Nick Williams

You don’t get. Simple. This simple poem by Jessie Belle Rittenhouse (1869-1948) and as quoted by Napoleon Hill tells you everything you need to know.

I bargained with Life for a penny,
And Life would pay no more,
However I begged at evening
When I counted my scanty store;

For Life is a just employer,
He gives you what you ask,
But once you have set the wages,
Why, you must bear the task.

I worked for a menial’s hire,
Only to learn, dismayed,
That any wage I had asked of Life,
Life would have paid.

If you don’t get the meaning have a think about it, and set your dreams high, aim higher, strive for more.

2010 has been an interesting year, with highs and not so highs, but it has been an important year.

This has been the year of other people helping me. Previously it’s always been “Nick to the resuce” doing what I can to help other people, from cooking for friends writing a website for a missing person.

This year has been a tough one for many businesses and many of us have found “that which we rely upon” is no longer there. I have been lucky, people have helped me, and for their help I am grateful. I have also found it to be a truly humbling experience at the same time. I am lucky to have these people think that much of me that they have helped in the various ways that they have, sometimes at personal cost, sometimes putting their necks on the block to protect mine.

To those people, from the bottom of my heart, Thank You.

It has been a rollercoaster ride, on which I have had to learn new things, new ways to look at and deal with things, there are several noteable firsts as well. In 2010 I was published for the first time, both with fiction and non-fiction, little did a magazine editor realise what she was letting herself in for when at an event in January she pulled a pile of dvds from her bag and said “who wants to review a DVD”?

In 2010 I was able to further establish my on and off line retail business, bring new products to market, and with inspiration and support start laying foundations for the future.

I also realised something in a text conversation with my sister a couple of days ago, we never give up, if you cut us down we will grow back stronger, we just keep on keeping on.

Its worth a go.

Try it.

The more I read the more I understand
The more I live the better I understand

The more I understand creating the right mindset for positive results the more I notice in the world around and including me. To understand things I generally need to experience them.  Then it becomes a eureka moment. I’ll spare you the image of me jumping out of the bath and running down the street shouting the “E” word.

I’ll explain instead.

Earlier today I wasn’t in the best of moods so I decided to have a little lie down. Nothing like the occasional “power” nap to refresh oneself. Lying in my bed I was thinking to myself “hmmm not feeling so great” and the “e” moment happened. I was fine but was convincing myself that I didn’t feel great, so I didn’t. When I realised that how I was feeling was because of what I was thinking I was able to correct this. That was about 30 minutes ago.

It goes back to the self fulfilling prophecy that if you think about it you will make it happen, and most peoples self fulfilling prophecies are negative. I you think, nay tell yourself that you feel good guess what? You will feel good.

People do not realise how much their thinking influences their lives. Which is why I am learning to think positive.

At sometime during my GCSE years (1992-93) I read a poem by Kipling called “If”. The basic jist of the poem is that “If you think you can you will, If you think you can’t you won’t.” I forgot about the poem, however it stayed stuck in the “grey matter”.

Fast forward a few years, several times between the age of 20 and 27, I was exposed to the theories of talking a dream into a goal into a reality, auto suggestion and postive thinking. I took it in, but didn’t really understand it.

Sometime between my 27th and 31s birthday I went out and bought a pile of books (How To Win Friends and Influence People, The Richest Man In Babylon, Think And Grow Rich, The Seven Steps Of Highly Effective People, Who Moved My Cheese and a few more). I read “Who Moved My Cheese” and “The Richest Man in Babylon”.

Step back to 1999. Star Wars Episode 1, The Phantom Menace. Qui-Gon Jinn says “I’m sure a solution will present itself” or something very similar. Didn’t think about it at the time, but it sunk in.

Jump to 2010. In the earlier months of this year I picked up “Think And Grow Rich” and read it. It was the right time. The stuff that had sunk in earlier began to bubble to the surface. i found a like mind to bounce ideas off, and headed out into the world with the following views:

“A solution will present itself”
“I can conceive it, and believe it and will achieve it”
“I can do it”

and more

I started putting into action snippets of what I had newly learned. I have started following the guiding principles of the books that I have read and listened to, and am currently, and as previously mentioned “rewriting my own programming”, looking at life with a can do attitude, and also learning to dream again.

