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Blog Action Day: Will Climate Change Impact You?

Today is Blog Action Day, a movement that brings together bloggers, no matter what subject they cover, to create awareness of a cause by all writing about it on the same day. This year’s focus is climate change.

This article interrupts a series of blog posts I’ve been publishing on creating positive change in your life. It’s interesting timing given the issue of reducing climate change may be the one greatest change we all have a vested interest in making, yet presently we struggle to make shifts significant enough to save us from what looks like a bleak future, depending on what predictive models you trust.

Writing the series on change made me realize an intriguing and at times contradictory relationship between changes that the individual can make, how those changes impact overall change as a society and the motivations behind change in the first place.

My article series on change focused on your favorite subject – you. I agree with you, my favorite subject is me too. Hence we tend to make decisions to change very much based on what we want as individuals.

Collectively, all our individual decisions dictate what we choose as a society. If enough of us adopt a change, it becomes part of our culture and who we are as a people. This is why the power to change things on a global scale really does rest in the hands of the individual.

The impact of climate change presents some pretty uncomfortable scenarios, many that most human beings would prefer to avoid if possible.

Although not everyone agrees on the science, simply looking at some of the physical manifestations around us (like the weather) is enough to convince me that something is up. I have a feeling we’re all walking a path that can only lead to major disruption of what we take for granted today (things like ease of access to food, water, electricity, transportation), not to mention all the wonders that are at risk in nature and animal life.

Something needs to be done, but who’s going to do it?

How Can We Be So Unresponsive?

Given the size of this issue (we are talking about the entire planet), it can be daunting as an individual to fathom what type of change is necessary to “save us”. The problem is complex and the implications so widespread that we can never hope to get a grasp of what exactly is going to happen, but one thing is clear – we need an adjustment of the entire global consciousness if we are to solve this suite of issues.

I began thinking how exactly this level of change is likely to happen. What’s the most likely scenario for us as a race to react to what’s happening?

Since I’ve been writing about change I’ve realized that behind every big change is a process of incremental changes. It’s the little adjustments along the way that take us to the big outcomes.

Unfortunately, in the case of changes like climate change, we don’t react to the problem until it has had a dramatic impact on us. Because of this, we may need to suffer before we do something significant and react collectively to the idea that the world as we run it today, is not sustainable. By the time we realize that we need to all adjust our behavior and shift our motivation, it will be too late, the inertia will be too great to reverse or even reduce very quickly. It’s going to be rocky before it becomes smooth again.

Most of us make changes to our lives only when there is a stimulus strong enough to cause us to react. If there’s no direct agitation that we personally feel, we tend to go with the flow and do whatever the majority does. The herd mentality strikes again.

In the case of climate change, I don’t have faith that enough individuals will force a shift in behaviors great enough to change us, until something really significant happens.

In other words, it’s going to take the threat of realizing or even experiencing that you won’t be able to just turn on a tap and have water appear. The garbage you produce won’t just magically disappear once a week, buried somewhere hidden away where you never see it. You won’t be able to just catch a plane to visit another country. The weather will be so severe that for periods of collectively many months every year, being outside simple won’t be an option.

Everyone will feel the impact so significantly, that finally we will be motivated to make changes. It’s a shame that it may have to go this far for us to decide to do something about it. This may not happen in my lifetime of course, but that doesn’t mean anyone alive today should be comfortable opting-out of responsibility. This is a human-race problem and I for one care about my people.

The one silver lining in this scenario, as I see it, is a huge raising in global consciousness and a shift in priorities towards much more sustainable and humane practices.

The world operates on polarities. When really bad things happen to you, your perspective on life shifts dramatically. Although your physical world may not be as rosy, you personally experience major growth – you “raise your consciousness” and see the world in a different way.

When this happens to many people at the same time due to a major tragedy, our entire society changes, emerging from the despair with an inner power and peace that wasn’t present before. We experience a mass internal realignment, advancing our culture towards a more functional, equal, sustainable and peaceful society.

From the seeds of suffering is born enlightenment.

Don’t Take What You Have For Granted

Of course I have no idea if these situations will eventuate, but I do know that human nature is very complacent.

As long as you don’t directly suffer, you don’t worry too much about all the big issues and focus more on what little things are bothering you or how you can get your next fix of self gratification. Let the politicians and the activists worry about the implications of climate change. As long as I get my beer, weekends, restaurants, cafes, cars, TV, sex, drugs, music, mobile phones and of course – the Internet, I’m good.

That’s a dangerous attitude and it needs to be changed.

Don’t live in fear of what you might loose, but don’t be ignorant either. Understand the reality of how you live today and what behaviors contribute to climate change and start making smart choices based on what you value in your life.

This is about everyone – and everyone includes you. Unless you want the shock of your life, it’s important that you start caring now, rather than just as the disaster strikes. This is your problem too, and although you shouldn’t let the burden depress you, and accept that you’re not perfect, it is important you start acting less like an individual, and more like a part of a collective species that makes one hell of a large footprint on this earth.

Yaro Starak
Shifting

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Why Creating The Change You Want Is All About You

Welcome to part three in this series on creating positive change in your life. Before you begin reading this article, I recommend you review the first two parts –

These ideas focus on you being the catalyst for change, so let’s take a deeper look at how much power you really have to create the kind of results you want in your life…

A Hard Lesson: You Can’t Control Everything

Potentially one of the most depressing moments in your life, especially as a young person, is coming to grips with your own limitations. I’m all for creating a strong base of self esteem so you feel like you can achieve anything, but it’s necessary to realize that you’re not going to be the best at everything and some things you won’t ever be able to do.

We’re all born with gifts, natural abilities, and strengths, but conversely, there are things we’re not good at and other elements that impact our lives, which are based on the “luck of the draw” that is the lottery of life. Your genetic make-up, where you are born, what era you are born into and all kinds of things can hinder your ability to create the change you want in your life.

