How to Leap: bootstrapping You 2.0

“How to leap: bootstrapping You 2.0”

Inspiration for dreamers and cowards alike.

1. Dream (wake and want to do what?)
2. Save (bootstrap your life!)
3. Plan (study, learn, chew on it)
4. Research (interview, talk)
5. Pay (your dues, your time, your sweat)
6. Leap! (do what you know you YEARN to do – go do it and commit!)
7. Commit
8. Roll with the bounces - (learn from the landing and bouncing)

How to Bootstrap Your Dot Com

How To Make $1 Million Before You Graduate
Helen Coster and Melanie Lindner, 02.17.10, 06:00 PM EST
Valuable lessons from preternatural wealth builders.

In Pictures: How To Make $1 Million Before You Graduate

American philosopher Eric Hoffer said, "If a society is to preserve stability and a degree of continuity, it must know how to keep its adolescents from imposing their tastes, attitudes, values and fantasies on everyday life." Too bad Hoffer never met Jamie Murray Wells.

In 2004 while studying for final exams at University of the West of England, Wells, then age 21, went shopping for a pair of prescription glasses. Nonplussed by the $150 pound ($300) price tag, Wells decided to funnel his $2,000 student loan into what would become Glasses Direct, a London-based online retailer that now generates $5 million in annual revenue.

Wells is part of an elite club of preternatural wealth builders who managed to cobble million-dollar enterprises before they graduated from college. The "million-dollar" measure refers to either total revenue generated or the value of the enterprise built (as opposed to the size of the total profit pile). That's no mean feat for any entrepreneur, let alone one who can barely buy a drink legally in the States.

The nine entrepreneurs featured in our slideshow--six from the U.S. and three from the U.K.--started launching businesses by the tender age of 15, and one before he broke double-digits. Some of these wunderkinds, like Wells, identified problems and created companies to solve them; others turned their hobbies into money-making ventures. Some teamed up with friends, siblings and mentors; others plowed ahead on their own. Their common thread: singular focus, preternatural financial savvy and the optimism and confidence to wrest financing from seasoned investors.

Smelling Opportunity: Jamie Murray Wells

0216_jamie-murray-wells_170x170.jpgWhen Wells was bemoaning the price of his lenses, four retailers dominated the U.K. prescription glasses market; all relied on pricey retail stores to move their merchandise.

Wells figured he could move the entire purchasing process online. All he needed was a factory to make the lenses, assemble them with frames and package them. He would then ship them to shoppers, who would simply e-mail or mail in their prescriptions and pay for their glasses online. Without the costly infrastructure, Wells could sell glasses for about one-tenth the price of the established brick-and-mortar players.

Getting Started

A nifty new business model isn't nearly enough to launch a thriving company, let alone when you're 21 and have no track record. "I was knocking on the door of an industry, saying, 'The way that you're selling glasses is wrong, and I've got a better idea,'" says Wells.

Luckily he had friends and family members who agreed to put up a few thousand pounds to help him get started. Wells didn't disappoint: In the first year, Glasses Direct's revenue topped $2 million. And unlike many zealous entrepreneurs, Wells figured out how to manage his cash flow to bootstrap the business. The company took credit card payments upfront but didn't pay suppliers for another month. Wells used part of the float to hire a public relations firm to hype his low-cost strategy.

The next year Wells turned to professional angel investors. "With some investors, I simply walked in to a meeting with a sales graph and let that speak for itself," says Wells. As demand grew, Wells raised $34 million in venture capital from the likes of Highland Capital, Index Ventures, and Munich-based Acton Capital Partners. That should tide Wells over until he turns his first profit.

Asking for Help

Wells believes his age and inexperience helped him. "Having a young founder helps to add a lot of personality to a business," he says. Still, you can't cover payroll with personality.

Recognizing his limitations (yet another challenge for many entrepreneurs), Wells sought out mentors, including ophthalmologist Dr. David Spalton, and David Magliana, a marketing guru who helped bag the 2012 summer Olympic games for London. While Spalton lent credibility with the eye-care community, Magliana worked with Wells on getting the word out about Glasses Direct.

