Who's your hero?

Tonight I sat with my missus and watched “Pride of Britain” awards on ITV. If you haven’t  heard of it, it’s a UK star-studded ceremony which happens once a year, attended by everyone from Prince Charles, to Cheryl Cole, to Simon Cowell, to David Cameron, and everyone who’s anyone in the world of British entertainment, politics, sport, and public life in general.

But these “stars” absolutely fade into insignificance in comparison with the people who are there to accept the “Pride of Britain” awards. People such as . . .

- Aimee Dempsey who was badly burned when she saved 7 children from a fire (she’s only 12 years old!)

- An off-duty policeman who rescued over 50 people from a burning bus on the edge of a motorway

- A boy who’s been in hospital 900 times, but has managed to raise over £90,000 to help provide toys for sick children, and he’s just 12 years old!

-70-year old heart surgeon Sir Magdi Yacoub, who set up the “Chain of Hope” charity which has helped save the lives of over 23,000 people with heart problems, many in developing countries

- Anne Glover, a woman who stood up to thugs and drug dealers in her housing estate, even when they fire-bombed her car and threatened her life.

. . . . the list goes on and on, and every story is humbling – people with the odds stacked against them due to health, or poverty, or violence, or just plain circumstance, but who just wouldn’t lie down to them.  Every one of them is without doubt a hero for what they’ve done, but also because they show us just what everyday ordinary people are capable of.

We don’t hear enough of this – every day the news is dominated by all the negative stuff happening in the world, because that’s what sells. This event happens once a year, and interestingly it gets double the TV audience of any other UK award ceremony (e.g. Brits / BAFTA’s)

But we need to celebrate our heroes every day, not just once a year.

And not just the people who have performed acts of bravery, but also those whose everyday actions demonstrate that there is hope for humanity and that most people are good, and the ones who appear on the negative news are in the minority.  The people who shine a little light over everyone else and uplift us all a little bit.

Do you have an everyday hero in your life? From acts of extraordinary bravery, courage, and overcoming the odds, to someone who’s always encouraging when you need it.

I’d like to know.

Because in sharing the story you will in turn spread that light a little further.

So tell me about them in the comment section below . . .

Entrepreneurial Spirit Pt 2 – this is what it's all about

After I wrote my last post about developing your entrepreneurial spririt, I happened to receive an email from Perry Marshall, a Google Adwords expert, and it just about summed it all up with a kind of “Entrepreneur’s Creed”.

This PDF – Perry Marshall For Against absolutely hits the nail on the head – it’s very powerful, and I wanted to share with you

Click the link above, download it, and use it to keep alive your entrepreneurial spirit

It’s up on my office wall in front of me as I write this

Powerful stuff! Enjoy

Develop your Entrepreneurial Spirit, and a thick skin!

Life can be tough, uncompromising and seemingly unfair sometimes, and that’s especially true if you’ve ever tried to do anything out of the ordinary.

Try to better yourself, to create something, to build something worthwhile, and you’ll always have something or someone getting in your way, telling you it can’t be done, or distracting you from what you’re trying to do.

But remember this.

It’s so easy to criticise – it costs nothing to do, after all it’s just words, but the impact those words can have if you take them on board can be very significant. The old adage that “No-one ever erected a statue to a critic” is so true.

On the other hand it’s difficult to take action, but only those who have taken action have ever done anything worthwhile.

The thing is, the vast majority of us are programmed to have an employee mentality – we’ve been conditioned over our lifetime to think that we should get a good job, and work hard for someone else, trading in our time for money. In the process we pay our bills, and have a little (usually not much) left over each month for some luxuries.

If you want to step outside that, you need to think different, and develop an entrepreneurial spirit

It’s like the analogy of the fleas in a jar, which if you’re never heard it goes like this:

A flea can jump up to 6 feet – (if a man could jump that far in relation to body size, then we could jump an entire football stadium in one leap!)

So to train fleas to control their jumping, you place them in a jar with a lid on it.  When they start jumping they repeatedly hit the lid in their attempt to escape.

