I recently came across the concept of Subjective Reality. It is a belief system which claims that there is only one consciousness. You are that singular consciousness, and everything and everyone in your reality is a projection of your thoughts.

None of the other people you encounter are conscious in a way that is separate from you. Nobody else can have intentions. The only intentions are yours.  You are the only thinker in this universe.

There is only one source of intentions in your universe – YOU.  The walking, talking bodies that you observe in your reality all exist inside your consciousness.  In simpler words, the concept of Subjective Reality claims the life is just another type of dream. A dream that seems solid because you believe (intend) it is.

When understanding the concept of Subjective Reality it is important to correctly define ‘You’. You are not just your physical body. You are the single consciousness in which this entire reality takes place.

If you were having a dream, are you the physical manifestation of yourself that you see in the dream? No, that’s just your dream avatar.  You are the dreamer.  The entire dream occurs within your consciousness.  All dream characters are projections of your dream thoughts, including your avatar. You can even switch avatars in your dream by possessing another character. In your dream you can do anything you believe you can.

Physical reality works the same way.  This is a denser universe, and hence changes occur a bit more gradually here.  But reality still conforms to your thoughts just like a sleeping dream.  The idea that other people have intentions is an illusion because other people are just projections.  Of course, if you strongly believe other people have intentions, then that’s the dream you’ll create for yourself. But ultimately it’s still an illusion.

A lot of people think black cats are unlucky. There is a popular belief that says a rabbit’s foot brings good luck. You should never open an umbrella inside the house and a three leaf clover is a sign a good fortune. I couldn’t help but wonder, why a rabbit’s foot? Why not a rabbit’s tail? Or ear? Why not a mongoose’s foot? Why is it ok to wear a raincoat inside the house but it’s not okay to open an umbrella?

Is there any truth to these beliefs? If yes, what gave these objects their power? How come a rabbit’s foot is lucky, but a mongoose’s foot is just a foot? What makes these objects special? Do they have some intrinsic power? Or is it that they are special because we believe they are. Do black cats really bring bad luck? Or is that bad things sometimes just happen and we blame them on the cat?

We associate feelings to everything in the world around us. We have convinced ourselves that cockroaches are disgusting. The scientific fact is that they are the cleanest insect alive. We associate fear and disgust with a cockroach. The cockroach itself is just a cockroach. Just like a foot is just a foot, we are the ones who believe it is lucky.

If holding on to a rabbit’s foot gives a person peace of mind, if it makes them feel a little more confident, does it matter if their belief is false? Is there something wrong with associating good feelings to an object to make your self feel better? Is it really such a bad thing to believe in something ridiculous if it eases your anxiety? No it isn’t. There is no harm in having beliefs, just remember that life is only as good, or bad as you think it is.

The term singer-songwriter has become a part of everyday vocabulary. It is a term that refers to musicians who write, compose and sing their own material including lyrics and melodies. We all remember Johnny Cash, Bob Dylan, Jackson Browne, Cat Stevens, James Taylor, and Dolly Parton. These were the singer-songwriters of the 60’s and 70’s.

In the early 1990s Mariah Carey rose to fame and became one of the most successful and well known singer-songwriters of all time. Alanis Morissette, Sheryl Crow, Victoria Williams, Patty Griffin, Jewel and Lisa Loeb were all hugely successful in the music industry.

Then came the beginning of the end of ‘Great Music’, in the early 21st century, a massive frenzy of “bubble-gum pop stars” were created by record labels. With limited vocal abilities, these artists sold records to young fans via a marketed image.

The fans loved them. They enticed such frenzy wherever they went, that they were regarded as modern day royalty. Artists like Britney Spears, the Back Street Boys and Christina Aguilera rose to super stardom. These artists, who merely performed songs given to them, were given the status of living legends. They were blamed for the difficulty of achieving success, faced by singer-songwriters of the time.

Then artist such as Spears and Christina Aguilera began writing their own material and taking further control of their musical careers. They were no longer seen as the puppets of the dollar making record industry. Today, massive success and credit has been given to artist such as Mariah Carey, Alicia Keys, Amy Winehouse and Taylor Swift who write almost all of their own material.

It has been proved that the image of a star can be used to sell records. People have a tendency to believe what they see. The same is true when it comes to business. So, have you checked to see, what is your corporate image?

Business Strategy, Business Planning, Marketing Guidelines, KPI’s; the list of plans is endless. Every business and businessman spends a significant amount of time planning for the different aspects of his business. Most people fall short on the step that comes after planning i.e. implementation.

