Well it’s been a big year, our economy is on the rebound and it seems that everyone I speak to says that they’ve never worked as hard as they have in 2009. For me, sleep became a privilege not a right and holidays seem to have forgotten about me… But I wouldn’t have had it any other way. Give me more than a day of free time and I start to go crazy – it’s probably something that’s built into my generationally high levels of impatience.

What keeps me enjoying life is constantly feeling like I’m going somewhere. There were a lot of new things that I got to do this year, both in business and life – What is extremely important to me however is that the energy that I am investing needs to be taking me where I want to go.

I am in control of my future and I would much prefer to live life to its fullest potential rather than float through it expecting things to happen to me.

The end of a year is a good time to reflect on what you have achieved throughout the year and whether you are still heading in the direction that you want to go. If you are, that’s great! If you are not, maybe you need to consider if you are happy doing what you are doing. It seems to be so easy to get stuck in the rat race and come out 20 years later saying ‘I wish I…’.

The moral of the story is live life in the now and year by year reflect and analyse that it is what you want and you are who you want to be – the only person in control of your life is you.

I won’t post next week as I will be too busy surfing what the Gold Coast has to offer.

I will however leave you with this very relevant quote from Thomas Jefferson.

“I find that the harder I work, the more luck I seem to have.”

Happy Christmas, Merry New Year! Have a great break, see you in 2010!

Are you a glass half full person, or maybe half empty… Do you realize that all of your actions are constantly impacting other people? Do you yearn for happiness in life or just enough money to buy things that will make you happy?

I believe that positivity is the single most productive trait in the world. Positive people get promotions, Positive people top the sales figures, positive people get the girl, positive people start their own businesses. Positive people impact other people positively and create a better environment… So what are the negatives? Well that’s easy… there are none.

Positivity breeds positivity, just like negativity breeds negativity. To bring this into a work related context, people always talk about ‘culture’ at work. Culture is a broad topic and can cover many elements that I won’t go into now, but one of the most common references re: culture is ‘staff happiness’ and ‘morale’. These characteristics can be very heavily impacted by positive people. Company’s often speak about having the perfect culture – ‘we could have the Google culture…’ The truth is that culture starts with you. If you are a positive, energetic person, you will positively impact people who then may positively impact other people and so on so forth down the line – this is culture in action – people impacting other people. It’s not necessarily top down, its everyone impacting everyone.

If you are not content with the culture in your organization, here is your challenge for the week:
Start changing it!

• Say ‘hello’ to a few more people of a morning.
• Intentionally try to brighten someone’s day…
• Smile at people.
• Randomly high-five people you pass in the workplace (I call this the ‘high-five’ culture).
• Tell someone they are ridiculously good looking (I call this the ‘good looking’ culture).

As the culture begins to spread, you can then watch this boomerang return home and someone you work with might brighten your day. Positivity breeds positivity.

Please share your stories in the comments section below. I’d love to hear how you went. If I work with you, I expect some comments regarding my handsome looks on Wednesday. Why don’t you begin by forwarding this to anyone you think could do with a dose of positivity?

I’ll leave you with these two quotes.

‘Our environment, the world in which we live and work, is a mirror of our attitudes and expectations.’ – Earl Nightingale

Or in the words of my generation:

‘Cheer up Emo Kid’

As a sales person, so much comes back to ‘how much I can sell,’ however I believe that this statement is redundant and belongs somewhere back in the 1940’s. The question today should be ‘how many relationships can I maintain?’

First off let’s define relationships – there are two kinds; personal and professional. Personal relationships are your family and friends. Professional relationships are those related to your career or investments, i.e. clients, staff, managers, suppliers etc.

The truth is, a person can only manage so many relationships before they start letting people down. Whether they are personal or professional is inconsequential. Someone who is a workaholic and works very hard to manage all of their internal and external business relationships will often let their personal relationships down by constantly canceling at the last minute or not answering messages. Similarly, those who place a higher value their personal relationships, will often have difficulty growing and maintaining their professional relationships, which may hinder their professional advancement.

Technology has certainly made it simpler to communicate with your contacts; however it has also created greater transparency and higher expectations for immediate responses. There are very few excuses you can use for not returning a phone call, or if a facebook post remains unanswered. With this in mind it is important to understand that the amount of relationships that you can manage will directly correlate with your success as a business person – that’s networking.

Over the coming weeks I will be discussing ways to better manage these relationships, and the great success that they can bring.