Your environment has a huge impact on who you are, how you think and what you do. You can expand your universe by taking in new inputs, but you’re limited to what inputs are available (hence the phrase you don’t know what you don’t know). Although you live in an infinite universe, for most of us we can only function within a finite universe or, well, your head might explode, or at least you won’t be able to function within the framework of the society you call home, or the body you operate within.

Despite having your own unique set of circumstances based on your environment, physical make-up and ever expanding consciousness, there are universal principles that you can apply to help you create what you want in your life, regardless of your limitations. In the end, as is always the case, in comes down to the choices you make.

You’ve been given the power of freewill, which means in all circumstances you can make a choice. This is a wonderful gift, but dangerous in the “wrong” hands, so it pays to put some effort into ensuring you are making smart choices – that’s smart in relation to what you want of course, which is going to be different from person to person.

Let’s take a look at a basic framework of ideas you can use in order to help you make the right choices. Like the previous article in this series, I’ll draw upon other blog posts I’ve published as source content for the ideas. Please read the source articles too as they will enhance your understanding of each concept.

4. Make Smart Choices (Stop making it hard for yourself and don’t just follow the herd)

Source: How To Combine Your Brain And Willpower To Break The Pattern Of Average Results

When faced with a situation where you’re simply not good at something or there is a barrier that is completely out of your control stopping you from achieving something, it’s important that you see reality for what it is.

Of course we can choose to see things in a different way, to put our positive glasses on, or perhaps simply not think about or perceive something at all because it serves us better that way. However, fooling yourself to believe you can fly and consequently jumping off a building causing massive injury is not the kind of positive thinking or awareness change we are after here.

The article on using your brain and willpower to create change introduced a logical idea when faced with a world of inequality: You need to accept the conditions you operate within now and do the best with what you have been given.

This is actually more critical than you might think. It’s not just about accepting that you will never be tall if you are short, it’s important that you make choices that allow you to develop what you are naturally gifted at (in the height example, you do things that short people have an advantage doing).

There are people in this world who prefer to take on challenges that they are handicapped to perform in some way. That’s fine, and I’m not going to argue against this, but for the greater majority of people on this planet, making your life harder than it already is, is not a smart choice.

We’re looking for the path of least resistance, and the lowest hanging fruit.

Make choices that leverage skills, talents or abilities that you were born with or have developed over time to give yourself an advantage. It’s usually much more fun and gratifying to do this, you earn greater rewards because you put more into it and do it for longer, and on a global scale, generally you give more back to the world too.

Don’t fight what you can’t control and gravitate to areas where you can provide effortless value. When I say effortless, I don’t mean it won’t be work, but the process of work is enjoyable even when it’s frustrating, painful or exhausting. You’re developing aspects of yourself that were meant to be developed, rather than struggling to do something you’re not good at.

This makes complete sense right?

Yeah, sure it does, but for many people on this planet they consider it a pipe dream to do what they want, and here’s why…

1. You don’t know what you’re good at or “meant to do” or how on earth it could help you make money, or if it even should
2. You’ve made less than smart choices and find yourself in a situation where you feel trapped doing something you don’t like
3. You live in a society where you don’t even have your basic needs met, so thinking about what you might be good at doing rarely even crosses your mind, making enough food to survive, or finding a place to sleep that is warm, are the only challenges you deal with on a day to day basis

The fact that the third point is even relevant is particularly sad, in terms of a reflection of who we are as a people. It’s safe to say that if you’re reading this you’re dealing with issues one and two and have risen to the point where your basic needs are met. Although at one stage I’d like to more thoroughly review some things we can do to help eliminate that third condition, that’s a topic for another article on another day.

So, assuming your basic needs are met, in most cases to create the positive change in your life, the big mistake you are making right now is bad choices, choices incongruent with what you want. Every day you wake up and repeat activities that reinforce what you don’t want, which are born from thinking in a way that doesn’t take you to where you want to go, or to who you want to be.

This is an easy mistake to make because most of society is doing exactly the same thing. In order to break out of this pattern you essentially have to be “weird”, which in context is not doing what the majority think is accepted behavior. The problem is that you are a herd animal and it’s uncomfortable enough just to even bring up the subject of making changes that most people will criticize you for, let alone to actually do it. This is why it’s critical you start to connect the dots and realize that –

• A) You’re going to have to be different to most “normal” people if you are to go after what you want
• B) The perceived normality is, however, just an illusion, brought about because everyone thinks in a certain way and thus acts in a certain way, which doesn’t make them happy, often causes other people as well as themselves to suffer and worse still, usually damages the planet too

If you can break the illusion simply by choosing not to partake in the accepted behaviors and thought processes, then you’re on the way to making a difference.

This is not a situation of black and white choices of course, so you’re going to have to make some decisions based on what you believe is right given what you want to change. I reiterate, you need to do the best with what you have been given, which is not usually doing what everyone else does or doesn’t do.

You’re going to face ridicule (all entrepreneurs and revolutionaries know what this is like), but the fact is, if you just keep doing what everyone does, you’re going to get the same results. Break the pattern, stand out from the crowd, start making smart choices and people will look at you funny at first, but once they see how big an impact it has on your life, they’re going to start looking at you as if you are some kind of genius. You may even become a leader – now that’s a scary thought isn’t it!

What’s particularly powerful about this shift in awareness and behaviors, is that at first sure, you’re doing it for your own self good, but it can go much further. It’s when one individual starts making smart choices – let’s call them “enlightened choices” – that the run-off effect is an impact on people around you, who may as a result of observing you, start to make similarly “unusual” choices. Like a good pyramid scheme, if enough people do this, then the world can change for the better, as these two fellows certainly understand –

Daisaku Ikeda (Japanese peace activist) said – “A great revolution in just one single individual will help achieve a change in the destiny of a society and, further, will enable a change in the destiny of humankind.”

Gandhi said – “Be the change you wish to see in the world”

Although you may be looking to create positive change to aspects in your life, making smart choices can have a ripple effect that can change the behaviors of the entire human race. The great thing about this is all you need to worry about is making what you perceive as the right choices given what you want to change. It’s not always easy, but becoming aware of your power to make the choice and not simply go with the status quo, is a huge first step.