So you have your plans, how are you going to go about executing them? Ironically you need a plan, for how you are going to implement your plans. Some people would consider this to be trivial. They would be wrong. It is very important that every entrepreneur know, how he/she is going to put their carefully devised plans into action.
There is a belief that a well devised plan would implement itself. This is like saying that a well made pie would eat itself. You need to cut it into slivers, decide what china you are going to use, who will be served the first piece and when exactly it would be served.

All plans may be good, but in my opinion what makes a plan great, is if it can be successfully implemented. After all, plans will only be plans until someone uses them. One way of successfully implementing a plan is breaking it into pieces. You can implement one piece at a time until it is in place. This would put less stress on the organization and would involve a lot less hassle. Another advantage is that if any piece is underperforming, necessary changes can be made to the future pieces.

The most important thing I’d like to say is, GET STARTED. You may have the best plan or strategy in the world but it is of no use if you don’t use it. Fine tune the plan as much as you can within reason. Once that is done, execute it. To quote Rihana, “Baby you’ve got the keys. Now Shut Up and Drive.”

You just got promoted. It’s time for that well deserved vacation. You travel to a beautiful, exotic land. You enjoy the scenery and the quirks of a foreign urban sprawl. You sample the delicacies. You’re having a fantastic time.

You wake up a few days later with a queasy stomach. You’re feeling slightly homesick. You decide to have some regular food that day, but it’s a foreign land, you don’t know the people and you don’t understand the language. You spend a few hours wandering from eatery to eatery looking for non-exotic familiar food. Just when you’re about to give up, you look across the street and see a sign with an arrow. The sign has a picture of two golden arches forming a giant ‘M’. You follow the sign.

You go up the road, take a left and then a right. Ah, a sight for sore eyes. How you cherish the sight of McDonalds, the smell of a big Mac and fries. You don’t need to know ten different languages to spot a McDonalds in ten different countries. The golden arches are so famous that they transcend the barriers of language.

Logos are a way for people to recognize an organization in just one look. It is important for every business to have a logo that represents what their organization stands for. This may seem trivial to small businesses, but don’t forget that all businesses start small. Who knew that a simple swoosh would become synonymous with sports gear?

Take some time to analyze exactly what your business stands for. Once you have done this, you need to try and visualize what your thoughts would look like. Think about the image that would best represent your business. What image describes your business in just one look?

We’ve all heard the story of the three little pigs. One built a house of straw, one built a house of sticks and the third built a house of bricks. There is another version of this story. In that version there is a fourth pig. That pig didn’t build a house at all. He planned where he would build his house. It would be on the bank of a stream, under the shade of tall trees. He planned what he would make the house from; sticks, stones, bricks and wood. He planned what the house would look like; French windows, a terrace, and a red tile roof. He planed how he would go about building it; he had his blue prints & his workers’ contracts. He planned and he planned and he planned some more. As he was planning, the wolf came along and ate him up. There was no huffing or puffing to blow his house down.

No one talks about this pig because his story is just too sad. There are so many people who have a similar story. They plan and they plan but they never actually do anything. Businesses often suffer the same fate.  It’s good to have a plan but don’t spend so much of your time or your resources on your plan that you don’t have any time left to actually implement it. We get lost in the numbers and specifics of things. We get so engrossed in planning for the future that we forget to look at our today. There is no point in planning ten years ahead if you aren’t doing enough to survive till the next year.

If you have a basic plan to get started don’t spend too much time trying to fine tune it. Get Started. Don’t be like the fourth little pig who never built his house.

Imagine a classroom. The teacher asks Tom a question. He says the answer is ‘A’. She turns to Bill and asks him the same question. Bill knows the answer is ‘B’ but he says ‘A’. We’ve all encountered this phenomenon. It is because of this phenomenon that we’ve given wrong answers, smoked cigarettes and during the 80’s, we even pretended that bell bottoms were cool. This phenomenon is known as ‘peer pressure.’ Studies have shown that 65% of us will give the wrong answer just because we heard someone else say it. When we hear ‘peer-pressure’, we automatically think of groups of intimidating teenagers. The reality is not always this obvious.

Peer-pressure is just an offshoot of the power of suggestion. There isn’t always an intimidating teenager involved. Women feel the need to go out and buy a new dress for a party; simply because they know, the other women in attendance will be well dressed. Men feel the need to have the corner office, with the windows, simply because all the successful guys have them.

The power of suggestion has been well documented. Those who know how to use it are some of the most successful people on the planet. To use this power you require patience, restraint and keen observation. For the most part it’s safer to stay away from this technique, at the same time, it’s important that we learn how to protect ourselves from it. The next time you find yourself taking an action, or craving an object, stop yourself and check to see if your own thoughts are guiding you. Make sure you don’t do something because you heard, someone else had done it. If you are asked, ‘What color is the night sky?’ Don’t say ‘black’, because everyone says ‘black’. Look and see. Sometimes the night is navy blue.

