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Recently I was the willing target of several audio interviews. The topic of course, was blogging, however as is customary, most interviews begin with a little background study of the person in question.

As a result of telling my recent business history I found myself reminiscing about some of the ventures I was involved in during the previous 8 years or so. Most of them were online enterprises, but there was one experience where I was running a start-up based in the real world, an English tutoring school called “Aussie Tutor”.

If you dig into my earlier archives you will find several posts and podcasts were I mentioned my English school. It was an interesting time in my life, which taught me many lessons about business and in particular what I want from a business and what I don’t want.

Working 9 to 5 by Choice

While in charge of my school I came to fully realize what I had always known - I do not like having to be anywhere nine-to-five, five days a week.

Before I avoided a full time job specifically because of not wanting to be anywhere for such long periods of time to work for someone else. Not surprisingly, despite working for myself, I still did not like that I had to be somewhere during working hours.

Unfortunately, as a business with a physical premises, the English school demanded my presence every day unless I was willing to forgo any possible patronage that might walk in off the street. Ironically, despite my immaculate attendance, many days my English school was empty and I spent the time working online.

It didn’t take long for me to realize, despite my passion for the idea and my entrepreneurial spirit, my tutoring service was not going to work unless I made a significant commitment to it. I would need to either shut it down, or invest money and time and treat it like a true start-up.

At the time I had a growing Internet based business demanding my attention that was profitable (BetterEdit - an online proofreading service I sold in 2007). It wasn’t too hard to decide what to do next. I closed down Aussie Tutor, broke my lease and went back to working at home.

A Web Based Life

I am very thankful that I grew up during a period where the Internet also grew up. My very first casual job was web based (crafting websites for the business school at university) and my very first self created income stream came from the Internet too.

I can’t remember what life was like before the Internet, but I know it wasn’t nearly as good as it is now.

Tomorrow I hop on a plane and fly to Fiji. I’ll be there for 5 days before I board another plane where I’ll head to Hawaii. I’ll spend a week in the land of aloha, before jumping on another flight, this time to Vancouver, where a week of fun awaits. I’ll then make a short flight to Winnipeg, visit my grandmother, before settling in Toronto for 5 months. I intend to visit the USA for conferences and other fun things during my time in Canada too.

In Fiji I will be in a hotel but during the rest of my travels I’m staying in rented apartments with kitchens, private double beds and all the usual trimmings, at two thirds the price of equivalent standard hotels (I’m practicing a little 4-Hour Work Week accommodation hunting). I’ll have ample time and funds to do what I want and it’s all thanks to the World Wide Web. There’s not many occupations today that grant you this much freedom.

Ever present during this trip will be my laptop. My computer that connects me to the online world will serve as a communication tool to keep in touch with friends, family and colleagues. I’ll blog, create content, work on products, market, network and effectively live a very similar life to what I usually do at home in Brisbane.

The scenery might change, but the purpose and lifestyle doesn’t - and I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Live the Stereotype - Laptop on the Beach

We all know the archetypical image of the entrepreneur sitting on the beach with their laptop, logging on to check how much money they made during the previous night and then settling back to a day full of sun, sand and sleep - a perpetual holiday.

I’ve already written about my disdain for the traditional non-working holiday, however the gist of the laptop on the beach image is definitely something I appreciate because it represents fantastic freedom. A business that can function - and even grow - despite your absence or location in the world, and the freedom to choose when to work, how to work and what to work on, is a great business.

This is a far cry from waking up at 8am to open the doors to a 3rd floor English tutoring school.

How To Build a Framework for Life Portability

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These tips will make you a better human being in my opinion, but you have to stay on topic, so let’s focus on business.

Over the past few months I’ve experimented with some lifestyle changes. Not all of these changes were specifically about improving my business or working life, but they have enabled me to become more efficient at what I do during the day with my work. I suspect they will have a similar effect on you if you do them too.

Some of these tips, at least on the surface, might seem a bit dramatic to some people, others will laugh and say they have been doing these things for years. Either way, please read this advice with a mindset of how you could possibly implement them to help your life and your business.

