Checking Money-Making Potential Pt. 1

When an Estate Agent shows you around an old wreck of a house, they don’t tell you about the peeling wallpaper or lack of flooring. No, they tell you about the *potential* of a house. They want you to believe in the possibility of what you could achieve if you just put your mind to it. And let’s face it, they do that because a great many people will spend money on something that isn’t actually there - potential.

What is potential? It’s the actualisation of your vision and your hard work, not just in a house or flat, but also in your money-making life.

Just as a damp, peeling wreck of a house can be turned into a “Homes and Gardens” special with the application of thought, vision and hard-work, so your damp, peeling wreck of a financial life can be turned into a debt-free wonder through the same process. You certainly won’t achieve either of these goals by simply sitting down and doing nothing (that roof won’t fix itself, young missy!), but by working hard and seeing your potential, you have every chance of success.

You need to put a little work in, though. That’s the start of the process. So here’s what I want you to do:

1. Put on some relaxing music and fix yourself a drink of your choice (I highly recommend tea, but I’m English, so no surprise there!).
2. Take the nicest sheet of notepaper, and the nicest pen you have and write a big, fat “1″ at the top of the paper.
3. Now, think about all the things that you *can* do. Not necessarily the things that you enjoy doing most (although those should come first if you are in the right frame of mind) and write them down on your paper. This list can include things like “using a computer” or even owning a lot of stuff that you could Ebay. Write down your *potential*. Imagine that you are the Estate Agent, selling your life on your potential.

I’ll be doing this exercise myself tomorrow and posting the results so that you can see how I categorise my own potential. At the bottom of your list of potential, I would like you to write the words “I have the potential to be wealthy, successful and happy”. Underline it. Draw little flourishes underneath if you like. Feel good about the words….

9 ideas for making money

So, if you read yesterday’s post, you’ll be determined to develop your positive mental attitude and make inroads into some debt repayment and income generation. What opportunities can we think of to make money in the Spring?

1. Spring Cleaning. If you are time-rich but cash-poor, why not offer a spring-cleaning service in your local community? If you don’t feel like cleaning an entire house top-to-bottom, then think about offering a specific cleaning service? If I had the money, I’d love for someone to come and wash all my window coverings and clean my glass…
2. Easter Crafts. Spring has sprung and people are enjoying going to craft fairs again – if you create crafts, have a think about building up a stock of your speciality and taking a stall at a nearby craft fair. There seems to be something about seasonal festivals which mean that people really enjoy properly hand-crafted items.
3. Car Boot Sales/Garage Sales. The weather is improving and people are getting back out of the house at weekends. If you’ve got a lot of stuff, then consider spending some time pricing and packing it for a car boot sale (or equivalent). Nobody likes to buy or sell when the weather is miserable, but it’s a proven fact that people are willing to spend more when the season starts up again.
4. Grass Cutting and general garden tidying. The grass is growing, but people have become accustomed to not cutting it over the winter. Offer a general tidying service, including a lawn cut and trimming of bushes. If you have access to a van or car/trailer, you can charge a premium for taking away material to landfill. *OR* offer to build them a cheap compost heap (4 pallets wired together and topped with a bit of old carpet) to put it all in.
5. Home Repair Consultancy. How many times have you heard that you should only employ workmen on personal recommendation? Why not act as a gathering place for that kind of information? There have been a lot of storms (and in my area, an earthquake!) recently, and lots of people need fences put back up, roof tiles replaced and chimney pots secured. Act as a “one stop shop” for workmen who can do all of that, as well as keeping records of who is available at any one time (workmen will usually tell you, “I’ve got three weeks of work lined up”, so you aren’t asking for confidential information!)
6. School pickups. This one takes a little more preparation, and is only applicable to those who like children. If you have a Criminal Records Bureau check (or don’t mind getting one), you could apply to pick up children from school and either escort them home, or look after them in your own home until their parents arrive. Bear in mind that a LOT of children start a new school after Easter, and if they haven’t got something lined up, parents will realise the value of this service and be prepared to pay well for it.
7. House staging. There’s a recession on. Houses aren’t selling well, and many people have problems seeing the potential in a house if it’s cluttered. If you have a good eye for design, then consider offering a house staging service (also known as “House Doctoring”) to people looking to sell. Spring is a great time to sell a house, and this service would be in great demand.
8. De-cluttering and home organisation. If you are a good organiser, and get on well with people, think about perhaps setting up a de-cluttering service. Talk to a local storage service about negotiating preferential rates for your customers too…
9. Pet-sitting/house visiting. Lots of people go away for Easter. Who will feed the cat , walk the dog, clean out the hamster and water the houseplants? You, of course! For a fee….

