There is no doubt that life has its ups and downs. However, how we deal with them can sometimes make all the difference. Today I want to share eight harsh truths that I’ve come to learn from life. There’s also a message in each that I think we can all learn from, and when applied, will improve our lives infinitely.

Some of these lessons may be old-hat for you. If so, look for ways to refine the idea to ensure your getting the most out of it. On the other hand, you may completely disagree with an idea or two and that’s great! Let us know your thoughts so we can all learn from each other.

1.     Friends Come and Go
When I was in high school, I always imagined spending most of my life with the same people. Then when I realized I had to move to college, that all changed. Once again, I made some close college friends but left them all behind when I moved from the UK to South Africa.

Friends will always come and go in your life; even though I’m back in the UK now, all my friends are in university around the country and not exactly in meeting distance. It can be a hard thing to accept, but many of the friends you spend time with now, might not be around in the next few years.

Important Lesson: There are an abundance of amazing people out there for you to meet and build relationships with. If you don’t have many friends, don’t stress, there are literally billions of friendship possibilities.

2.     You Won’t Always Get What You Want
I remember one Christmas when the only thing I had asked for was some second hand turntables for DJ’ing. I didn’t ask for anything else so I was pretty sure I would get them. However, they didn’t come and I ended up having to save for 10 months on my own in order to purchase them.

You won’t always get what you want in life: people are going to be late, people will let you down, items you want won’t always be available.

Important Lesson: Don’t look for happiness in material possessions and if things don’t go your way, learn to accept them. Life’s too short to stay miserable.

3.     Many People Will Love You, but Many Will Not
Whether you are a celebrity, a charity worker or just a normal guy, there are going to be people that love you and what you do, but there’s also going to be plenty people that don’t like you. There are many possible reasons such as jealousy, similarities to them, or just not being someone’s ‘type’.

Important Lesson: Not everyone is always going to like you, and that’s fine. If people want to spend time talking about you then that is their problem. You are perfect as you are. You shouldn’t need everyone to like you to have some form of self-esteem.

4.     Nobody Can Transform Your Life Like You Can
Wouldn’t it be lovely if we didn’t have to go up on stage, but we could just read a paragraph of a blog post and become a perfect public speaker? Or, wouldn’t it be nice if our friends could do daring things, and we would benefit from them as well?

The support and help of others can only take you so far, you’re going to have to do your own thing to make big changes in your life situation.

Important Lesson: Do things for yourself and learn to stand on your own two feet. People you rely on won’t be around forever, and you don’t want to have to use others as a crutch to get anywhere in life.

5.     You Are Going to Fail
I built more than 7 websites before I created one that actually started making me any money. I even put hundreds of hours into my own company that I actually closed down last month. Whether it is exams, projects, companies, or even the odd pub quiz, there are times when you will fail to meet your goals.

As the saying goes – “Only those who are asleep make no mistakes”.

Important Lesson: You can learn a lot from others, but it is your own failures that are going to teach you the most valuable lessons in life. Learn from your failures, embrace them, and use them to drive you on to success.

6.     Rain Will Sometimes Cancel Play
On some occasions when you have your shorts on and you’re ready for the beach, it’s going to rain. Or, when you get to that first hole and you’re ready to tee off – the clouds will open. Things aren’t always going to go how you would like them to.

Important Lesson: Don’t stress about the things that you can’t control. Learn to live with things that happen. You can’t change the past, but you can change how you react to things.

7.     There May Be No Tomorrow
At least, not for you anyway. We never know what is around the corner, a car crash, a heart attack; heck…even the end of the world is possible. Let’s face it, although we would all like to live till we are 70 years old, that’s certainly not always the case. There will be one day that is our last.

Important Lesson: Make the most of each day. Make sure the people you care about actually know it, don’t worry about little matters, just make sure you spend time doing the things you love.

8.     Someone Else Will Always Have More
Whether it is money, partners, friends or even blog subscribers, there will always be areas where other people have more than you. That isn’t to say you can’t become abundant in whatever you want (i.e. someone always had more money than Warren Buffett until 2008 when he was noted to be the richest man in the world).

The wanting of more actually holds a very important lesson…

Important Lesson: Just because someone has ‘more’, that doesn’t mean they are happy. Read the biography of any celebrity and they will tell you they enjoy their process of earning money, rather than what money can do to make them happy. In other words, focus on what you love, not what the thing you love can get you.

