Posts Tagged ‘Formula for success’
Mentor Yourself: An Interview With Shannon Moroney, Author, Advocate & Speaker, Part II
May 11th, 2012 | 
Author: Invisible Mentor: Shannon Moroney, Author, Advocate & Speaker
Website: http://www.shannonmoroney.com/
Avil Beckford: Tell me a little bit about yourself.
Shannon Moroney: I’m the author of a book that just came out titled Through the Glass
Avil Beckford: How do you integrate your personal and professional life?
Shannon Moroney: It’s a challenge! I think so much of my professional life is personal because it is about sharing my story. When I go to do a speaking engagement I always bring somebody with me who is just for me – my husband, my mom, my dad, a friend – and that brings everyone together so that I’m not alone with my experiences. When I go out and speak to a community group or work in a prison, somebody is there with me just to share it, and to debrief afterwards and that’s a really wonderful thing and I I’m lucky can do that.
Avil Beckford: When you have some down time, how do you spend it?
Shannon Moroney: I spend it doing the things I want to do, and spend it with people who I love to be with. The work that I do is very emotional and involves a lot of output so I really have to focus my downtime on recharging my batteries. I love to cook. I like to do yoga. I can’t wait until I’m not pregnant so that I can really exercise again – that would be good. I try to do things that are a pleasure, relaxing. Definitely the most helpful and grounding activity for me, other than spending time with my loved ones is doing creative work, whether it’s painting or knitting or making a photo album, something that involves creativity is a really grounding force for me.
Avil Beckford: What are five life lessons that you have learned so far?
Shannon Moroney:
- Know yourself. Act within your own values else you’ll be very uncomfortable.
- Prioritize the people in your life over possessions and work.
- The days sometimes go by slowly but the years go by quickly, and it’s good to embrace what you have every day because you don’t know how quickly it can change. I was grateful before this trauma happened I was somebody who was quite aware, and appreciated my life. When the life I knew suddenly came to an end, I knew that I hadn’t wasted any time before that happened.
- Let people talk about you, sometimes you have to stand up for yourself, and other times you have to try not to take things personally, because most people when they criticize, they are coming from where they’re at in their own lives.
- Be compassionate and hope that the compassion you show for other people, and the understanding and trying to put your feet in somebody else’s shoes is what you can expect from other people, and that you’ll be shown that same compassion.
Avil Beckford: How do you define success? And in your opinion what’s the formula for success?
Shannon Moroney: Success is a generalized feeling of positivity, of the right combination of purpose, fulfilling your purpose that you define for yourself, and having people around to share it with. For me, that’s really important. We use the word balance a lot these days, and I think it’s important to try to achieve the right balance of work and play, volunteering and having time for yourself – that’s a good formula to try to achieve. It’s different for every person.
Avil Beckford: If trusted friends could introduce you to five people that you’ve always wanted to meet, who would you choose? And what would you say to them?
Shannon Moroney:
- Frida Kahlo, the Mexican self-portrait artist. I would thank her for being an example of someone who could be open to the pain she was in, and not try to make it pretty. She’s not trying to please anybody but herself through her artwork, and in so doing, impacted a lot of people.
- I’d love to meet Lucille Ball just because in my family whenever anyone was feeling sick, the solution was always to eat cinnamon toast and watch I Love Lucy, so I feel like she is a member of my family.
- There are some authors that I’d like to meet and have dinner with. But mostly I would be very nervous about what I would say to them. I would listen to what they have to say to me and not do too much of the talking myself. Authors I admire are Barbara Kingsolver and Jeannette Walls who wrote a fantastic memoir called The Glass Castle and Lucy Maud Montgomery who wrote all the Anne of Green Gables books because I feel the values she puts forward in her books, as I read them as a young girl, impacted how I grew. The character of Anne shaped who I wanted to be – how she was different from other people, coped with her own frustrations. All those authors are people I’d like to thank for what they give, and for giving me a story or a book I can read and learn so much from.
Avil Beckford: Which one book had a profound impact on your life? What was it about this book that impacted you so deeply?
Shannon Moroney: There are many books but I’ll say The Catcher in the Rye
When I read The Catcher in the Rye as a teenager, I knew that’s exactly what I wanted to do in the world was to keep the little children from falling over the cliff, so much so that I wrote that as my ambition in my yearbook, my career ambition. By becoming a teacher, by working with young people who’ve experienced violence, and by finally becoming a mother myself, my passion is for children and young people and trying to keep them away from the dangers, and allow them to grown and fully be themselves. I hold that to the main character Holden Caulfield in The Catcher in the Rye.