"As an entrepreneur, it's a lot easier than you'd think to reach out to people," says Wells. On the flipside, "entrepreneurs love to be written to and asked for their advice," he adds. "If your question is appropriate for them and they're emotionally interested in you, you will get a letter back, and you will get to meet them for coffee."

Running on Empty: Michael Furdyk

In 1996, as the dot-com boom started to simmer, Michael Furdyk started a Web site, called MyDesktop.com, an online computer magazine, in the basement of his parents' home in suburban Toronto. Furdyk was 16 and a bona fide computer geek. His site was filled with tips and advice Furdyk gleaned in online chat rooms, where he also came across fellow teenager Michael Hayman in Australia. The twosome figured they could turn their passion for technology into a paying business. Hayman was so convinced that he moved to Toronto to get things started.

Just one problem: Their only source of income was Furdyk's paper route. Solution: barter. In exchange for Web site storage space, they ran their host's ads on MyDesktop.com. They negotiated cheap rent on their modest office by designing their landlord's Web site.

Selling Strategies: Six New Ways To Make Money Online

Soon MyDesktop.com was bringing in $60,000 a month in advertising revenue from blue-chip clients like Microsoft ( MSFT - news - people ) and IBM ( IBM - news - people ). Furdyk and Hayman used some of their excess cash to scoop up smaller technology sites for $5,000 to $10,000 apiece. By 1999 the company was attracting 1 million unique visitors a month (serious numbers back then). Furdyk, Hayman and a third partner sold the company to Internet.com for "over $1 million," says Furdyk.

Absorbing the Blows

As part of the MyDesktop sale, Furdyk and company received a small amount of venture capital funding for their next project, a product review site called Buybuddy.com. They raised an additional $5 million and brought on an outside management team. But the good times were short-lived. In 2001 the tech bubble burst; Buybuddy suffered and shut down within three years.

Furdyk hasn't soured on entrepreneurship; indeed, he is promoting it via TakingITglobal.com, a nonprofit social networking site he launched for youngsters and educators interested in using technology to solve global problems. "Never be afraid of failure," says Furdyk. "Just learn from it. When you're young you have even less to lose."

Going With the Flow: Fraser Doherty

0216_fraser-doherty_170x170.jpgWhile his fellow mini-moguls were making a mint on the Internet, Fraser Doherty was doing things the old-fashioned way. In 2002 at the age of 14, Doherty started making jams from his grandmother's recipes in his parents' kitchen in Edinburgh, Scotland. Neighbors and church friends loved them. As word spread Doherty received orders faster than he could fill them, so he leased space at a 200-person food processing factory several days a month.

By age 16 Doherty left school to work on his jams full time. In early 2007 Waitrose, a high-end supermarket in the U.K., came knocking, and within months there were SuperJam jars on the shelves of 184 Waitrose stores. Doherty borrowed $10,000 from a bank to cover general expenses and more factory time to produce three flavors: Blueberry & Black Currant, Rhubarb & Ginger and Cranberry & Raspberry.

Spreading the Word

Last year Doherty ramped up the company's marketing efforts, printing 50 million coupons in newspapers across the U.K. He also ran a promotion in the Sun newspaper offering readers a free jar of jam. Good moves: SuperJam's revenue hit $1.2 million in 2009, flat from the prior year. Doherty's retailers now include U.K. chains Asda Wal-Mart, Morrisons and Tesco ( TESO - news - people ). This year he plans to introduce three new flavors.

Doherty remains the company's only full-time employee, although he hired three part-time staffers to hand out samples in grocery stores. Within the next four months, he hopes to produce mini jars for airlines, hotels and gift boxes. Based on a reasonable valuation multiple of one time revenue (jelly maker J.M. Smucker ( SJM - news - people ) generally trades between 1 and 1.5 times revenue), Doherty's debt-free stake is worth between $1 million and $2 million.

As for taking SuperJam up a notch, Doherty asserts that his supply chain and operations can safely scale to meet heavier demand. "We're sticking with what works," says the entrepreneur, now a seasoned 21 years old.

