What do you worry about?  Some common concerns are loss of income, your house burning down, losing your children, getting sick and not being able to pay for your medical expenses, not being able to afford to retire, having your home broken into, children getting run over, your car being stolen.

The first step in protecting yourself, so you never have to waste any more energy worrying about these things again, is to define what you have to lose and how it could be lost.  Then you can work out what strategies you can put into place to protect yourself against these possibilities.

One method of protection, which covers many of the main concerns, is insurance.  There are many different types of insurance to meet different people’s needs but most people should have some insurance cover of some sort.  There are general insurances that cover things like your house, your contents and your car.  Then there is personal insurance such as life insurance and income protection insurance that covers loss of income through illness or death.  Other insurance such as medical insurance covers medical costs when you need it.  See an expert to find out what best suits your needs and budget, because when you need it, it’s too late.

As well as the financial side of being well protected there are many simple things you can do to protect yourself.  Set up family systems so everyone knows what to do if there is a fire, or someone gets lost when you’re out and about.  Set clear rules about wearing seatbelts and not playing on the road.  Install smoke alarms and adequate locks on doors and windows.  Always lock your car and don’t leave anything valuable in view.  Start a savings plan so you have an emergency fund if you need it.  Pay your bills on time and minimise debt.  Have a current will that clearly states who will care for your children and who gets what if you die.

Being well protected doesn’t mean focussing on the doom and gloom and all possible disasters.  It means never having to worry about the “what-ifs’ ever again because you know that you have the systems in place to deal with anything that could happen.  This leaves you free to get on with enjoying life today!

By Jacqui Thomas

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The quick facts: 
*  The motivation to avoid pain is usually stronger than the motivation to gain pleasure. 
*  Most people focus on avoiding pain and gaining pleasure in the short term, but to be successful you need to focus on avoiding pain and gaining pleasure long term.
*  Everybody’s perception of what causes pain and pleasure is different and linked to their own experiences.

To make changes in our lives we need to change how we think and how we act.  One simple way to do this is to change what you link your pain and pleasure to.  For greater success you also need to shift your focus from short term pain and pleasure, to long term pain and pleasure.

Here’s an example:

If you’re overweight you may be focussing on the short term pleasure that you link to eating too much, or eating unhealthy foods.  Or, you might be avoiding pain that you link with exercising.  Or, maybe you’re avoiding the pain of dealing with a problem and instead seeking pleasure and comfort from food.  

*  You can motivate yourself to make the changes you need to by creating new long term links to pain and pleasure for yourself. 
*  You might choose to avoid the pain associated with long term health problems, or of looking fat and not being able to wear nice clothes. 
*  Also add in some long term pleasure associations, such as looking and feeling fantastic, and being able to play with your children. 
*  The key thing to remember is that the new links and associations must be personal and real for you. 
*  And, they need to be strong enough to over-ride your existing pleasure and pain associations of eating the cake and avoiding the gym!

Another common example is staying in a relationship that is no longer positive or satisfying.  In the short term, you may gain pleasure from having a date to go out with and avoid the pain of being lonely.  But is it costing you the long term pleasure of having a fulfilling relationship, and the long term pain of realising you’ve wasted many years staying in an empty relationship?

By Jacqui Thomas

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“Lifestyle” refers to things we buy to decorate our lives. Through our lifestyle choices we can buy an identity through brands. We can define how other people perceive us, so it can be a way of gaining acceptance and approval from them. A common term for this is “keeping up with the Joneses”. We want to control what people think of us and it can be tempting to do this through making sure we have the right “things” in order to be regarded in a certain way.

Your “life” on the other hand, is what you lead when you know what is important to you and you let that control your behaviour. Your life is made up of your choices and actions. Through our “life” we can create our own self esteem and pride through being true to our selves.

Often our “lifestyle” keeps us in situations we don’t want anymore, like jobs, relationships and even cities that are no longer working for us. It’s very easy to get tied up in working towards having the right home, with the right furniture, the nice cars, sending our kids to the right schools, having the right holidays, wearing the right clothes, etc, etc.

There is nothing wrong with having nice things, fabulous holidays, or any of the other lifestyle choices, if it is what you want. But, so often, our “lifestyle” becomes more about what other people think, than what we truly want for ourselves.

Take a moment now to imagine you are celebrating your 80th birthday and looking back on your life with tremendous pride. What are you most proud of? What were the highlights of your life? Did you have the life you wanted to have? What was most important to you?

