What is Your Personal Currency?

What is your personal currency? What do you feel you have to provide to the world as a whole, and is that offer given the value, validity, and respect it merits? Are you happy? When you judge yourself, as we
all do, how do you measure up? Are you an evenly appreciated part of society? Are you predictable? Do you ever feel compromised in any case? When you think of your worth what springs to mind? This subject
may bring out emotions and reactions that surprise you.

For instance, what are the parameters you use to value your worth? Do you consider:

• Your marriage?
• Your power to provide for your children?
• Your success in your career?
• Your friends and family relationships?
• Your spare-time activity and hobbies?
• Your sense of welfare and fulfilment?
• Your allegiance to assisting others?
• Your religion?

Do you even think about your worth at all? Perhaps not in so many words, but the matter of worthiness probably arises for you again and again, and it's demonstrated by behaviors that don't serve you well; fear, depression, inferiority.

Many of our ideas of worthiness come from a place deep inside that was forged by factors associated with outside influences. So the question is are we incapable of determining our own standards? Misconceptions to external and internal influences can regress us into a state of weakness. Do be aware that such unconscious thought may indeed have been included in the messages you were given as a child, and it may invade your behavior when you least expect it.

Here's a significant note for you to write down and read often: refuse it. Play to your specialties, not your failings. Self-confidence is your best asset.

Why is it significant to comprehend your true value or personal currency? Because your survival, sense of well-being and success literally depend on it.

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Cheryl Lacey Donovan is an entrepreneur, award winning author, mentor, coach, inspirational speaker, and radio/tv personality. To have Cheryl speak at your next event or to learn more about her Golden Life Coaching and Mentoring Program please contact Carolyn Hall of the CL3 Agency at cl3agency@gmail.com.

How are you going to get it?

What is the difference between successful people on non-successful people? Are successful people more intelligent or do they just have better opportunities than non-successful people?

Brian Tracy said, "Only Difference between successful people and non successful people is this: "Everybody thinks about what they want, but successful people think about what they want, and HOW to get it!"

Others say plan your work and work your plan. No matter the mantra the most important things is the HOW.

The only way I ever accomplish anything is to figure out what I want, then how I am going to get it. My life has been driven by goals and what I want in life, the only way I ever achieve anything is by laying out a plan and working on that plan until I accomplish it. I remember my mother saying, "You're going to write your life away." Well, maybe so, but so far, I've been pretty successful using this method.

Another way to look at it is to start backwards, think of the house you want to live in, the cars you want to drive, the lifestyle you want your family to live. You have to lay out a game plan to get there. It is not going to miraculously show up on your door step someday. This means each day of your life you need to be doing at least one thing that will help you accomplish that goal.

Robert Kiyosaki explains this concept in his book "Rich Dad Poor Dad":

"Because I had two influential fathers, I learned from both of them. I had to think about each dad's advice, and in doing so, I gained valuable insight into the power and effect of one's thoughts on one's life. For example, one dad had a habit of saying, "I can't afford it." The other dad forbade those words to be used. He insisted I say, "How can I afford it?"

One is a statement, and the other is a question. One lets you off the hook, and the other forces you to think. My soon-to-be-rich dad would explain that by automatically saying the words "I can't afford it," your brain stops working. By asking the question "How can I afford it?" your brain is put to work. He did not mean buy everything you wanted. He was fanatical about exercising your mind, the most powerful computer in the world. "My brain gets stronger every day because I exercise it. The stronger it gets, the more money I can make." He believed that automatically saying "I can't afford it" was a sign of mental laziness."

So remember, the question isn't what you want… It's HOW are you going to get it?

Good Leaders are Good Learners

Entrepreneurial leaders do not have a mindset that adapts to failure.  Things go wrong, of course, but entrepreneurs don’t call them “failures” they call them “glitches, mistakes, bungles, setbacks” – but not failing.

When one such entrepreneur was asked about the hardest decision he ever had to make, he answered that he didn’t know what a hard decision was.  An entrepreneur will approach decision-making with the idea that there’s a strong likelihood that he/she will be wrong.  This doesn’t dissuade them – to the contrary they just do the best they can and worry about handling obstacles as they arise.

Another way of looking at it is to realize that you will make mistakes, so make them as quickly as you can in order to learn from them.  A good leader doesn’t view making mistakes as negative or irrevocable, he/she feels free to press on and try something new. There is the belief that something useful has been learned, and hopefully not at a high cost.

Let’s face it; if you’re going to live this life you’re going to make mistakes.  Make use of them as learning tools and don’t make the same ones twice.

Entrepreneurs also know the value of “intuition”.  While you shouldn’t act on the results of tossing a coin, there is something to be said about your “gut” feeling about the situation.  Very often business people become so involved with systems and checks-and-balances that they forget about that “gut” instinct they had when they started.

While not strictly logical, intuition does draw on a combination of experience, knowledge, and analysis as well as a lot of “gut” information you may have forgotten that you have.

You become a strong leader in your business by “practicing” being a leader.  It’s not a course you can take at a business college; it’s learned in the school of life as you’re doing business.

As a leader, you have to set standards and higher standards for your own behavior.  You must do this because appearances are sometimes more important that facts.

Consider for a moment that as an entrepreneur with a small business you’re planning on approaching a bank for a loan.   You know that you must present a well thought out and concise Business Plan, with all the projections for the use of the capital you’ll borrow and the repayment of the same.  You learned that from all those seminars you attended when considering becoming an entrepreneur, but is there something that you weren’t taught in seminars?  What about “presentation”?

I don’t mean the presentation of the Business Plan, we all know that must be well done and attractive.  What I’m talking about is YOU!  Do you maintain the appearance of leadership?  Do you project a confident appearance of a successful entrepreneur?  You may not have the faintest idea today how you’re going to pay for that advertising bill coming due on the 15^th, but you’re not going to give that banker that information.

Presenting yourself as a confident entrepreneur, filled with the excitement of your business idea, and a strong leader of your team (whether it’s 1 or 10 employees) is what will make you a winner and add untold weight to your Business Plan.  After all, you are your business to that banker so you’d better look good and confident.

To protect that faith that your people and your customers have in your organization, always ask yourself these two questions:

1. Could this be interpreted by anyone in a way that would shake their faith in my leadership?
2. Could this be misinterpreted and held against me or the company?

Strong leaders know that leadership is a lifelong learning experience, and when they make a mistake they simply continue to move forward.  The ability to bounce back is a quality that every entrepreneur I’ve ever known has in abundance.

When you blunder, get up and try again quickly.  As one high-tech executive I knew put it, “Our strategy is to fail forward fast.”