Follow your Passion, even in retirement

Why Retirement Is Bad For You
Lounging by the beach isn't all it's cracked up to be--especially for entrepreneurs
by Dr. Steven Berglas

You cannot imagine how many times I've heard business builders lament: "By the time I'm able to smell the roses, I'll be too old to walk through the garden!"

Entrepreneurs should be so lucky. Here's what your recently retired buddies--those, that is, who can still afford retirement--slathering sun screen all over their balding pates don't know: Lying fallow erodes psychological health.

Martin Seligman, expert on the psychological origins of depression, detailed the ill effects of a life of R&R in his book, Helplessness: On Depression, Development, and Death. Studies show that men who retired from corporate jobs, donned their gold watches and lazed about at a resort lived measurably shorter lives than those who sought productive work (e.g., volunteering for organizations like SCORE, the Service Corps of Retired Executives). In fact, plenty of retirees who traded productive work for sunshine and early-bird dinners dropped dead surprisingly soon after making the transition.

Here's what's going on: Humans need challenges to replenish their sense of self-esteem. Without it, we feel impotent, vulnerable and helpless. Lack of self-esteem saps vitality, the kind that makes you feel like you can change the world--precisely the kind of energy entrepreneurs are suffused with when doing constructive things. Just as fish have to swim and birds have to fly, entrepreneurs have to build, improve and build again. Without that process, they--quite literally--die inside a little every day

I call this idleness-borne syndrome Supernova Burnout. Unlike other forms of fatigue, this brand of burnout is very private and self-condemnatory. Those who suffer from it experience chronic trepidation, despondency or depression. In some cases they turn to alcohol, abandon their loved ones or fall prey to some other form of self destruction.

The prescription for Supernova Burnout is pretty simple: action. A patient of mine name Carmine (real names have been disguised) can attest to that. The grandson of an Italian food importer from Tuscany, Carmine became one of the largest importers of Italian wine in North America. At age 52, he sold his 25-year-old business to the Seagram Co, making Carmine wealthy beyond his dreams.

And, yet, he had little psychic energy to sustain him. Both of his children were in college, and his wife was devoted to her job as an English teacher. A hard worker since his youth, Carmine never developed hobbies and had few interests apart from wine. His line when we first met: "I have a world-class case of seller's remorse." Soon enough, Carmine was frequenting strip clubs and fraternizing with the help. (One dancer even began calling him at home, at which point Carmine severed contact.)

Sexual conquests, of course, were no substitute for the rush Carmine got from running his business. Worse, his marriage was on the line. I told Carmine that work might well be the best medicine. Perhaps he should approach Seagram about a consulting gig. (After all, he still had a bevy of well-placed contacts with suppliers overseas.) The company leapt at the offer, and Carmine found the satisfaction he had been missing--and craving--for so long.

Carmine's tale is no outlier. Given all the pressures--from friends, family, colleagues and, not least, the media--to enjoy the fruits of their labor, ennui-plagued entrepreneurs are myriad, whether they know it or not.

A final warning about Supernova Burnout: As much as they love to rack up accomplishments, entrepreneurs love to burnish their legacies nearly as much. That may feel satisfying, but it doesn't deliver the same vitality that comes from shaking things up and tackling new challenges. As Ben Franklin put it: "When you are done changing, you are done."

Dr. Steven Berglas spent 25 years on the faculty of Harvard Medical School’s Department of Psychiatry. Today he coaches entrepreneurs, executives and other high-achievers. He can be reached at: drb@berglas.com.

Elder Uchtdorf, General Conference, Oct 2009: Work

How I admire men, women, and children who know how to work! How the Lord loves the laborer! He said, “In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread,”¹ and “The laborer is worthy of his hire.”² He also gave a promise: “Thrust in your sickle with all your soul, and your sins are forgiven you.”³ Those who are unafraid to roll up their sleeves and lose themselves in the pursuit of worthwhile goals are a blessing to their families, communities, nations, and to the Church.

