Podcast Episode 8: Insider Secrets to Nailing a Successful Global Business From Scratch!

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Episode 8 of The School of Success Podcast Series is now live! This insightful interview with George Bramble, Founder of the award-winning eco-pet company, Beco, gives inspiring insight into how to build a successful global business you’re truly passionate about!

My chat with the accomplished, tenacious + resourceful, George, is not to be missed if you want to know:

– how to find a business idea that inspires you + makes great money;
– what the best route to entrepreneurship is;
– why mindset is key to success;
– common myths that will keep you stuck;
– insider tips on how to scale a business; +
– top tips for effective selling.

This is also for you if you’re not sure you have what it takes + have no idea where to start.

In this super informative interview, George shares his expert wisdom from over 10 years’ experience building an extremely successful global business that saw him go from sticking stickers on dog bowls on a roof in the dead of night to becoming the leading compostable poop bag specialist + a supplier of eco-friendly pet products to over 43 markets worldwide in a pet industry worth over $99 billion in the US alone.

You can find George @beco_pets on Instagram + at www.becopets.com

In the words of Beco, love your dog, love our planet!

Listen here!

1 in 4 of Us Experience Mental Ill Health Yet Nearly Half of Managers Have Never Received Mental Health Training

MH misunderstood in workplace

Just another reason giving mental health first aid training is so rewarding – because even though awareness is improving, there’s still a gaping need for greater awareness of mental ill health at management level. 85% of managers feel responsible for employee wellbeing yet at least 50% aren’t receiving any kind of training to execute this duty of care – that’s despite at least 1 in 4 of us experiencing mental ill health every year in the UK and 99 million sick days being taken due to mental ill health every year.

Aside from the prevalence of mental ill health, managers are the role models of organisations and they have a huge effect on employee wellbeing and mental health. They also have the power to implement organisational policy and make positive change. There are so many more stats which make a no brainer business case for mental health first aid training including unsupported mental health costing the UK economy £36 billion a year and over 80% of line managers admitting they’d judge someone with a mental health condition. This is why the watch words of my training business are understand, create, transform. Because any transformation, organisational or otherwise, starts with understanding and having an action plan for change.

As per this insightful article from Health Insurance Daily on occupational health:

‘the Chartered Management Institute suggests workplace training should become a legal requirement.

Nearly half (49%) of managers have never received training on managing mental health in the workplace, according to a survey by the Chartered Management Institute.

Less than a third (30%) have received training in the last 12 months, the poll of nearly 950 managers found.

The survey also shows over half (51%) of managers have had a member of staff disclose a mental health problem, such as stress, anxiety and depression as well as rarer problems like bipolar, eating problems and post-traumatic stress disorder.

This means that over three fifths (62%) of managers who have had a member of their team disclose a mental health problem to them have either never received any training, or received it over 12 months ago, the CMI said.

CMI’s chief executive Ann Francke said there is very long way to go to make mental health training a part of essential workplace practice.

“Line managers play an absolutely critical role in supporting employees’ mental health and wellbeing. Employers are already required by law to provide training on physical health and safety. It’s time the same requirements applied to mental health,” she stated’.

If not now, when?

The 10 Books That Changed My Life

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It’s hard to overstate the impact that books have had on my life, developing my understanding of people and society as much, if not more than, human interaction. Whether the power of integrity in The Crucible, the strength of love in Jane Eyre or the paradox of man in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, books hold a mirror up to nature and reflect every nuance of what it is to be human. They can be life-changing and deeply grounding all at once and wonderful tools for reflection, expansion and growth.

Combined with travel, writing and a few relationships that were love stories in themselves, my top ten book recommendations below have been major catalysts for emotional, spiritual and intellectual growth. They’ve deepened my strengths as a friend, girlfriend and coach, with every one developing my understanding of myself and the world around me significantly. I hope the below recommendations will help inspire your life as they have mine.

1. The Untethered Soul: The Journey Beyond Yourself by Michael Singer

This New York Times bestseller really expedited the healing process after a life-changing relationship ended. Co-published with the Institute of Noetic Sciences, ‘The Untethered Soul’ begins by walking you through your relationship with your thoughts and emotions and helping you uncover the source and fluctuations of your inner energy. This book will be a truly eye-opening if you’ve ever struggled with anger or frustration that life isn’t how you want it to be, the sense that you’ll only be happy once you have certain things or certain people around you and that any other way means unhappiness, compromise or misery. It also helps clarify why some people feel resistance towards certain types of people or places and what’s really going on when you feel judged by others for not being what they want you to be. Michael Singer’s pearls of wisdom help you manage your negative inner voice and understand how this is key to spiritual growth. He also helps you understand how to overcome blocks within yourself that may threaten relationships whether romantic, platonic, professional or otherwise. Offering simple yet profound answers to achieving happiness and self-realization, Singer opens the door to a life lived in the freedom of your innermost being – the plain where the enlightened exist.