Now look at a snapshot of how you live today. Is it a picture you are proud of? Are you working towards being able to look back on that wonderful life? Are there any changes you would like to make? Are you focussing your time and energy on the things that matter most to you? Are you living your life according to what you honestly believe is most important, or are you chasing other people’s expectations?

By Jacqui Thomas

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Mary was a fulltime mother and housewife for all 24 years of her married life until her husband announced he was having an affair.  Left with nothing when he left, with no experience or business acumen whatsoever, Mary took on the cafe her husband had been in the process of starting, complete with thousands of dollars worth of debts, and made a go of it.

When I took on this business I had absolutely no idea about running a cafe, I didn’t even know how to pour a filter coffee.  At the time I had been married for 24 years and I was a housewife.  My husband was in business and throughout my married life I’d worked the odd day here and there, but they were only pretend jobs.  Earning money wasn’t a side of my marriage I had to address.

My husband was setting up the cafe.  The lease was up for renegotiation.  He was going to take on the lease, do up the cafe, and then resell the lease.  Right in the middle of it all he announced he was having an affair, that he was going to be leaving, and he wanted the business sold.  He really didn’t want me in the cafe, but I dug my toes in.  Bearing in mind that I suddenly had no source of income, no house, and I had been a housewife for the last 24 years, I decided I had to give it a go.

It was tough.  While they finalised the details, I had to work with my husband and his new girlfriend.  Emotionally, I wasn’t the best equipped to deal with anything, let alone running a business.

My first real insight into how little business acumen I had, and how little support I was about to have, was when I had to go to the bank.  I had to take over the overdraft with my father as guarantor.  When I went to the bank they talked to my father, not to me.  I don’t think Dad really wanted to lend me the money, I suspect he was looking for an out.  The bank certainly didn’t want to lend money to a middle-aged housewife, on the verge of a breakdown, who didn’t have an ounce of business acumen.  That was my first introduction to how difficult it was going to be for me as a woman, without a house or any collateral.  My husband had taken everything.

Eventually my father agreed to act as guarantor, even though the bank advised him I was a dodgy prospect.  I think he felt sorry for me at the time so he gave it a go, which I am grateful for.  I repaid his trust, and the money, and from there I constantly grew.  When I came into the business, I found I was left with thousands of dollars of debts I had been completely unaware of.  So as well as struggling to come to terms with every other aspect of the business – staff, wages, GST – I constantly had creditors ringing me demanding money.  At any one time, they could have put me under so I had no choice but to get a grasp on everything as quickly as possible.

I was extremely fortunate to have the support of my daughter, Emily.  She was at university, studying for a masters degree at the time.  She quickly came to terms with many aspects of running the business.  My husband had left nothing.  Emily set the books up, started doing costings, and thought it was feasible, that if we got it right we could make a go of it.  Emily worked out what it would cost to run the business and said, “Mum this is what you have to do every week before you even turn the lights on, otherwise you’re going to be in trouble.”

I initially worked seven days a week, from 5.20 in the morning, until 7 at night.  Gradually I made myself completely au fait with every aspect of running this cafe.  Every day was a battle until now it is easier.  Now I don’t owe anyone anything, I run my business on a monthly accounts system, I have a good name around town, I make one of the best coffees in Christchurch, and most of the time I enjoy it.

I learned through making plenty of mistakes.  After 24 years of marriage I was dropped in it – and I could make a go of it, or go under, that was it.  I just had to carry on each day, read up on things, and educate myself.  Every day I tried to make sure the lack of knowledge I had didn’t go with me into tomorrow.  I set myself targets every day.  The cappuccino machine used to scare the shits out of me.  Some days I’d have a queue half way down the mall, and I wouldn’t know how I was ever going to get on top of it, but I did.

Excerpt from Mary Murray’s story

Go Girl Go! – Real Stories of New Zealand Women in Business

By Jacqui Thomas

Published 2001, JT Publishing Ltd

Our lives have got so busy and complicated but actually it doesn’t have to be that way.  So often I hear clients complain about how busy they are and how they have to do this and that and they never have any time.  Most people’s lives are too tightly jammed with projects, appointments, goals, commitments, shoulds, have-to’s, expectations and obligations. 

This makes it very difficult to be true to yourself and have the life you want.  Life becomes a constant struggle to just keep up.  It also means that you’re not available to new and exciting opportunities as they come up.  What a nightmare!  Stop!  You do have a choice!  At any point you can simply decide you don’t want to live like this anymore and I encourage you to make that choice right now, today.

