Archive for the ‘Guest Posts’ Category
On the Tenth Day of Christmas – Baby Steps Into the Free World
Baby Steps into the Free World: How to Put Yourself First & Succeed
Hello readers of Leaders of the Free World! I’m Dena and I’m a big fan of this blog and of Andrew’s mission to free us all from the trenches of corporate slavery! I first fell in love with Andrew’s writing when I read his guest post, Corporate Fluff a few months back. As a former cubicle monkey and a current 9 to 5 monkey myself, I could relate to everything that he was saying. Bring down the man! Follow your passion! Focus on providing the maximum value to the end user and cut out the middle men! It all made perfect sense to me. I was leaping out of my chair. I was fired up and ready to make moves… and then the reality hit me.
I am tens of thousands of dollars in student loan debt, and I am not ready to make that leap.
Call it cowardly, call it what you will, but I’m just not ready. I am determined to pay down this debt. I am making enormous sacrifices, working hard, and even practicing the fine art of frugality. And one day soon, I will be ready to join the ranks of The Free World! But for now, I’m still doing the 9 to 5; but here’s the key, I’m doing it my way, having a decent time of it, and learning a hell of a lot along the way.
In this post, I will teach you how you can take baby steps into The Free World by putting yourself first, no matter what your circumstances. Follow these five steps and you will be on the quick path to the Free World.
1. Focus on the Positive
Focusing on the positive is the key to life. Seriously, if you can manage to shift your thought to focus on the positive things around you, you will succeed every single time. It’s really simple — focus on the negative and be miserable, depressed, and unsuccessful or — focus on the positive and be happy, fulfilled, and successful. Which one will you choose?
“A man is but the product of his thoughts. What he thinks, he becomes.” —Mohandas Gandhi
No matter what your job is, there are good points about it. Whether you like it or not, the economy sucks right now. Approximately 195 million people around the world are unemployed and that statistic was taken before the economy took its recent nosedive. Whatever your job is, you are making money. Maybe you can afford to put food in your child’s mouth, maybe you can afford to put a shirt on your own back, maybe you can afford a lot of things and every time you start to complain, think about all of the people who can’t do those things. Think about the mother who can’t put food in her baby’s mouth or the man on the street, in the snow, who doesn’t have a shirt on his back. It’s harsh, but it’s true.
Aside from a paycheck, I know that there are a lot of other really good things about your job. Maybe it’s the view from the window on the second floor or the smile on the janitor’s face in the afternoon or maybe you are the janitor and it’s the steaming hot cup of coffee that you enjoy each morning at the start of your shift. Whatever it is, it’s there. You have to find it.
There are lots of little things to be grateful for, focus on those. …Or focus on the negatives and be miserable. You decide.
2. Never Accept Less Than You Deserve
My attitude toward life goes something like this: I am going to shine at every single thing that I do. I am going to work my ass off until I see positive results. When I fall, I am going to get back up—every, single, time. If you can honestly say that you take that approach in your own life, then you’d better be looking out for yourself along the way.
You’ve got to look out for yourself, because if you don’t do it, no one will. Some people will perceive your kindness and hard work ethic as a weakness. They will try to take advantage of you. The fact is that there are people who refuse to adopt a positive or fair attitude and they will remain miserable. They will try everything to drag you down with them. The key is to never let those people get to you. When they pop up, you keep moving. Pity them, show them kindness, but don’t ever stop on your path. Just keep going.
Take the steps to make sure that you are never taken advantage of. Keep track of your accomplishments, prove yourself, and excel at each task that you tackle. If you are working hard and giving it your all, make sure that you are being compensated & appreciated accordingly. If you are consistently giving 110% but never see the pay off, let it be known.
I recently went to my boss and asked for a substantial raise. I made sure that what I was asking for was legitimate, did my homework, and presented my case. I was scared as hell! But you can not imagine how gratifying it was to stand up for myself — even before I got a positive answer, I felt like a million bucks.
You’ve got to see the good in people but you’ve also got to be realistic. Make sure that you get what you deserve, nothing less.
3. Keep Your Eye on the Prize
Like I said above, I want to enter The Free World and I am getting closer everyday. I am experimenting with all sorts of liberating things lately — blogging, passive income, options trading, freelancing, etc. There are hundreds of paths to take in order to get where you want to be; but you’ve got to remember your goals.
