From Decorating to Dubai

I find it hard to believe but this coming Thursday Julie and I are flying to Dubai to see if I can establish contacts out there for potential work. I already have 5 business meetings set up with a further 3 potentials. This has been a dream of mine for around 3 years and it has finally arrived. Someone I met this week said the following – ‘Have a Passion for something, Visualise it and take Action to achieve it.’

When I first set up my business 5 years ago many of you will know that I had to decorate for the first two and a half years to pay my mortgage and bills. It was very tough and I didn’t enjoy it but I did what I had to do. Zig Ziglar a great American motivation speaker put it so well when he said: ‘Do what you have to do, when you have to do it, and the day will come when you can do what you want to do, when you want to do it.’

Visualise your Dreams

So I did what I had to do, which was to paint another room. Two and a half years ago everything changed when I stopped decorating and started working seriously on my business. Slowly but surely by applying all the principles in my book ‘Off the Wall’ I have developed a very nice business helping people through coaching, training and speaking.

One of the techniques I am a keen advocate of is developing a Dream Board. This is where you put things you want to achieve on a piece of paper in picture form (like a Bucket List in pictures). I visualise all of the things I want to achieve every morning. There is a power to visualisation and I really believe that things come into your life quicker if you visualise on a regular basis. I have 4 images of Dubai on my board and have visualised myself there hundreds of times

Amazed to be an author

Being a published author still amazes me as English was one of my worst subjects in school, but now that I have written one book I feel there are more to come. When I was still decorating and dreaming of Dubai, I had the idea for a book title which was quite interesting. I believed it would be my first book if I ever got round to writing one. The name of the book I had in mind was ‘From Decorating to Dubai.’

I felt the book would be about the journey people are prepared to take to achieve their dreams and the price they are prepared to pay. While I was decorating I kept a diary of everything I was going through and I can’t wait to read those notes which will no doubt bring back painful memories. I have a large number of words recorded ready for this book.

You can’t do it on your own

One thing that is critical for this book to be written is that I need to be getting paid for work in Dubai. Not just visiting but actually being paid. It was so unrealistic in those early years when I was decorating, yet I still visualised Dubai every day; and have done so to this day.

Because Dubai was still a distant dream, the idea for my first book ‘Off the Wall’ based on my Mental Resilience workshop came to mind, so I took action and started writing. With the help of my book coach Gail, my mentor Stuart Ross and my sister Christina the book ‘Off the Wall’ was launched in October 2015.

The pain of decorating

The pain I went through during the two and a half years of decorating both physical and mental was extreme at times, and I must admit that on many occasions I wanted to quit. But in my mind I had this Passion for doing something to help people and change lives and I hung in there.

I will not start writing this book until I have secured and delivered my first speaking, coaching or training workshop in Dubai. This means that the book may never be written because I cannot control circumstances but what I can do is stay Passionate, Visualise working out there and take Action, then let’s see what happens.

Thoughts for the week

1. Have a think about what you are passionate about
2. What do you find easy to do
3. What do you enjoy doing work wise
4. What hobbies do you enjoy
5. Consider a Dream board to project some things into the future
6. You may be very happy in your job so this may be to achieve the extra things in life
7. Write some things down on paper that you would like to achieve
8. Find images which represent these dreams
9. Visualise having already achieved these things in your life
10. Stay Passionate, Visualise and take Action

That’s it for this week. I will try to send a blog next week from Dubai.

Have a great week and stay positive.

Warm regards

John