Are You Working Hard To Earn Money For Others
By © Arthur, The Part Time Job Home
As full-time paid employees, many of our life have something in common. First, we are all working hard to earn money for others, which is our company. Secondly, we are are going to experience at least one right-sizing, down-sizing directly or indirectly in our entire career.
During the past few years, a few of my old colleagues and I have experience it ourselves. All of us lost our jobs at different times during the last few years. Two of them even got retrenched twice.
Many of these retrenched employees have good education, are hard working, they are nice family men and women. Some of them are even in senior position with good pay. They gave all they can to the company they work and made sacrifices working overtime without pay for the sake of their company.
Once the retrenched ax start to chop, loyalty and hard work have no impact on their choice of people to axed. The good life after losing your job is going to be a huge blow.
Read this Financial advice from The Richest Man in Babylon written in 1920:
"I tell you, my students, a man's wealth is not in the coins he carries in his purse; it is in the income he buildeth, the golden stream that continually floweth into his purse and keepeth it always bulging. That is what every man desireth. That is what thou, each one of thee desireth; an income that continueth to come whether thou work or travel."
Living in today borderless global economy, everyone of us must start learning how to build our own golden stream that continually flow into our pocket once we got our full-time job. The best time for planning is during when the employment rate is high and job are easily found. These are the best time that should put into good used as the threat of job loss can happen anytime.
Just like The Richest Man in Babylon, he advised that everyone should saved 1/10 of their salaried income and lived on the other 9/10. This 1/10 of our income should be put into good use such as starting a traditional business or an internet business.
According to him, business skills are learner. Yes, you may lose your business investment when you are new but that these are business experiences that every business people must accumulate. Business are one of those trade that can produce the most reliable form of income that keep flowing towards your pocket, even when you are not working.
Do you want to earn the same amount of salaried income after 40 years of working life?
or
Do you want money to work for you and generate a continuously flow of money to your pocket for life?
Opportunities for making money are always there around you. The only problems is that you MUST learn how to seek it. It will never come to you. As The Richest Man In Babylon says: "Where the Determination Is, The Way can be Found."
Copyright @ Arthur
"Opportunity are often shy, you just have to keep looking for them." Learning and putting what you learn into Action is the key to success in starting any successful Part Time Home Based Job
Visit: http://www.sap-basis-abap.com/careerguide/
Over 40? Learn to envision and live your perfect vocational day
Have you ever thought about what your perfect work would be? How about the pattern of a typical work day for the rest of your life? What daily routine would get you excited and bring joy and happiness to your work?
This didn’t come with the job description
The problem with job descriptions is that they are defined by someone else. They rarely take into consideration what brings you fulfillment.
How do I get started?
Whether you work for yourself or someone else, it is critical to start with the idea of what would be just perfect for you. For example, when would you get up in the morning? Once up, what would your morning routine be? Would you start your day exercising, with a little run, or perhaps some yoga or meditation? Or would you make breakfast first instead? Would you eat alone or with others? Who would they be?
What would you wear to your work?
Sweats, suit, shorts?
What would be just perfect for you?
I’m sure by now you’re thinking, “What does all of this have to do with my job? After all, I go to my job and I’m stuck with the rest of the day based on how much time is left.”
Yes, that is the traditional way of looking at your work.
For those over you 40, I’m proposing a radical new way of looking at your work. You get to design your entire day around the work YOU want to do instead of just the limited time left over after an empty and meaningless day at the office.
Where would you go?
Where would you go for your work? What would be perfect for you?
Would you like to work from home, or would you prefer to work outdoors? Would you prefer to work alone or with others? Maybe you would rather drive a short distance to a small office and work with a small group of other people. Or perhaps you would enjoy working with hundreds of others around you in a large organization.
How about lunch?
When will you eat lunch? Where will you eat lunch? Who will you eat lunch with on a typical day?
Back in my corporate days, I remember sneaking out at lunch (I was in management) to go for a run. I also remember too many lunch hours spent in drab conference rooms, working with others while eating unhealthy food. I can remember thinking how terrible this was for my system.
How long will your work day be?
How long will you work each day? What will you do after work? Who will you spend your time with after work?
This is all part of the design of your perfect vocational day. How will your evenings go? Who will you spend your evenings with? It’s so important to have support and love and downtime after your work ends each day. Coming home, instead, to someone who does not support the work you love will drain you and you’ll have less energy for your quest for vocational happiness and for the experience of life itself.
How will your evenings go?
When will you eat dinner? Who will you be with at dinner on a typical day? What will you do after dinner? What does your evening look like?
Will you spend the evening alone, with others, or a combination of the two? Your evenings are an important part of your perfect vocational day. This again, is something most employers don’t care at all about, unless you are spending your evenings at the office, of course! This is the difference between creating the perfect work for you, and just dragging yourself home after a long day at the office and collapsing on the couch.