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I know I said there would be no more self development articles on Entrepreneur’s Journey, but what I meant to say there would be no more by me! Matt kindly contributed this great article on self development and I wanted to publish it here since my personal development blog won’t be launching for a while. Enjoy! - Yaro

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By Matt Lindsay from A Car Too Far

“If you can’t believe in yourself then who else is going to believe in you?” - I heard this mantra a while ago and although it’s not a pillar of my everyday living, it serves to illustrate at least one of the key issues that often send people on a path of self development. There are other reasons of course, ranging from those who are picking themselves up after a fall (maybe you lost your job or broke up with a partner) to those who are only hitting the 7 out of 10 mark and feel they could do better. Whatever your reason for starting a program of self development, once you dip your toe, you could well find yourself in for a splash.

Self Development is, by nature, an open loop structure; as you develop and improve your personal characteristics, the more you will desire to achieve and strive for better things. In order to get that bit extra from life, you will need to develop more and so on and so forth and if this cycle is left unchecked, this can rapidly lead to a serious burnout. Fortunately every day constraints or “frictional losses” will erode the speed at which this cycle accelerates but ultimately you will need to be careful about what aspects of your character you wish to improve and more importantly how many you try to improve at once.

I recently decided to quit my job in order to chase my dream. I realised that if I was working from 5AM to 12PM everyday already, then I had the commitment it would take to go it alone. I have a few months in which to work up enough money to give me a few months breathing space, but at some point I will have to decide what business of mine I’m going to run with. How did I make this decision? Well Steve Pavlina’s excellent approach to the relative risk strategies of being in a job to working for yourself were instrumental in the decision and this all started because of my journey of self development, so, well I know these risks.

If you are reading this article it is likely that you have an inkling as to what self development involves and you may even have a few good resources for advice. This is not the domain for this article but I am happy to put you in the direction of my favourite reads. If, for example, you pop over to Steve’s site, you will find a plethora of articles and blog entries on self development. The easy mistake to make is to harvest them all (or a large number), read them and try to implement them. Take this strategy and it is next stop: Burnout City .

For instance, we would all like to get a little more out of our day. How about trying Polyphasic sleeping, having better time management or just getting up when your alarm goes off (this worked wonders for me). We could benefit from giving up coffee, sanctifying our workspace, making money from our blogs, overcome fear and there aren’t many of us out there that would turn down the opportunity to make $10,000 in an hour. There are, however, some things that cannot be rushed and self development is one of them. Not only will you burn out if you binge on self improvement but in actual fact some of the best advice and methods are mutually exclusive. Just as Steve often says, to get from a 7 to a 10 you sometimes have to go back to a 5 first.

I do not know the ultimate answer to applying self development, only the way it works best for me and the way that I would advise. I have split the two routes and addressed them separately:

Progressive Self Development

The way I like to look at applying self development is like a tan. If you try and get a great tan all in one, it will burn and peel off quickly. If you build it up, layer by layer, waiting for each application to settle and really sink in before laying the next, you will have a firm understanding of the things you have done, why they work and why you should continue to do them. It is also easier to do it this way as you only really need address one issue at a time.

Structured Self Development

If you are in more of a rush to be the million dollar man you might opt for a program of structured self development. This is where you consider certain aspects of your persona and group them into comparable and mutually inclusive groups. You might for example have a “Time management and optimization” aspect that you want to improve and similarly a “Finance and occupation” aspect. These groups will depend on you, but be sure to keep them fairly specific. For example if you tired to bundle “Time Management” and “Healthy Living” into a single group you may well come unstuck when you try and optimize both as the interrelationships between the two (extra time required for workouts or meal preparation compared to “time and motion studies”) will cause unpredictable or unrepeatable results at best or collide entirely at worst. Once you have these groups defined (on paper preferably) then set about reading up on one group at a time, or if you are impatient, one mechanism for each group. Try to deal with one group completely before moving to the next if you have time, or again if you are rushing this then one mechanism from each group only!