If you’ve managed to raise your self awareness to the point where you understand you are master of your own interpretation, you’re focusing on changing the internal dialogue with yourself for the better, you’re seeing the world in a much more positive light, you’re committed to working on something long enough to get a result and you realize that it’s not always going to feel 100% perfect along the way, all that’s left is to figure out what the right choices are, and then make them.

Let’s take the next step and look at how we can determine what the right choices are…

5. Follow Success Patterns (Don’t reinvent the wheel)

Source: How To Find The Courage To Change By Raising Your Awareness

Much of this source article focuses on raising your awareness to the point where you realize what you want, a recurring theme in this series on positive change too. There’s a very relevant point to extract from towards the end of the article, which can fill in one of the final missing ingredients to create the change you want in your life.

It never fails to amaze me how many people don’t figure out this very simple idea. I’ve had people come up to me and ask for my advice on how to do something and in so many situations, even if I know absolutely nothing about who they are, what they are good at, or even the area they are focused on, this advice still applies.

This concept applies universally to all forms of change, there is always some form of help available. If you want to make money doing something, find someone who’s figured out how to do that. If you’re about to face a new challenge, like becoming a father or mother for the first time, there are other people who have been through this experience before you. If you want to start a revolution and eliminate a great injustice, or stop a global catastrophe, or just figure out how to change your fashion style so you will be more attractive to the opposite sex, aspects of how to do all these things is learnable because it has been done before.

Even if you are doing something completely new in a completely innovative industry, or you’re attempting to break new ground, there will be success principles that other people have used that will apply to what you are doing. You’re learning some now just by reading this article. All you have to do is get out there and find the right people or the right information to start filling in the blanks to figure out what your immediate next step is, what the smart choices are.

You might need a coach or mentor, or perhaps you can study a guru or just read a good book. Maybe a structured course, or even a full degree is the answer. Maybe just a conversation over a cup of tea will give you want you need, or perhaps taking a hands-on training program is what you require.

In most circumstances, to learn what you need to know is a holistic process. To determine what steps you need to take and to undertake the necessary personal growth you require to get where you want to go, it is necessary to collect input from all kinds of sources, some that you proactively seek out, others that just show up at the right time (more on this later in the series).

In my own experience to create the change I desire in my life I usually go with a combination of experimentation (mandatory for most change to occur), with passive observation of people who have what I want, combined with active study of materials from experts and when possible, some personal time spent with people, some who just came about at the right time and taught me something they may not have even realized they were teaching, and others who I sought out to solve a particular problem.

As Mulder constantly reminded us in the X-Files, the truth is out there, you just need to go looking for whatever truths will help you to create the change you want.

What If You Don’t Know What You Want?

As one final piece of advice before I end this part of the series, if you’re not even sure what you want, consider things you might like to have, or what about you or your immediate environment that you want to change, and then start looking for alternative choices you could make today to take you towards that reality.

You have to understand that making smart choices is not an absolute endeavor. You will never know the “right” decision beyond what is best for what you want to be in a given moment. This means that what is right for you will change constantly, it’s part of the growth process that is the evolution of your consciousness. In order to help you get closer to figuring out your truth, you will need to sample and experiment.

Follow success patterns based what you think and feel might work for you, or focus on making changes that eliminate what you don’t like about your life right now. Sometimes a process of elimination will lead you to what you want, but that doesn’t mean all the principles you have learned up to this point are not relevant. They apply equally the same.

You will always have the power of choice and it’s up to you to figure out what you want, no one else can decide this for you. That’s why raising your awareness as a basic concept is so important, it will give you the insight to know that change needs to be made in the first place, triggering the cascade of decisions that will lead you to greater clarification of what you really want.

Coming Up Next: Where Does Change Really Originate From?

The puzzle is looking a lot more complete. You now have some strong foundation concepts that can help you to realize the change you want, namely -

1. Confidence comes from training
2. Become self aware so you can use your perception as a positive force in your life
3. Work consistently regardless of external conditions and their effect on your feelings
4. Make smart choices based on your own strengths and what you want, not what everyone else does
5. Follow the success patterns that are all around you, ready to be learned whenever you need guidance

Most of these ideas reflect on you as the center of your own universe, which is certainly true, but we’ve left out a key point – everything is connected.

I touched on this idea when I talked about how you changing yourself can result in changing others around you, but it goes much further than this.

Everything you do influences other people, just as what other people do influences you. There is a mass interconnected web that you must learn how to operate within if you want it to help, rather than hinder you from experiencing the positive changes you desire.

Once you are aware of what I will cover in the next article you may even begin to question where change comes from or what you even are. We are heading into uncharted waters, so stay tuned, there’s more to come yet!

Yaro Starak
Change Agent

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What I Can Teach You About Getting What You Want

This is the second part in my series on creating positive change in your life. If you missed the first part, please read it before reading this. You can find part one here – Is It Really Possible To Create The Change You Want In Your Life?.

If you haven’t manifested your own desires and want to change your life, take on board what I have to say here, and in the articles that complete this series. I promise it will help you in many ways…

Here Is What I Know So Far

I’ve proactively changed many aspects of my life for the better, especially in the past five years. The key word here is “proactively”, which could be interchanged with the word consciously, or intentionally. The point being that I decided I wanted something and then went to work to create the change necessary to have what I wanted. It wasn’t just hoping, dreaming, or thinking about the change, it was all of those things AND focused action designed to take me there.

The end outcome of achieving what I set out to is usually different to what I expected, and of course as per the universal rules I talked about in the first article in this series, the process, the journey of creating the change turned out to be more valuable than actually arriving at the outcome.

Although we are motivated by changing certain physical circumstances we exist in, often it’s the internal shift, the growth we go through on a personal level, that turns out to be the most valuable outcome. The physical benefits are like having the cake, while the real change is learning how to cook, something you can take with you long after you finish eating the cake.