The Lord doesn’t expect us to work harder than we are able. He doesn’t (nor should we) compare our efforts to those of others. Our Heavenly Father asks only that we do the best we can—that we work according to our full capacity, however great or small that may be.

Work is an antidote for anxiety, an ointment for sorrow, and a doorway to possibility. Whatever our circumstances in life, my dear brethren, let us do the best we can and cultivate a reputation for excellence in all that we do. Let us set our minds and bodies to the glorious opportunity for work that each new day presents.

When our wagon gets stuck in the mud, God is much more likely to assist the man who gets out to push than the man who merely raises his voice in prayer—no matter how eloquent the oration. President Thomas S. Monson put it this way: “It is not enough to want to make the effort and to say we’ll make the effort. . . . It’s in the doing, not just the thinking, that we accomplish our goals. If we constantly put our goals off, we will never see them fulfilled.”⁴

Work can be ennobling and fulfilling, but remember Jacob’s warning not to “spend . . . your labor for that which cannot satisfy.”⁵ If we devote ourselves to the pursuit of worldly wealth and the glitter of public recognition at the expense of our families and our spiritual growth, we will discover soon enough that we have made a fool’s bargain. The righteous work we do within the walls of our homes is most sacred; its benefits are eternal in nature. It cannot be delegated. It is the foundation of our work as priesthood holders.

Remember, we are only temporary travelers in this world. Let us not devote our God-given talents and energies solely to setting earthly anchors, but rather let us spend our days growing spiritual wings. For, as sons of the Most High God, we were created to soar unto new horizons.

Now, a word to us seasoned brethren: retirement is not part of the Lord’s plan of happiness. There is no sabbatical or retirement program from priesthood responsibilities—regardless of age or physical capacity. While the phrase “been there, done that” may work as an excuse to avoid skateboarding, decline the invitation for a motorbike ride, or bypass the spicy curry at the buffet, it is not an acceptable excuse for avoiding covenant responsibilities to consecrate our time, talents, and resources in the work of the kingdom of God.

There may be those who, after many years of Church service, believe they are entitled to a period of rest while others pull the weight. To put it bluntly, brethren, this sort of thinking is unworthy of a disciple of Christ. A great part of our work on this earth is to endure joyfully to the end—every day of our life.

Steve Jobs Stanford Commencement Speech

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UF8uR6Z6KLc

Stanford Report, June 14, 2005

'You've got to find what you love,' Jobs says

This is the text of the Commencement address by Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple Computer and of Pixar Animation Studios, delivered on June 12, 2005.

I am honored to be with you today at your commencement from one of the finest universities in the world. I never graduated from college. Truth be told, this is the closest I've ever gotten to a college graduation. Today I want to tell you three stories from my life. That's it. No big deal. Just three stories.

The first story is about connecting the dots.

I dropped out of Reed College after the first 6 months, but then stayed around as a drop-in for another 18 months or so before I really quit. So why did I drop out?

It started before I was born. My biological mother was a young, unwed college graduate student, and she decided to put me up for adoption. She felt very strongly that I should be adopted by college graduates, so everything was all set for me to be adopted at birth by a lawyer and his wife. Except that when I popped out they decided at the last minute that they really wanted a girl. So my parents, who were on a waiting list, got a call in the middle of the night asking: "We have an unexpected baby boy; do you want him?" They said: "Of course." My biological mother later found out that my mother had never graduated from college and that my father had never graduated from high school. She refused to sign the final adoption papers. She only relented a few months later when my parents promised that I would someday go to college.

And 17 years later I did go to college. But I naively chose a college that was almost as expensive as Stanford, and all of my working-class parents' savings were being spent on my college tuition. After six months, I couldn't see the value in it. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life and no idea how college was going to help me figure it out. And here I was spending all of the money my parents had saved their entire life. So I decided to drop out and trust that it would all work out OK. It was pretty scary at the time, but looking back it was one of the best decisions I ever made. The minute I dropped out I could stop taking the required classes that didn't interest me, and begin dropping in on the ones that looked interesting.

