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Fear of failure in business

February 24th, 2021 entrepreneurs mindset
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Fear of failure in business is inevitable. The keyword is FEAR. We must learn to handle our feeling of fear. Fear comes when we have to make a decision about something that may lead to an uncertain future. But, you never know until you try.

Zig Ziglar quotes fear has two meanings. Forget everything and run or Face everything and rise.

Fear has two meanings. FEAR – Forget Everything And Run or Face Everything And Rise.

– Zig Ziglar

It is up to you, how you would like to handle your fear. I must say the latter FEAR (Face Everything and Rise) makes you strong and is more empowering.

The other FEAR – Forget Everything and Run, – this method does not make our problem go away. The question is how long you can keep running? When you tired and stop running the problem would still be there.

Nothing is certain but we can learn to use what we have to keep going

A man called Paul has a company with a steady stream of work coming from a family connection. Suddenly, Paul lost his steady income stream. This was scary for him. The question for him was that does he dissolve his company and go back into employment? or find a way to get new customers? He talked to his spouse. They found a way to turn the business situation around.

Handling FEAR – Face Everything and Rise

His spouse designed and printed mini cute brochures for him to distribute to residential homes in the area he wanted to serve. Paul paid youngsters to distribute the brochures for him. Yield nothing. Then his spouse took on the responsibility to distribute brochures for him, printed out a map of the area, and plan the targeted distribution area and marked it as done as she went along. 2 months into it, a man walked into Paul’s office holding the mini cute brochure and asked for a quote to renovate his house. Paul took on the project. He completed the project satisfactorily. The client was very pleased with his work and service. Good words spread to friends in the area, another client was on board and the company was prospering from there.

Paul’s first brochure distribution assignment failed and he tried again with a more organised and targeted way of distributing. It worked the second time.

In brief, don’t give up so easily. If you tried and failed, you try again. Keep going. Change the way you define “failure”. Your project/assignment/task/business may have failed but NOT YOU. People say “you have failed”. Don’t take this comment personally. We can only fail at something. We cannot fail as a human on our own. Similarly, we can only succeed at something.

Define your own “Fear of failure”, give the meaning that can empower you to do things. People asked Thomas A Edison how did he feel to have failed a thousand time in his attempt to create the light bulb? He replied, “I didn’t fail, I found 1000 ways that won’t work.” He sees failure as a learning curve.

Dr Wayne Dyer famous quotes “if you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change.” Change your perspective on how you define failure to empower you to keep moving forward. We live and we learn in life. If possible, reduce contact with people are negatives about life.

If you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change.

Dr Wayne Dyer

You never know until you try

Whenever the fear of failure comes to mind, empower yourself to choose to Face Everything And Rise. Say, you received a reminder from Companies House to submit your company accounts. You have yet appointed an accountant to act for you.

Choose to face everything and rise. You decide whether to hire an accountant or do the accounts yourself and then you act on your decision. You get your accounts prepared and file on time with Companies House and avoid a late filing penalty.

Say, you worry seeking help from an accountant because you reckoned it will cost you a fortune so you postpone to act on the reminder.

The consequences of ignoring the reminder in this situation are:

  • Companies House will change your company’s status to “proposal to strike off” and eventually dissolve it. Your customers will lose confidence in your products or services.
  • Consequently, you would have to restore your company which will cost more in accountancy fees and time to restore your company.
  • When you apply to restore your company with Companies House, you must submit your company accounts at the same time and pay the late filing penalty.

In short, you are better off to act on your reminder promptly than postponing it to a later date.

On the same note. non-filing of your confirmation statement will lead to your company being struck off as well.

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Non-verbal communications in business

February 23rd, 2021 entrepreneurs mindset, Starting a business
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Understanding non-verbal communications in business settings allow you to gather feedback on what being said instantly, whether the message is of interest or boring, clearly understood or confusing, disapproved or accepted.

All you have to do is to be aware of people’s non-verbal behaviours. Non-verbal behaviours are autopilot. In other words, they are controlled by your subconscious mind. The non-verbal behaviours tell you the feelings and attitudes of others in response to what being said or discussed.

Mirroring

When someone is mirroring your non-verbal behaviour. He/she shows a willingness to understand you and genuinely connect with you. This is like the “we are on the same page on this subject” kind of non-verbal communications.

If you observe politicians on TV, you will see them mirroring each other when they stand and also when they are sitting down. This is because politicians have a genuine desire to connect with people meet.