Ultimately, the process of Self Development is a difficult one, not least because of one of its own inherent anomalies. When dealing with self progression, it is commonly accepted that goals are required. A goal is a dream with a deadline, that is to say that as we, as humans, work best to deadlines, by attaching a “due by” date to our dreams we transmute them into actions. Self development however is an on going process and only a program of continual improvement will make for take you the whole distance. If you cannot put a time frame on it as an overall process and you can never complete it then doesn’t it break its own rules? Well, yes and no, but with no timeframe on it, at least it will work nicely with your new “Stress management” mechanism…

Provided for your own protection by Matt Lindsay.

Matt is an Aussie born, UK living, 26 year old working a day job, a night job and running an online business of two years (www.slothball.com). He has a blog at lindsayhart.co.uk/blog.

Matt is giving up his job in October to further follow his dream (see his blog) and to find a way to make mortgage each month - pretty scary really.

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Continuing from the article - It’s Time To Reduce Your Stress - I’ve produced a series of practical tips for you to reduce your stress. I intended to include these in the original article about stress but they didn’t fit with the flow and made an already large article even longer. If you haven’t read the previous article I suggest you do that first before reading this article.

If you are feeling at a loss regarding how to reduce the stress in your life, here’s some techniques you can apply today. All of these tips I applied to my life and have had very positive outcomes.

Exercise

This is probably the single most important change. If you aren’t exercising, and this means something rigorous that makes you breath heavy for a good 20+ minutes per day, then you need to add it to your life immediately. You will know when you have worked hard enough because after you feel absolutely buggered but the adrenaline and lovely endorphins are flowing.

I’m convinced that regular exercise is the key to happiness (along with all that self awareness stuff). It creates a natural high which you don’t pay for in the morning (once you get used to it) by feeling worse like you do from other, not-so-natural highs, such as drugs and alcohol. Exercise helps you sleep better, increases your overall energy, makes you chirpy, you think clearer, can work and play longer, increases your general confidence and best of all - it keeps you living longer with less trips to the doctor (I have never taken any antibiotics in my life!).

If you haven’t adopted a regular exercise pattern then this should be your number one priority. Make sure it’s regular - aim for every second day to start. You will start to enjoy it so much that you will want to do something everyday, in fact you will crave some form of exercise and it just won’t feel right not exercising.

Personally I get quite bored of one physical activity so I try and mix my week up. I do rollerblading, swimming, weight-training, walking, jogging, bike riding, tennis, golf and wait for it…bowling! (bowling really isn’t all the strenuous though). Once you get confident in your physical health you will be more eager to try other sports too.

If you are just beginning start with what you know you can do, perhaps walking at a fast pace to get your heart rate up, then up to some jogging bursts, then maybe try some tennis or whatever takes your fancy.

Music

The best companion for exercise is music. Music soothes the soul as they say, and I’m sure I don’t have to convince you of the powers of music to reduce your stress. For me there are few better moments in life than a speedy skate with the Brisbane river and a marvelous sunset on my right side and some high energy music (I’m a trance fan) playing in my earbuds. This is when I experience the biggest high of my life. It’s better than sex (!) and just a tiny bit better than a two-fisted backhand down the line passing shot to win the point in a long tennis rally. Just.

Self Development - Raising Self Awareness

This won’t work for you unless you are ready and open to it, but I find that studying self development materials, and more importantly understanding, believing and putting the concepts learnt into action, is one of the best ways to reduce your stress. You realize that your worries are pretty trivial and life isn’t that complex.

I’ve managed to almost eliminate stress from my life. My next goal is to work towards a Steve Pavlina style sustained joyful existence.

I have good control over my emotions (not perfect mind you). I have strong self awareness, but I’m still somewhat a slave to certain impulses, basic drives and emotional conditioning. I always feel stronger and more relaxed with the world after working on my self development. Often things tend to drop in importance, I gain a stronger grasp over my emotional state and everything becomes calmer after new insights are gained or concepts reinforced.

In your case you will be somewhere on the levels of consciousness scale, which will determine how you should go about raising your own self awareness and improving your self development. The fact that you are reading this article means you probably are open to self development concepts and have the potential to help yourself. Steve Pavlina’s blog is a great place to start.

