For me, life is too short to spend hours watching TV, so I catch the news in the evening, and occasionally watch a movie. That’s been the pattern for years until coverage of the Winter Olympics in Vancouver started.

There is something much more fascinating and compelling about sport at the Olympic level than at other major events. Is it because the athletes are striving for not only their personal glory, but also their country’s honour?

Is it because for many athletes it is the culmination of 4 or more years of dedication to a relentless training schedule, fighting injury and pain and often putting the rest of their lives on hold?

Or is it because of the publicity and media saturation? Or the sheer number of different events in a short space of time?

Whatever the reason, watching the events provides many valuable lessons for entrepreneurs.

Firstly the dedication and commitment to hours of training over a long period, for most of that time, with no certainty that they will qualify for their national team.

Without a clear goal and a vision of winning a medal, how many people will maintain that degree of commitment for years?

Contrast this with so many would-be Network and Internet Marketers who are unable to maintain that level of commitment to their business for even a few weeks or months.

Secondly, focus. Focusing during years of training, on only what is critical to achieveing the level of fitness and skill to put in a world class performance. Ignoring distractions.

At the start and during the event, being able to focus 100% on winning that medal, ignoring pain, the weather or fear of failure. Even to the extent of competing with 4 broken ribs as was the case with an athlete in the 15km ski event.

Thirdly, not relaxing for even a blink of an eye until that goal is achieved, how many races were won by a few hundredths of a second?
The difference between Gold medal and 5th place in the womens skeleton race was inches.

Many countries award cash bonuses to their medal winners, so a five hundredths of a second gap between Gold and Silver could cost the second place finisher up to $5000 depending on their National Olympic organisation’s generosity.

That works out to $6 million dollars a minute!

Of course, we understand that Olympians are competing for the achievement and honour, not the cash.

Just for a moment, look at that in terms of our businesses, if a few minutes of extra effort, or a few ounces of extra energy every hour could generate even a small fraction of that sort of return, would we make that extra phone call, spend more time improving our sales copy or perhaps write an extra blog post each week?

Makes you think doesn’t it?

Wishing you success in all your endeavours.

Perseverance and Resilience are both essential values for marketers, entrepreneurs, and self employed professionals.

Frequently, people see them as the same or similar character traits. I disagree, based on a long, exhilirating and sometimes dangerous life in Africa, I believe that both are vitally important for a successful life, but each is needed at different times and for different levels of adversity or challenge.

In a nut shell, Perseverance keeps us going when we are convinced that we are on the right track, but we are just not getting enough traction to get to our destination.

Resilience enables us to build a new track, fix the locomotive and start all over again when the wheels come off.

Here is an example from my own life:

In 1990, after a successful career as a marketing manager with a large corporation, I started a small food packing and export trading business. I suffered from all the usual problems, lack of capital, large bank loans, staff problems, difficult customers, unreliable joint venture partners. Perseverance kept me going until 3 years later, I had a very nice income, a good home on a piece of land where I could keep my horses, 4 cars including the obligatory fancy BMW and cash in the bank.

A short year later, it was all gone, outbreaks of civil war in the two countries that accounted for 90% of my business wiped out my income. To compound the problem, large shipments in transit to these countries were diverted to safe harbours. I had paid for some of the goods up front, there were large amounts due for the balance within 30days. My customers had disappeared, and now I was faced with escalating storage costs for the cargo. I had signed personal guarantees for several business purchases, my marriage was in the last stage of failure, one of my sons had 2 bad accidents and because of political changes happening in South Africa, I could not sell my house. The same changes made the prospect of getting a job remote.

The end result was that I walked away from that with my clothes, 2 horses (but no where to keep them) and a few personal possessions, not even a vehicle.

My track had gone, no amount of Perseverance would get me going again. This is where Resilience came in, with assistance from my family, I moved to a different country, worked for my brother until I could get enough consulting work to keep me going, then started another business. Finally developing a successful farming enterprise – then losing it all again through politics, but that is another story.

The bottom line is that Resilience lets us bounce back, to make the choice to be a survivor not a victim. Perseverance helps us keep focused on our vision and keep on keeping on. We need both.

Do you have the perseverance and resilience to keep moving forward?

Wishing you success in all your endeavours.

Today’s post is by Jennifer Froggatt and is especially for readers in the United Kingdom.

What I like about Jennifers article is how she points out that this can be a difficult time of year for many people and how the added stresses that she mentions can make our problems seem insurmountable.

Over to Jennifer –

A new year brings with it the promise of better things and the motivation to achieve them. Unfortunately the months after January don’t offer so much hope. By this time of year we are all feeling a little down, bills are coming in and our motivation is on a downward spiral.

Motivation is the key to life, with out it we lack the enthusiasm we need to push ourselves forward. Be that in our careers, social life, housing situation, in our relationships or any other part of our lives we want to improve. Once we lose our motivation it is extremely hard to get ourselves back on track. Even the threats of repossession, or even a new child may not be enough, if anything they can just add to the pressure and our motivation takes another blow.

Finding ways to improve motivation is difficult to say the least. Life coaching may seem an unusual approach but it is a very effective means to boost your enthusiasm. Life coaching helps you find out why you are suffering a lack of motivation, finding the root cause. The life coach then helps you work out ways to deal with these root causes in a positive manner, and your motivation should then soar.

Life Coach Directory is an easy and effective way to find a qualified and insured life coach near you. You can search via postcode, town or county to find your closest life coach. You can see each coach’s qualifications, experience, expertise, fees and contact details. Why not make a visit today and get your motivation back on track.
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So if you are stalled in an area of your life and just cannot get going again on your own consider coaching.

Wishing you success in all your endeavours.

Disclaimer: I do not receive any financial advantage from the website mentioned in this post. Some of the links elsewhere on this blog are to sites of which I am a compensated affiliate.