Although many of the stories I’m about to tell you relate to a personal milestone, event or challenge from my life, the cornerstone of the story is the lesson learned as a result. Luckily for us, I’ve been chronicling many of these lessons by revealing the stories here on this blog, so together we can go on a trip through the last ten years of my life and extract some of the most important and powerful revelations as they apply to creating positive change.

I’ve included a link to the original articles that recount in more detail the situations and the key learnings. I strongly recommend you read these articles too, as they will greatly reinforce the messages of this article series.

This is some of the most powerful content in this blog in terms of helping you change your mindset, increase your own self awareness and achieve what you want. I say this in confidence because they are the benefits I gained by living these experiences.

Here we go…

1. Personal Congruency (Confidence through training)

Source: Personal Congruency… At 21? How To Be Confident At Any Age

Way back during the first year of this blog I talked about my trip to Seattle to play in the 1998 Magic world championships (a card game that has a competitive tournament series, sort of like poker, but geekier). During this trip I was able to meet some of the stars of the game, and play against the best of the best. The result of this once-in-a-lifetime experience was a change to how I perceive people who are considered famous and a deeper understanding of how they got there.

People who are exceptionally good at something get there because they repeated processes over and over again in preparation for an experience, or in an attempt to qualify for the experience. They then had the experience, which helped them become more confident heading into the next similar experience. This is why in professional sports or competition of any kind it’s usually a huge advantage to have “been there before” as you’re not intimidated by what you don’t know.

This opens up the idea that expertise and success comes to people who choose to go after it. Yes talent, gifts and luck play a part, but the greater your “courage of conviction”, the more likely you will be successful. If you build the tools to create the courage through hard work, then you are more likely to succeed, even if you have never had the success you are striving for before.

It’s worth reading this article because I wrote it when I was 26. I’m 30 now and a lot happened during those years. I wrote that article having had minor financial success in my life at the time, but feeling confident about where I was heading because the positive signs were becoming very consistent and I truly began to believe I could have what I wanted, at least financially, because of what I was doing. I was starting to become proof of the concept I was writing about. I was starting a process of change, just as I was starting to build this blog.

2. You Control Your Perception (Interpretation is half the battle)

Source: The Key To Happiness

I read a book called Learned Optimism by Martin Seligman. It’s a really interesting book, and one of the most enlightening ideas I took away from it was this -

Optimistic people do not see reality. Instead they contort their interpretation of what they are experiencing to see it as positive, regardless of what is really happening.

Pessimistic people have a much firmer grasp of reality and as such often see the negativity in what is happening to them and other people around them.

Optimists are essentially fooling themselves so they feel better. They manufacture hope and as a result live longer, happier lives. Pessimists see a form of truth, which you might say is more accurate than the optimists, but they consequently suffer more.

So do you want to be the happy fool or the sad realist?

When I was in my early twenties clearly my mind had decided that it preferred to see the negative in what was going on around it. It became so good at this, that the body it had control of started to malfunction.

My mind created so much fear that I started to get panic attacks. Even when there wasn’t a large predatory animal trying to hunt me down, which is a more typical reason for my body to react the way it did, as if it was preparing to fight or run away from the danger, I was feeling these sensations. It was horrible.

I created danger and fear when it wasn’t there and it was because I had learned how to think about things the wrong way. I distorted my interpretation of reality to the point where I suffered physical pain. I call that a form of insanity, but I did find a way out…

As a result of this experience I became a very, very good listener, and this has nothing to do with listening to other people. I started listening to, or perhaps it’s more accurate to say I started to observe my own thoughts, and wow, were they broken.

Back when I wrote the key to happiness I was at a stage where I observed my thought process for the sake of becoming a better thinker. You can call this cognitive behavior therapy if you like, but it’s not that complicated, all you really have to do is “watch” how you talk to yourself. Once you do this you start to realize, at least this is the case for many people, that you really don’t like yourself very much. You spend your entire day being insecure about pretty much everything.

My god was this a turning point for me! I couldn’t believe how mean I was. I thought I was a good person before this, in fact I thought I was so nice that I deserved better in my life, but I was wrong. I was an absolute bastard to the person that mattered most – myself. I spent nearly every waking moment judging myself, and the world around me, and 90% of the time I was negative.

From the seeds of your worst moments, come your greatest strengths. Becoming aware of my own internal dialogue was a massive gift and has positively influenced my life since then. The awareness born from actively listening to how I talked to myself, and then making a very conscious choice to change how I interpret the world around me and thus how I talk about experience to myself, gave me the toolset I need to, well, be happy.

I can’t really put it any better than I did at the end of the article, so I’ll repeat it here…

Happiness is ultimately not in anyone else’s hands or controlled by any external element at all. It’s purely a choice you can make. As often as I can I choose to be happy. It’s not always as easy as that but by undertaking to change the way you think and create an ongoing positive dialogue with yourself you are both working towards the same goals – that’s you and your little voice – both aiming for happiness.

Once you gain the power by becoming self aware of your own voice inside your head and how you perceive the world around you, half the battle is won. You are in control and that will always be the case no matter what happens to you or your environment.

Creating positive change in your life begins with how you interpret life itself. If you want things to change for the better, the first step is to make the choice to see the world in a way that is beneficial, on the inside. The outside world is always open to interpretation, and you will never know the real truth, so why not create perceptions that help you?

The key take away from this article is self awareness is the first step towards creating the change you want, in fact, it is all you ever need if you really drill down to it. You are the master of your own universe.

3. Work Ethic (Do it even when you don’t feel like it)

Source: How To Remain Productive When You Feel Like Giving Up

This is still one of the most popular articles on this blog with almost 250 comments as I type this, I wrote the article because it is clear people need encouragement. Heck, I need encouragement too, so I wrote this just as much for myself as I did for you.