Top tip, if you want to catch a stranger’s attention, you can do it by mirroring the person. Say in a restaurant, you want to attract a stranger’s attention, you mimic her postures, gestures including the words she said. If she picks up her glass to sip her wine, you pick up your glass to sip your drink. If she touches her nose, you also touch your nose. Sooner or later, she will notice you and start talking to you. Remember this phrase – like with like.

Congruence

Be honest with yourself so that your non-verbal body language will be congruent. If you don’t agree with something say so. People tend to trust you when your non-verbal body language and words are congruent because you come across honest.

If you see someone said one thing but do another. Naturally, you will doubt the person’s intention and the person’s reliability become questionable. Your non-verbal body language can’t lie unless you are well-trained in acting it out.

Handshake

A firm handshake is the best bet but you do not want to overdo it from a firm handshake to become a bone crusher handshake. Some people may perceive bone crusher handshake as aggressive. You don’t want that. You want to be perceived as firm but trustworthy and friendly.

On the other hand, a fingertip handshake is interpreted as lack of confidence and insipid.

Eye contact

Maintain eye contact when you speak to someone or someone is speaking with you. Don’t look away when people are talking to you. Steady eye contact is often taken as a sign that a person is telling the truth and is trustworthy. On the other hand, shifty eyes and an inability to maintain eye contact is frequently seen as an indicator that someone is being deceptive.

Gestures

Gestures are another form of non-verbal communications. You can see on anyone’s face if he/she is happy or angry or sad or envy or fear or love. These are universal human emotions.

You smile when you are happy. People scowl when they are angry and have a long face when they are sad. With this, you can gauge if you should continue with your conversation or better change the topic. For example, if you are about to ask your friend for a favour to help you with your confirmation statement and company accounts filings and it is urgent, your friend told you his wife just had a baby and you can see from his face, look like he has slept for days. In this situation, you may want to reconsider, be kind to your friend, maybe ask some other friend to help.

In business social gatherings, if someone is talking to you with his/her body facing you directly, this means he/she wants to give you full attention. Later, if you notice the person shifted their body slightly to open up a gap between you and him/her in a triangle shape like this means the person is ready for another person to join in the conversations or that the person is ready to leave.

Territory

Generally, people have a conceptual egg shaped zone of personal space around their bodies and only trusted person can invaded if others trespass into it.

In business gatherings, if you do not want a person to invade your personal space, for example, standing up close to you, you can stand behind a chair or counter or you use your handbag (if you have one) to make the gap to protect your personal space. Likewise, you can observe yourself so that you are not invading others’ personal space unintentionally. When a person is comfortable and trusts you, he will let you into his personal space.

Understanding non-verbal communications can help you to communicate effectively with people and network with ease. You can gather instant feedback based on their non-verbal body language and act accordingly.

A firm handshake gives a good impression

February 23rd, 2021 entrepreneurs mindset, latest news, Starting a business
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Handshakes are a universally accepted way to meet and greet in business social gatherings and meetings. A firm handshake gives a good impression, and an intention to have peace with each other.

A handshake is also a popular non-verbal behaviour when a business deal is closed. It was like “thank you for accepting my proposal” or “thank you for the opportunities to collaborate or work together”.

A firm palm to palm handshake

Practice a firm, palm to palm followed by a decisive release kind of handshake. You will need this after the COVID is over. Avoid bone crusher, wet fish, dead fish, fingertips handshakes. Also, when your hand is cold, warm it up by rubbing your hands together before a handshake.

History of handshake

According to history.com, one of the earliest depictions of a handshake is found in a ninth-century B.C. relief, which shows the Assyrian King Shalmaneser III pressing the flesh with a Babylonian ruler to seal an alliance. 

You can read the full article about history of handshake here.

No handshake during COVID pandemic

During this COVID pandemic, a handshake is deemed dangerous. Scientifically, it is because of the possible COVID transmission from one person to the other and can spread like crazy.

Handshake will be back to life

You know what? COVID is not going to last forever on this planet. Face to face business meetings will come back to life at some point in the future and the popular handshake way to meet and greet in business gatherings will come back to life too.

Just look at the history of the previous pandemics, for example, the H1N1 Swine flu pandemic occurred between 2009 to 2010. The main route of swine flu virus spread between humans is exposure to the virus when someone infected sneezes or coughs, and the virus enters one of the potential mucous surfaces, or when a person touched something infected with the virus and subsequently touch their nose, mouth, and surrounding areas. This is how COVID was spread too.