I’m sure that you can probably think of some more ideas – why not post them in comments?

Eight Facts sbout SEO

If you are going to take up an SEO service, it is important for you to understand that SEO is not something that can be done based on some set principles and then left at that. There is lot more to SEO than just building links or writing title tags. There is a whole lot of planning and execution that goes into building a successful SEO campaign, and this takes time. There is time required to work out a linking strategy, there is time required to approach websites and build quality links, there is time required to ensure that the site ranks consistently and is not penalized by search engines cause of excessive or bad link building.

Below I present 8 SEO limitations that you as a client should know before taking up an SEO service.

1.) SEO Cannot Guarantee Results

The first thing that you have to understand is the fact that SEO is not magic. It’s not about building a few links and getting the site to rank top for keyword queries. It’s a lot more than that. If you look at a wider picture, you will realize that there are thousands of websites out there who want to rank within the top 10 for the very same keywords that you want to rank for. All these websites are using SEO services, and some are even paying a whole lot more than you can even afford.

Let us take an example. Say a website wants to rank for the keyword “acne remedies.” The competition for this keyword is around “338,000.” (You can find the competition of a keyword by going to Google and searching for the keyword using quotes. Just put a quote before and after the keyword and search. The competition will appear in the top right hand corner of the search results.)

Now, out of these 338,000 odd competitors, let us assume that we have around 1,000 good websites. All of these good websites are using SEO services to rank top for the same keyword (acne remedies). The number of spots available are only 10. So, considering this, how do you expect an SEO to guarantee results?

A good SEO will never guarantee results. The only thing he guarantees is the quality of service he will offer. 

2.) Keywords Don't Remain Within the Top 10 Forever

I have seen many clients who simply stop the SEO service once their keywords start ranking on top. This is a mistake. You are ranking top today, and this could be your moment of fame. Search engines like Google keep updating their database on a daily basis and the SERPs change accordingly. If an SEO is making your keyword rank on top, appreciate him and stay with him.

SEO is not a one time process. It can never be, because there is competition out there waiting to topple your ranking at a moment’s notice. You have got to keep at it on a consistent basis so you can maintain your rankings. Please understand that SEO is an ongoing process.

3.) Rankings Can Fluctuate at Times

As mentioned above, Google keeps experimenting with its search algorithm. This means one fine day your top ranking keywords can drop down the order. But this does not mean that you should start panicking or blaming your SEO service provider.

Please understand that this is just a phase; your keywords can start ranking top once again in a matter a few days. Sometimes it might even take a few months; but if your website is of good quality and you have not done anything wrong, you should get back up there eventually.

It could also be that the keywords are ranking low only in a few old datacenters. You can always cross check your results in different Google datacenters using online tools. Here is one, for instance:

http://www.mcdar.net/dance/index.php

4.) PR Has Got Nothing to do with Rankings

There are many clients who think that SEO is about increasing the PR, so therefore the rankings would automatically improve. I am tired of explaining that PR has got nothing to do with a site's rankings, and that a low PR does not reflect badly on a website’s quality. There was a time when PR was taken into consideration in deciding the value of a website, but those days are gone. You can safely stop worrying about PR. What matters is the number of quality backlinks that you have. Check your backlinks using the following command in Yahoo!

Linkdomain:yoursitename.com –site:yoursitename.com

 
5.) SEO is Not About Mass Link Development

It’s not about the quantity of links that you get, but rather the quality. Sometimes a single quality link is worth more than 100 non-quality ones. Beware of SEO companies that develop hundreds of links every month from resource pages that have hundreds of unrelated links.