Your mind is your strongest asset and your weakest link, and can be a very clever saboteur. It has a huge influence on your emotional state, and your emotions are the fuel that feed your creativity, or stifle it.

If there was a lesson that every blogger, entrepreneur and athlete knows well, it’s the importance of consistence and persistence. I wrote about this in some depth in my very first free report – How To Start An Internet Business – and it’s safe to take this on board as fact.

To be successful you’re going to have to work hard, over a long period of time and there will be stages, many of them, where you just don’t feel like it. If you want to change, learning how to work through periods of lack of motivation, depression, feelings of loss, confusion, or any state brought upon by negative thought patterns, requires that you learn two things -

1. Your thoughts are choices of perception that you are in control of entirely (the previous section discussed this)
2. You can choose to just do it (credit to Nike) regardless of how you feel

As you probably know from experience, sometimes even when you are aware of your inner voice, and even despite telling yourself all kinds of positive and good things, you still feel like crap. The reason for this is you don’t believe in what you are saying to yourself, which is often very hard when you’re still on the journey to change, because your physical reality hasn’t become what you want it to…yet.

A true master of self awareness chooses their emotional state because they are in complete control of their internal configuration and have need for nothing in the external world (like totally zen). For most of us, the outside world has, and will have for our entire lives, a huge influence over us because we want something from it. As long as you have a sense of attachment to anything, and this is especially true for attachments to people, you’re going to suffer (go Buddhism!).

This happens to me too, and although I can say it’s not as pervasive as it once was, I still feel lousy sometimes when I’m not getting what I think I want, when I want it. This is especially the case when you are working to change something that requires you have an experience you have never had before, or where you have attempted to have the experience, yet failed, perhaps multiple times, reinforcing the belief that you will never attain your goal.

Chances are if you are reading this blog, one of the things you are attempting to do now is make money online, and you’re not there yet, so you’re forced to do things to make money that you don’t like (e.g. a job), and you feel bad about it. This is a classic situation where you need to push through and keep going, even in the face of emotional adversity, and as I outlined in the article, often simply making the decision to act even when you don’t feel like it, will pull you out of the negative mood.

The important point here is that you need to realize your process to come to a change is going to involve feeling all kinds of emotions, many of which will not help you change in the direction you want to. The greater the change you desire, the longer the journey, and the more you are going to experience along the way. It’s your job to pilot the ship forward no matter what the conditions, with the belief that your destination is always moving closer, even when you feel like you are going backwards, and you are never certain of when you will arrive.

Coming Up: Taking It To The Next Level

I’ve introduced you to three principle concepts required to realize positive change in your life -

1. Confidence through training helps you create a foundation for growth
2. Self awareness – You choose your perception of reality
3. Working regardless of inner or outer conditions is the path to what you want

You can no doubt see how all three of these concepts are very interrelated and impact each other. As you continue through this series you’re going to see that all these concepts are governed by universal laws, and in the end there is only one variable that really matters when it comes to making change. That variable is you.

Coming up next we’re going to look even deeper at how you are the greatest agent for change there is today. Although your focus right now might be to change aspects of your own life, by the end of this article series you’re going to see how important it is that you go through this process, because if you can truly grasp this, you will see that you’re also the key to changing absolutely everything that you perceive as wrong on this planet.

But let’s not get too deep just yet. First we need to understand what’s governing the process of change, how your own behavior dictates results, what drives your behaviors and how simple it really is to change behavior if you just tie it all into the right mindset.

You can read part three of this series now here –

Why Creating The Change You Want Is All About You

Yaro Starak
Blogging To Awareness

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Is It Really Possible To Create The Change You Want In Your Life?

This is part one of a series on how to create positive change in your life based on what has worked for me, what hasn’t, and what I’m currently learning. Rather than write one of my usual 4000+ word monster articles I’m breaking it down for you into more manageable chunks.

This is going to be a very important series if you’re ready to arm yourself with some powerful tools in the battle for happiness, success and contentment in your life, so get ready. Here we go…

This Is Who I Am

As a blogger you are at times more open with your thoughts and feelings online than you might be in person, even with your closest friends and family. Despite knowing that thousands of people read this blog every day, I find it easier and I’m much more succinct, when I share my thoughts and ideas here, at least when it comes to certain subjects.

One of the wonderful, if surprising at first, experiences as a result of being open with people through a blog is that eventually you gain some kind of notoriety for being good at something. When I started Entrepreneurs-Journey I wanted to share my business experiences simply for the sake of sharing and to see whether other people found what I had to say of value. Some people did find what I had to say valuable, so I kept saying things, and more and more people found me and started listening.

Eventually my perception online became that of an “authority” in my niche, at least to a small sub-segment of the population. I became a “someone” rather than an audience, in one little corner of the universe, in this case as a blogger who talks about entrepreneurship, marketing, and personal development.

This is a great event for all kinds of reasons, but the most important reason, and be sure to underline this, is that with authority, more people actually read what I write. With the attention that authority gives me, I enjoy the privilege and honor of being able to influence people. This is power and it’s something you have to be very careful with as power is trust, and you don’t want to abuse people’s trust.

What’s a little strange for me is that I’ve not really done anything to enjoy my position other than tell you what I think and do. I haven’t been officially trained to do this in any way, I didn’t go to school to learn to blog (I started one instead), nor was I instructed along the way about the right way to do things. In reality I’m pretty much exactly the same as you are right now, except I’ve spent the last five years sharing aspects of my life through this blog over and over again, week after week.

The Challenge That Is Changing Yourself

One of the most interesting subjects, one that I’d like to tackle with you now, is the concept of whether it is really possible to change, especially in a proactive, self-determined manner. This isn’t about fate or destiny, this is going after and getting what you want.

When I say change, I mean real change. I mean the kind of change that takes you from where you are now, to where you really want to be, although using a phrase that relates transition to a destination or a time isn’t quite complete. What I’m really talking about when I say “be” is the state you are in. It’s the change of state, the way you think and consequently act and thus experience, that I refer to when I mean change.