BONUS: Linking all the lessons here together is actually quite simple, and I can share the majority of what you need to know to enjoy life in a few simple bullet points:

·         Live life for the moment

·         Accept what is, even if things don’t go your way

·         Happiness is here, right now if you stop resisting and start accepting

I hope you all enjoyed my slightly unique take on the topic of improving your life. I would love to hear some harsh (but necessary) truths in the comments below!

Asimismo, Howard despertó la furia de algunos musulmanes australianos cuando dijo que ha dado todo su apoyo a las agencias de contrainteligencia australianas para que espíen en las mezquitas que hay en la nación.

‘Los que tienen que adaptarse al llegar a un nuevo país son los inmigrantes, no los australianos’, expresó con firmeza el mandatario. ‘Y si no les gusta, que se vayan. Estoy harto de que esta nación siempre se esté preocupando de no ofender a otras culturas o a otros individuos. Desde el ataque terrorista en Bali, hemos experimentado un incremento de patriotismo entre los australianos’.

‘Nuestra cultura se ha desarrollado sobre siglos de luchas, pruebas y victorias de millones de hombres y mujeres que vinieron aquí en busca de libertad’, agregó Howard.

‘Aquí hablamos inglés fundamentalmente’, dijo el primer ministro en un momento de su enérgico discurso. ‘No hablamos árabe, chino, español, ruso, japonés ni ninguna otra lengua. Por lo tanto, si los inmigrantes quieren convertirse en parte de esta sociedad, ¡que aprendan nuestro idioma!’

El mandatario continuó diciendo que la mayoría de los australianos son cristianos. ‘Esto no es un ala política ni un juego político. Se trata de una realidad. Se trata de hombres y mujeres de ascendencia cristiana que fundaron esta nación basándose en principios cristianos, lo cual está bien documentado en todos nuestros libros. Por lo tanto, es completamente adecuado demostrar nuestra creencia en las paredes de nuestras escuelas. Si Cristo les ofende, entonces les sugiero que busquen otra parte del mundo para vivir, porque Dios y Jesucristo son parte de nuestra cultura’.

‘Toleraremos vuestras creencias, pero teneis que aceptar las nuestras para poder vivir en armonía y paz junto a nosotros’, advirtió Howard. ‘Este es nuestro país, nuestra patria, y estas son nuestras costumbres y estilo de vida. Permitiremos a todos que disfruteis de lo nuestro, pero cuando dejeis de quejaros, de lloriquear y de protestar contra nuestra bandera, nuestra lengua, nuestro compromiso nacionalista, nuestras creencias cristianas o nuestro modo de vida. Os recomiendo encarecidamente que aprovecheis la gran oportunidad de libertad que teneis en Australia. ¡Aquí tenéis el derecho de iros a donde más os convenga!’

‘A quienes no les guste cómo vivimos los australianos’, prosiguió Howard. ‘Tienen la libertad de marcharse. Nosotros no los obligamos a venir. Ustedes pidieron emigrar aquí, así que ya es hora de que acepten al país que los acogió’.

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Steven Snell

One of the realities of being a freelancer is that you will have a wide variety of responsibilities in regards to running a successful business. You won’t have the luxury of passing duties off to another department, and your success depends on your ability to wear multiple hats and develop some versatility. The dizzying amount of responsibilities can be overwhelming at times, but it can also be one of the perks to being a freelancer. You’ll have the opportunity to try your hand at every aspect of business, and you won’t get bored from doing the same repetitive tasks over and over again. Whether you see this diversity as a positive or a negative of freelancing, you can increase your productivity by realizing all of your responsibilities and setting a plan for success.

Distinguish Your Separate Responsibilities

The first step is to simply acknowledge the different aspects of business that you will need to manage. Of course this will include income-producing work (designing, developing, writing, or whatever else it is that you offer), tracking expenses, managing invoices, balancing bank accounts, marketing your services, continual learning and development, customer service, and more.

Embrace the Diversity of Your Job

Like it or not, we all have a lot on our plates. In my opinion it’s best just to embrace the fact that we need to be knowledgeable in multiple aspects of business rather than fighting it and trying to convince ourselves that we really don’t have to be good with finances, or some other aspect of the business. When we embrace our responsibilities we’re ready to move on towards finding solutions that will help us to be more efficient.

