Welcome To Your Inspiration Blog

by Andrew Abba Festus Image Credit: Joshua DeVries “Every decision you make affects someone very special: your future self” You’ve never met this person, but they are carrying the torch of your dreams. Life is hard for them too except their further along the timeline of life than you.  Have you ever wondered what the future you will be like? It’s something worth contemplating through deep and inward thinking. When you give up on your dreams and quit, you’re not just hurting you right now, you’re killing the future you as well. That future you is bound by the decisions that you make today. One day you will become that future you and wish you could change that decision to quit. By then, it’s too late to change the past. There  ain’t no rewind button on life. Do you really need to quit ? I know you think it’s impossible and your only option is to quit, but that’s because you’ve reached your breaking point. I’ve been there too. I’ve reached a level of failure that has

by Andrew Abba Festus www.facebook.com www.twitter.com Image Credit | Twenty20.com Whether you are the class clown or identified geek in the class, why do we automatically assume one cannot lead? There is plenty of research on the introvert and extrovert spectrum but what if it was about how you lead your team, rather than you. I’m not buying the either-or debate. How you tailor your leadership approach to your people to maximize and leverage their strengths is more important. What if you embraced the approach that leadership is energy? It is drawing energy and amplifying creative juices from a different place. Introverts draw their energy from their inner empire, extroverts amplify their qualities in more populated surroundings. Leadership preferences are neither wrong or better, nor good or bad. Both leaders can create and empower other leaders. Let’s step into the inner revolution to delve deeper into 7 keys to lead your team : 1 . Know thyself – self-awa

Image Credit | Twenty20.com Do you constantly feel like a bunch of pirates are going to loot you? Even when you’re simply driving down the freeway in your car? Do you fear that you’re going to lose your job and live in the  homeless  park near your home? Do you see how the worst possible thing that goes wrong, goes wrong? Many of us have a constant barrage of negative thoughts that we learned to cultivate during our childhoods. Instead of seeing the world in a positive and optimistic way, we continually wait for the other shoe to drop. We wait to see the worst that can happen because we fix our minds on the worst-case scenario. Not everyone is like this, however. Nor do you have to see the world through a prism of negativity and disaster. Here are 9 things the most positive people do every single day to help themselves stay optimistic about the world around them : 1 .  They don’t ruminate about what happened. Positive people understand that what happened, happened, and t

Do you know how many hundreds of times I wanted to give up? No, I’m not joking either. I’ve wanted to give up more than you’ve had hot dinners. So much rejection and so much failure have overwhelmed me. These two things have overwhelmed us all. This “life” thing sometimes seems like a joke. It’s like we’ve been put in a racing car, in fifth gear, at 300km per hour and then been told to steer without any steering wheel. That’s what life is. But there is a plan for you and for me. One day I sat down and thought about all the leaders and world champions I’ve studied. What did they do when they had to drive this racing car we call life without any steering wheel? They got in the seat, put on the seatbelt and enjoyed the goddamn ride to the best of their ability. They ran over stuff. They hit walls. They crashed in the rain. Basically, they had fun with it. No one’s perfect.   Most of all, the people you look up to. Don’t ever give up. Here’s why: 1 .  I don’t want you t

I had the awesome opportunity to meet with Adam Braun, a  New York Times  bestselling author and the Founder of  Pencils of Promise , an award-winning organization that has built more than 320+ schools for children in poverty around the world. He is the #1 National Best Selling Author and has also been named to Business Insider’s 40 Under 40. Adam shares his advice on finding your purpose, following your dreams, overcoming failure and how we can all make a difference in this world. Listen to the Podcast episode below to find out how you can go from ordinary to extraordinary now!   Begin each day with a completely selfless act. Most of your day will inevitably be consumed by responsibilities, musings and opportunistic ideas. But within your first hour of emailing, send a note connecting two great people who will benefit from an introduction to each other. Try sending someone a book you know they’ll love or text a friend to say you’re proud of their most recent accomplish

by Andrew Abba Festus Image Credit | Twenty20.com It was Elbert Hubbard, the American artist and philosopher, who said, “Life is just one damn thing after another”. Inevitably, we are always going to have problems to deal with and inevitably going to find ourselves in a variety of situations; some of which will make us happy and some will make us unhappy. To a greater or lesser extent, life just happens to us all. The sooner we come to a point of acceptance about this, the sooner we are likely to find peace and more importantly contentment. However, you can’t find contentment by just trying to  be happy . There are far too many factors outside our circle of immediate control to contend with. Even the very word itself is derived from the Norse “hap” which means luck or chance. “Happy” is a silly, childish word full of connotations of birthday cakes, parties, days at the beach and laughter. It’s a pleasant but transient state, fleeting and shallow. Sometimes we are happy and