Avil Beckford: You are one of the 10 finalists on the reality show, So, How Would You Spend Your Time? Each finalist is placed on separate deserted islands for two years. You have a basic hut on the island and all the tools for survival; you just have to be imaginative and inventive when using them. You are allowed to take five books, one movie and one music CD, and whatever else you take has to fit in one suitcase and a travel on case. What would you take with you and how would you spend the two years? T he prize is worth your while and at this stage in the game there really aren’t any losers among the 10 finalists, since each are guaranteed at least $2 million?
Shannon Moroney:
Two Years
If there is anyway I could bring my guitar with me, I would because the guitar is the best travel companion. I would try to build a connection with nature around me, observe and get involved with the natural life rather than try to fight it, and look for ways to survive and realize that everything I need would be around me.
I would also spend a lot of my time crying, I’m sure, because I’m a very social, outgoing person, very extroverted, and that would be the number one hardest thing about being on my own, would be not having other people around me.
Five Books
- I would take a really long book that I have never read before, something really hard like War and Peace
, something that would make me a better person. I have actually lived in some very isolated places where you read anything because there is nothing else to do so it’s a good way to get through hard books.
- I would take some of my favourites that I can really escape into. I would take something like Anne of Green Gables: The Collection
, or Little Women (Sterling Classics)
– these classic books from my childhood that I could escape and love.
- I would take one of my favourite Buddhist books of literature, which is The Places That Scare You: A Guide to Fearlessness in Difficult Times (Shambhala Library)
by Pema Chodron because I think that would give me guidance as I coped with being on this isolated island.
- I’d take a Barbara Kingsolver book, maybe Prodigal Summer: A Novel
or the The Poisonwood Bible: A Novel
. These are the kinds of books that each time you read them you get more so it would be okay to reread them.
Movie & Music CD
For music I would take the Indigo Girls, the album that has “Closer to Fine” (Indigo Girls
Indigo Girls – Closer To Fine
Cannot view this video, click here. Uploaded by IndigoGirlsVEVO on Oct 25, 2009
Little Women (1933) – Trailer
Cannot view this video, click here. Uploaded by warnervod on Jun 13, 2011
Avil Beckford: What excites you about life?
Shannon Moroney: Possibilities, the opportunity to travel, the growth I have in my relationships. I’m at a wonderful point of new beginnings with my new husband, with our children about to be born. There are a lot of things. I feel so lucky to have the life that I do, to have the perspective that I do, to have come through such a horrible situation. I feel very lucky to live in Canada, very lucky for the opportunities that I have. I’m very lucky for my education and all of those things make life a lot easier, and it’s something that lots of people in the world don’t have, is the opportunity even just to dream and get excited about life because work and daily survival is so important.
For me, even though I lost my ability to dream for a while when I was just having to survive day-to-day and make all these difficult decisions that when I finally emerged and got back that ability to dream and have hope, it’s a wonderful experience. So lots of things excite me about life, and I hope it’s long.
Avil Beckford: How do you nurture your soul?
Shannon Moroney: Connecting with nature is the number one thing for me. Usually if I see myself coming off balance because I haven’t spent enough time in and around trees, connecting with the beautiful wilderness that we have in Canada. But I do live in a big city so I also have little practices that I do that offer me a chance to reflect, whether it’s lighting a candle, burning some sage, or just sitting quietly is very important to me. And my soul is nurtured so much by other people and by being around the people who I love.
Avil Beckford: If you had a personal genie and she gave you one wish, what would you wish for?
Shannon Moroney: I would wish for more compassion in our world – that’s the number one thing I could think of, less judgement and more compassion.
Avil Beckford: Complete the following, I am happy when…..
Shannon Moroney: I’m happy when I’m with the people I love.
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Related articles
- Mentor Yourself With Diane Craig, President, Corporate Class Inc., Part II (theinvisiblementor.com)
Posted in Interviews With Successful People, Mentor Yourself, Professional Development, Self-improvement | 
Tags: Avil Beckford, Barbara Kingsolver, books that impact, books that influence, Formula for success, Glass Castle, Holden Caulfield, Jeannette Walls, Life lessons, Lucille Ball, Lucy Maud Montgomery, Shannon Moroney, success formula | 
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Mentor Yourself – An Interview With Drew Dudley, Founder & Chief Catalyst Part II
Invisible Mentor: Drew Dudley, Founder & Chief Catalyst
Company Name: Nuance Leadership Development Services, Inc.