I had a client who was not happy with my link building. He showed me a list of links that his previous SEO company had developed. I had one look at that list and was shocked. All links were from crappy resource pages and each resource page had more than 500 to 600 links on them. Wow, if only link building was so easy.

I had to get all those links removed to keep the client site from getting penalized. Always remember, it’s not about quantity, it is all about quality when it comes to link building.

6.) SEO is Not About Directory Submissions or Article Submissions

Anyone can do directory or article submissions. But what do you think is the value of these easily generated links? The value of these links is close to nil, and these links can never be counted as quality links. I am not saying that all directory links are valueless. There are a handful of directories that can offer you good link value, but these directories are very rare. The other host of directories that accept any site that is submitted to them pretty much pass no link value.

When it comes to article submission, it’s not the link that you get from an article directory that matters. What matters is the links that you get from websites that decide to reprint/reuse your articles. You have to give a lot of thought towards writing good quality articles and not crappy ones.

7.) SEO is Just Like Website Maintenance – It’s Ongoing

SEO is ongoing and cannot be over in a set period of time. This is because, as I mentioned earlier, there are many websites out there competing to outrank your site. The only way you can maintain your position is by constantly working towards building good quality links spaced over a period of time.

8.) Slow and Steady Wins the Race

The question that really frustrates me is when a client asks, ‘How soon can you bring my keywords to rank on top?’ As already mentioned above, there cannot be a set time period for SEO. SEO is a slow and steady process. It is not like AdWords or any other PPC campaign that can bring results in a matter of minutes.

In SEO, just like anywhere else, the slow and steady win the race. Not the fast and the furious. The fast and the furious can generate a lot of links in a very small span of time, only to get your website penalized by Google. What is the point of spending so much on links when all you get is a penalized website?

Search engines are strictly against links generated artificially. They rank only those websites whom they think got their links naturally. It takes time to naturally acquire links. These links are generated over a period of time and not overnight. SEO is about generating links artificially, giving the search engines the impression that the links were actually generated naturally. 

Building Links

We’re always talking about keeping links fresh and how important it is to keep up with your link building efforts. It’s great to talk about, but it can be daunting after months of trying to generate new and different links that will register well with the search engines. This week we thought we’d give you ten quick ways to add some links so that you can take a breather from the strenuous stuff and still feel good about adding real link value to your site. Each one should not take more than 5 minutes, a total of 50 minutes!

3 Internal Links: Go to your site right now and find three places where you can link your own content to content on another relevant page. This internal linking is often overlooked and is actually a great way to keep people digging deeper within your site. Look for a good keyword phrase on your homepage and link it to an inner page with more information so that readers will stay longer and explore further.

3 Free Directories with Value: In the past we’ve warned against indiscriminate use of directories, but there are some free directories that continue to show some value. Here are three that are consistent performers and that have all been seen in Google backlinks. So click on them and add your site right now.

• www.worldsiteindex.com
• www.webotopia.org
• www.all-linkdirectory.com

2 places to Go Local: http://local.yahoo.com and http://register.local.com/free/update.aspx are both local searches that are ideal linking opportunities for small businesses. You get great links and you can draw some added local traffic from the many people who routinely use local searches to find local businesses. Yahoo Local includes customer reviews, maps and blogs as well.   Local.com is a more straightforward listing, but does include business descriptions and you can search by zip code or city.

1 Link Site you should join is LinkedIn at www.linkedin.com. This professional networking website provides you with great access to thousands of other business professionals who are members of the network and allows you to connect with others through affiliations with companies, schools and universities you may have in common with other members. You can give and receive recommendations, discover business opportunities and create multiple links as a member.  It’s free to sign-up and takes only minutes to get through the set up process. Look for me at my LinkedIn profile.

1 Blog Comment Right Here. Yep, all you have to do is add a nice little comment below and you will get a “do follow” link right back to your site. Maybe you can even suggest a couple other places to get a decent link in 5 minutes or less!

For some more great ways to quickly add links to your site, check out the link building tips at WIEP.

