Here is a great lesson in consistency, persistence and discipline, taken from the free tutorial by Chet Holmes.

Becoming a master is not about doing 4000 different moves; it’s about doing 12 moves, 4000 times each. The same is true for all areas of accomplishment. Golf, tennis, sales, customer service, ALL areas of competency require repetition of fundamentals.

Another thing in business this reminds me of is your Single Minded Promise in marketing speak. Tell me 10 things once and I’ll forget them. Tell me 1 thing 10 times and I’ll remember it.

There are no quick fixes to mastery, no shortcuts to becoming a person of character.

I read a great quote on ideate blog today from the creator of the Dilbert cartoon, Scott Adams. On the Dilbert blog Scott Adams shares thoughts of his “Champagne Moments“.

I still haven’t popped the champagne. I just raise the bar for what would be the right moment, and tell myself how tasty it will be if I ever accomplish something special in my work. Apparently the thing inside me that makes me work so hard is the same thing that keeps me unsatisfied. It’s a package deal. The best you can hope for is a family that understands.

This really struck home with me. I feel that, although it’s important to celebrate your successes, you should be careful not to think that just because you’ve experienced once small success, that you’ve won, and from now on everything is smooth sailing. Don’t become complacent, you can’t coast on previous successes for long.

In today’s world we are constantly interrupted by marketing messages, adverts, music, video and all sorts of information via the Internet. We are bombarded day in and day out.

A few months ago, my car was broken into and, among other things, my CD/Radio Player was stolen. After getting my car repaired, I didn’t bother to get the CD/Radio replaced. I found I’ve enjoyed the quietness in the car while driving. It meant that instead of being distracted by the music, I could actually hear myself think.

It got me thinking what is my constant internal dialogue saying?

Have you ever had a jingle you’ve heard from some tv ad stuck in your head all day, just repeating over and over? Or perhaps the latest catchy pop song? You might even find yourself humming to your self while working or driving.

Is this programming of your internal dialogue empowering you? Wouldn’t it be better to rather be thinking about something more along the lines of visualizing your goals, working out and reprioritizing your action plan, reaffirming a positive state?

I’m currently on day 6 of the Simpleology 101 course, but I decided to read ahead a little in the virtuosity book.
Simpleology, teaches essentially the same rules that most, if not all, personal/business development experts are trying to teach us. Simple rules to be successful like selecting clear goals, focusing your attention and energy on your goals and taking action, and although we might have heard this time and again from all over the place and think we already know this. Something I heard from Tony Robbins rings true here, “if you are not doing it, you don’t know it”, and that’s the great thing about the simpleology course it makes it laughably easy to stick to the course and take regular, daily, effective action.

Anyhow, back to the point. I was reading ahead and something struck me on the truth about procrastination. Something simple, but true nevertheless.
“There is no such thing as procrastination or laziness”, because there is no such thing as inaction. You can’t not do anything. Even if you are sitting on your butt, watching TV, you’re doing something. There is a whole bunch of stuff happening to your body and mind, whether you’re sitting on the couch, exercising, driving, or even sleeping. They’re all actions. The only thing that exists is ineffective action masquerading as inaction.

This was an aha moment for me, not because i didn’t know that procrastination was taking ineffective action that distracted my attention from my goals, but the fact that no matter what you are doing, even if you think you are not doing anything, you are taking action. It gave me a new perspective, that made me feel more empowered.

I realized every moment is a choice. Since in order to take action you need to make a choice, a decision, and since there is no such thing as inaction, it leads that every moment of every day of your life is a choice, and that’s empowering.

Last week during the VeloCITI Business Acceleration Course group session I go to, we discussed some of the points made in the book “7 Habits of Highly Effective People”.

I’m only beginning to read the book now, however something that has stuck with me from that session was about being responsible, but with a new sense of the word.
The dictionary defines responsible as “Worthy of or requiring responsibility or trust; or held accountable”, however I now have a different view on its meaning.

“The ability to choose your response”

Short explanation taken from a quote out of Lord of the Rings: (Not a direct quote)
“It’s not for us to choose what we are given in life. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us.”

It’s all in your attitude. Exercising your ability to choose your response. Being Responsible.

I’ve always been fascinated with technology. It changes what we think is possible. It’s magical and I knew from early on I wanted to be a part of that: creating technology that wows and excites people; that changes lives.
The very first time I thought about what I wanted to be when I grow older, was an inventor, which, after exploring other options, came back to something more specific like electrical or mechanical engineering.
After high school however, I, on suggestion from my sister, decided to study IT. I’m not sure what I was expecting exactly, all I knew was that I would be studying computers and it would lead me into a career where I could create all sorts of fascinating and life changing computer technologies.
It wasn’t exactly what I expected, as everything was more software oriented, but I loved it nevertheless. I was creating something, computer programs, from nothing and that added value to peoples lives. It wasn’t great, life changing things, but it was something and I’d created it. In the latter years of high school I had tinkled around with our old computer at home, but when I went to college, I took messing around with our home computer to a whole new level. It was fascinating, challenging and sometimes frustrating.

Anyways after 3 years at college, I went to work at a retail company doing technical support. Not exactly the software programming I had studied, but something I loved doing nevertheless and was more than good at. While working full-time I had enrolled and studied my honors in IT for 2 years part-time.

After working in technical support for 2 years, I was beginning to get tired of it. Thinking back to what originally I wanted to be doing, I wasn’t doing it. I wasn’t even utilizing any of the knowledge I learned in college. Most of the stuff I was doing I had learned while messing around with my computer at home. I wasn’t programming, creating new software programs that make peoples lives easier, changing the way people work and live.

