Overcoming the Storms in our lives

The most difficult thing in life is maintaining your focus on a goal while things all around you are not going as planned or you face some kind of adversity in your life. Women especially, are prone to getting emotionally totaled when things are not working out in one area or other in their lives.

Here are some ways you can stay focused and at the same time empower yourself to rise above your circumstances;

1.Accept the reality of whatever has happened in your life. Allow yourself 5 minutes each day or even a little bit more, to feel sorry for yourself and even cry. After that move on and do something productive.

2.Don’t keep replaying the event in your mind. Focus on bouncing back and staying in control.


3.Keep yourself empowered; stay focused on who you are and why you were created. Fill your mind with positive empowering thoughts. Know that as a woman you have an edge. You are stronger and capable of bouncing back from pain and adversity. Your body was created to navigate times like these.

4.Accept the things you can’t change and move forward with your life. Don’t get stuck in the past or present state. Always be in constant motion; forward motion.

Life is full of adversity and pain and it’s an absolute guarantee that you will face challenging times. Learn to free your heart from bitterness, anger, rage and grudges. Don’t blame yourself, move forward with resolve.

One of my favorite episodes in Desperate Housewives was a scene from Season 5. Right after Bree’s husband Orson had been sent to jail for three years, she went into a state of depression and alcoholism as she tried to deal with losing her husband. Her business partner and friend came to see her and told her to stop feeling sorry for herself, and to focus on filling her life with accomplishment and focus on her goals.

Whatever it is; if it doesn’t kill you it will only make you stronger.

The Secret to Success

Why is it that for some people success seems to have come easy while for others it seems a struggle?

One of my business partners always tells me that his father, who became a millionaire at 25, used to always tell him that there is no such thing as a free lunch. Every successful person you see has gotten to where they are because they paid the ultimate prize for their accomplishment.

I am surprised each day by the price people are willing to pay for a temporary state of accomplishment. Wherever you are in you career cycle, have you ever tried to project a decade into the future? I will give you an example of what I'm getting at.

I attended a class at church where the people in my class felt that our church was putting pressure on them because everyone in the church was young and was driving some kind of really cool and expensive car. For that reason they felt that they were not fitting into the particular kind of class the church was targeting. I told them a story of a lady who worked in one of the leading banks in asset finance. She came to visit and as she took a look in the parking lot she recognized a lot of cars that she owned in the asset portfolio she managed for the bank because the owners were still repaying their car loans for these flashy cars. Yet here were these young men and women feeling that they were not financially capable!
Are you willing to pay the ultimate price!

What sets successful people apart is how they behave. They don’t wait for things to happen they make them happen. They don’t wait until the time is right, they take calculated risks. When things don’t go according to plan, they adapt quickly. They are willing to make mistakes, experiment and explore new possibilities.

One of my favorite songs by Kanye West has a line which goes something like; “before I had it I closed my eyes and imagined”. Ask yourself what you truly want. Think about how you will feel when you have what you want. This means you can begin to direct your life because you have a precise well defined and accurately identified goal.

Get out of your comfort Zone

The most common question I get is from people who ask me how it is they can be able to move forward and actually put into action the very thing they have been thinking of doing for eons. Once you overcome procrastinating how do you take that final leap? The fear of failure and fear of the unknown is what holds people back. As a person you need to get to a place where you feel your purpose so strongly that not accomplishing it is a worse fate than death.

There is nothing that makes me sad than to meet someone that wanted to do something so badly but because they were unwilling to get out of their comfort zone, they lost time and now they have settled into their fate and what life has handed them as their destiny.

The one thing I tell women to do is to begin with the end in mind.What is it that you want to accomplish in the long run. If you took a look in the mirror and you saw yourself a decade from now; who is the woman looking back at you in the mirror? How does she feel about herself? How does she live her life? What things are important to her? Then figure out how you can get the woman in the present to get to the woman in the future.

Another mistake I have found women making is thinking that there is only one way. Ask any battle strategist, the goal is the same; eliminate the enemy. But the methods are countless. Accept that you are not defined but what you do but what who you are and what you have to offer. Find ways to bring your skill set to the forefront no matter what you do.Whether you set up a yogurt shop or run a multi-million organization the satisfaction and sense of accomplishment is the same.
I have sat in boardrooms with sleek looking investment bankers who own factories and chicken businesses. Remember all that matters is the goal. Do not get caught up trying to keep up with the joneses.

Finding Equlibrium

One of my friends celebrated her 30th birthday a few days ago. When talking to her I was curious to know what to expect in my 30th decade. She shared with me her dreams and aspirations and the things she had hoped to accomplish before turning 30, some which did not quite work out as planned.

The war stories from her twenties were full of intrigue and drama; from bad relationships, business decisions, best and worst mistakes, scars, pain, and no doubt lessons that had made her wiser and stronger as a person. I then asked her what she expected her third decade to be like. Her other thirty-something friends had told her that everything calms down and you become more conscientious and deliberate about the things you do and decisions that you make. It is like you finally find a state of equilibrium; where all things are in perfect harmony. I for one cannot vouch for a bit of truth in that.

It is important for every human being to understand and know yourself well.
There is a place in all of us that must remain at constant in order to be able to survive and succeed in this world. Develop an inner strength and confidence by understanding who you are, your strengths, your weaknesses, and your worth. Regardless of any criticism thrown at you, a business deal, marriage or relationship that goes bad, whether you are rich or flat broke. When everything is peeled away from you; your version of who you are on the inside must be so clear to you that you are able to weather any storm.