Food

Eating well benefits me in two ways - the obvious, it works because it’s healthy for your body, but also I find it healthy for my mind too. Knowing that I am eating well and sticking to certain self-imposed restrictions, means that I feel good mentally and physically about my food intake. This is great because these two areas of my life reinforce each other positively. When I am eating well I mentally pat myself on the back, have more confidence and find it easier to continue to eat well. When I break from this I feel worse mentally way before my body experiences any obvious negative effects from eating badly. I very quickly get back on track because my mind wouldn’t let me stray for too long. I guess you would call this self-discipline, but I call it maintaining peace of mind.

I don’t drink alcohol. I’ve had maybe the equivalent of half a cup of coke in my entire life. I drink only water, juices, milk and soy drinks. I strive for the five vegetables and two fruit servings per day rule. I’m not a vegetarian, I do enjoy meat even though I know it hurts animals - I’m morally against it but I have not decided to change my eating habits as a result.

I have been blessed with a metabolism that can deal with copious amounts of food without gaining weight - I certainly have never needed to diet to lose weight. Overall I believe in a balanced diet and mostly I eat what I like and I know is good for me - fruit, veges, nuts, breads, a little dairy, meat and plenty of water - always drink plenty of water. I have a solid love for chocolate too, but I have trouble eating excessive amounts nowadays because my conscious won’t let me get away with it, as compared to my fun-filled, chocolate overdosed younger days.

There’s enough information out there on eating right and I’m sure you know what parts of your own diet you would like to change. Eating right comes down to discipline. When you change something for the long enough it becomes a habit and you face resistance to change it. The trick is to make all your habits positive.

Sleep

This is probably the single most abused aspect of peoples lives when it comes to creating stress because of our “rushed” lifestyle, which tends to encourage not sleeping. Many decide to sacrifice sleep for the sake of deadlines, work and social outings. Not sleeping for the sake of a work deadline is something you probably already aim to avoid, sometimes unsuccessfully, but the idea that missing sleep because of a great party or a big night out may not seem like such a bad idea to you. You are probably willing to make the sacrifice, potentially wiping out your next day from being excessively tired, in exchange for a fun-filled evening. Everyone else does it and you don’t want to miss out on all the fun.

For me the decision whether or not to sacrifice sleep has always been one of opportunity cost. What do I potentially lose as a result of not sleeping well? Should I stay up to keep working longer or to stay at a party longer knowing that I’ll end up being tired the next day?

Some people operate better on no sleep than others and I’ve generally been the kind of person who always needs at least 8 hours to function properly. I also don’t enjoy that feeling of lack of sleep so 9 times out of 10 choose to get a full night sleep even if that means missing out on some potential fun (the fun factor generally drops for me as I get tired anyway).

In your case you know your body best. The only suggestion I have is that if you currently feel less than 100% take a look at your sleeping patterns and see if you can find a correlation between feeling your best with a good night’s sleep. I’m sure you will find that sleep is as important as food and exercise and deserves just as much attention when it comes to reducing your stress.

Balance

I’m sure you have heard this before - balance is key. The three factors - sleep, food and exercise - need to be in harmony. Build a lifestyle that optimizes those three variables specifically for your body, mind and lifestyle, and you will find that the other aspects of your life tend to work out well too.

Yaro Starak
Starship Exercisor

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I was sitting at the bus stop the other day. It was a Friday. I had spent the day leisurely - some work in the morning, then off to the city after lunch for some writing on my laptop at an Aroma’s cafe for a couple of hours. I had plans for a game of tennis with my friend Alborz for 7 PM that night.

I left the city to go home before tennis with what I thought was plenty of time to spare, at about 5 PM, a full two hours before I was due at the courts.

On the way home I got off the bus early to stop by the supermarket because I was almost out of milk.

I don’t like to play tennis without eating beforehand otherwise I run out of energy. I wanted to get home to have something to eat before playing.

I had to catch a Citycat (a river ferry) to get over to the tennis courts.

