Month: Sep 2009

Success is an attitude.

You are, or become, what you think!

On the 12th August I published a Post about the Law of Attraction.

Let me turn to succeeding – from a entrepreneurial point of view, but equally applicable for whatever is important to you.

In business, simply knowing about the basics in a little detail is not enough to achieve any degree of success.

Actually you need to have a deep understanding of what you are about to embark upon to ensure that you place yourself correctly in the market and sell to people who actually want your product.

The success therefore is in the detail. As is said, the devil is in the detail.

It will take you time to gain this understanding and, in most instances, will cost you money, but if you lack the belief that you will achieve your goals, you will not have the enthusiasm to learn and we learn most from our mistakes. To use a cliché again, you can’t make an omelette without breaking some eggs.

Perversely, if you have a very positive attitude without any desire to learn, you have even less chance of success.

The answer therefore has to be somewhere in-between. It’s a fine balance and reaching it can be a challenge in itself.

It would be safe to say that most don’t ever achieve it.

A clear goal is critical in the process. Having a clear goal helps you plan what you need to do to achieve that goal and lets you know when you have achieved it!

As is said, the only benefit of not planning is that failure comes as a complete surprise!

Success therefore is a Mindset, but what exactly should your Mindset be?

By Dapinder Bains

Normal service interrupted!

From the 13th until the 20th September, I shall be away and maintaining two Posts a day is going to be difficult.

I trust that the Post that is published each day continues to retain your interest in the Blog.

Thanks for reading.

By Paul Handover

A Dog Story!

This has been doing the rounds and may be seen on numerous web sites and Blogs. It may be fiction but, nonetheless, it’s a good message.

Strangely, for a Blog called Learning from Dogs, there have been precious few dog stories. Maybe the integrity of a dog is so flippin’ obvious that we don’t need to wrap the species up in all sorts of romantic twaddle. This in no way, however, reduces the power of the message that dogs, along with many other species of warm-blooded animals (e.g. horses) are capable of reminding mankind of the importance of integrity.

Pair GSDs

Read The Dog Story

Lend an Ear!

Taking stuff for granted.

Speaking to Paul on the phone and reading his comments about Hurricane Jimena, it’s clear that we all take basic things

in life very much for granted. The following was passed to me by a fellow commercial pilot who, like me, as you will probably appreciate, requires regular medicals to be passed fit to fly. It serves as a reminder to all of us that we should value frequently our health.

Here’s the tale.

The International Space Station

Almost taken for granted by so many of us.

Thanks to Dan for passing me the link to a fascinating graphic that was recently published in USA Today showing the

time-line of the International Space Station. It has been orbiting above our heads for over a decade! Do click on the link because you will be surprised, unless you work for NASA, how large and complex the ISS now is.

It’s an interesting to consider what has happened since the launch of the first module, Zanya, on the 20th November, 1998. Bill Clinton was then President of the USA; Tony Blair had been British Prime Minister since May, 1997. How times change!

But steadily a group of Nations has worked together to keep this project going and now the end of this magnificent enterprise is within sight. As the NASA web site summarises:

The International Space Station is a partnership of the US, Russian, European, Japanese, and Canadian Space Agencies. The station has been continuously human occupied since Nov 2, 2000. Orbiting 16 times per day at 17,500 miles per hour 250 miles above the ground, it passes over 90% of the world’s surface. When complete in 2010, it will weigh over 800,000 pounds and have a crew of 6 conducting research and preparing the way for future exploration to the moon and beyond.

By Paul Handover

Journey into (inner) space

The journey into inner space is just as fascinating as the one into outer space.

Many, many years ago, 1973 to be precise, an English author, Tony Buzan, was involved in presenting a series on BBC

television called Use Your Head. Tony released a book to accompany the television series. There is not a lot that I remember about that book but one thing I never forgot. That was the number of neurons in the brain, 10 to the power 200, give or take. I will return to this aspect in a later Post but now to the main point of this, my introductory Post.

Read about an extraordinary man

Understanding unemployment, Part One

The Unemployment Rate: how it’s measured; what it means.

The unemployment rate is often used as a signal of how well an economy uses its resources.

The social costs of involuntary unemployment are evidence of a poorly functioning economy. The unemployment rate

in the U.S. currently stands at about 9.7%, causing deep concern about the overall health and viability of our economy.

Let’s first make sure we know how this reported unemployment statistic is measured.

The Saola, what future?

The Saola is one of the world’s rarest mammals, on the brink of extinction.

(Please share this Post as far and wide as you can – thank you.)

NOTE: Thanks to Yves Smith of Naked Capitalism for this amazing picture that came from the BBC. (By the way Yves’ Blog is an excellent subscription if only for the wonderful daily animal pictures.)

If you, like me, had never heard of this creature then be prepared to weep a few tears; this beautiful animal is very unlikely to survive as a species for much longer.

Saola