Take a look at your current life.  Are there any projects, goals or commitments you have that you really don’t want in your life?  Be ruthless and delete them. You may have things that you’re spending time and energy on that simply are not important to you, or it may be that they were important once but are no longer relevant.  Get rid of them.  Are there things that have been on your “to do” list forever?  Chances are if they were that important they would be done by now, so do yourself a favour and cross them off.  Are there people that you keep meaning to catch up with but never do?  Maybe your friendships have changed too.  It may sound harsh but maybe it’s time to delete them as well.  Simplifying your relationships means you have more quality time for the people that really matter to you.

I challenge you to get rid of at least three things from your life, even more if you’re feeling brave – I guarantee you’ll feel better for it.  And the next time you catch yourself complaining about how busy you are – remember, it’s your choice!  Take control of your life, delete what’s not important and only keep the bits that are real and meaningful for you.

By Jacqui Thomas

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That could’ve easily been the case for me this weekend, but instead I somehow managed to remain incredibly calm and experienced the wonder of going with the flow, instead of the extra stress associated with resisting reality.

I was so far behind with my work commitments, hadn’t even begun the Christmas shopping, and the Christmas tree had already been deleted from the agenda and put back into storage, so I really didn’t have time to attend my friend’s baby shower, especially as she lives three hours away. But she is a good friend, and I decided that actually, an enforced overnight break out of town may be just what the doctor ordered. That was fine until, at 7pm on a country road in the middle of nowhere, my car broke down and refused to go again. I got to experience the best of human nature as some local farmers towed me to the nearest town, where we left my car outside a garage, and my dear friends came and collected me. For the next two days, we were stuck on an idyllic rural property with no car, and no cell phone or broadband coverage, with nothing to do but relax until the car could be fixed.

At this point most of us would stress and worry about all the things we are supposed to be doing, the meetings we are missing, the tasks that are not being done. Or, we can practice going with the flow and trusting that the present is prefect, that everything is exactly how it supposed to be, even if it’s not how we would like it.

Dan Millman says, “Stress is the mind’s refusal to accept what is.” Ain’t that the truth? We don’t have to like reality, but accepting what the current reality is, is a great starting point to make changes, without getting eaten up by stress of it.

One of my favourite quotes is from the Dalai Lama who says, “Sometimes when things don’t go your way, it’s a wonderful stroke of luck.”

And a friend of mine is fond of the notion “that it’s not going wrong, it’s just going.” I had set my intention to replace my car before Christmas, maybe this is part of the process? You have to clear the old to make way for the new. Or maybe Santa is just being cheeky and having some fun with my Christmas wishlist?

Either way, things will go wrong for each and every one of us. We can either make it ten times worse for ourselves by stressing about it, or go with the flow, accept the current reality and see how you can make the best of it.

By Jacqui Thomas

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One of the big secrets to successful goal setting is to set goals that you want to achieve.  That might sound like its too easy, but who said it had to be difficult?  Sure achieving your goals will require some effort from you, but you’re much more likely to commit to making that effort if you are working towards something that you really want for yourself.  So that means sorting out the ‘want to’ goals from the ‘should” goals.

Here is my Successful Goal Setting Process in 7 Easy Steps:

(1) Think carefully about the goals you want for yourself.  Be honest.  Are they goals you ‘want to’ achieve, or goals you feel you ‘should’ achieve?

(2) Rate your goals on how badly you want them on a scale of 1 –10. (1 being you don’t care about them at all, 10 being you desperately want them)  Generally you are only likely to succeed if your ‘want’ for that goal is in the 8-10 range.

(3) Eliminate the ‘shoulds’ on your list.  ‘Shoulds’ are the things you feel you “should” do because of other people or other outside influences.  If your goal is a ‘should’ rather than a ‘want’ it is probably the wrong goal for you.

(4) If there are goals on your list that are ‘shoulds’ or rate lower than an 8 on the ‘want to’ scale but you feel you need to achieve them for your health and wellbeing, eg losing weight or sorting out your finances, then first work on getting them higher up the want to scale.  Look for some incentives or reasons that you want to exercise or save money, so your goal can become a ‘want’ rather than a ‘should’.

(5) Once you’ve carefully selected your goals, get excited about working on these goals you really want to achieve.

(6) Go for it!  Break the goal into steps and take the action needed to make it happen.  Getting started is the most important step.  However small that first step is, make sure you do it.  Then the next one, and then the next and keep going.

(7) And last, but certainly not least, don’t forget to celebrate your success when you do achieve your goals!

By Jacqui Thomas

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