When you do just a job, the quality of your downtime suffers as you worry about the next day of work.
What about sleep?
At the end of your perfect vocational day, when will you go to sleep? How will you go to sleep? What nightly ritual will you follow before bed? A little yoga, a warm bath, light reading, television, or intimacy with someone you love?
What’s perfect for me?
You must keep asking yourself this question, because no one else will do it for you. Be careful as you design your perfect vocational day, because you will indeed start to move towards it. Make sure you really know just what you want.
Typical job searching is all backwards
Most people look for jobs that are available with little thought to all the other hours of their days. The typical job description only covers the requirements of the job. I have never seen one that covers whether you should exercise or eat a big breakfast.
The point is: it’s critical to design what you want BEFORE you go looking for it.
Now you get to play by new rules
After many years of playing the work game the traditional way, now you get to change the rules. When you design the work day you want, you automatically start to alter your thinking, and you start to focus on what you want and what you do not want. Unless you place your focus on what you want, you’ll start to focus too much on what you don’t want in your work life, and then this is exactly what you’ll end up with.
Now at work
Once at work, what exactly will you do? What activities will align your abilities and your interests and bring you the most joy?
Joy?
Yes joy! Now that’s a question no one in the HR department will ever ask you about! This is where you must be specific. Your mind can’t tell the difference between what is real and what is imagined when envisioning a work day that will bring you joy. You must create the reality you seek.
What are you working on?
Are you developing software, making sandwiches, teaching math, painting, speaking, doing financial analysis, taking pictures or promoting a new cosmetic product?
What would give you the most joy in your work? What would leave you breathless? What would make Monday your best day of the week and Friday the worst because you have to wait until Monday to resume your beloved work?
What work could you do now and continue to do until you stop breathing?
Why retiring will lead you to a quick death
The other day I received the enrollment package for AARP (American Association for Retired People) in the mail. This really scared me. Most Americans after 40 do not like their work, let alone love their work. They dream, instead, to one day retire, and then finally do what they enjoy. The problem with this strategy is that life tends to get in the way while making long range plans. After 40, crises will hit — it’s only a matter of when. If you are doing what you love, you have the best kind of health insurance. When your crisis hits, your work will give you the strength to ride out the storm, and then recover quickly.
You need to be specific
What are you working on that will last a lifetime?
Whether you are working for yourself or someone else, the questions are the same. What specific products or services are you offering in your perfect day of work? What are the features of each of these services? What are the benefits to others of what you are offering? Who are the ideal customers for your services? Day in and day out for the rest of your life, what type of person do you want to work with? Are they engineers, students, disabled children, artists or advertising reps?
Unless you are clear about it, you and your work will end up being mismatched.
Now what?
Ok, now you have the vision of your perfect vocational day. Is this a daily pattern you could follow for the rest of your life? Good! Now you can start to examine how to close the gap between your new vision and today.
For some of you, this will come easy. For others, years of external negative influences, and perhaps a little fear, might prevent quick action, and your next steps might have to be small.
The important part is that you start
Little steps turn into bigger steps. New possibilities turn into bigger possibilities. You are unique and special, and you have many gifts to offer the world. With a new vision of what would be just perfect for you, you can begin to create the second half of your life and work in a way that includes what is most important to you. As you plan your perfect vocational day, you will have begun moving down the path to an authentic life.
Can’t I just separate my life from my work?
This is just an excuse for not moving forward, and down deep, you know this is not possible. I wish it were, but it’s not. Your work and what you do impacts your health, your sense of self, your relationships with others and your overall happiness. Isn’t it worth taking just a little extra time to think about your perfect work life?
Before turning 40, we needed jobs and careers to build both our egos and our sense of self. After 40, jobs and careers are both limiting and outdated.
A new sense of urgency
After 40 when your crisis hits — and it will — you will have a new sense of urgency about your life and what to do with it. Your work, and what you do each and every day, is a great place to start.
I’ll be cheering you on as you go………
Craig Nathanson is the author of P Is For Perfect: Your Perfect Vocational Day and a coaching expert who works with people over forty. Craig’s new E-book, Discover and live your passion 365 days a year is a workshop in a box designed to help busy adults go insane with their work. Craig’s systematic approach, the trademark "Ten P" process,’’ helps people break free and move toward the work they love. Visit Craig’s online community at www.thevocationalcoach.com where you can take a class, get more ideas through Craig Nathanson’s books
and CD’s, get some private coaching over the phone or read other stories of mid-life change and renewal.
Craig lives in San Anselmo, California. You can reach him at 415-457-0550 or at craig@thevocationalcoach.com.
How to attract the work you love
First, decide what you want! Yes, it’s that easy and that hard. What do you love to do?
Decorate a house, take pictures, teach children or work with the elderly?
Do you approve?
Once we figure out what we love to do, many of us make the fatal mistake; we ask someone else for approval.