3 Ways to Make Article Marketing Work

Article directories are losing their value right? Then why are we bothering to add it to a “best practices” site? Writing interesting, informative articles that will educate readers and introduce them to your website can still be an excellent way to improve your business’s success. 

Just how successful your articles are depends on a number of factors. The articles have to be interesting, well written and contain enough helpful information to have real value to readers, but they also have to be marketed properly. All of the articles in the world won’t help you if you post them in places where they won’t be found by the right audience. A fascinating, informative article about proper surfboard maintenance isn’t going to help you if it’s lost in a general article directory or posted on a website where most readers are avid mid-west gardeners.

How do you find really solid places to market those great articles you’ve written? This week we have three suggestions on how to match your articles to the right publications and at the right times

1) Find the right editorial calendars. Look for the editorial calendars of online publications. Most online publications provide an editorial calendar that outlines what the main topics will be several months in advance. Reviewing these can not only give you an idea of when to submit articles you already have, but give you some great ideas for future articles. For instance, www.eweekmedia.com, an IT publication, is focusing on Mobile and Wireless in early May of 2008. In April 2008, there’s a feature titled “Security Focus: Email Security Challenge.” 

Whatever your business’s niche, check the magazines and review editorial calendars and make sure you match your articles to their focus – and be sure to pay attention to their submission deadlines! Editors love to run articles that dovetail with a particular focus.

2) Find niche publications. After you’ve checked out the editorial calendars of the magazines you’re already familiar with, look for publications you aren’t familiar with. For example, if you have an ecommerce website, search for “ecommerce magazines” and you might just find this: www.world-newspapers.com/e-commerce.html.

When you search for Surfing magazines, you can find magazines that include online magazines focusing on female surfers, North Carolina surfers, New England surfing, Australian surfing, competitive surfing, long board surfing…well, you get the idea! Even a niche like surfing can be narrowed even further, so be sure you look for any potential niche magazines that you can really tailor your articles toward that will love you for sending them some high quality content.

3) Find niche article directories. There are good niche article directories out there that either supply niche businesses with quality content or can point you in the direction of respected online publications that are looking for content. Lets say your site is about human resources, here is an example of article dedicated to HR http://www.businessknowhow.com/bkhmanage.htm.

You can do basic searches for “human resource article directory” or whatever your business niche is, and you’ll turn up various directories where you can get your articles published.  Do some homework, however, to make sure that you utilize the best directories for your own articles. A few things to look for in an online article directory are:

• Read several articles in their supply of articles to check the quality. The articles should be well-written, with plenty of information and excellent grammar. If the quality isn’t consistent, then the directory doesn’t set high standards.
• Does the site indicate how many articles are actually downloaded each month? You want to compare figures from directory to directory to see how much of the traffic to the site is actually downloading articles.
• How recently has the site been updated? If there hasn’t been new content added in more than a month, then the directory may not get regular visits from publications. It also means there aren’t very many authors. The more authors, the more frequently articles are added. Publications are looking for fresh content – and fresh content means content that’s new and different every time that a visitor logs onto a directory. Look for sites that are changing every day.
• And of course you might check their pagerank, backlinks, traffic stats, etc. to judge the quality of the link juice or traffic they might send your way.

Ebay - Make Money with Online

Online auctions can make you some serious money if you know what you're doing.

Back when Ebay first started you just threw whatever product that you had and just hoped it would sell for some big money. Well today Ebay has all kinds of tools & tricks that you can use to increase the offers on your products.

Making money with Ebay is truly a science. First you have to know what categories best fit the product your selling. then you have to properly display the product. (Taking a good picture) After that you have to describe your product in a way that any reader will want to just snatch the product right out of the computer screen.

And once you actually sell the product you must deliver the product fast so that you can solicit a good review from the buyer.

When trying to make money with Ebay for the long term as a business, you must know how to run a dependable and profitable operation.

Where to find good products to sell. What are the hottest products that people are buying. And what products can you get at a super low price and sell for a huge mark up. These are all questions that a successful Ebay auctioner should ask themselves.