Schedule Time as Needed

If there’s a particular aspect of the business that we don’t enjoy or that we struggle with, it’s natural to keeping putting that work off into the future. The problem is that with a busy schedule time moves too quickly and these things tend to not get done until it’s too late and things have been made more difficult than necessary.

Part of my routine is to make daily and weekly to-do lists and to schedule out my time. I try to give myself some flexibility, but by setting aside time for necessary tasks I can make sure that I get the “dirty work” done before it’s piled up and created a real problem.

If you find yourself struggling to get everything done and getting behind on the same aspects of business all the time, make an effort to schedule some time each week (or as often as necessary) to make sure that you have adequate time.

Establish Goals for Each Aspect of Your Business

I think it’s safe to say that we all hope to achieve success in freelancing, and effective goal setting is one of the foundations to success in any business. For a freelancer, goals should include a variety of different aspects of the business.

For example, your primary goals may involve how much money you want to make or which projects you want to finish by the end of the month - but don’t forget about the other parts of freelancing. Maybe you should have a goal for contacting one former client each week/month to see if there is any way you can be of service to them. Or maybe you should have a goal for getting all of your expenses recorded by the end of the week. I’ve found that setting simple, small goals like this (and writing them down) can have a huge impact on getting things done and staying ahead of the game.

Give Yourself a Brief Monthly Review

What good is goal setting without following up on them? At the end of each month take a few moments to read through the goals that you had established and see which ones you met and where you fell short. This is a good step for evaluating your efficiency and for helping you to identify any weak areas in your freelance efforts. Of course, this is also helpful for leading in to your development of new goals for the following month.

Provide Yourself with the Necessary Tools

There are an incredible number of resources and tools that can help with all kinds of aspects of freelancing (see 101 Essential Freelancing Resources). An efficient freelancer will take advantage of what is available. Obviously, some tools are free and some are not. There’s such an aversion to paid tools and resources that it can become counter-productive at times. In many cases there may be a resource that costs a few dollars per month that can save a considerable amount of time and effort. While it may not be free, if you can give you more time to focus on the other aspects of your business, it may be extremely helpful to your bottom line. Invoicing tools are a prime example. Take the time to get to know the resources that are available that can help you in your day-to-day work, and see what may be cost-effective.

Recognize Your Strengths and Weakness

Although I feel it’s important to embrace the diversity of freelancing, it’s also inevitable that we will have areas of strength and areas of weakness. Recognizing these areas can help you to identify where you need to be more disciplined and where you may need some further development, or potentially some assistance from a helpful resource. For the areas that you are particularly strong in, try to find ways to maximize them in your business. If your skills involve marketing, devote some time to working on a detailed marketing plan that can help you to stand out from the competition and take your business to the next level.

Outsource Where Needed

Once you’ve identified your areas of weakness you may see some tasks that are simply better off to be outsourced. If it’s something you struggle with and you hate doing, you may be able to save yourself some headaches and free up more of your time for doing the things that you do best and for doing the things that bring in the income. (See How to Earn More and Play More: Getting Started with Personal Outsourcing.) Although you may be outsourcing the work, it’s still in your best interest to maintain some knowledge in the area and look after the work that is being done.

Don’t Loose Sight of Billable Hours

With all the responsibilities of freelancing and many of the points that we’ve looked at so far, you may find yourself getting distracted and having less and less time for client work that actually brings in the money. Whether you charge by the hour or by the project, keeping enough time for income-generating work is critical. Don’t get lost in the shuffle of doing everything right and forget about what keeps you in business. The goal is to find a balance and to develop efficiency that will minimize wasted time by taking care of all the aspects of freelancing in an organized manner.

Prioritize

With so much going on, for freelancers there is rarely enough time in the day, or enough days in the week.Effective prioritizing is an essential skill that must be developed. You simply won’t have time to get done everything that is worthy or your attention. Setting goals and scheduling your time are two big aspects or prioritizing that shouldn’t be overlooked.

Develop a Process

If you’re new to freelancing make an effort to develop habits that will help you to improve efficiency with your various responsibilities. Maybe you want to get in the habit of managing your finances and sending out invoices at the end of each week. Maybe you want to get in the habit of taking 10 minutes at the end of your work day to plan out the next day. Everyone works differently, but I think we can all benefit by developing a process that works well for us. With time this will improve efficiency and cut down on unproductive time.

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