Right now one of my main priorities is to pay down my student loan debt. Sometimes that means sacrifice. If I score a small freelance gig that generates some extra cash, I do not head to the shopping mall and I buy myself a new purse. I take that money and I apply it toward my debt!
The principle is simple. If you are doing something that is taking you further away from your goal — stop now! Every single thing that you do should take you one step closer to reaching your goal.
4. Know When to Take a Break
Whether you are close to the end of your journey to the Free World or just at the beginning, there’s something you’ve always got to remember: You Come First. You need to take time out of every single day for you. Whether that means a cup of coffee in the morning or an hour of yoga after work, you must take time to clear & focus your mind at least once a day, preferably more.
What makes you happy — Long, quiet walks? Blasting out your ear drums with your Ipod? Writing in a journal? Taking your kids to the park? Whatever it is, embrace it! Work is hard work. Life is hard work. We are all just trying to get by and if we forget to take the time out to do what we love, what centers & focuses us, then we stand no chance to accomplish our goals.
Whether your ambition is to be a globe-trotting blogger or the CEO of a Fortune 500, you must remember that You Come First. Too many people climb their way to the top only to suffer a massive heart attack at age 50, or to look back and discover that there was never an ounce of passion or love.
At the end of the day, there is a lot more to life than money, fortune, and fame. Practice living with intention and you will find the balance between a life of fulfillment and a life of success.
5. Don’t Ever Give Up
It is not going to be easy, but anything that is worth it in the end rarely is.
“Never give in, never give in, never, never, never, never.” —Sir Winston Churchill
You’ve got to keep a positive outlook, fight for yourself, stay focused, and know when to take a break. If you can keep those things at the front of your mind, then you will be on a sure path to success and your way to The Free World in no time at all. You are going to fall down, I can promise you that, but you are also going to get back up—every, single, time.
Remember that I am right here beside you, cheering you on!
~~~
Dena is an aspiring full-time blogger from Northern New Jersey, USA. Her passion/purpose in life is to infuse light & joy into the hearts of as many people as possible. She carries out this mission at her blog, Evolution. You can also find her on Facebook and Twitter.
A Festive Guest Post – The Crispness of Christmas
When Andrew asked me if I fancied writing a festive guest post for his ‘12 days of Christmas’ (or is it ‘Crispness’?) series, I went back and re-read the first entry, to try and get down with the spirit of the thing. You know, extrapolate ideas, see if there was anything I could copy, make sure I didn’t re-use his jokes, that sort of thing.
I came away thinking a couple of deep thoughts. Firstly, “Why is that lettuce wearing a woolly hat? Didn’t he steal that from me?” Second, “I think Christmas probably gets a bit too much crap for being aggressively consumerist, doesn’t it?”
Don’t get me wrong, shopkeepers have far too towering an erection for festivity. If I wanted to buy Christmas lights in July, I’d expect society to section me, not encourage it. And I dread to think about the carbon footprint of some houses’ decorations. I hope they had the decency to assemble their own power station in the back garden.
Having said that: It’s nice, isn’t it? It’s happy in a really over the top way. It might be garish, but this is a garish season. The people who use only the most tasteful of wrapping paper and discrete fairy lights are few and far between. And even if you are those people, it’s hardly fair to deny others their Christmas. No-one is forcing you to look at it. (Unless you live across the road, I suppose.)
It’s easy to get down on the festive season for being tacky and somehow undeserving of time, when we think that time is better spent on side projects and escaping to Glorious Freedom. But if we don’t go out and have some fun occasionally, we will be boring, tired and just plain obsessed. Christmas is a gleeful combination of tacky entertainment and deeper meaning, why not embrace it for a few days a year?
I should probably be less enthusiastic about the bright-red, fur-trimmed dark side of Christmas, as I have my very own achingly cool cynic’s lifestyle blog and I can feel my credibility leaking away.
But to hell with it. It’s Christmas time, and that means time off questing for the almighty higher goal, for at least a few days. The New Year will be here soon enough, bringing hours to reflect upon the year gone by, plan for the future and get thoroughly drunk. But for now, let’s embrace buying stuff.
Remember: They would not sell life-size reindeer replicas made of elastic bands if there was not an audience for them. This is what the people want. We will not change the nature of Christmas celebrations by moaning about it.