Once you learn the inside secrets to making money with Ebay you can earn anywhere from $500 - $3,000+ per month with Ebay. Many people are enjoying full time income with Ebay.

Work At Home & Make Money

"Freelance writing is by far the most lucrative and profitable job online, and will be for many years to come."

If you're searching for a serious work at home job that will truly increase your earning potential, then you must take a closer look at becoming a freelance writer. The demand is at an all time high for writers and you can cash in on it.

Let me get straight to the point. The Internet is made up of millions of pages of information. Articles, blogs, sales letters, etc... are needed on an ongoing basis to feed hungry Internet surfers, craving more and more information all over the world. And there's just not enough writers to keep up with the HUGE demand for original content.

What does this mean for you? Well, if you can write or atleast have the desire to learn how to write, you can earn a very lucrative income writing content at home for websites, newsletters, and any other assignments a company might be needing.

Every day there are thousands of new websites put onto the Internet. All will be needing to add quality content to each page of their sites. Even if you forget about the new websites, you will still be left with millions of already growing websites that need to create new and fresh information. There simply will never be an end to the need for new, fresh website content. And there are webmasters that will pay you top dollar to write one or many articles to be placed on their site.

The job of a freelance writer is not hard to do. You can work your own hours and the job is flexible enough for you to easily fit it in when it is comfortable for you.

Pay is based on the assignment and quality of work you do. In the beginning you might earn anywhere from $10 - $25 per job. But as your writing improves and your reputation spreads, you could possibly demand $80+ per job. It is not unheard of for a professional writer to receive $500-$1,000+ per job. Some sales copywriters even demand royalties for their jobs, where they earn based on the amount of product their letter or article sells.

Why is this a perfect work at home job? Because it isn't a job, it's a career. With the proper information you can become a professional sought after freelance writer. You will be able to set your own hours, pick your jobs, and set your own pay. And you don't have to wait years for this to take off. There are webmasters that will pay you right now to write for them.

Still not convinced? Well let me first say... "What's your PROBLEM!" Freelance writing is a recession proof work at home job. You will never be laid off. You won't have to worry about co-workers and bosses. This is a work at home job that will put money in your bank account no matter where you are in the world. You can sit on a beach in hawaii and shoot out a quick writing job and make $100. What other job can offer you that?

Now there are many, many ways to get started with freelance writing. Some work better than others and some are going to get you to the top quicker than others.

Before you jump in and start writing for companies, you will need to have an idea of what a freelance writer is. You will need to know what the companies expect from your work. And last but not least, you will need to know what to charge for the jobs that you do.

I have found EasyWritingBiz to be the best resource for getting started in the career of  freelance writing. It clearly explains the job of a freelance writer and every aspect of it.

In no time,  you'll have top companies contacting you to write for them.

What is Link Building?

To index in Google you should have at least one incoming link from other site that is already indexed in Google so that when Google will crawl that website the crawler will follow link that are coming to your website and then your website will be crawled.

Link-building is a tedious, long-term strategy. It takes time and effort to get links placed on another site, more time for the search engines to find the links, and more time for them to include those links in the ranking algorithm.

Before we begin with link building Your website must contain high-quality, useful, timely content that people will actually want to link to. so you need to spend more time creating unique and relevant content, and less time on pictures, flash, frames and some other type of graphics, because crawler cant read these thing, they can read only the text in your site, so this point should be kept in while developing a site.

What is the need of links.

Link building is the main part of SEO and SEO is a type of Search Engine Marketing. So for effective Search Engine Marketing, we need a Effective Link Building

Obtaining links from other websites is a time-consuming process. However, without other sites that link to your site, you will likely not rank well on Google for your keywords. More businesses fail to get rankings in Google because of an insufficient number of quality links than any other competitor. Your objective is to obtain the highest number of high quality links. Having lots of links is also important for bringing traffic to your site. By growing and maintaining an active link exchange effort, your traffic risk can be decreased. Link-building also makes you immune to tweaks in search engine algorithms. Links are forever. Each link individually won’t drive much traffic to your site, but hundreds of links in the aggregate will over time. Traffic you receive from links on many different sites may eclipse traffic you obtain from Google in the long term.