Ask yourself? Before the COVID outbreak, did you shake hand with other people? I guess your answer is YES. With the COVID vaccines rolling out rapidly worldwide as I am writing this article, I believe COVID will no longer control how we want to live our lives and greet people in business settings.

Be ready to meet and greet with a firm handshake

Let be positive about the future and practice your firm handshake for when we are ready to meet face to face for business.

In the meantime, we embrace online meeting via Zoom, Whatapps, Face Time, Messenger, Skype, Google Meet and so on. We cannot do a handshake but we can smile and wave when we meet on screen. This is a popular non-verbal body language to welcome others in virtual meetings.

If you are running a business through a limited company, remember to deliver your confirmation statement and company accounts promptly to Companies House. It is important to maintain your company status “Active” with Companies House during this COVID pandemic. Your customers will lose confidence in your products or services if they see your company status is a “proposal to strike off” or “dissolved”.

Blue zones lifestyle

November 21st, 2019 entrepreneurs mindset
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What is the blue zones lifestyle? Blue zones are places where people live the longest there. Dan Buettner identified five places in the world so far as the blue zone. There are Sardina in Italy, Okinawa in Japan, Costa Rica’s isolated the Nicoya Peninsula, Loma Linda in California and Ikaria in Greek.  These places looked stunning on the photos published by the National Geographic.

Dan Buttner and his team studied the lifestyle of people live in the blue zone. They share their discovery with the world through his books the blue zones, the blue zones solution, Tedtalk and so on.

Dan Buettner shared the blue zones lifestyle.

Exercise

Exercise is part of their daily routine. People in blue zones walk naturally. They do not go to the gym or use a treadmill. They walk a lot and enjoy nature.

According to entrepreneur.com, successful people like Barak Obama, Warren Buffet and Richard Branson, they all have one thing in common. They exercise regularly. Let look at the world’s oldest leader, the Malaysia Prime Minister at the age of 94 he still can cycle 11km.

Why exercise? Personally, I feel more energetic with regular exercise. I like this one the most, when I feel angry or frustrated with something, I go exercise, be it running or boot camp. I find myself feeling great after exercise. All the negatives emotions seem to left with the sweats. I do not feel I have to kick anyone butt afterwards.

Having a fit body also boost your self-confidence.

City life

How do we incorporate exercise living in a busy city like London?

Like the Blue zones people, walk to places if you can.

I walk 0.6 from home to office one way. It takes me about 13 minutes one way. A round trip per day is 1.2 mile.

Recently, after I learnt about the blue zones lifestyle, I made it a point to use the stairs too. My office is on the third floor and my home also on the third floor.

Sometimes, when I was in a rush, I tend to use the lift instead of the stairs. What was my thinking? I was thinking using the lift is faster than walking upstairs.

Actually, I noticed using the lift and stairs take roughly the same amount of time to get to the third floor. One day, I saw a person waiting for the lift, he got into the lift at the same time I start walking up the stairs. When I reached the third floor, I saw him coming out of the lift. So this teaches me one thing, my mind tricked me to believe using the lift is faster than walking upstairs. Next time, walk it.

Motivation to keep going

I noticed during summer, my body is cool with indoor and outdoor exercise. I could do it every day. I enjoy the run in the park, I can hear the birds sing, squirrels playing on the grass and many other people running and exercising in the park too. Something to different compared to what I see at work. At work, I see computer screens only.

In Autumn, I cut down outdoor exercise because it’s cold out there. I have to wear multiple layers and gloves to exercise. Also, it gets dark early in London during autumn. My solution to this more stairs exercises during autumn/winter.

Eat wisely

Malaysia Prime Minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad, he is now 94 years old. He shared his secret of staying healthy to the world after being repeatedly asked to share tips during international conferences.

He shared do not overeat. Live to eat, not eat to live. When the food is tasty, stop eating. Very difficult but you have to develop the discipline.

The people in the Blue zones adopt the 80% rule when comes to eating. They stop eating when they are 80% full.

Dr Mahathir Mohamand’s eating habit seems to be similar to the blue zones people eating lifestyle.

Keep your brain active

Keep the brain active is important so that it would not lose its capacity. Use it to talk, argue, debate to keep your mind’s muscle active.

Conclusion

You do not have to move to the blue zones in order to live longer. You can be anywhere in the world. It’s all start with YOU.

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