This is the kind of change where you feel like you’re not the same person you were before, and everything around you has changed as a result of this. You might be living in a different place, associating with different people, you might have a different lover, or several, you might be financially wealthier, or maybe you’ve lost or gained weight, or you no longer do something you wanted to stop, like drinking, or smoking.

All these things are symptomatic of change, to say they are the change isn’t quite accurate. It was something about you on the inside that changed, that caused a physical change to manifest in reality. It was YOU who changed.

When you experience this kind of change you know it, because when you realize the change you stop yourself and go “wow, I’m actually feeling what my previous self wanted to feel oh-so-much back then“. I’m living what I previously wanted to live. I am what my past self wanted to be in the future, if we include the element of time. I am now where I wanted to be back when I was somewhere else, if we include the element of place.

It’s this idea of change, and it’s change for the better that we want, or at least what we perceive as desirably better today (it may not actually turn out to be so, but we assume it is for now since we don’t know yet), that intrigues me. The idea that you are in charge of your own “personal development” is powerful. Imagine being in charge of claiming what you want in your life?

Yeah, it sounds good doesn’t it, but let’s state a truth – change is hard.

Significant change takes effort, and often so much effort that by the time we get what we wanted or arrive where we wanted to be, our value system has changed too, so you may not even want what you were working so hard to acquire. That I believe is a clever built-in motivation tool nature has given us so that we’re always striving for more. If we got everything we wanted instantly and easily then the value wouldn’t be there and we’d stop striving to make ourselves better.

Consequently, the lessons we eventually take away from any dramatic change in our lives are these, which many people come to understand as universal principles if they live long enough…

• We should live in the moment,
• enjoy the journey,
• understand that what we want isn’t what we really want and,
• that we will always want more until we decide we don’t.

Tricky isn’t it.

Is Change Even Possible?

I remember as a child listening to my mother on the rare occasion she hosted a party at her house. My mother is not the most social person and while she loves sharing ideas with other people, she’s closer to hermit than socialite. That doesn’t stop her from talking her mouth off when she’s had a glass of wine and the people around her are saying things she feels a need to respond to (nowadays she doesn’t need any alcohol to get her started!).

One of her favorite subjects as I recall, is whether change is even possible in the first place. She steadfastly believes people can change on a fundamental level, and we are talking about the tiniest of individual personality details, all the way up to global consciousness. Some people didn’t agree with her, they argued that no one could truly change, which is why as humans we will always have the problems we have, in some shape or form.

I remember listening to her passionately explaining her viewpoint on this subject, although from my recollection as my mother’s son, I felt more uncomfortable that here was my usually soft-spoken mother becoming more animated than usual, resulting in me wanting to be somewhere else (parents are, like, so embarrassing!). I generally preferred to find a way to be in another place when adults where drinking and talking loudly, but no doubt my mother’s viewpoint on change has impacted my own perception of whether change is possible, so credit where credit is due.

I Haven’t Quite Mastered This One…

As I stated at the start of this article, sometimes as a blogger you have to get personal. It’s one of the most powerful tools we have to engage our audience. However, in the case of this subject, I have to admit I don’t feel quite as comfortable as I’d like to when talking about my own perception of how to change.

Normally, as the authority, it’s smart for me to assume a tone in my blog posts that I know what I’m talking about, and to a certain degree with many subjects that relate to marketing, I do, at least comparing my own skill level and knowledge with my audience’s. I know just enough more than my readers so that I can provide value.

Marketing in so many ways is a science. Talking about how to make money, or relating a story of how you did something to get a result is simple enough. The concepts we are dealing with there are straight forward, like pieces of a puzzle you just have to arrange in the right order.

Concepts like change are much more fluid and complex. Most personal development subjects are that way because we’re dealing with some of the fundamentals of life. As a result, I’m best teaching by revealing the aspects of my own journey, even though I may not have figured it all out. Writing an article like this isn’t just for you, it also helps me, as I come to a greater realization of my own place by sharing with you. As they say, the best way to learn is to teach.

Here, discussing how you can go about changing your life for the better, I feel the need to make note of where I’m personally at with the topic because, well, I’m not quite there yet. At least I’m not where I want to be, so there is still more change to make.

I expect this is likely the state I will remain in for most of my life because as far as I can tell, no human ever masters change or remains content with how things are permanently, unless they are enlightened or dead. I don’t exist in a perpetual state of enlightenment (nor am I convinced that’s what life is all about if you consider the practical world, not just the spiritual world, although they can overlap if you become self aware enough), so I can only imagine what it is like.

For the sake of making this applicable to you, I’m going to assume you still have a strong desire to make changes in your life too and you’re not quite enlightened yet either. At least we’re coming from the same place .

This is part of the reason why this subject is so compelling. Being comfortable that life IS change is one thing, and I’m all for going with the flow, but taking a proactive interest in determining what changes in your life is a different story. You want to be the driver in your life, even if you can never be sure where the road is taking you or what you will pass through on the way.

Coming Up Next: What I Can Teach You Now

Coming up in the next part in the series I’m going to review what I know so far in terms of how I’ve been able to realize growth and change in my own life. There are some very strong repeating themes in this, and I’m seeing a pattern that I’m still trying to come to terms with myself.

If you want to know what that pattern is, read on to part two of this series –

What I Can Teach You About Getting What You Want

Yaro Starak
Changing

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Is A Partnership Right For You?

How My Partnership With Gideon Shalwick Generated A Quarter Of A Million Dollars In Under 12 Months

When I first started this blog the Internet was younger and many of the current big success story online companies had only recently risen to dominance.

I was fascinated with the background history behind the companies that featured heavily during the dot-com boom, some of which survived post the bust like eBay, Paypal and Amazon.com, and others that had fallen far from their glory days, like Napster.

I read biographical books that covered the people behind these companies and enjoyed hearing how the initial concepts were sparked and what path led from idea to multi-million, sometimes even multi-billion dollar companies.