The last few weeks I have had some amazing times. If only these experiences could last forever. Or can they? When we are in the moment of one of those amazing times, we often let it pass us by. It’s so easy not to be conscious of what is happening right now. – Experience One A work colleague and friend got married a few weeks ago. He had been single for twenty-eight years and then at the start of the year, he met someone. Within three weeks they were engaged and then a few months later they got married. Against the odds, my friend wanted to show that even though they hadn’t known each other a long time, they were going to prove all the critics wrong. I’m not sure why, but I was one of the few people that got to attend the wedding. It had been a while since I had attended a wedding, so I had forgotten what it was like. Watching these two inspirational leaders get married was so humbling. The wedding was spectacular and it seriously felt like one of those Disney fairy tales. Duri

 | Entrepreneur FacebookTwitterGoogle+LinkedIn You’re exhausted. You’ve put countless of hours into an idea that you believed in so much. Literally almost blood, sweat and tears were sacrificed for this vision to be accomplished. You had hoped and expected for a lot of things, and was excited to have plans for the future. A few months ago, I wrote an article here titled, “What I Learned After Opening My First Business at 21.” My restaurant was doing well that time, and writing that article made me feel on top of the world. I thought that it was going to be that way for a long time, yet not so long after that, sales started to become stagnant and then declined. As I write this today, my restaurant has already stopped operations. It stopped a few days ago, but a couple months back, I knew it was bound to happen. We couldn’t keep up with the bills we needed to pay, and they kept accumulating day by day. With a heavy heart and chaotic mind, we knew we had to close it down. I couldn’t be

Yep. There’s a new hipster in town and he’s been dubbed the “Lumbersexual”. No longer relegated to the Pacific Northwest, the Lumbersexual trend has crossed America faster than, spoiling the dreams of many Alternachics of bedding down with a clean shaven hipster. Yes, ladies, gone are the days of van dyks and motorcycle jackets. Dating sites like OKCupid.com have reported heavy confusion by their algorithms. With so much facial hair, the system is having a hard time matching people up. Women, exasperated by the seemingly endless scroll of beardies have turned to *gulp* going to BARS to meet men. Yep, it’s the 1990s all over again! There are many dangers to dating one of these manliest of (clearly ‘self’ employed) men. For one, if you like a little er um ‘oral’ delight — well you risk some serious rug rash and may be wishing you were making it with a brillo pad instead. Second, the average Beardo may look sporty in his flannels and oversized sense of irony facial expression, but don’

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Like many other millennials coming out of college, my first foray into the work world wasn’t a smooth landing into a stable job. I spent a year in a startup incubator before leaving to start interning with a mentor to develop my marketing skills. I then went on to lead marketing for Sumo.com, until that blew up 8 months later. There’s more detail to the story, but suffice it to say that I’ve made it to the other side successfully. Now I spend my time working for myself as an entrepreneur, traveling the world, and growing my site. I can say without hesitation that the key to getting this ball rolling was finding a set of mentors who guided my initial learning, widened my network, and provided feedback along the way. The time I spent with my mentors set me up for success no matter what path I decided to take. Finding a good mentor isn’t easy. It can be downright intimidating to reach out to someone you admire and ask for something. But it’s a skill that can be learned. A lot of

by Andrew Abba Festus It was late on Friday night. I couldn’t really be bothered socializing The energy wasn’t there, but I did it anyway. Last time I went to this social event I hated it. It was full of pretentious ex-Harvard / Stanford snobs that loved to compare whose daddy had a better car. Inside, I was shaking my head the whole time. This time, though, it was different. This time I met game changers who were doing seriously cool sh”t – cool because they were solving real problems. One thing I find hard to deal with is shallow conversations. There’s nothing better than going all in and going in deep. Ok, don’t look at me like that. If you want to socialize like a pro you’ve got to make an effort and think about what you’re doing. Here are a few hints to get you on the right path: 1 .  Don’t be scared to ask for a phone number Never leave a place where you have connected with some interesting people you like, without doing this step: ask for a phone number. You