It wasn't all romantic. I didn't have a dorm room, so I slept on the floor in friends' rooms, I returned coke bottles for the 5¢ deposits to buy food with, and I would walk the 7 miles across town every Sunday night to get one good meal a week at the Hare Krishna temple. I loved it. And much of what I stumbled into by following my curiosity and intuition turned out to be priceless later on. Let me give you one example:

Reed College at that time offered perhaps the best calligraphy instruction in the country. Throughout the campus every poster, every label on every drawer, was beautifully hand calligraphed. Because I had dropped out and didn't have to take the normal classes, I decided to take a calligraphy class to learn how to do this. I learned about serif and san serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great. It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can't capture, and I found it fascinating.

None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life. But ten years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me. And we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography. If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts. And since Windows just copied the Mac, its likely that no personal computer would have them. If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on this calligraphy class, and personal computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do. Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college. But it was very, very clear looking backwards ten years later.

Again, you can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.

My second story is about love and loss.

I was lucky — I found what I loved to do early in life. Woz and I started Apple in my parents garage when I was 20. We worked hard, and in 10 years Apple had grown from just the two of us in a garage into a $2 billion company with over 4000 employees. We had just released our finest creation — the Macintosh — a year earlier, and I had just turned 30. And then I got fired. How can you get fired from a company you started? Well, as Apple grew we hired someone who I thought was very talented to run the company with me, and for the first year or so things went well. But then our visions of the future began to diverge and eventually we had a falling out. When we did, our Board of Directors sided with him. So at 30 I was out. And very publicly out. What had been the focus of my entire adult life was gone, and it was devastating.

I really didn't know what to do for a few months. I felt that I had let the previous generation of entrepreneurs down - that I had dropped the baton as it was being passed to me. I met with David Packard and Bob Noyce and tried to apologize for screwing up so badly. I was a very public failure, and I even thought about running away from the valley. But something slowly began to dawn on me — I still loved what I did. The turn of events at Apple had not changed that one bit. I had been rejected, but I was still in love. And so I decided to start over.

I didn't see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.

During the next five years, I started a company named NeXT, another company named Pixar, and fell in love with an amazing woman who would become my wife. Pixar went on to create the worlds first computer animated feature film, Toy Story, and is now the most successful animation studio in the world. In a remarkable turn of events, Apple bought NeXT, I returned to Apple, and the technology we developed at NeXT is at the heart of Apple's current renaissance. And Laurene and I have a wonderful family together.

I'm pretty sure none of this would have happened if I hadn't been fired from Apple. It was awful tasting medicine, but I guess the patient needed it. Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don't lose faith. I'm convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You've got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don't settle.

My third story is about death.

When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: "If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you'll most certainly be right." It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: "If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?" And whenever the answer has been "No" for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.

Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.

About a year ago I was diagnosed with cancer. I had a scan at 7:30 in the morning, and it clearly showed a tumor on my pancreas. I didn't even know what a pancreas was. The doctors told me this was almost certainly a type of cancer that is incurable, and that I should expect to live no longer than three to six months. My doctor advised me to go home and get my affairs in order, which is doctor's code for prepare to die. It means to try to tell your kids everything you thought you'd have the next 10 years to tell them in just a few months. It means to make sure everything is buttoned up so that it will be as easy as possible for your family. It means to say your goodbyes.

I lived with that diagnosis all day. Later that evening I had a biopsy, where they stuck an endoscope down my throat, through my stomach and into my intestines, put a needle into my pancreas and got a few cells from the tumor. I was sedated, but my wife, who was there, told me that when they viewed the cells under a microscope the doctors started crying because it turned out to be a very rare form of pancreatic cancer that is curable with surgery. I had the surgery and I'm fine now.

This was the closest I've been to facing death, and I hope its the closest I get for a few more decades. Having lived through it, I can now say this to you with a bit more certainty than when death was a useful but purely intellectual concept:

No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don't want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life's change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true.

Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.