A lot of people live their lives by a standard that is set by those around them. They are constantly changing themselves, how they act and behave to suit an occasion or individual. If you do not define yourself and get comfortable with who you are; what will you have left when everything in your life is taken away? What happens if you lose your job, your money, your house, your wife, your friends? Would you survive something that big and how far will the rubber band stretch before you bounce back?

Once you know and define your equilibrium, your task will be to find it when you lose it. Not knowing this is the very thing that stops us from achieving and living our potential regardless of what is happening in our lives.

Defining Success for yourself

The problem with all of us is that we do not define success by what we want to accomplish but rather by what others in our circles are doing and how we can keep up with them. We are basically keeping up with the joneses. The problem with this is that we are all very different individually and we are uniquely gifted in our capabilities.

Have you ever stopped to consider what success means to you? The definition of success varies from one person to another. It is also dependent on what stage of life you are in.

It is important to first understand what success means to you individually in order to have a marking scheme for self-evaluation. Glenn Meakem became an overnight billionaire when his company went public. He however is known to have said that even though he was wealthy, he would consider himself a failure if he was a bad father and terrible husband. However, today’s prevailing culture defines success largely as financial accomplishment and everything else is secondary to the pursuit of it.

Some of the most famous entrepreneurs define success, in a personal way. They put their families, charities, employees, spirituality above money, status and rank.

I know several people that have achieved financial success but have lost their spouses and relationships with their children along the way. I was once told a story of a very wealthy Kenyan man who spent his life as a miser even to his kids. He did not spare time to enjoy the fruits of his labor with his family and was known to withhold even small amounts of money from them. When he passed away, his children were shocked to discover that their father owned a lot of property and other assets across Kenya. Their father had been a very wealthy man. None of his children wanted to come and manage their father’s vast portfolio and they even gave his money away. They felt cheated and they had their own lives to lead. To this day there are tenants living in his rental houses who don’t pay rent because no one is there to collect.

The point is, as your pursue what you consider your success milestones don’t lose your life and relationships. It will all have been in vain if you were to die and everything you worked for died with you and had no impact on your community or family.

In the words of Stephen Cover, leave a legacy. Even the bible commands us to leave a legacy into our third generation. Consider carefully what you would like your legacy to be and use this as your true measure of success.

Tired of New years Resolutions that don't work? Try this

Enough already! It’s a new year and with it another chance to set new year resolutions that I must accomplish this time. I want to share a funny story with you from one of my leadership mentors. He had made a new years resolution to lose weight like most of us do every year. He signed up to the gym got his gear and everything necessary to accomplish that goal and was ready to begin in January. The only problem was that every time he went to the gym, it was so crowded and he had to queue to use the training machines. The gym instructor noticing his plight gave him a bit of advice. The instructor told him to come back in March because half of the people would have given up by then and there would be plenty of space.

If you are one of those people who at the end of every year you wonder what happened or you completely gave up setting resolutions, I want to introduce you to a new concept. A new way to do things and every successful entrepreneur has done this to ensure that whatever business they set up aligns to their goals and interests. It is called life planning.

I must admit that a very good friend of mine introduced me to this and I did it. Since then, I have had so much clarity about my life and everything I do or come into contact with reveals opportunities that I am now able assess how they connect to my life plan and vision.

Life planning is pretty simple. It is what our government would call vision 2030. What is your vision 2030? How do you see your life 30, 40, years down the line? What do you see yourself doing, where will you be living? Start your life plan here and write everything down.

Look at every area of your life, finances, personal growth, relationships, education, spiritual growth, business etc. List the different areas down. If you have started from 2030 go back all the way to 2010. List down under each area of your life specific things you need to do each year to get to whatever your vision 2030 is. For example if you want to be a multi-millionaire in 2030 how much money do you need to make every year, every decade? What investment vehicles or businesses do you need to set up each year to generate that kind of positive cash flow? What do you need to do in 2010, 2011 etc that will ensure that you achieve that goal? Do you need to get out of debt, repay a loan, complete project x? Be very specific with this part.

Now move a step further. Look at how you are spending each day of the week. Are there activities that you need to include or exclude in order to align with your year one goals? Perhaps you need to get to work one hour earlier to avoid traffic and have time to study before class? Do you need to set aside two hours per day to focus on a project that has been delayed for years in order to get it done?

Nothing simplifies your life better than life planning. It sounds like a lot of work but the time you spend on it is nothing compared to the lifetime of clarity it will create for you. If you are an entrepreneur or aspiring to be one and do not know where to begin, this will help you focus on an area that is in alignment with your interests and lifestyle.

Check out http://www.startupnation.com/steps/55/3751/1/create-life-plan.htm for a step by step guide and a template you can use to get started.

Carry your weekly time table and life plan around with you so you can internalize it and in time know it by heart. Check yourself constantly to see if you are in alignment with your vision 2030. When an opportunity crops up that sounds great, first check whether it is in alignment with your life plan.

Try this and let me know how it works out for you. Let me know whether you need more help or information. Wishing you all a life of health, wealth, success and purpose.

Kenyan Lady enterprenuer Stand Up!

Today i spent time researching on top ways to cut down costs for your business. The sad reality dawned on me after a few reads that most companies at the end of the day will sacrifice their employees to survive the bad times. If you are a Kenyan Lady that has had to go through a pay cut or retrenchment in this recession my sentiments are with you. Rather than feel defeated and lost i think its time for you to rise up and wise up. Use this as an opportunity to start climbing the mountain towards financial freedom. If you have been through this and would like a chance to explore other opportunities to help you build multiple streams of income drop me an email and i will share with you some powerful resource material that will require a little bit of commitment. Remember in all things to give thanks and to pray.