You can read reviews of some of the books in the archives of this blog, including the PayPal Wars, the The Perfect Store – Inside eBay, Google And The Mission To Map Meaning And Make Money and All the Rave – The Rise and Fall of Shawn Fanning’s Napster.

Two People Are Better Than One

I can’t remember where I read it first, but somewhere I recall hearing that many really successful companies, both offline and online, were started as partnerships. Two people, for all kinds of reasons, are able to achieve more than an individual.

The stories behind some of the big Internet success stories reinforces this idea, as is the case with Google, Microsoft and Apple. There are two founders who drive the vision behind the company, taking it to good performer and beyond to where most companies never go, to industry leader and even cultural phenomenon.

On a smaller scale, many of the people I interview in my podcasts on this blog often are part of a two-person partnership of some kind. One person may be in the limelight more than the other, but behind the scenes, there are two, who complement and motivate each other to get things done.

Up until 2007 I was a solo-entrepreneur, and I liked it that way. I read this fact about partnerships resulting in big success stories online as interesting, but it wasn’t compelling enough for me to run and find a partner. I had no interest in sharing my profits, or needing to negotiate with someone else to decide what to do. I enjoyed my independence as the only captain steering my ship.

Of course there are success stories of individuals creating massive companies too, so I wasn’t concerned that my desire to work alone might hurt my potential for success.

Despite my lack of intention, I have managed to find myself in a successful partnership that will very likely dominate the direction of my business for years to come. It’s worthwhile explaining how this happened, and what it has done for my business, so you can decide whether a partnership could benefit you too.

Random Strangers

One of the wonderful things about life is that you never know what’s coming up next. The only constant is change. This can be a terribly frightening idea if you become attached to something for fear of loss (relationships, objects, places, people, life itself), but also wonderfully liberating because it means whatever you don’t like about your life now will change, it’s a guarantee.

In some circumstances what appears as the randomness of change means you are completely oblivious to what comes next on a conscious level, so when it arrives, it’s a surprise. This idea can make you live in a permanent state of excitement or of course fear, depending how you look at life.

I had no idea that in 2007 I’d attend a typical pitch-fest Internet marketing event, which for all intents and purposes wasn’t anything special, except I met my future business partner there, Gideon Shalwick.

Many people have asked how Gideon and I met, so here’s the story in brief…

Gideon was at the Internet marketing event, walking up to the speakers and asking to do video interviews with them for his Internet Marketing Wizards project.

At the time Gideon was still looking for a break-out project, having written and published a book, and was spending a lot of time with online video.

Gideon came up to me and asked whether I was interested in being featured in one of his videos and I said yes. Since Gideon lived in Brisbane too, we agreed to do it at a later date so he could fit in interviews with those marketers who were only visiting Brisbane for the weekend.

Two weeks later I found myself in Gideon’s downtown apartment, sitting on chairs in front of his green screen, recording an interview. You can watch the video here if you’re interested -

Introducing Yaro Starak (You will have to dig around Blip for the rest of the parts of the interview.)

After I saw the quality and effort Gideon put into his video work I realized here was a guy with passion and an action-taker, two rare qualities.

A few months before this I was approached by the owner of the domain name BecomeABlogger.com to ask if I was interested in buying it. I said no.

I had enough projects going on at the time and I had made the mistake of doing too many things at once previously, so I tended to have a knee-jerk “no thanks” response to anything that looked like it might balloon into a new project.

A few months later I had a change of heart after having an idea about how to use the domain name as an introductory site for new bloggers. I didn’t have much video content at the time, so I decided it would be worthwhile having a site with beginner training videos on how to start blogging with WordPress, which I could send people to. I wouldn’t charge money for the videos, instead I’d use the site as a lead generator.

I bought the domain name but didn’t start the project up immediately. When Gideon appeared he seemed like a good fit as I needed someone with solid video and teaching skills.

I approached Gideon about taking the job on as a contract project and he said yes. It probably wasn’t the most fun work for Gideon, and I can be a terribly annoying person to develop for as I get picky with the little details, but eventually we finished up the site and made ten videos available for free. We were both happy and proud of the results.

When Gideon and I first talked about the project we discussed possibly expanding it, even as much as creating an entire membership site around the concept, if the first ten videos were well received.

It turned out that yes, basic video training for bloggers was something people really wanted, and Gideon’s teaching style was well received. I had access to an audience and Gideon had the skills to produce great video content, so we decided to follow my membership site model and set up a new video training program.

The rest, as they say, is history…

Become A Blogger Premium went on to become my most successful training course to date, with close to 2,000 students taking the course in the last 12 months.

Gideon and I created a new business together that grossed over a quarter of a million dollars in less than a year. We’ve helped thousands of people start successful blogs and Gideon and his wife are now in a much better financial situation too, which is something I get tremendous satisfaction from.

Incidentally, if you are at all interested in the more finite details about how we set-up and launched Become A Blogger Premium there is a special series of videos inside Membership Site Mastermind from Gideon and myself about the BAB Program, as well as my complete overview of how my membership site system works and how you can apply it to launch your own product.

If releasing your own information product interests you, you can begin now by studying my free report, The Membership Site Masterplan, and stay tuned for when I open the Membership Site Mastermind course to new students again.

How Partnerships Make A Difference

Now that I’ve actually experienced an active and successful partnership, I’m in a position to understand why they work and why you would consider entering into one.

Here are some key benefits I’ve gained thanks to working with Gideon:

• When Gideon and I partnered I had just finished creating two courses all by myself and I wasn’t in a situation were I wanted to create content for another program. I was tired. Gideon brought a skill-set I didn’t have – video creation – and was willing to spend some time creating content to teach others, if the project was something he was excited about.
• Gideon has motivation and skills, but he lacked a platform to access people. I had a platform through my blog, email list and contacts. It was a natural fit to work together as we could reach a lot of people and deliver a quality product, but only do this together.