After a few minutes the fleas change their behaviour and stop jumping so high, so they won’t keep hitting their heads on the lid, at which point the lid can be removed and they will never try to escape. In other words they BELIEVE they cannot escape from the jar, so they stop trying.

They change their behaviour and accept their situation.

Sound familiar?

If you have an entrepreneurial spirit, it takes constant daily effort, (and a thick skin!) to keep your vision and focus alive and targeted.

But keep it alive.

Keep stoking the fire

Keep reminding yourself what it is you want to do, whether it’s charity work, inventing something, creating a business, starting a family, getting out of debt.

It doesn’t matter what it is, as long as it’s important to you.

So if you have something worthwhile that you want to do, even if you haven’t started it yet, then just do it. Even if it’s just a twinkle in your eye or a mad idea in your head, then just take the first step.

And remember, when someone (sometimes someone close to you) looks at you strangely and tells you you’re crazy, it doesn’t mean they don’t support you, it probably just means they don’t understand your vision.

You are Powerful beyond Measure!

I’m sure you’ve heard of Tony Robbins – he’s probably one of the best known mindset coach / self-improvement experts around today (if nothing else you might remember him from the movie “Shallow Hal” – the guy who met Jack Black’s character in the lift and changed his thinking to realise that beauty was on the inside!)

It’s Tony’s 50th birthday, and to celebrate he’s sent out to his subscribers this powerful & inspiring video – it’s only a few minutes long but made the hair on the back of my neck stand on end.

There’s nothing to buy or sign up for, just stop what you’re doing for 4 minutes for a reminder of how good you are.

Enjoy, and leave a comment below, I’d love to know what you think!

Inspiring Thoughts – Welcome to PlanetSelf.net

This site is founded on the belief that YOU are far better than you think you are, and you’re capable of much more than you believe yourself to be.

We believe that the dreams and aspirations that you either hold now or have held in the past are well within your reach, if only you would just focus on them again. Maybe you’ve put them to the side to simply get on with everyday life, maybe you’ve lost focus as you just don’t think that you could possibly achieve them, but we’d like to help you resurrect them, dust them down, and go for it.

You can do it.

One of my mentors, Mike Litman, has a saying that I’ve now adopted as a mantra – it goes like this:

You don’t have to get it right, you just have to get going.

Whatever it is that you’ve always wanted to do, JUST START IT. Don’t try and figure out how it’s going to end up. It may not be exactly the way you want it or imagine it to be, but you can develop.

As you progress you can change and adapt it, but as that wise old guy Confucius said:

“A Journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step”

Take the first step – then you’ll figure out the second step. Just worry about the first one for now.

If you wish you can SIGN UP FREE to our e-mail list, and we’ll send you a regular e-mail over the coming weeks and months to help you achieve your goals.  These may have resources suggested – many of them will be free, as we always make a point of trying to over-deliver, and some will be particular programs we recommend will help you. And just for signing up you’ll have access to several free resources to get you going!

One word of warning, and this runs through every single communication from us, and here it is:-

YOU NEED TO TAKE ACTION!

If you keep doing what you’ve always done, you’ll keep getting what you’ve always got. We have everything from programs to teach you how to make a part or full-time income learning to give Professional Massages (Click here for details) right up to programs to teach you how to set up a fully-fledged online business bringing in thousands of pounds each month in passive income (download our FREE E-book on Overcoming Information Overload & it’s all in there! (Click here for details))

If there’s anything specific that you don’t see but you’d like us to source for you (a course in dog training / how to make your own pottery / whatever), please let us know and we’ll do our best to find it for you from one of our suppliers. Consider us an online resource for whatever type of information you like.

But YOU have to take action, or nothing will change. I know we can help you with these regular communications, and I look forward to working with you on helping you improve yourself

If you have any questions, or you’d like me to deal with something specific, send me an e-mail with your comments – or post a blog entry here. I’d love to hear from you, and promise to answer every communication personally.

Aidan