Should we follow others who have a dream and get paid for making themselves wealthier, or should we take charge of our lives and get paid for following our own dream? That is a question that, I would guess, less people in our society would ask. Most people ask the question: “where can I get a job that will allow me to pay my bills?’
How sad it is that more people think so little of themselves that they won’t pursue their dream, but maybe that is why many of the people who do, become part of the wealthy class. They are the people who take the risks that create the jobs that the masses work at to “pay their bills.”

With the mass layoffs and an unemployment rate of 10% due to poor economic and fiscal policies, we are at the greatest time in our history for economic and entrepreneurial growth. When one door closes, another one opens. Some people are spending their unemployment time doing nothing but milking the system to take as much from the taxpayers as they can. At the same time others are taking positive action and creating work for themselves by becoming self-employed in their own businesses. There was a recent article in a New York newspaper that shared that there is a record number of unemployed people who have started their own businesses and that some of them are earning more than they did in the jobs that they lost. Not only is that exciting, but it is also encouraging to those who have felt lost in the Limbo-land of unemployment.

Why not start your own business? You ask yourself, “where would I start?’
“what should I do?” “how do I start?”
There is a guideline one could follow to discover what is the best business for him/her to start that could allow a higher rate of success over a period of time.

First step: DECIDE WHAT YOU WANT. Do you have a hobby? Do you have a skill you have been doing to get paid by someone else? Is there something you would like to learn that could help you grow? Is there something that you always wanted to do? Write down everything you always wanted to do on one side of the paper, then write down all the things you would not want to do if you had enough money to pay someone else to do it. Then decide on the one thing you want to do that excited you and hits your hot button. Make a decision to do it. Decide on the end result. Where do you want your business to take you?

Second step: DECIDE THE PRICE YOU ARE GOING TO PAY. There is no free lunch. There is a price for success. It won’t jump out from behind a door and attack you. Every day take action in the direction of your desired outcome. Stay open for ideas and incites that will guide you in progressing to your desired outcome. Keep focused on your goals as you take positive action.

Third step: ASSOCIATE WITH PEOPLE WHO HAVE WHAT YOU WANT NOT WITH PEOPLE WHO HAVE WHAT YOU’VE GOT. Find out about people who are successful at doing what you want to do, and if you can’t because your business is so new, find people who are successful at doing the skills you need to be successful at doing what you want to do.

Fourth step: PLAN YOUR WORK AND WORK YOUR PLAN. When you develop a plan of action put it to work. Re-evaluate the plan periodically and adjust it as needed, then take continued action in the direction of your desired outcome. Remember, Rome wasn’t built in a day, and a journey of a thousand miles begins with the first step. Take action and it will work.

We often spend time comparing ourselves to others, only to end up disappointed because we not only cannot be someone else, but by trying to be someone else, we cannot be ourselves. The only way to achieve happiness is to be ourselves. A rabbit doesn’t try to be a gorilla, and an eagle doesn’t try to be a tiger. Humans are the only species that compare themselves to others and use these standards to gauge whether they are a success or failure.
When we feel insecure we sometimes try to build ourselves up by imagining we are a movie star, a famous athlete, a well-known successful entrepreneur. When we are in our pain, we wish we were larger, because if we were larger, we wouldn’t feel so much pain. If we were larger, we would be harder to miss and would have a better chance at being loved. Then we feel compelled to make others look smaller so we can live in the illusion of seeming larger than our pain.
The fact is, we cannot get away from who we are. If we spent the time loving and appreciating ourselves and knowing that we are perfect as ourselves, we wouldn’t have to pull anybody else down. Remember you can have the tallest building in the city. One way is to demolish all the other buildings. Another way is to build yours taller than all the rest. See yourself as successful being yourself and doing what you love to do, and you will shine.

In order to grow, we must be willing to change. Sometimes that means changing where we live, changing relationships, or changing our jobs or businesses if they no longer serve us. Change comes from within. If what we are doing no longer is working, maybe it is time to change. “If we continue to do what we always did expecting different results” is considered the height of insanity.
“The Dusuns of north Borneo have believed for centuries that when God finished creating the world, He announced that “Whoever is able to cast off his skin shall not die.”
But what does that mean? Not that we can live forever, but that the way to stay closest to the pulse of life , the way to stay in the presence of that Divine Reality which informs everything, is to be willing to change. Still, Change what? To change whatever has ceased to function within us. To shed whatever we are carrying that is no longer alive. To cast off our dead skin because dead skin can’t feel. Dead eyes cannot see, dead ears can’t hear. And without feeling, there Is no chance of wholeness, and wholeness remains our best chance to survive the pain of breaking.” (from The Book of Awakening by Mark Nepo)
Like the snake, we must be willing to shed our old skin in order to renew our lives and continue to live. Being bogged down in something that no longer works could be a cause of illness and depression in those too afraid to take a risk and move on. We must seek and find our passion and follow that passion ‘til its fulfillment or until it no longer serves us, and that is when we should move on to find something else to be passionate about. When we do what we love to do we will awaken our creative spirit and not only will we feel joy, but we also will feel a driving enthusiasm for life.

Whenever I start writing here, I am never sure what I will say until my fingers start moving over the computer keys. Prior to that, I ask my Higher Power, who many of us call God, to give me the words to say so that I can at least help someone improve their life. I also used that before making major decisions, before painting a painting, or before making a speech. If Divine guidance is involved, I have a better chance of saying and doing the right thing. The hardest parts of this is keeping my head out of it and not trying to figure out what to say. So this is what I am doing now. What I have learned to believe is that when we relinquish control to the Almighty Power, life gets easier. The hard part of life is when we live it without turning our will over to this Higher Energy. Trust is the other part of the equation. When we choose to do this we have to trust that what is coming through us is the right thing. Here is where I choose to let go and let the words come through. I have learned to believe that every man, woman, and child can do this and if they want to be truly happy, they have to learn this as well. Maybe this is what they call the “Quest for the Holy Grail.”

Prosperity and abundance are a state of mind and of being. I learned that if I expect success, opportunities for success will come my way or appear to me, and if I ACT on those opportunities, the success usually comes as well. There are also subconscious beliefs that can set us up for failure as well as success. Deep set beliefs that “I am not worthy of success,” or “I don’t deserve to keep this,” or “I don’t really care about money and abundance, I just want to earn enough to live on,” will all give you what you say, and when that happens one may wonder why they are not having prosperity even though they work hard to earn more. We all deserve to have all the abundance that we want, the problem for most people is that they were trained to believe that they are not capable or don’t deserve abundance by those who were their mentors growing up. We all have thoughts that were conditioned early in our youth. Some of those thoughts are self-inhibiting, and if we are to achieve more than we have in the past, some of those habitual thoughts need to be overridden and replaced by new thought habits that empower us to grow. That can be done by practicing thinking and saying what we want as if it already happened. These are called affirmations or positive self-talk statements that concentrate on our goals and dreams. If we make this kind of positive self-talk a habit, we will experience more and more success and abundant living than if “we keep doing what we always did.” Which is also the definition of INSANITY: if we “keep doing what we always did, expecting different results.”