Website: http://nuanceleadership.ca/
Avil Beckford: Tell me a little bit about yourself.
Drew Dudley: The way I make my living is by using more than a couple of sentences at a time. I’m a professional speaker, an educator, and trying to be a writer and I absolutely love what I do.
Drew Dudley - Cartoons by Scott Mooney - TedxToronto (Photo credit: Ann Douglas)
Avil Beckford: How did mentors influence your life?
Drew Dudley: Because I was looking for mentors in a conventional sense – who your boss is, who does what you do, and who you look up to – for most of my life I didn’t have much of that. My father was a tremendous mentor, but in terms of my career, there wasn’t very many. I didn’t work for people who really inspired me, and do things the way I would have been proud of doing. My perceived lack of mentors made me feel as if I had to take care of things on my own. The older I get, the more I realize that I had mentors every step of the way. They were my friends, they were my students. Those were mentors, but I thought mentorship was, only if you’re older, if you have more money, or you have a bigger title, those are the people who teach you things so you get the same stuff. I realize now that that perception of mentor had an impact on my life that was detrimental.
My mentors are students who forced me to apply to be a speaker at TED Toronto, which had a massively, positive impact on my career. Those were mentors, so when I look back, mentors had a big impact on my life in ways I did not recognize. I encourage people to look around and see who are the mentors in their life and to let go of the idea that they have to be older, have to have more money that they have to have bigger titles. I think mentors are the ones who live their lives in a way that you respect, and that you’d be proud of living your life. If you took money out of the world, and all we had as currency was how much value people add to others in terms of intellectual capacity, social, and spiritual capital. Look around and ask who pour most of that into the world, and those people should be your mentors. Once I started focusing on those people in my life, my life got tremendously better.
Avil Beckford: An invisible mentor is a unique leader you can learn things from by observing them from afar, in the capacity of an Invisible Mentor, what is one piece of advice that you would give to readers?
Drew Dudley: Seth Godin says, “Never trust anyone who gives you a list of tips.” But I think if I had one piece of advice, it would be this, go back and think of the regrets in your life and reassess if they are still regrets. We spend a lot of time thinking less of ourselves because of the mistakes that we make. We keep remembering mistakes the same way we thought of them right after we made them. So go back and think of the regrets you have in your life now. When someone asked me “what’s the biggest regret you have?” I started to list all the regrets I had based on how I felt when I had them and I realized at the moment that I wasn’t sad that that happened.
It was a big disappointment at the time, but it allowed me other things to happen later in my life. My biggest advice to people is to reassess your regrets and recognize that probably 80 percent of them you don’t regret anymore. That allows you the freedom to believe that every mistake you make, every regret that you have, is going to be one of those 80 percent.
Avil Beckford: How do you integrate your personal and professional life?
Drew Dudley: My personal and professional life is almost completely integrated as it is. The workshop and facilitation parts of my business are growing. All the lessons I use in the debrief come from my personal experience. When I speak, it’s me delivering messages about the mistakes I have made in my life. What my personal life is, is really a constant generation of ideas and content that I can share with other people, not just here is the success, but if you look at my presentations, most of them are on mistakes I made and what I learned from them.
It can be tough sometimes, but my personal and my business life, because of the nature of my business, are inextricably intertwined. Everything that goes on in one, leads into the other. A lot of people talk about work-life balance, but work-life balance insinuates that they are two separate things on opposite ends of the scale. I look at it the way you mentioned – integration. Because of what I do, everything I do businesswise is personal, and everything I do personally is business. Someone once told me that people don’t care about how much you know until they know how much you care. I can’t compartmentalize what I do for business because it means I don’t care, and there isn’t enough passion because I need to make what is business, personal and what is personal, business.
Avil Beckford: What are five life lessons that you have learned so far?
Drew Dudley:
- Leadership is not about getting better. Leadership is realizing there is nothing wrong with you. Change the way you think and act to remind yourself of that more often.