Nick Bryan of Feeding the Black Dog and Behatted fame is a writer of all things humourous, snarky, educational and amusing. A frequent guest of the Free World, this is the second time he’s been kind enough to write an article for the site. I’d recommend you head over to Nick’s blog for a daily dose of the real world.
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The Great Freedom Sample Exercise
Well it’s nice to know that I’m not the only one who likes to procrastinate in the free world. Back when i was serving my sentence I used to marvel at the thought of turning my 65 hour work week into my ‘own’ productive time. Once I get past the sleeping in, nipping to the shops and putting off jobs, I’ll let you know how it goes.
Nick Bryan, a fantastic writer from feeding the black dog took time out of his suspense filled comic strip drama of hats, tea cosies and beanies at behatted and was nice enough to write a guest post for the free world.
The Great Freedom Sample Exercise
Recently, I took a week off work, for no particular reason. Well, there was a clear justification, namely to use up my paid holiday. But I’d been to Ireland for a holiday with my girlfriend fairly recently, didn’t have any drive to go anywhere else and, above all, am reliably awful at organising anything.
So, with nothing to do, I decided that my week of nothingness would serve as a Great Freedom Experiment. I could work out whether I could organise my own time, launch a project, push it, exploit my tiny amount of contacts and, above all, drastically increase the number of tweets on my Twitter account. Did I succeed?
Well… kinda.
Beginning
I’d been toying for a while beforehand with the notion of launching a “Proper Blog” and trying to run it in an efficient, meaningful manner. Make my name as an Internet Writer, try to earn a few pennies from stringing words together, feed the tiny boxed ego that longs to be published in any form, all that stuff. This seemed as good a time as any.
Luckily, much of the tedious blog-starting stuff had already been done. So Monday, my first day of fake-freedom, was launch day. And I’m pleased to report it was pretty excellent, perhaps even too excellent.
The blog went live, people emailed me, I was spotlighted by a helpful friend, comments happened, I wrote more. It felt good, verging on awesome. But, as you will know if you ever see a movie, when a new venture starts off awesome, the reality check is inevitable.
Middle
Things kept going well for a while, but by Wednesday it began to feel… subdued. I hadn’t gone out for a while; the obvious victories weren’t coming as quickly. I even started chatting to work people via IM about, um, the work I was meant to be on holiday from.
And yes, that tweet count shot way up. I sighed, organised a few social occasions and duly escaped, telling myself I’d at least achieved something.
End
Around the end of the week, or perhaps the weekend, I started to worry I wasn’t handling my semi-mancipation especially well. I was a little lonely, very unmotivated and had started procrastinating to a degree that swallowed hours in a single gulp.
Eventually, I wandered off back to my parents’ house, and spent a fairly enjoyable few days of drinking with old friends and blogging on their sofa. Which, all told, was an upbeat end to a lukewarm week.
So, Can We Learn Anything From This Farce?
There’s a lot of writing about the joys of freedom and whatnot, especially in the “blogosphere”. So much so that the ongoing bloody hard work involved, as well as the degree of single-minded concentration, may be somewhat overlooked.
Did I fail? Not exactly. I think it might be something I could enjoy if I were able to establish a routine. (Perhaps one involving a decent laptop and writing in differing locations.) But nor did I take to it like a fox to an overflowing trash can.
With no deadlines or superiors hovering over you, motivation becomes your own task. It’s something I’ve never had to do, and I’m fast realising I have to practise. Balancing this with day-to-day tasks and, y’know, having a life, it wouldn’t be easy. But this is the real world, and occasionally realism kicks idealism. We’ll just have to see what happens.
Recently, I took a week off work, for no particular reason. Well, there was a clear justification, namely to use up my paid holiday. But I’d been to Ireland for a holiday with my girlfriend fairly recently, didn’t have any drive to go anywhere else and, above all, am reliably awful at organising anything.
So, with nothing to do, I decided that my week of nothingness would serve as a Great Freedom Experiment. I could work out whether I could organise my own time, launch a project, push it, exploit my tiny amount of contacts and, above all, drastically increase the number of tweets on my Twitter account. Did I succeed?
Well… kinda.
Beginning
I’d been toying for a while beforehand with the notion of launching a “Proper Blog” and trying to run it in an efficient, meaningful manner. Make my name as an Internet Writer, try to earn a few pennies from stringing words together, feed the tiny boxed ego that longs to be published in any form, all that stuff. This seemed as good a time as any.
