Today’s success tip comes from Jeremy Lim.

Young Ambassador of the Children’s Medical Fund and freelance writer, Jeremy Lim, is a 16-year-old boy who has ‘Brittle-bones’ Disease. His numerous achievements and positive attitude despite his daily challenges has attracted media attention all over the world.

What do you do to pick yourself up when you are feeling down?

Feeling down is as natural as feeling pain when you are hit with an object. How much pain you feel depends on the degree of impact. Sometimes, I feel miserable. I think it is perfectly fine to feel that way, after all I am only human.  However, I know I don’t have to stay down forever and the quicker I let it go, the better it is for me.

What do I do to pick myself up? I don’t make a big deal of what has passed because I cannot do anything to change it. Instead, I use my time and energy to think of solutions that will bring back my smiles. I also remind myself that spring would not be so pleasant if there was no winter.

Of course, there will be times when I feel sad because of reasons beyond my control. One of the things I do to feel better is to write about it. I write my column for Today newspaper and this feels great because it gets the negative feelings out of my system.

In challenging times, I pick myself up by looking at funny pictures or comics and reading jokes to have a good laugh. I will also turn to my books for inspiration and words of wisdom.

This website contains even more great tips from Jermeny Lim.

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Today’s success tip comes from Laurence Harrould.

Combining his three passions of business, science and astrology with a love of working with people, Laurence has developed the Aviel brand. Laurence has also achieved diplomas in education, business information systems, orthomolecular nutrition, clinical ecology and workplace training.

For most business minded people, there are never enough hours in a day. What’s your advice for getting more done with less effort?

Everything keeps coming back to focus. If you know what your objectives are then whenever something comes up you can make a decision about whether it needs to be dealt with now. Steven Covey (author of The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People and First Things First) uses four quadrants: (1) Important and Urgent, (2) Important but Not Urgent, (3) Not Important but Urgent, and (4) Not Important and Not Urgent.

When we are clear about our purpose we can more easily put tasks into these quadrants. If it is in quadrant four, ignore it; quadrant three, get someone else to do it. Ideally life should be about working in quadrants one and two.

Particularly challenging for small business owners is getting caught in the trap of thinking, ‘If I don’t do it, then it won’t get done’. Something I find useful is to have a sign above your desk that says, ‘Whose job am I doing now?’

Delegation is very powerful and often misused. It is about having people who are responsible for specific tasks and allowing them to carry out their responsibilities without micro-managing. The other important point here is that your staff must have the authority and the tools to enable them to perform their roles. There is little that is more soul-destroying and stressful than having responsibility without the authority or ability to fulfil that responsibility.

Michael Gerber’s The E-Myth is a must for any business owner; the basic premise is about having systems in place. The other must-read is The One Minute Manager by Ken Blanchard and Spencer Johnson.

This website contains even more great tips from Laurence Harrould.

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Today’s success tip comes from Jennifer Jefferies.

Today Jennifer speaks to corporations throughout Australia, Taiwan, China, Hong Kong, South Korea, the United States, Europe and New Zealand. She is the author of 7 Steps to Sanity and seven other health-related titles which are sold throughout the world, and have been translated into four languages.

Why is it so important for people to learn to say ‘no’?

Most of us are our own worst enemies when it comes to saying ‘yes’ to everything that is asked of us. I can’t tell you the number of people that I have treated over the years who felt overloaded, fatigued and resentful for having been put in situations where they’ve had to do things that they either didn’t want to do or didn’t have time to do.

The reality is that you create this situation by saying ‘yes’ when you should have said ‘no’. You choose to forgo your own needs rather than having the courage to say ‘no’. You choose to accept being overloaded rather than risk being thought of as selfish or inconsiderate. But have you ever thought about how unfair it is to say ‘yes’ to someone and then feel angry at them for it? If you are going to say ‘yes’, you need to mean it, get your head around it and get on with it. If you are saying ‘yes’ but meaning ‘no’ then you are heading into trouble.

There are enough stressors in life without creating new ones for yourself every time you are too afraid to say ‘no’. No one likes to disappoint or let anyone down, but in life it’s a reality - the only question is whether you will choose to always let yourself down by never letting anyone else down.

It’s time to show some respect for yourself and to start saying ‘no’. It doesn’t mean that you are selfish or don’t care. It demonstrates that you understand your limits and are realistic about what can be achieved given your time, resources and capabilities. Respectfully saying ‘no’ shows others that you are not willing to disappoint their expectations by promising more than you can give.

We also have to learn to say ‘no’ to ourselves when we’re not acting in our own best interests. You might have experienced the ‘I’ll just finish this one thing’ syndrome, where you become so single-minded about your work that you neglect to look after the other areas of your life.

It usually strikes after 5pm on a weekday and every time you think, ‘I’ll just finish this one thing’ another hour slides by with you still sitting at your desk - then you grab something fast and fattening to eat, decide it’s too late to go to the gym or that you’re too tired to catch up with friends as planned and the ‘poor me’ behaviours begin to creep in. Negative emotions like ‘poor me’ suck the life out of you. It is generally unnecessary fear that stops us saying ‘no’.

This website contains even more great tips from Jennifer Jefferies.

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