The mixture of these transportation variables and activities I wanted to do before tennis combined to create stress. Yes, I know you are probably laughing at me - “That’s not stress, I’ll tell you about stress!” you are thinking. I admit it wasn’t significantly stressful but in a life like mine this is about as stressful as it gets - enough stress that it sparked the concept for this article.

It’s All About Timing

I was standing at the bus stop to finish my journey home after buying my milk and a few other items from the supermarket, frustrated because I was hungry and annoyed that I managed to make a few activities stressful when I really didn’t need to. It didn’t help when I only had a $50 note for the bus driver and he couldn’t provide change.

To cut the story short, I managed to get everything done, had a snack, dressed for tennis, caught the ferry over the river, walked into the tennis centre and looked at my watch - 6:35PM - I was a full 25 minutes early. I couldn’t help but chuckle at myself.

While I was on the bus I was thinking about my “previous life” as a university student. Now those days were stressful. Exams, assignments, tutorials, lectures, lots of public transport and of course studying topics I really didn’t care too much about, combined to create tonnes of stress.

I thought back to one of the worst times - exam block - those few weeks when you have a bunch of exams at end of semester all at once. At around that time every year (right about now actually as I type this), at the end of May and early June, I would get sick. I’d get the flu and have the added pleasure of feeling physically miserable while I did assignments and studied for exams. My own personal hell that I’m sure many other university students are going through right now.

I can’t put my finger on exactly why, but ever since I’ve been my own boss and worked on precisely what I want to work on, I don’t get sick anymore (touch wood!). It could be that I no longer go to a university campus infested with other sick students all coughing and spluttering on each other, sharing the same computer equipment and congregating in small square tutorial room boxes in close proximity to each other.

Or it could be, and I think this has more to do with it - I don’t really get stressed anymore, and well gosh, I’m pretty happy most of the time too, which is not something I could say about my university life. Being happy, having no stress and being in control of your emotional state combine to create the most powerful immune system boost you could ever have.

You Are What You Think

I’m a firm believer that your mindstate very much influences your physical state. You can literally make yourself sick just by the way you think and the prime culprit of illness inducing thinking is stress. I’m fairly certain that if I asked you right now about when you have been crook (unwell) in the past, it almost always coincides with a period of high stress in your life.

The mind is powerful. I’m living proof of this as I’ve managed to change my thinking process so dramatically in the last few years that what used to be the biggest cause of problems in my life, is now the most powerful asset I have for dealing with potential negative influences. As I discussed previously in my article - The Key To Happiness - your self talk, self-awareness and the choices you consequently make, dictate your happiness (and other emotional states).

One of the main influences on my choice to work towards self employment as an Internet marketer was to remove all time based deadlines from my life. I didn’t want to be anywhere at any time unless I specifically chose to be. I constantly make choices that remove any deadlines from my life because I know for me, the way I work best, is to have no rigid deadlines.

No Deadlines (The word “Dead” is enough of a hint to avoid them…)

People are asking me when Blog Traffic School will be released. I answer by saying I don’t know. I have some loose likelihoods - the month I hope to be finished - but I am not committing to any specific timeframe because I’d rather give myself the time necessary to produce my best work, rather than rush something because of a deadline. That would create stress and reduce my output quality.

I’ve turned down speaking and networking opportunities that start before 9 AM because of my sleeping patterns. That one 9 AM start would ruin a full day for me because I’d miss some sleep and my output is terrible without sleep. I almost always choose my own physical health over anything else because I know that is the most important consideration for my success. Without my health I can’t achieve what I want to. Therefore, and this seems so logical to me, yet millions of people everyday make the opposite choice, I will always opt for a good nights sleep or a quality meal instead of pushing myself to work to meet a deadline, which in the grand scheme of things, has very little impact on my happiness, while my health certainly does.

When people look at my “working lifestyle” they are amazed at how relaxed it is. An hour or two of work here, another hour or two there. As I’ve written previously I don’t call it work, it’s what I do for enjoyment and satisfaction, but the label of “work” is necessary in order for most people to understand what I do. My average day has NO stress and I am not driven by deadlines, I’m driven by comfort and happiness. Can you say the same?

