they truly feel.

There is a common saying that 99% of the problems we think of never come true! Think about this, we may stop saying something because of fear of conflict, and we become noddy dogs within board meetings to avoid confrontation, however express what we think after the meeting nearer the water cooler. By having a bit more confidence and courage by individually taking responsibility to communicate more effectively we will all be more happier.

Communicate, with your children, with your friends,  and with your colleagues, it WILL make all the difference.

Summary of Executive Report from the Children’s Society

Related articles

• Innocense of Children’s Thinking (performancecoachingandtraining.co.uk)

Last weekend I went to a seminar run by my friend Deepak Lodhia and he remined me of the famous saying that Bruce Lee Coined – Be Like Water.

This puts what we strive for, in perspective. A great metaphor, if we adapt to situations and events and be our true to our self we will get more of what we want

Image via Wikipedia

Getting more clients is what we all strive for. We go networking, make cold calls, and go to workshops to learn the secrets from the ‘experts’, however if we apply the Yoda principal to getting more clients we will get more than we need.

The word ‘try’ is often heard when in our language, when we look to attempt something, ‘I want to work with that blue chip company, I will try and call the CEO’

TRY!!! This allows for failure. By trying we give ourselves a get out clause.’ Well I did try and call him, but he was busy, he is already working with XYZ‘

Next time you say you will try to do something, just change it to do. Even saying this will change the energy around your intention and make it more likely to happen.

When you are committed to something it is amazing how often opportunities occur. When I coach, whether in schools or in business, if I had a penny for the number of times I hear people say the word try, well, let’s just say, it would be easy money. Yoda’s response to Luke when his ship immersed in the lake was, all about intention.

Is your intention to fail or succeed. Is it an option that you fail? No, so why allow it to happen. By doing, your intention is all around succeeding, and history tells us as soon as we decide on something our intention changes and we get closer to what we want.

Go on try it, sorry DO IT, you never know it might just be true!

So what has undiluted orange squash got to do with anything.

In life we are forever told we must do that, do this, use these words, do this action, don’t eat this, do more exercise, buy this product. However, how many times do you actually listen to your inner self. Some call this intuition, awareness, gut instinct, any numerous definitions.

Does listening to your inner self make a difference, well if you listen only once or twice, maybe not, however if you trust it and listen the results may surprise you.

What would a glass of undiluted orange squash taste like? Bitter, strong, not very nice. Now the easiest thing to do is put water in it and drink it. Wouldn’t it be good if life was like that, i.e. when we come up against something that is bitter and not very nice we can just add something to it to make it better.

Just imagine if you put just one drop of water in the undiluted orange squash, would it taste any different, would it look any different, would it smell any different, no it wouldn’t. Now if you gave it to a scientist to see if it was different, what would they say? Yes there is, however only you and the scientist can know there is a difference.

That drop of water represents the small change we could all make to get the things we want in life. That small step that takes us nearer to our goal, that one small change of thought that makes us see those seemingly impossible things, now just really difficult.

What would be the implication if you allowed yourself to add one drop of water each month, each week, each day, or even each hour? For the first few drops only you (and the scientist) know you have made some changes, however the outside world will not know until, much, much later.

As humans one of our “want’s” is that we look for approval so when we make some changes we like it acknowledged, and when we don’t get that outside validation we lose self-belief  and give-up. The outside world will notice the great glass of orange juice only until several drops have been added and then the outside world can see the differnece.

This is the same when we do something different. It may take days, weeks, or even months before others see the different. But does this matter. If you knew that by adding a drop of water each day, you would achieve your goals, tackle near impossible tasks and increase your self-belief, would it really matter, if others notice the differenece?

By making sure you add one drop of water each day and being consistent you will start to get the results you want, and if you’re lucky others may see the difference as well!