2. The Power of Now by Ekhart Tolle

This international bestseller taught me about the power of mindfulness and what it really is – quietening worries about the past, fears about the future and living more consciously in the present. It opens with the author’s sudden transformation from suicidal crisis to spiritual enlightenment and lasting inner peace. Tolle goes on to explain, with powerful insight, where stress comes from, why you are not your mind and how you can control your thoughts and emotions. He gives actionable steps about how to turn your mind off and live more fully in the present, where you respond from a place of deep consciousness, in alignment with your true self. In doing so, you can better fulfil your inner purpose and change the world at cause. This book is intense and a love or hate read but if you give it a chance, it will leave you feeling like you’ve uncovered the secrets of the universe.

3. A Return To Love by Marianne Williamson

I read this book in the wake of a painful but necessary break-up. It clarified the different kinds of romantic love, how they’re part of your wider journey and why self-love is the most important of them all. The number one bestseller, ‘A Return to Love’ explores how miracles start to happen when you resolve to trust the universe and learn to love yourself. Marianne Williamson was in her mid-20s, a self-destructive product of the ‘me generation,’ when she made a discovery that changed her life. In 1965 Helen Schucman, a professor of medical psychology at Columbia University, had started transcribing a ‘voice’. The result was the massive ‘A Course in Miracles’, a self-study psycho-spiritual philosophy based on love and forgiveness that gave birth to discussion groups around the world. Williamson’s full embrace of the ‘Course’ led her to give talks and lectures on it, which eventually resulted in the publication of ‘A Return to Love’. A masterful summation of the ‘Course’, Williamson’s book guides the reader to deep spiritual awakening — which may explain why it spent over six months at the top of the New York Times bestseller list.

4. The Art of Happiness: A Handbook for Living by the Dalai Lama XIV

This book deepened my knowledge of the most important aspect of human nature in any relationship: empathy. I read it at a time when I felt lonely and unsupported in a romantic relationship and the teachings were a catalyst for me leaving that partnership for a while. In collaboration with Howard Cutler, a western psychiatrist, the Dalai Lama incorporates stories and meditations on how to overcome challenging emotions, what makes some people more loving than others and what good relationships are built on. Whether you’re experiencing family, health or relationship problems or just interested in happiness at large, the 2,500 years of Buddhist teachings within will help you understand how to find peace in your daily life.

5. A Mindfulness Guide for the Frazzled by Ruby Wax

This read inspired me to develop mindfulness workshops in companies, charities and prisons. Outrageously witty, smart and accessible, Ruby Wax’s book on mindfulness explains the well-known term with humour, simplicity and compelling appeal. With mindfulness advice for young professionals, parents, children and teenagers across a range of subjects from stress and relationships to careers and mental health, Wax’s book is a bite-sized guide for leading a healthier, happier life. And if you thought Wax was just some silly comic, think again. She has an OBE for her services to mental health, her book is inspired by her studies of Mindfulness Based Cognitive Therapy at Oxford University and she believes that mindfulness is the only thing that has eased her crippling depression. If you’ve struggled to understand what mindfulness is about and enjoy a light-hearted read with lashings of comedy, this one’s for you.

6. Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman’s Search for Everything by Elizabeth Gilbert

I read this worldwide bestseller while I was in New York after emerging from a toxic relationship which left me feeling completely unlike myself. It starts at 3am, with Elizabeth Gilbert sobbing on the bathroom floor. She’s in her thirties, she has a husband, a house, they’re trying for a baby – and she doesn’t want any of it. A bitter divorce and a turbulent love affair later, she emerges battered and bewildered and realises it’s time to pursue her own journey in search of three things she’s been missing: pleasure, devotion and balance. So she travels to Rome, where she learns Italian from handsome, brown-eyed identical twins and gains twenty-five pounds. She then travels to an ashram in India, where she finds that enlightenment entails getting up in the middle of the night to scrub the temple floor, and ends up in Bali where a toothless medicine man of indeterminate age offers her a new path to peace: simply sit still and smile. Slowly happiness begins to creep up on her and changes the course of her life entirely. Having unconsciously followed Liz’s path over the last four years, I would highly recommend this book if you’re at a cross-roads in life, whether in a relationship you’re unsure of, newly single or wondering what makes you tick. It’s a love or hate read but I had more laugh out loud moments and feelings of comfort and catharsis than I can recall.

7. Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear by Elizabeth Gilbert

I read this book while knee deep in the highs of Chamonix’s Alps, deep in the throws of the most joyful love and the most liberating period of freedom and creativity I’ve ever experienced. I’d left law not long before and was training to be a life coach while writing my blog against the backdrop of Mont Blanc. I was moving closer and closer to who I was meant to be and closing the gap between a life lived by ‘shoulds’ versus ‘wants’, so it seems apt that I read ‘Big Magic’ at this time as it centres on connecting with yourself and expressing that creatively. More specifically, it focuses on finding the courage to access this creativity (something Oprah Winfrey says we all have and are meant to exercise), shattering the struggles and suffering that surround the process and showing you just how easy it can be. By sharing stories from her own life, as well as those from her friends and the people that have inspired her, Elizabeth Gilbert challenges you to embrace your curiosity, commit to what you most love and overcome what you most fear. Whether you long to write a book, create art, cope with challenges at work, embark on a long-held dream or simply make everyday life more vivid and rewarding, ‘Big Magic’ will take you on a journey of hope filled with wonder, humanity and joy.

8. The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari by Robin Sharma

Just thinking about this book gives me tingles. This was the seed of my awakening to what really matters in life – the beginnings of reconnecting to my true self – bridging the gap between the conventional past life I’d known as a lawyer and the new, more inner-directed life I was starting to forge. Teaching about the difference between ‘shoulds’ and ‘wants’, prestige and inner power, feelings over thinkings, the pearls of wisdom in this number one bestseller have contributed to reshaping my views on careers, love and life at large. This book is, quite simply, one of the most powerful stories you will ever read. Described by Brian Tracy, as a ‘fun, fascinating, fanciful adventure into the realms of personal development’, this is an inspiring story full of insightful messages on how to achieve greater balance, control and happiness in your daily life. Written by one of the world’s leading experts on leadership and personal development and author of 12 international bestsellers, Robin Sharma knows a thing or two about success in the widest sense. Read it if you want a short course in life’s most powerful learnings and top tips for finding lasting happiness. If it doesn’t change your life, it will certainly change your perspective.

9. The Dirty Life: On Farming, Food & Love by Kristen Kimball

I read this book at the beginning of a journey that would change my life. I’d just moved to Madrid after leaving law, I was embarking on a love affair with a Mowgli lookalike French man nobody would have ever put me with and I was beginning to connect with my true self – closing the gap between who I thought I should be and who I really am.  Based on Kimball’s unconventional journey from the glitzy world of Harvard and New York journalism to the rugged wilderness of the countryside with a farmer she falls in love with, ‘The Dirty Life’ is a powerful tale about love, fulfilment and the power of instinct. I could almost have been her for the outwardly shocking decisions she made which were essential to her happiness. Exposing stark ironies about conventional perceptions of ‘success’ and ‘happiness’, Kimball takes us on a journey full of surprises, a world away from the corporate sphere she might have settled into in favour of a world full of simple pleasures. ‘The Dirty Life’ is a heart-warming must-read if you’re feeling disillusioned with the daily grind or conflicted by society’s expectations of you versus your inner longings. Whether you’re at a romantic or professional cross-roads or are wondering about exploring less well-trodden paths, read this book. It will certainly change your perception of ‘wealth’ and it might just change your life.

10. The Five Languages of Love by Gary Chapman

I met a woman in Chamonix who said this book saved her marriage. I can see why. Its pocket sized dimensions are completely disproportionate to its power, for though you can read it in two hours straight, ‘The Five Languages of Love’  is a life-changer in the relationship game. A New York Times bestseller, with over 5 million copies sold and translated into 38 languages, this book is a sales phenomenon, which outsells sales the prior year, every year. Not disimilar to Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus,  New York Times bestselling author Dr. Gary Chapman, guides you to identify, understand, and speak your partner’s primary love language – quality time, words of affirmation, gifts, acts of service or physical touch. By learning the five love languages, you discover how we each have unique love languages and learn practical steps in how to make the other feel more loved. Chapters are categorized by love language for easy reference and each one ends with specific, simple steps to express a specific language to your partner and guide your relationship in the right direction. A bit like Myers Briggs, once you understand how people are different and how you can adapt to their needs, your relationships flow with greater ease, joy and abundance. Whether single, in a relationship or married, this powerful toolkit is like a little love bible. You won’t regret reading it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Bestselling Tips: How To Eradicate Stress & Strengthen Your Relationships

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I just read a life-changing passage on the key to happiness in the New York Times bestseller, The Untethered Soul by Michael Singer ⋯⇠

The following will be truly eye-opening if you’ve ever struggled with:

⌲ Anger or frustration that life isn’t how you want it to be;
⌲ The sense that you’ll only be happy once you have certain things or certain people around you and that any other way = unhappiness, compromise or misery;
⌲ A feeling of resistance or a narrow mind towards certain types of people, places, events or environments;
⌲ A feeling of being judged for not being how others want you to be and wondering whether this is right.