I used to get stressed when students would send in editing jobs to my business BetterEdit with short deadlines. I’d have to arrange projects sometimes with only a few hours before the deadline. Back when I was very gun-ho to get my business going I’d take on every project and I’d feel terrible if I couldn’t meet a deadline.

We’ve both matured past this now (that’s both me, and BetterEdit the business). When a job comes in I ask my editors if they can do it and respond matter-of-factly to clients “I’ll do my best, but no promises”. I won’t create stress in order to complete a $100 job, it’s just not worth it.

It’s amazing what happens when you disconnect yourself from what you have been trained to value so highly - money. Don’t create stress and make your life mentally and physically painful just for an extra buck. It is never, ever, worth it.

Is Time An Illusion?

I’m sure you have heard the phrase “Time is an illusion”. If it really is, then it has to be the most powerful illusion ever not to exist. Time is the single biggest cause of stress in our western culture. It’s amazing how much value we give it, how much influence it has on us and how it, or a lack of it, makes us sick.

Deadlines at work, during studies and in our social lives make life rushed. You feel as if you are running from place to place, meeting one deadline just to start work on meeting the next. During the worst times you feel as if you no longer have control over your own life, you forget why you created the deadlines in the first place and just work as fast as you can like a mindless automaton. You are always busy and if you are not you start to feel guilty. There has to be something wrong with that.

Then of course you look at the big picture and once again we seem to be rushing to achieve certain goals before we are 20, 25, 30, 40, 50 or 65 years old. Am I the only one who finds it funny that we count down our lives using a numerical system that just seems designed to make us feel like we are useless, out of date and underachieving? I’m constantly trying to forget my birthday so I can just be Yaro rather than a 26, nearly 27 year old male who should be earning so much money now and doing certain things because society says I should (and my peer group are too). It’s hard to forget how old you are though because you get presents on your birthday

How You Can Start To Remove Stress From Your Life

People have told me that some stress is a good thing. You need stress in order to push yourself to achieve things. I don’t agree with this, or at least I don’t think “stress” is the right label for it. You need desire, motivation and passion to achieve success, not stress. Stress is the result of letting time and money influence the way you live your life.

If you break things down, really evaluate what is important for you right now in this single moment, during this one day, then you will quickly realize most of the causes of your stresses are because you are running as fast as you can towards false idols. Don’t be in a hurry to get to tomorrow because you have been socially conditioned to do so. Don’t convince yourself that you HAVE to achieve something by the end of this year, resulting in stress, dissatisfaction and potential sickness, for the next six months. Don’t make stress because you want more money, that shiny new boat/car/house, just because the TV commercial told you it will make you happy or your neighbour just got one. No physical item has ever made anyone truly happy.

Adapt your life to what works for you. Afterall, you can only do the best you can with what you have been given. Each and every one of us has been given a different situation in life. We all have different strengths and weaknesses, freedoms and limitations. As you are the best judge of you, all you need to do to reduce your stress is to start listening to your feelings.

Flag the events, thoughts and situations that create stress. Figure out why they do (probably because of time based constraints or limitations or expectations you have created), then work to change these situations, remove them altogether if necessary. Then start hunting for the opposite - find what relaxes you or energizes or motivates, but doesn’t create stress. Work to imbue your life with more of these situations and you will find your life will slow down, your happiness will increase and your health will improve.

Stay Relaxed

The key to eliminating stress from your life is to relax. Doesn’t the polarity between those two words just seem so appropriate? Relax, don’t stress. Be in control of your emotions and your life. Don’t let your life control your emotions.

Do you hear this phrase repeated over and over from self development teachers and spiritual leaders?

“Enjoy the moment”

It’s true, so very true. If you enjoy the moment, the deadline doesn’t exist. If you take a step back, connect with where your true happiness comes from, you will realize that nothing has to happen today unless you want it to. Tomorrow is just as good, or the next day, or the next.

Yaro Starak
Living Today

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