I can’t remember if I have already mentioned it, but it is so powerful that I will mention it again, “Look around you, everything started as an idea”.

Look around you, everything you see started as an idea

Dare to dream.

Nick

p.s. If you think you can you will, thats the only bit of the Kipling poem you need.

Fear stops us from doing anything that puts us outside of our comfort zone.

Fear stops us from doing things.

Superstitions are fears.

I am conquering my fears, I have thrown my superstitions to the wind, (magpies, touching wood, etc, etc). I workng on my fear of heights, which this weekend just gone had me standing at the edge of a cliff and looking down (without having to do it lying on my belly). It is an empowering feeling to look down at the cliffs, and the 20 or so metres of sheer drop and say “I’m not scared of you”, for what is there to fear? Although, I may not fear the sea and the cliffs, I still have respect for them.

In the philosphy of the self fulfilling prophecy being afraid of something happening will almost make it happen.

I write this post from the family pile (3 bed detached) in Cornwall. Its a gorgeous bank holiday weekend, with the weather in the right place and the rain at bay. This, dear reader I promise you is not fiction, it really is a sunny bank holiday.

This year has been interesting to say the very least, and I am pleased to say, an emotional phoenix of a rollercoaster that has done a loop the loop of the ashes and is now on the climb back to the starting position.

Nurturing a young business is probably not too far removed from the car of a young child, in fact being currently of the childess disposition my business is my baby, and this year it has been learning to crawl, teething and trying to use the video as a toaster!

I am not a holiday person, I love travelling and visiting different places but am more than happy to do day trips or city breaks., however this weekend I am in Cornwall for a christening. Violet, my 4th Godchild gets dunked in approximately 12 and a half hours time. Driving to Cornwall on a Bank Holiday can be an adventure in itself as you battle through traffic jams, struggle to get past those caravanists who tow their shed on wheels down a single carriageway at 27.5 mph, whilst the navigator directs their mobile chicane along the path of most annoyance. Therefore I drive to Cornwall at night, it has its advantages, all the burger places en route are closed so it is both safer on my wallet and my arteries, plus the roads are so much quieter you acutally have a chance of getting up to and maintaining the speed limit.

Having arrived just before sunrise and having had a little bit of sleep I found myself with an afternoon without and requests on my time. On the drive down I had, in a conversation to a close friend spoke about my desire to find a quiet cliff and sit on it and feel the breeze. So I set of to an area off the beaten tourist track, where locals go. Its beautiful and quiet and peaceful and you have to walk a couple of miles to get to it. I went armed, I had a large tradional steak pasty and two cans of wild cherry pepsi, my blackberry and that was it.

After a good hour of walking I found my spot, close to a beach, with soft grass, a clear blue sky and deep blue water. A check of my Blackberry showed it to be outside of signal range, so to be fair the spot was perfect. It was time to Stop.

I ate my pasty and washed it down with one can of wild cherry pepsi. Then I just sat, taking some deep breaths to slow myself down, relaxing myself. I felt the wind rolling off the Atlantic Ocean and wrapping itself around me. I thought about the things I wanted to think about, the people and things in my life that deserved that level of attention. As I relaxed and dove deeper into my thoughts I could hear buzzards overhead, the wild life in the grasses, the sea crashing on the rocks, the wind breathing over the flora, it was tranquil. It was removed from the noises of humans and machines. Perfect. As I concentrated on my thoughts I found myself coming in an out of conciousness. This was my aim, my goal, me and the sun and the sea and the wind. This was all about me, and me taking care of me, mentally, spiritually. Me taking care of my Angels. I call this Angel Maintenance.

Carry On. When the time felt right to go back to life I did, finishing my maintenance session with a cliff top walk to a quiet golden sanded beach where i could put my feet in the cold Atlantic waters that were breaking around me.

It was exactly what I needed, so much so that on return to the house I then crashed out and slept for several hours.

Maintenance complete!