When I was young, there was an amazing publication called The Whole Earth Catalog, which was one of the bibles of my generation. It was created by a fellow named Stewart Brand not far from here in Menlo Park, and he brought it to life with his poetic touch. This was in the late 1960's, before personal computers and desktop publishing, so it was all made with typewriters, scissors, and polaroid cameras. It was sort of like Google in paperback form, 35 years before Google came along: it was idealistic, and overflowing with neat tools and great notions.

Stewart and his team put out several issues of The Whole Earth Catalog, and then when it had run its course, they put out a final issue. It was the mid-1970s, and I was your age. On the back cover of their final issue was a photograph of an early morning country road, the kind you might find yourself hitchhiking on if you were so adventurous. Beneath it were the words: "Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish." It was their farewell message as they signed off. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish. And I have always wished that for myself. And now, as you graduate to begin anew, I wish that for you.

Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.

Thank you all very much.

"Do not despise the words of prophets, but test everything; hold fast to what is good; " 1 Thess. 5:21, NRSV

Positive Attitude Article

10 Ways to Build a Positive Mental Attitude

By Dieter Pauwels

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The news is working hard to make us fret about our futures-our ability to make it when businesses are closing all around us. Yes, times are tough, but you can "toughen up" - and enjoy the ride - by making sure your attitude is positive. Here Dieter Pauwels offers 10 tips for you to stay positive:

1. The choice is yours.

Your life is the result of your choices. You always have (and had) a choice. You can choose to let the current state of the economy bring you down, or you can choose to look for opportunities. Choose to focus your attention on what you can do and what you will achieve. The way you choose to see the world creates the world you see.

2. Limit TV time.

Instead read a positive book, start a project, pick up a new hobby, spend some quality time with your family-do something that will enhance your life. Manage your time around your highest priorities and values. How high is the TV on your priority list?

3. Use positive language.

Listen to the words you use. Avoid words like 'always', 'never', 'can't', 'won't' and even 'why.' Say 'I choose' or 'I want,' instead of 'I need' or 'I should'; notice the difference.

4. Surround yourself with positive people.

Surround yourself with people who are positive influences: people who speak the truth and support you. Expand your circle to include people who are further ahead in personal and professional development than you are. Disassociate with negative people who impede your progress.

5. Develop a Givers Gain mentality.

Give away what you seek without expectation or measuring. When you seek success, help others to be successful, too. When you seek happiness, help others to find happiness first.

6. Invest in yourself.

Listen to positive attitude audio CD's, invest in courses or workshops, or attend personal development seminars. Read books from people like Napoleon Hill, Earl Nightingale, Jim Rohn, Charles Swindoll, John Maxwell, Dale Carnegie, Anthony Robbins, Jeffrey Gitomer, Wayne Dyer, Norman Vincent Peale, Ken Blanchard, Jack Canfield and many others. People who write about how you can and will, not why you can't or won't.

7. Let go of anger, resentment, and judgment.

Hanging on to negative emotions like anger or resentment will drain your energy and hinder you from moving forward. The best way to let go of these emotions is to fully acknowledge the feelings associated with the initial negative experience. Honor those feelings and let them go as they no longer serve you; replace them with something positive. You can still hold on to the lessons learned from the initial negative experience.

8. Create positive, realistic expectations, and take action.

All too often people try to live up to the expectations of others: a parent, a manager, or a significant other. Make sure your expectations are congruent with who you really are. You are what you believe, and you become what you expect. Expect the best - and only the best - from life, others, and yourself. Take action on your expectations.

9. Start believing in what you really want.

Identify and let go of limiting beliefs that no longer support or honor you. Instead develop empowering beliefs that are aligned with your goals, values, and your heart's desires.

10. Take responsibility for your own life.

Focus your attention on what you can control: your thoughts, your actions, your behavior, your emotional state, and your daily actions and activities. You're the steward of your own life, solely responsible for the results and experiences you create. Taking ownership and responsibility for your own life is a freedom and tremendous privilege.

It all starts with your attitude.

You can check out the rest of Dieter's website at: http://lifecoaching.dieterpauwels.com/.

Tags: attitude, Dieter Pauwels, expectations, January 2009 edition, personal development, positive

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