So for high ranking you should have maximum inbound link

Quality of Links

There are many factors that tell the quality of link

1. No link farms, ffa’s, gambling, pharmacy, illegal, violent, or hate-based, blogs, classifieds, dynamic links or generally black hat links
2. Links page is reached from homepage in maximum 2 clicks
3. All links pages where links appear are indexed and cached by Google
4. All links are from unique C Class IP addresses. One Link Per DOMAIN
5. Page are not disallowed by robots.txt and NO rel=nofollow links in the code.
6. No commercial web rings or link exchange programs like Linkpartners.com, LinksToYou.com etc.
7. No redirects, JavaScript links, hidden links or links on any site that seems to have incurred a Google penalty. Only ethical work will be done.
8. A report indicating the URL where the links can be found will be given.
9. Not too many links from directories.
10. English language web sites only
11. Link page will not contain more than 50 links on the page.

Google gives more weight age if your links is coming from high PR. Taking links from .gov and .edu website also gives importance to your website
The following are some factor that should be kept in mind while doing link exchange

Off page link factor
It includes that portion of the Google algorithm that determines page importance means the page rank. If you are taking link from pr 3 page will provide more importance to your site than taking links from pr 1 or pr 0 site.

Link quality factor
Quality of links is equally important to number of links. Today quality of links highly matters for a site, quality of links includes - relevancy of site from where you are taking links, number of links on that page, position of your link on the site - means he is providing you link on home page or link page. Links on home page provides more weightage than any other page on the sites.The following points should kept in mind while exchanging link with other sites -

1. Text of the link – does it contain your keywords? (This very important)
2. Text of other links on the same page – do they also contain, or are similar to, your keywords?
3. Is the link contained in a paragraph on the page, surrounded by related text. Such links are weighted more than links that are listed on a page without any other text, such as in the footer of a page or a Sponsored Links section.
4. Title of the linking page – does it contain, or is it related to, your keywords?

Are We Really Earn From Blogging?

Blogging has become a popular online activity. Many of us blog in social networking sites like Friendster, Myspace and a lot more. Since we do it almost on a daily basis, why don't we try to earn money from it?

Blogging online is getting more and more popular than we can imagine. Everyday, thousands of new blogs are being developed. Some people blog as a hobby, others blog to introduce a product or a service online while the rest blog to get more traffic to their sites. Others simply express their innermost feelings and thoughts. Majority of the blogs' purpose is to earn money. Though to earn enough, we have to work harder and post regularly.
Earning money online through blogging doesn't happen overnight. It needs extra effort on your side. You need to produce as many articles as possible and post it online so different people from different backgrounds can visit it. The more articles you have, the more your
adsense code will be displayed. Getting more traffic to your articles, mean more chances for your ads being clicked. The idea is simple. Submit as many articles as you can. Drive traffic to your site. People click on the ads that interest them. You earn money.
Advertising your articles and driving traffic to your site will help a lot in the process. Participating in some forums and attaching your signature to your posts is one of the effective ways. Another is commenting on the posts of others. In this way, you don't only gain popularity and friends but also, drive traffic to your sites. There are thousands of blog directories and classified ads online so it is best also to submit yours to as many directories as you can.

Earning online needs a lot of work at first. However, once you have produced a lot of articles online and attached your signatures in forums, exchanged links with your friends' blogs, and have done other marketing strategies, you will soon reap the rewards. Try it. I rested for a month blogging as I thought I was just wasting my time. However, while I was resting, I found out I was earning from my posts. They may not be that big yet, however, I realized that if I produce more and more articles everyday, there are chances my earnings will go higher. There's no harm in trying. The risk you are taking is too little. I highly recommend you do.

Earlier Methods of Money Making

How did we make money quickly before the internet? A few ideas came to mind, which still work although simple are effective!

1. Sofa Change
It really is a classic, pull all the cushions off the sofa or comfy chairs and you are sure to find some coins hiding.

2. Have a cleaning day
Tidying around the house will always bring spare change to you. Just collect it in your pocket as you clean up and it will all add up in the end.