Luckily, much of the tedious blog-starting stuff had already been done. So Monday, my first day of fake-freedom, was launch day. And I’m pleased to report it was pretty excellent, perhaps even too excellent.
The blog went live, people emailed me, I was spotlighted by a helpful friend, comments happened, I wrote more. It felt good, verging on awesome. But, as you will know if you ever see a movie, when a new venture starts off awesome, the reality check is inevitable.
Middle
Things kept going well for a while, but by Wednesday it began to feel… subdued. I hadn’t gone out for a while; the obvious victories weren’t coming as quickly. I even started chatting to work people via IM about, um, the work I was meant to be on holiday from.
And yes, that tweet count shot way up. I sighed, organised a few social occasions and duly escaped, telling myself I’d at least achieved something.
End
Around the end of the week, or perhaps the weekend, I started to worry I wasn’t handling my semi-mancipation especially well. I was a little lonely, very unmotivated and had started procrastinating to a degree that swallowed hours in a single gulp.
Eventually, I wandered off back to my parents’ house, and spent a fairly enjoyable few days of drinking with old friends and blogging on their sofa. Which, all told, was an upbeat end to a lukewarm week.
So, Can We Learn Anything From This Farce?
There’s a lot of writing about the joys of freedom and whatnot, especially in the “blogosphere”. So much so that the ongoing bloody hard work involved, as well as the degree of single-minded concentration, may be somewhat overlooked.
Did I fail? Not exactly. I think it might be something I could enjoy if I were able to establish a routine. (Perhaps one involving a decent laptop and writing in differing locations.) But nor did I take to it like a fox to an overflowing trash can.
With no deadlines or superiors hovering over you, motivation becomes your own task. It’s something I’ve never had to do, and I’m fast realising I have to practise. Balancing this with day-to-day tasks and, y’know, having a life, it wouldn’t be easy. But this is the real world, and occasionally realism kicks idealism. We’ll just have to see what happens.
Head over to feeding the black dog for a nice dose of daily cynicism or for something a bit more light hearted check out behatted.
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Why You Don’t Need to Go to School to Be Successful
When I started leadersofthefreeworld.org, one of the objectives was that it could act as a forum for everyone to unite against the norm! I’m very pleased to publish the very first guest post on Leaders of the Free World! Oscar Del Ben from freestyle mind was kind enough to contribute his personal experience as to why you don’t need to go to school to be successful.
Why You Don’t Need to Go to School to Be Successful
I always wondered why schools suck the way they do. I left school when I was 18 because I was simply not learning something useful at that time.
This happened over four years ago. Once I left school, I went to work for more than one year doing manual labor tasks for small companies. I didn’t enjoy it and my parents (along with everyone else) were saying to me that without school I was going to be stuck with laboring for my whole life.
Of course I knew it was just bullshit and after one year I established my own company and started doing consulting. Now, four years later, I’m expanding my business on the internet as I want to create (and live) off passive income. It’ll not be easy but that’s not a reason for me to give up just yet.
What does this story have to do with school? Well, in these four years I studied a lot, I devoured hundreds of books and learnt a foreign language (english).
At some point during the past four years, I realized that the reason people are not successful is simply because of what they learnt at school, or better what they didn’t learn at school.
Being successful is primarily a state of mind. If you don’t have it, it doesn’t matter how much money you have in the bank, you’ll be never be happy. On the other side, having the right mindset makes it straightforward to achieve success.
The problem is that they don’t teach you how to be successful at school, you have to learn it yourself.
School prepares people to join the corporate world, they teach you how to work in a corporate environment, and not how to become a leader.
Here I’m talking about 90% of schools, because I haven’t attended Stanford University, so I don’t know what they do, although most of their courses are available for free online.
And here’s the point – If you want to learn how to be successful and how to develop a successful mindset, you can learn it from books and videos thanks to the Internet.
And you don’t have to buy some secret guide that someone is trying to sell online, you can go just fine with what you can already find for free.
Having said that, schools are not that bad, simply don’t expect them to teach you how to be a leader, because you have to learn it yourself.
Oscar Del Ben is a personal development blogger. He writes about productivity, success and personal growth. You can read his blog at freestylemind.com.
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