We all look at the world around us in different ways. Where some see wonder and magic others cringe in disgust. Some see a swamp and muck while others see the lotus that grows in it. Some see coal while some see the potential of it becoming a diamond. Where some of us see defeat and surrender, others see challenges and a chance to do better. We are all defined by the way we perceive our surroundings. If you think your world is sad and depressing you will feel sad and depressed. This affects your psyche and in turn, your work. Beneath all that we see and all that we understand is us, just us and our ideologies. We are at the center of our world. We can change anything in our world by shifting our center. By looking at things differently we can make them different. We can either see a glass half empty or we can see it as half full, with room for more. Our core ideologies and our thinking are what shape our world. Thoughts are the greatest energy force in this world. You can make this energy work for you.

When you are faced by adversity, don’t think of defeat, think of how you can overcome the obstacles in your way. If you think that things will work out, they will find a way to do so. Don’t let your world be clouded by failure and regret. They will reflect in your work and all you will encounter is failure and regret. Have faith in the fact that things will work out and they will find a way to do so. The world around you should reflect success and everything that inspires you. This will help you work harder and gain success. You are the centre of your world. You alone can affect the world around you. By changing your perception you can change not only how things make you feel but also how they are. There is no limit to the change you can bring about by simply believing that things are going to change.

After Napoleon’s defeat at the battle of Waterloo we learnt that it’s never a good idea to be late for battle and that it’s always a good idea to have a strategy. When it come to business we know it’s not enough to take the journey we must have a destination in mind. But there are many forks in the road. How do you know which fork to take? Every decision will affect the time and the state of your arrival. So apart from setting your destination and packing your bags you need one more thing before you begin. You need a map, one that charts the best course for you to take, keeping in mind the resources that are available. In business this map is known as business strategy.

Strategy is the direction and scope of an organization over the long-term. It involves setting long term goals for your business and making decisions on how to attain these goals. Imagine for a moment that you’ve started a hobby class. When you open some of your friends show interest and are keen on becoming students. It is only natural for some friends to ask you for a discount or special rate. Now the question is do you give them a discount or not? If you do then yours is a class that gives special treatment to those who know you personally. If you don’t then you are a class that treats everyone the same irrespective of their relationship with you. Each course of action has its pros and cons. A sound Business Strategy will guide you in making these decisions. Here is some information on the different levels of business strategy.

Corporate Strategy – is concerned with overall purpose and scope of the business.

Business Unit Strategy – is concerned more with how a business competes successfully in a particular market.

Operational Strategy – is concerned with how each part of the business is organized to deliver the corporate and business-unit level strategic direction.

Focusing the mind can be a difficult task, especially in our busy lives. We all have some responsibilities – be it to family and/or careers. Some even have responsibilities to community and church. In all that busy-ness, most people have forgotten about the responsibility to themselves. They take a back seat to everyone and everything else that’s going on. Is it any wonder so many people in society feel burned out, devoid of peace and purpose?

I used to be that way, and I was tired of it. I knew I had to change. I decided to try an experiment; after all, I had nothing to lose. Everyday, I started to focus my mind on what I desired most in life (contentment). It wasn’t easy. The path of least resistance is to focus on what’s going wrong in our lives. It’s only natural because we’re raised in a society that, if we hear any comments on ourselves or others, it’s usually negative. We rarely receive compliments.

Because of all that, I was resistant to take a few minutes several times a day on quieting my mind. I saw it as self-indulgent; people needed me and deadlines were looming. But once I took the time to focus my mind and take some “me time,” I not only found more contentment in my life, but more energy and less stress. I started seeing more positives occurring in my life, and that reinforced the contentment I felt. Of course, that contentment attracted more positives in my life. It’s a lovely cycle!

Sometimes I revert back to my old habits of not taking time for myself. It’s so easy to do, isn’t it? When you’re super busy, the last thing that springs to you mind is to spend a few minutes in focused quiet time. My old self says something along the lines of “Yeah, right. I don’t have time for that right now. Besides, it’s just a few minutes. How much good can it do?” Then I remember a patch of a few days when I didn’t take time to focus. I had less time and a whole lot more stress.

Sometimes you have to change your behavior to change your attitude. Focusing your mind on what you want in life, in your quiet times, works wonders. Try it for a week. Set aside a few minutes, at least four times a day, to quiet yourself and focus on one goal. By focusing the mind, you’ll find yourself more relaxed and able to face whatever challenges come your way.