  This only worked because I clearly saw the talent Gideon possessed and he had proven himself in a contract project we did together. The contract project was critical because it demonstrated to me Gideon’s character and skills, but also the marketability of the product we were planning on creating. We were able to experience the demand for what we were creating, so we weren’t playing a guessing game when it came time decide whether to release a product.

• Accountability is a huge aspect of getting things done and there’s nothing more motivating than becoming responsible to somebody else besides yourself. I’m quite self-motivated – I couldn’t have done what I’ve done without being so – but having someone else whom you are accountable to makes deadlines even more important because you don’t just let yourself down if you don’t perform.
• We made friends. This is probably the most important aspect. We got to know each other as people first without any thoughts of working together on a business project, and making a new friend is always a good thing.

Put Friendship First

Any form of partnership is based on the ability of the people in the partnership to work together as human beings. If you don’t “gel” then it doesn’t matter how complementary your skills are, or how great the opportunity is, it won’t work.

Gideon and I are well suited in many ways. We are both down to earth, so much so that when we started nutting out the details for our partnership we decided to just play it by ear and see what happened before getting any formal contracts done.

We put the friendship first, and we have always done so because that’s more valuable than anything else. Fighting over profit distribution, or who does what when, to the point of damaging a relationship is not worth it. It hasn’t always been smooth sailing of course, but it has never come close to a situation where we would risk our friendship.

The key to making the relationship aspect of your partnership work is to have a well constructed value system, that all parties share to some extent. If you value the relationships with people before the material benefits you earn from the partnership, then you will do well.

It’s Not Always Smooth Sailing

If there’s one area where most partnerships have problems, it’s communication.

If you don’t communicate where you are coming from or how you are feeling or what your expectations are, when things don’t quite line up how you expect them to, that’s when agitation begins. With enough agitation, the entire partnership can begin to deteriorate.

Gideon and I faced a unique challenge when we started because we were both bringing very different things into the arrangement, variables that are difficult to measure and thus cross reference.

I came to the table with an established brand, channels of communication to reach customers and contacts with some very important people in the industry. These variables are often the hardest to create and are make-or-break in terms of business success, since if you can’t reach people it doesn’t matter how good your product is, you won’t have customers.

Much of my contribution was based on leveraging work I had already done over previous years to create my preeminence, while from Gideon’s point of view he showed up and agreed to do a lot of work in terms of product creation.

Gideon created the bulk of the content within the product we created. He wrote the largest chunk of the resources and marketing materials we used to promote the product and continues to deal with customer service and ongoing promotion.

The challenge with this arrangement is it is very difficult to quantify and qualify what each person contributes to a partnership. It’s impossible to place a “value” on each of our contributions and then attempt to reach a point where we both are adding 50% value each, to justify the 50% value of the company we both own.

The key, and this ties back into the communication aspect, is to make sure that both parties feel comfortable with the contributions each party is making. Emotions are way more important than quantifiable measurement of inputs.

This is something that needs to be constantly evaluated and discussed, which is why Gideon and I have to be very careful as we take on more projects, so we ensure we both know what our roles are and are happy about what we each agree to do.

Gideon was content to do more “labor” work initially because I brought distribution, but I can’t expect to leverage my past efforts while Gideon works hard in the present forever.

Now that we’ve finished creating all the content for the course and most of our system is automated, we have much less work to do. Gideon and I are both in a situation where we can leverage previous effort, and enjoy the fruits of a well structured information product business model.

Why Would You Look For A Partnership?

Although I don’t think it’s necessary to deliberately seek out a partnership, there are some situations where you may consider it a good strategy, either as a means to form a new enterprise, or take your existing business forward.

Here are some situations where a partnership is valuable –

• If you lack critical skills and don’t have a means to hire or contract the work. Be careful with this, don’t partner with someone just because you need a good designer, or web developer, or any job that can be outsourced on a project basis, or supplied by an employee. You should only bring on a partner when there’s a clear synergy between you and them, where your partnership creates something greater than the sum of the parts.
• If you’re currently not established in an industry and you don’t want to go through the hard slog to slowly build up your preeminence over time, then finding a partner who is already preeminent and has distribution is definitely the quickest path to success.
• When a person approaches you and they so clearly possess talent that you can leverage based on your own talent or situation, it’s simply a case of divine intention that you work together. Sometimes it’s just meant to be, and you will know this very likely based on the relationship you have with the person and how they make you feel more than anything else.
• If you’re already established yourself, one of the greatest sources of leverage you will ever find are people who have a great idea, or own the rights to a great product or technology that could be applied to your industry. If you have systems, resources and distribution, you can leverage your assets to create more wealth. Just be certain you’re not doing it just for the money, you have to believe in the concept too.

Partnerships are relationships, so you don’t want to enter them lightly. Make sure you know what you are getting into, think about where you are heading, what you personally want to contribute, what type of person you are considering working with, whether you really need them as partners and always, always communicate clearly for best results.

Gideon and I are planning some big things in 2010, so if you’re interested in working closer with both of us, stay tuned, we’ll have some very unique opportunities coming soon.

Yaro Starak
Partner

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Optimize Your Website For Bing The Right Way » Attorney Marketing …

Attorney Marketing – Lawyer Marketing – Legal Web Tips. Attorney Marketing Blog. Search for: … Why SEO Is So Essential And How To Get It Right October 15, 2009. by Remus Lim SEO or Search Engine Optimization, as the name suggests, is a
technique to optimize your website and its presence on the world wide web for a certain set of keywords so as to enhance your traffic through search engines. With the arrival of the internet and its increasing popularity [...] […] …

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Lodging Interactive Blog: 10 SEO tips for YouTube …

Article Highlights:YouTube videos can rank well on both YouTube itself and on search engine results pages Include links to other social media channels wherever possible Open videos to commenting and embedding to ensure they are shared …

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» SEO Tips for Bloggers on WordPress

There are several million WordPress blogs that you can find on the internet, but unfortunately the majority of them are not properly optimized for search.

Blog Traffic Exchange – http://www.blogtrafficexchange.com/

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