Blog
Tomorrow morning Julie and I are flying to Dubai for 12 days where I will be delivering my Mental Resilience Masterclass to the staff of the British University in Dubai. When we were last in Dubai in November I met with the Vice Chancellor of the University Professor Abdullah. Since then we have been in discussions and we finally arrived at an agreement for me to deliver the Masterclass to his staff.
This is very exciting because this is the first time we are going to Dubai with guaranteed paid work. Last year we went to Dubai on three occasions with the goal of trying to establish some business there and we have finally achieved that. While we are out there I have 3 other meetings already set up with substantial organisations.
We went to Dubai to try to find business
Each time we went to Dubai I could see the potential for business growing, but there was no guarantee that this would happen. I had to believe that this was possible and my Dream Board helped me to believe. My Dream Board is basically a ‘bucket list’ of things I want to achieve, but in pictures rather than words. Pictures ‘paint a thousand words’ and there seems to be more power in pictures than in words.
Just over three years ago, I developed my Dream Board and I currently have around 25 pictures of things I want to achieve together with Julie. We have a picture of homeless people because we want to help them in the future, we also have a picture of an orphanage for the same reason. You won’t be surprised that I have a couple of pictures of Dubai still on the board.
The Dream Board works
We have pictures of some of the most stunning places in the world we want to visit. We have three pictures of the USA because that is a dream of ours too. When I was decorating just three short years ago, to pay the bills before my business took off, I was in debt and working as a decorator on £80 a day. My future looked bleak and I was on my own with very little to look forward to.
This is when I discovered the Dream board and the critical importance of maintaining a positive mindset in the worst of circumstances. I developed a series of techniques to help me stay positive most of the day no matter what was happening in my life. By doing this I noticed things turning around, so I carried on with more intensity. Every morning I spend about 20 minutes visualising the dreams on my board as if I have achieved each one.
Positive feelings bring good things to our lives
I can feel the feelings of each achievement, I can see it, I can hear the sounds, I can even taste the food I am eating to celebrate. By doing this each morning as well as reading a page or two from a couple of motivation books, I find myself in a very positive state of mind to start the day. This means that if I take a knock during the day it doesn’t take much to get back up again.
My belief is that the feelings we experience daily are important to our future. If we feel more than 50% positive during the day we are winning and bringing good things to our future. Gratitude is a key, as is forgiveness. Recently I have delivered successful keynote talks to groups of solicitors and University Students as well as highly effective Masterclasses for organisations.
Hard Rock Café
To add another positive to dreaming and believing, I have just heard that the Hard Rock Café in Dubai have booked me to run my Mental Resilience Keynote for their staff on the 4th April which is amazing. Self-belief is one of the 5 key pillars I speak about and it really is key to persistence.
I will never take for granted this opportunity to help and inspire people to achieve more.
Thoughts for the week:
1. What do you really believe you can achieve?
2. Have you set limits on what you can achieve?
3. You may have created a belief system which tells you how far you can go – but it may not be real
4. You need to challenge your belief system and tell yourself that maybe you can achieve more
5. When was the last time you dreamed about things you wanted to achieve?
6. Go away somewhere quiet and list off the things you want to achieve then create your own dream board and see what happens.
I have a full chapter on how to create your own Dream Board in my book which is on offer below.
Well that’s it for this week – the next one will be from Dubai.
Have a wonderful weekend and stay positive.
Warm regards
John
Off the Wall – How to Develop World Class Mental Resilience available here