- Almost anything bad that can happen to us has probably happened to us in some degree, so realize that you’ve survived everything that has happened to you so far – that you’ve dealt with every problem that you’ve ever had because you’re still here and we should give ourselves more credit for that.
- Give yourself more credit and that’s related to the point above.
- You matter – I matter.
- The basic unit of human understanding is the story. We need to recognize what our story is, be willing to tell it, and believe that it’s extraordinary.
Avil Beckford: How do you define success? And in your opinion what’s the formula for success?
Drew Dudley: I very consciously try not to define success in a general sense. I think the formula for success is a whiteboard, and something that can be erased, and new things drawn on it. And in fact, many things can be drawn on it. I define success as definable only for each individual situation. The formula for success is a blank board that allows you to rewrite it constantly. That’s a big part of me, I don’t define success in a general sense, I’ll define success in what’s today, what’s my definition for success today? and then I write that on my whiteboard.
When I come up with a different task, I wipe off the whiteboard, and figure out how I define success for that task. Allowing ourselves to define success differently in every context, we are able to recognize just how much flexibility we need to have in our lives. As a result we allow ourselves to have more success. If you say this is what success is, then you have to fit the things in your life into that definition, wherein if you say what success means right here, then you can make sure that there are many more successes that you can give yourself credit for in your life.
Avil Beckford: What are the steps you took to succeed in your field?
Drew Dudley: The first step was to get started, and the second was to get over the fear of starting. So the biggest steps to success for me, were the first and second to begin. And the third biggest step was a wrong one which took me down a path that I realized eventually wasn’t the one for me. The fourth biggest step was when I was willing to go backwards to start on a new path, and the fifth was the one I took where I couldn’t see where I was going to land. That’s not specific, but each one of these steps may be several years or several contexts, but those are the biggest steps to my success.
Avil Beckford: If trusted friends could introduce you to five people that you’ve always wanted to meet, who would you choose? And what would you say to them?
Drew Dudley: I would talk to myself because ultimately we are the only ones that we listen to about why we are awful and why we are great; about why we can do it and why we can’t. Hearing questions like the ones that you ask are ones that lead to revelations about ourselves. When people ask us questions about who we are and what we stand for, these are sometimes things we don’t think about, we just act on.
If I can be introduced to five people, and we’re suspending belief here, I’d like to talk to myself at five, as I was still discovering the world and being reminded of how I thought at five; I’d like to talk to myself at 12, 18, 45 and I’d like to talk to myself at 80. I’d ask myself at each stage, “What’s making you happy right now?” I think that would be an extraordinarily revealing conversation with all of them. To be able to ask yourself 10 years from now what’s making you happy now, to ask yourself 40 years from now, what’s making you happy now, and to be able to chase that earlier. If I ask myself at 12 what was making me happy, as I said before, one of my biggest regrets was not starting earlier. It would be awfully cool to have me older tell me what to start looking for now and to remind myself of the things to be educated out of, or experienced out of when I was younger and didn’t have so many things I was worrying about.
Avil Beckford: Which one book had a profound impact on your life? What was it about this book that impacted you so deeply?
Drew Dudley: I can’t even remember the name but it was the first book I read that made me want so many more books. It opened me up to the fact that there is so much joy to be had there. I grew up consuming any book I could. And if I take a step back and say the first book led to so many things – joy, happiness, knowledge – why would I ever say no to the first of anything?
Avil Beckford: You are one of the 10 finalists on the reality show, So, How Would You Spend Your Time? Each finalist is placed on separate deserted islands for two years. You have a basic hut on the island and all the tools for survival; you just have to be imaginative and inventive when using them. You are allowed to take five books, one movie and one music CD, and whatever else you take has to fit in one suitcase and a travel on case. What would you take with you and how would you spend the two years? T he prize is worth your while and at this stage in the game there really aren’t any losers among the 10 finalists, since each are guaranteed at least $2 million?
Drew Dudley:
Two Years
If you’re alone for two years you have lots of time to think about yourself, but we’re a part of everyone who we have ever met, and they are a part of us. We don’t take enough time to truly get to understand ourselves, or the people who love us and we love. I would take three books they said changed their lives. In reading those books I would learn about them, if that book was profound to them. The messages would speak to what they value and care about and I would like to know about that.