3. Car Wash
Offer to clean your neighbours car for a small charge. A popular one in my childhood, I used to charge 2.50 per car.

4. Garage Sale/Car Boot Sale
Have a massive clear out in your house, there are bound to be things that you don't need anymore. Get them all into boxes or bags and set up a table of things, remember one persons rubbish is another person's treasure! If there are things leftover you could donate them.

5. Be Creative
Are you creative? What can you make and sell? Maybe cookies....knitted baby wear? You could sell them at local fayres or sales.

Apply this in the new World using Internet, Success would be yours

Take Good Decisions for More Money Making

Many of us have just never learned how to make good decisions. Maybe you had poor role models growing up; perhaps you are a people pleaser and go for the initial approval without looking at the long-term ramifications. Could it be you have never learned how to function as a separate individual because you are so enmeshed and co-dependent on others? Whether you realize it or not, when you don’t make a decision you are still making a decision. Whatever the reason, you can make a choice to take responsibility for consciously making your own decisions now.

Multiple considerations affect your decision making. Being in touch with how you really feel is an important first step that many people, especially in crisis, jump over. Try these 10 tips for making better decisions:

1. Give yourself some space. You may need to remove yourself from a situation in order to really analyze how you feel about it. Many decisions can be delayed. It’s okay to say, “I need more time.”
2. Spend quiet time alone every day. It can be in prayer, meditation or going for a walk. It’s important to really let your mind settle down and start to listen to what your inner wisdom wants you to know.
3. Clarify what the issue is. During their divorce Rachel tells her husband Tom, “You just never listened to me like you did when we were dating and you tutored me in math.” Tom replied, “I thought it was the math.”
4. Gain an understanding of why you need to make a decision. If there is a problem, do you know the how, where, when and with whom the problem is occurring? Take some time to look at each issue and see if it sheds more light on your decision.
5. If you don’t feel comfortable with something, find out why. You have the right to ask all the questions that you have. Check more than one source, no matter who that one source is.
6. Once you have the answers that you are comfortable with, review and evaluate them.
7. Next move on to possible solutions. Let yourself think big. Do not censor yourself or limit ideas by worrying about whether or not they are practical. That is a later step. Brainstorm with people you trust, who also think outside the box.
8. Now you have a list of options, write them out and put down the pros and cons for each one. Another way to do this is to list your priorities with the most important first and write down what fits under each one. For example, Joyce is a single, working mother who wants to be home with her kids but still needs to make the same amount of money. Being home is a priority and making a certain amount of money is a priority. If she could make more money with one option but not be home as she intended that would be ruled out.
9. Develop a plan of action. Analyze if you are willing to implement your plan. Joyce decides to explore whether she can work virtual at her current job. Joyce feels this is a risk, because once they know what she wants to do they may phase her out. She also decides to explore home-based businesses she could start. She knows this may take money out of her savings and is also a risk. Joyce has to be willing to accept the risks and consequences in order to move forward with her decision. Plans are more successful with a deadline. Set one now.
10. As Nike says. “Just do it.” Take the leap and go. If you make a mistake or information changes you start over. Practice probably doesn’t make perfect in this case, but it does make you a lot better.

As you become more connected to yourself and practice you will develop the confidence to make more decisions. As you practice decision making, your skill will grow.

Depending on the situation, timeframes or even plans may have to be modified. That doesn’t mean you failed. You became more educated, experienced or practical as the plan progressed and modifications had to be made. Review and assess your decision throughout implementation. Now that you are into it what would you do differently? Learn from every decision. One decision may lead to the need to make another decision. Keep going. Don’t stop. Big or small, success or failure take full responsibility for all of your decisions every day. Take full responsibility for your life. Claim it, live it, it’s yours.

You can gather information, process it, listen to others and bounce ideas off people, but ultimately it comes down to you. You need to have faith and confidence in yourself. You are responsible for all of the decisions that you make. It doesn’t matter if someone mislead you, took advantage of you or even if a trust was betrayed. It comes back to you. Learn to rely on your own decision-making.