I have had a taste of it and thus have every intention of getting back to self-sufficiency again. This time, however, I will arrange to do it without worrying about how I’m going to pay for rent, power, internet, food, etc.

For almost a year I was doing well as an online editor, writer and consultant. I was spoiled with a loyal word-of-mouth clientele that basically came to me with large, long-term projects. Life was good.

Projects come to an end, however, and one by one my clients went on to promote the work we had finished. Suddenly I found myself with no income  and no real idea of how to promote myself. In fact, I was not very motivated to drum up new clients whom I did not know through existing clients.

I was actually afraid to prospect for clients. So I did nothing.

Well, I did put this website together, but I have failed to commit to maintaining it. Not a good thing for someone who seeks to help other people build and maintain their online presence and write stellar, kick-butt ebooks. My excuse was that I was too busy working on other people’s websites and social media to keep up with my own. This was only partly true; I was still working on small projects here and there, but in all honestly those projects did not take so much time that I could not have spent a few minutes a day toward my own promotional needs. They certainly did not – and do not – provide a living wage.

It’s time for me to work toward making that living wage through my own efforts a reality again.

I know what to do with words and sentences and paragraphs, catchy headlines and content flow, and making Facebook, Twitter and your blog all play nice and talk to each other. I don’t know what to do to get you interested in paying me for it. That’s what I will be actively working toward now. Starting with my first new client: Me.

As someone who has lived most of my life in negativity, bitterness and anger, I can only shake my head and sigh over these comments by people who share my curse. It does seem to be a societal one and hard for people like us to get past.

But I am learning to get past it. And part of that has been learning to embrace the power in examples of simple belief, hope and positivity. As a result, my most recent experience is that you really can change your life – most importantly, the quality of your life – by simply changing your perspective. By changing your Mind.

Because of my innate negativity I’ve not gotten very far in my life, nor cared to because, you know, everything is dark and everything sucks and we’re fooling ourselves if we don’t see what helpless victims we really are so – why bother?

Success requires belief in possibilities. Negativity just kills belief and hope. People who channel defeatism do not get what they desire from life, which of course makes them more bitter and angry, to which their reaction is to feel even more victimized and helpless – and the cycle continues. And then those who do succeed, or even try to do better for themselves, are vilified and resented by those who choose not to work for it.

Success is not about money, though money seems to come with the territory because it is an effective tool for getting things done. People with a mission and a goal simply gather the tools they need to build what they want to see realized. It’s not about greed – it’s about creation.

Success is about quality of life. That is a state of mind. A positive state of mind. And that is attainable by all of us. You decide where to put your focus and energies. You choose.

As for myself, I now choose to feel better and I can’t tell you how much I learn and grow every day because of it – and feeling better than I used to feel is well worth changing my perspectives on things. I still have moments of deep darkness and despair, but I work my way out of them now. Wallowing is no longer comfortable and familiar to me. It’s not where I want to be anymore and I have chosen not to let negativity rule.

So you have a choice to make every day, and you do make that choice however unconsciously. You can make this a conscious daily choice right now.

How do you want to feel today?

It really is that simple.

American ingenuity is showing its head and apparently that is threatening to the powers that be. We can’t get jobs? Fine, we’ll figure out how to make money on our own, because it’s necessary. But now there are a whole slew of new taxes, new regulations, new barriers that serve no real purpose except to make it hard, or even impossible, for people like you and me to run their own small businesses profitably.

The real threat to big business is, consumers are now finding that they prefer small, local, independent businesses to the impersonal behemoth mega-entities, they prefer working with individuals they know and like, and gosh darn if they don’t get better products and services from the little guys, too. Plus, smaller businesses are quicker, more adaptable, more flexible, and more likely to serve individuals in more responsive, personalized ways.

If this trend continues, Americans might take over America and run things our own way. We might start taking our ideas about freedom seriously and paying attention if big government and big corporations let us get too successful and too neighborly with each other. We could gain a sense of ownership, involvement and accountability with our communities, cities, states, and country if we learn how to take charge of our own lives and livelihoods. And with a real individual, independent sense of personal power and stability, we might even be more accepting of others’ differences and Get Along Peacefully and Cooperatively.

Can’t have that, now, can we?

How are you leveraging your ingenuity, creativity and determination to stay prosperous? How are you and your colleagues overcoming these challenges, improving your lives, and changing the way business is done for the better?

by Alan De Keyrel

As soon as I opened Alan De Keyrel’s book JOBLESS (how to quit your day job and begin your climb to the top) I knew I had to read it. JOBLESS proved to be one of those can’t-put-it-down reads.

This is not a thick book, but it is dense with substance. The layout is open and inviting. De Keyrel employs a highly readable, friendly and conversational writing style, and his book is filled with his own personal experiences as a struggling – and eventually prospering – small business owner. His story is real and immediately accessible which is why his message hits home so strongly: We Can Relate. In fact, you will see yourself and your business more clearly than you ever have before.

Through his exceptional ability to communicate complex concepts in concise understandable language, De Keyrel delivers page after page of highly relevant and immediately useful information for anyone starting a business or trying to figure out how to make their existing business run better. You will see where you have dropped the ball and, more importantly, how you can put it back into play just when you think the game is over. You will see what you have done right and how to make it even better. And you will see it all through the eyes of a real guy who has done what you want to do and made it work.

The book begins with some review of basic business principles, then moves quickly into discussing the things that get in our way and shut us down, the question of whether you own the business or the business owns you, and personal goal setting explained in a way that cuts through all the excuses you’ve ever used to avoid writing things down and figuring them out. De Keyrel shows us it’s just not that hard; we’re actually working harder avoiding the processes that will move us forward than simply getting things done would be.

JOBLESS covers an amazing range of topics, from operations to image to attitude to expertise. De Keyrel emphasizes the importance of people to your business – employees, colleagues, community, family and friends – in a manner that is usually never discussed in other business books. He also shows you what to do with social media, blogs, newsletters and, most importantly, your website. He tells you how to get noticed in all the right ways without the need for a huge promotional budget.

By the time you finish reading JOBLESS you will have more tools than you ever knew existed to build your small business into a bigger business that you can feel good about and be proud of, that you won’t have to kill yourself running, and that will sustain you and your family for many years to come.

by Linda A. Hill

People tend to naturally lean toward the dynamics of leadership, or the structure of management. Only rarely are both talents innately present in equal measure, but both are necessary to some degree in each capacity. As a management position is likely in my future at some point, I want to better understand how management differs from leadership, how aspects of supervision and management compare, and how one can balance leadership aptitudes with management skills.

“Becoming a Manager” by Linda A. Hill is not like other how-to books; it is a progressive dissection of case studies detailing how a group of first-time managers learned about management during their first year in the position. This is a ground-level examination of the frustrations, illuminations, and basic growing pains former producing employees experienced as they transitioned out of one functional capacity and into a completely different and unexpected new role within their companies.

Because of this experiential insight, “Becoming a Manager” is a much deeper learning tool for anyone either becoming a manager for the first time, or wanting to understand how to better supervise new managers by seeing exactly what they are seeing – and what they are not.

With this book, I have a much clearer expectation of what I will encounter as a manager, how my supervisory experience benefits me in a managerial role, and how to avoid the pitfalls other new managers fall into.