I quite my job to do web development. I had, during my time at college, been introduced to some very basic website development. I had also started a little website project with two class mates, tourguide.co.za, which I helped develop and maintain while still working full-time and studying part-time.

I enjoyed web development, since it allowed me to express more creativity, while still remaining challenging, and it also meant creating something that added value to people’s lives.
After doing freelance web development for about a year for some small companies and continuing to develop and maintain tourguide.co.za with rafiq and craig, my college mates and business partners, I realized tourguide.co.za wasn’t just wasn’t working as well as I’d hoped. Rafiq’s mother, a driving school owner and instructor, suggested we try take what we’d developed for tourguide.co.za and try it for driving schools, and so after a little while iDRIVE.co.za was born and was getting a lot better response. We submitted it to the National Innovation Competition at our college, same as we did with tourguide.co.za the year before, and came in first place and awarded R50 000, which was desperately needed as we were seriously low on cash.

So anyways now, nearly 2 years later, myself and Rafiq are running iDRIVE.co.za, doing freelance web development on the side to pay the bills and blogging along the way, which now also pays some bills.
However, looking at my life now, I’m still nowhere close to where I’d like to be and I’ve come to realize that developing websites for other people doesn’t interest me, as all my hard work only benefits that one business/person. It’s like building a rocket, but not getting to fly into space with it. I want to not only build the rocket, but I also want to fly into space with it, and enjoy it. I’ve since evolved the web developer view of myself to web entrepreneur, as I’m more interested in developing a businesses using my previous IT and Web experience, than mere web development.
Business in any form is a way more fascinating animal. It speaks directly to people, rather than web development, that only speaks of the technical/creative aspect of creating a website or application.

From the VeloCITI Business Acceleration Program that afiq and myself entered into to help us grow our iDRIVE.co.za business into profitable machine, I’ve learned a lot, not only about business, but also about myself.
All successful businesses are dependent on successful people, so to have a successful business you need to sort yourself out first.

I’ve also come to realize that to fulfill my dream of creating technologies that change peoples lives, but at the same time get to ‘fly my rocket into space’ and have the creative freedom I want, being a successful entrepreneur is what I need to be. I can’t create everything myself. I need to be smart and get the right people to help me change the world.

And so, I decided the topic of my blog from now on is going to be personal development for web entrepreneurs.
I don’t aim to preach, hell, a lot of the time I’d probably be wrong, but I want to just share some of my thoughts and things I’ve learned, and learn from you all reading this, about personal development, coming from the perspective of a web entrepreneur.

This post has been kinda rough and I apologize. One of the things on my personal development mental to-do list is to write more often and hone my writing craft. I not only want to be a better writer, but also a better story teller, which I think is important.

Anyways, cheers, until later.

I haven’t been posting here in a long time now. I started off pretty strong, managing to post something everyday or at least once or twice a week, but haven’t really been feeling it.

I’ve been quite really busy working on an online business I co-own, iDRIVE.co.za, and lately and so haven’t found the time or inspiration to publish much here for lack of direction for this blog.

Initially wanted to have a place to store and share my special events in my life, a personal journal, separate from my business life, but also create a personal brand independent of my work.
So I began sharing some moments in my life, like my nephew’s visit from the UK, our church’s annual international evening, some history and secrets about me, my mission of continuous personal development, etc and just to fill the gaps in between when I’ve got nothing to say and to just commit me to write something every day, my favourite quotes, which I’m currently thinking about.

However, this, for me, still seems like it’s not enough, and I have come to realize why.
They’re selfish reasons to blog. I know in some cases it’s a good thing to be selfish, but in this case, it’s just not rewarding for me to blog. Who wants to subscribe to blog soley about me? What value am I adding to people’s lives by writing this stuff online?
If I blog, I should want it to benefit someone, and not only someone as much people as possible.

This leads me to the conclusion that I want this blog to be focused on giving to it’s readers, you, as much valuable information as I, from my experience, can provide.

Resulting questions to ask myself about writing this blog.

What experiences in my live can people benefit from?
What skills can I impart to my readers? How?
What will keep me going?
What am I truly passionate about versus what I’m moderately interested in?
Who do I want to read this blog?
How much time can or will I dedicate to this blog?
How can I ensure I don’t relapse into large gaps in posting, like now?
What habits and distractions are preventing me from making this blog successful?
Is this the right place to do all this, rather than my business blog?

Anyways, it’s something for me to think about. I’ll try to post my answers to those questions soon and determine a more thorough mission for this blog.

Ah! I just found out that the book Think and Grow Rich, by Napoleon Hill, that I bought the other day on Amazon is available for free in pdf e-book format from MySelfDevelopment.net.
Oh well, let me synthesize happiness. A hard copy is probably better to have than an e-book anyways

Quote of the Night

Most folks are about as happy as they make up their minds to be.
- Abraham Lincoln

I’ve been following a comic from a South African illustrator and animator, Mike Scott, for a while now. His comic Bru and Boegie is really quite brilliant.
Anyways, the other night I got to chat with Mike at the recent Cape Town 27 Dinner and offered to hook his website up with RSS, so now, drum roll please….., Bru and Boegie, the kiffest comic in the world, is available in RSS. Neato

Also, in keeping the spirit of the occasion todays quote of the night will be something humorous. Here it is, two for one special, ’cause they’re just so damn good.

I am not a vegetarian because I love animals; I am a vegetarian because I hate plants.
- A. Whitney Brown

The major difference between a thing that might go wrong and a thing that cannot possibly go wrong is that when a thing that cannot possibly go wrong goes wrong it usually turns out to be impossible to get at and repair.
- Douglas Adams

I can’t help but be struck by the truthfulness of this quote.

Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the judgment that something else is more important than fear.
- Ambrose Redmoon