You will never get final approval from someone else
Even if you get the approval from someone else, their approval will be conditional. Permission to do the work you love must come from you. Let’s go down the list.
* Your spouse will be the first to say “No” because he or she will feel intimated by your change of heart and life.
* Your kids probably won’t approve or understand much.
* Your boss? Well, you know the answer here.
* Your parents? Of course not. After all, you are a product of their belief system and you must not do something they would not do. I must add that if your parents are no longer living, obviously you won’t be able to get the approval you are seeking.
* Your close friends might approve, but only if they have worked out their own vocational happiness. If not, they will worry how the changes in your life will affect their relationship with you.
* Strangers might give you permission, especially those you share deep conversations with on an airplane, but then you will never have to see them again.
Are there exceptions?
Maybe, if you are lucky, you will have someone supportive in your life. Sadly, all too often, I have seen people’s dreams rejected by the very people they thought they could count on for support
Society doesn’t help
The standard notion is that we work at jobs that lead to careers so we can retire, and then, if we’re lucky, do what we enjoy. This idea is outdated and illogical.
Skip the retirement part
A recent guest on my show, Monica Lee, picked up a paintbrush for the first time at age 40. Not long after that she was transferring her thoughts and feelings to canvas and selling her paintings worldwide. With maturity she realized that it was of little importance how others perceived her work. Instead, what really mattered was how much she enjoyed putting color and form on canvas.
When Monica opened her own gallery, the uncertainty of making ends meet each month led her to sleep in the back of the gallery in a makeshift bed. She showered under a garden hose and laundered her clothes by hand while she rented out her home to others to supplement her income as an artist.
Years later, the challenge of cancer came and went, and her work helped carry her through the difficult times. Today, at nearly 60, her art work, under the name MoVan, sells all over the world and Monica says she has never been happier.
What if you quit or got fired today?
How long could you go before making any money? One month, six months, a year?
Are you willing to cash in other resources now to extend your time? If so, now how much more time will you have? After forty, we need more time rather than more money.
Once you start making an income, this time doing what you love, how much do you really need to make?
Make it less than you are making in your corporate job
To pursue the work they love, many people decide they must make what they made before. This is a flawed strategy. When your vocational passion takes you in the direction of working for yourself or others, it usually means starting out making 25-30% less than what you made before.
Have you turned your back yet?
Not yet? Good — let’s summarize what we have done thus far.
You figured out what you want to do, you’ve given yourself approval and you’ve identified how long you could go without making an income. What’s next? Well, these are the hurdles that stop most people.
Next — Take action!
Visit, read about, and meet other people who make an income doing what you want to do. They have already jumped over the hurdles you will encounter soon, and they can provide valuable insight you will need for your journey.
Get ready to be lonely
Pursuing what you love to do vs. accepting “just” a job will be very lonely. In fact, this will be the loneliest road you will ever be on. It’s a lonely road because there are very few people on it. You meet a few rebels, a few middle-age run-aways and, from time to time, a younger person who learned early not to waste his life with empty, meaningless jobs like his parents did before him.
Better to join the rat race?
Ever wonder why the terms we have for work have so many negative meanings?
* Rat race (something we have to do, like rats on a wheel),
* Career or fast track (can’t slow down to enjoy it)
* Re-tire (“slow down” + “get ready to tire”)
These certainly don’t help to motivate us to swim against the tide and do something different.
What happens in mid-life?
A crisis will hit sometime after age 35 or so. Our crises come in different shapes and sizes and it is normal to have one, or even more than one. You might get divorced, have to deal with a sudden death in the family, a layoff, or a serious illness. In many cases, none of these occur but suddenly you’re confronted with a deep sadness, and you wonder, “Is this all there is?” You feel empty inside.
What you must do?
Many people at this stage, especially those over forty, simply turn back before reaching their dreams. The risks and tradeoffs we have to make to pursue our dreams just seem too impractical at this stage in our lives. So many people at this stage simply take a job and postpone the next phase of their life for ten years, or more, or even forever!
You can be different!
You can attract the work you love by figuring out what you want, giving yourself permission to pursue it, and making a plan to pursue it.
This will be the greatest gift you ever give yourself and, once you do, you will never look back.
As always, I’ll be cheering you on as you go!
Craig Nathanson
Craig Nathanson is the author of P Is For Perfect: Your Perfect Vocational Day, and a coaching expert who works with people over forty. Craig’s new E-book, Discover and live your passion 365 days a year is a workshop in a box designed to help busy adults go insane with their work. Craig’s systematic approach, the trademark "Ten P process,’’ helps people break free and move toward the work they love. Visit Craig’s online community at http://www.thevocationalcoach.com where you can take a class, get more ideas through Craig books and CD’s, get some private coaching over the phone or read stories of mid-life change and renewal.
Craig lives in San Anselmo, California. You can reach him at 415-457-0550 or at craig@thevocationalcoach.com.