Singer’s pearls of wisdom will help you:

⌲ Manage your negative inner voice and understand how this is key to spiritual growth;
⌲ Challenge preconceptions and ideals that you’re convinced keep you safe but are actually keeping you stuck;
⌲ Overcome blocks within yourself that threaten relationships, romantic or otherwise;
⌲ Improve your relationships with yourself and with others, whether platonic, professional or otherwise.

What Does Happiness Depend On?

Singer directly challenges our propensity towards instant gratification, safety and this idea of ‘When I have this thing, or this particular person, I’ll be happy’.

Quite the contrary, the key to happiness is what Singer calls: The Path To Non-Resistance. In other words, stress only happens when you resist life’s events or when you perceive happiness to be conditional on having certain things.

For example, let’s suppose Steve Jobs felt stressed about not finding a businesswoman for a wife as clever as he was; Usain Bolt feels resistance about not finding friends as athletic as he is to hang out with; an ocean lover feels depressed because they can’t spend every waking hour at sea; or a single person struggling because they’ll only be happy when they’re married.

Where Does Resistance (or Stress) Come From?

All these worries are born of suffering and resistance that block your heart’s energy flow and keep you closed. It’s not life events that cause problems or stress, it’s your resistance to life’s events that’s causing this experience. Life events could be anything from being in a relationship you’re not 100% sure of, being with people different to you, living in places that don’t feel ideal, not earning enough money or not feeling alive enough all the time.

All resistance that you experience is linked to your childhood. Maybe you were born into an atmosphere of stress, maybe you had an overbearing mother or an absent father, maybe your parents divorced when you were young or you suffered a different trauma or loss. This event may have coloured your view of the world, what is safe, what feels risky and what determines or threatens happiness.

Let’s say you felt the ripples of stress from your parents’ divorce when you were too young to process trauma — you may have been left feeling that relationships are a risky business, that women or men are difficult or that controlling exactly how your partner is and keeping freedom at all cost is the best way to stay ‘safe’.

What’s The Solution?

You have to carefully watch the mental voice that tells you to resist something. It literally commands you: ‘I don’t like what he said. I don’t think my relationship’s perfect enough. I wish that person was more like this. Fix it’. If you don’t carefully watch this negative inner voice, you will not actually be dealing with the current event, you will be dealing with your blocked energies from the past. You will not be coming from a place of clarity but from a place of inner resistance and tension.

How Else Can You Improve Happiness?

Singer advises that relationships are a great way to work with yourself. Imagine if you used relationships to get to know other people rather than to satisfy what is blocked inside of you. If you’re not trying to make people fit into your preconceived notions of what you like and dislike, you will find that relationships are not really that difficult. If you’re not so busy judging and resisting people based on what is blocked inside of you, you will find that they are much easier to get along with – and so are you.

If you’ve ever wondered why bosses tend to have issues with you or why relationships feel difficult, ask yourself what energy you’re giving out / how you’re judging that person / what resistance is going on inside? You might think of yourself as a peaceful, chilled-out soul, but how easy-going are you if you’re so easily disturbed by others and your happiness is dependent on conditions around you being just so?

Maybe you’re feeling resistance because you wish your partner was more into the same things as you or you wish they were cleverer, more ambitious or more driven. What does that tell you about how open you are to people different to you or places or environments that challenge your preconceived ideals? Do you see difference as a vehicle for growth or are you easily ruffled when people and things aren’t how you believe they should be?

The Golden Nugget

Quite simply, letting go of yourself is the simplest way to get closer to others.

To grow through life, your heart and mind must be open and expansive enough to encompass reality. The only reason they’re not is because you resist.

Learn to stop resisting reality, whether visiting places you don’t like, being open to events you perceive to be stressful, being with people different to your preconceived ideals, and what used to look like stressful problems will begin to look like the stepping stones of your spiritual journey.

Magic Quotes To Meditate On

Here are two powerful quotes that will shift your mindset from resistance to growth:

“It is neither good nor bad, but thinking makes it so”

William Shakespeare

“Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space lies your freedom and power to choose your response. In those responses lie your growth and your happiness”

Victor Frankl (Holocaust survivor)

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Melanie