Blog
Well here we are in Dubai and I have a good signal to send this blog which is great news. The Hilton Doubletree is a fabulous hotel and we went to see the Burj Khalifa yesterday up to the 124th floor in 60 seconds as well as the famous fountain show which was spectacular.
This is all very nice but I am here to work and on Sunday I start with a vengeance. I have 4 meetings on Sunday, 3 on Monday and 3 on Tuesday. These are all various contacts I have made through connections I have in England and a big thank you to them all! This is a great example of the law of Sow and Reap in action.
Amazing People!
None of these people who gave me leads had to help me – they chose to help out of the goodness of their hearts. On some occasions they had to interact with me several times which was time out of their day but it really helped me. Without these amazing people I would have maybe 2 -3 meetings set up instead I have 10 plus a radio interview on the Dubai Eye Business Show at 7.15am on a local radio station on Tuesday.
I don’t have any guarantees that I will get any business from these meetings, but what I do know is that my chances have increased because of their generosity in time and contacts. They could easily have ignored my request for help or told me that they didn’t have any suitable contacts – but they didn’t and that has really impressed me.
I needed to change
I am indebted to them for this and I believe because they have helped me they will be rewarded somehow. The law of Sow and Reap is something I really believe in which says that whatever you do, you will get back in some way. If you do positive things you will get positive things back, if you do negative things you will receive negative things back.
In the distant past I have to admit that I found it hard to share contacts and information with other people fearing that I was giving away things and that somehow I would lose out. But I have learned that the opposite is actually true. You have to be wise with what you do share but on the whole helping people when you receive a request for help is the best way to live.
Helping people makes you feel amazing
To be generous, kind and helpful seems to bring with it a peaceful and happy life. By helping others you appear to benefit yourself, even though you don’t do it for that reason. So the more you help others the better your life seems to become. I have said for many years now that one of the ways to true deep happiness is to help others.
The emotions you experience when you help someone are quite unique. You can’t buy them, you can’t find them in any other way than in helping others. There is a very deep feeling of joy when you do this and even though it may involve hassle and time, the benefits are always worth it. There seems to be a deep inner desire to help others within us, but we seem to process these feelings with logic and often turn down these opportunities.
Things change when You change
Since I have been aware of this principle I have tried to apply it whenever I can and it seems to work not only on an emotional level but on a physical level – things actually happen as a result of being kind, generous and helpful. I have studied many of the truly successful people who seem to have a complete balance to their lives, and they all seem to adopt this philosophy.
We will see what comes from these meetings I have here. I will give it my best shot and see if I can either get leads to follow up, or interest from the people I am meeting for some coaching, training or speaking in the future. I see this first trip as an information gathering trip with the hope that this leads to follow up trips to deliver some training, coaching or speaking.
As someone said ‘you have to be in it to win it.’ So at least I am here with the chance of something happening. If nothing does happen from this, then as least I can move on with my business knowing that I haven’t missed a key opportunity and I can sleep well at night.
Thoughts for the week:
Consider the philosophy of Sow and Reap and see what opportunities present themselves to help people along their journey
1. Feel as good as you can all day long, as this will bring more good feelings during the day. Use the reframe technique to help with this, which is on page 125 of my book Off the Wall
2. Have a think about people you know or someone famous who seem to live a happy balanced life and observe whether they come across as helpful and friendly
3. We have spoken before about money not being the answer to happiness. The balanced life has much more – including happy relationships and healthy human interaction
4. Make a list of the times you have helped someone no matter how small. If you don’t have much on the list consider making it a priority for a short while and see what happens
Well that’s it from Dubai. Have a great week and stay positive.
Warm regards
John