Five Books
- Macbook loaded with as much information as I can on how-to. Specifically, how-to build a power source for a Macbook. This is a commentary on the state of life because one of the things in life is to be flexible. Be ready to deal with whatever comes. Why not embrace what this amazing world has given us in terms of the ability to know things? You can load hundreds of things on a Macbook. Maybe I’m ducking your question, but I don’t want five books, I want a thousand and load them on a Macbook and take them with me.
- I would take a book from my youth called My Book About Me
by Dr Seuss because it asks you to fill out all these things about yourself when you are three years old. If you have two years on a deserted island, it’s an extraordinary opportunity to sit and think about yourself and your life, and we don’t do that enough on an everyday basis. I remember seeing this book in storage at my parents’ place and opening it up and being reminded of that kid at three years old and how I always thought about what my favourite thing was, what I liked to do, and what made me happy. This book was filled with questions. Two years alone is an amazing chance to become more of who you are.
- I’d ask the most important people in my life which books changed theirs and I’d take those with me. Most people would take books that they read before and want to read again, but if I’m allowed to take my Macbook, I’d fill it up with both fiction and non-fiction, and the work of authors that I don’t know.
Movie & Music CD
I would take the 1988 baseball movie Bull Durham (20th Anniversary Edition)
Bull Durham – trailer
Cannot view this video, click here. Uploaded by johnmatrix1 on Jul 22, 2010
Avil Beckford: What excites you about life?
Drew Dudley: Tomorrow! I get today. People often ask the question, “Where so you see yourself in five years,” and what excites me is that I don’t get the urge to answer that question. Maybe what excites me about life is that maybe I haven’t seen the best part yet. Life just keeps on getting better, and what excites me is that there is something better yet to come, and you don’t have to figure out what it is.
Avil Beckford: Complete the following, I am happy when…..
Drew Dudley: I allow myself to be happy! I really do. Sometimes you look at the things where you should be happy and for some reason you don’t let yourself be happy. And there are times when doing things, there is a moment I wasn’t happy because I didn’t allow myself. I can be happy anywhere if I let myself do it. Most of the times I’m unhappy is because I won’t let myself be happy because of silly reasons.
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Related articles
- Mentor Yourself – An Interview With Drew Dudley (theinvisiblementor.com)
- Mentor Yourself With Miranda Vande Kuyt (theinvisiblementor.com)
Mentor Yourself: Interview With Joann Lim, Making It Happen Specialist & Professional Coach, Part II
“No matter how much it rains, or how much it pours, the sun will always shine again. It may not be today or it may not be tomorrow, but it will shine.” Joann Lim
Invisible Mentor: Joann Lim, Making It Happen Specialist & Professional Coach
Company Name: Big Picture Fine Focus
Website: http://www.bigpicturefinefocus.com/
Avil Beckford: Tell me a little bit about yourself.
Joann Lim: I’m a connoisseur of life and a make-it-happen specialist. I’m a lover of all things food and world travel.
Avil Beckford: How do you integrate your personal and professional life?
Joann Lim: Most of the time it’s fairly synergised in the sense that what I do professionally comes into my life personally. The context and the discussions pieces that I have with clients are things I internalize as well. I often give make-it-happen opportunities in my client sessions, and they are pieces that I would never give somebody that I wasn’t willing to do myself. Part of my work is to help people grow within themselves, to have a deeper connection to their lives and to others, by having a deeper connection with themselves.
My work is simply an extension of who I am personally and the more I am as a person the more I am able to offer, the more enriching my professional life becomes.
Avil Beckford: When you have some down time, how do you spend it?
Joann Lim: I love to travel. I love seeing the world. I think it’s one of the best and most nurturing ways to learn about people and life. I love spending it with family and friends – the people who inspire me, and help me to see things from a different perspective. I love cooking, for me it’s a freedom of expression and creativity, taking ingredients and making it into something of value, of nutrients of nurturing. It’s just a wonderful experience. The last part is just having quiet time. I think that it’s in the silence that I get inspired the most.
Avil Beckford: What are five life lessons that you have learned so far?
Joann Lim:
- To truly embrace life we must be willing to face death. And face death in the sense of coming to terms with what death means to us, and how it’s going to impact our lives, and how we may live life differently.
- To be completely free, I have to be completely me. We embrace who we are and take responsibility for our lives, and then we can experience true freedom.
- Richness and abundance is available to all of us. There are a lot of people who think materialistically, which isn’t abundance that stems from within, and it’s when we have that attitude and perspective that everything in our lives becomes more valuable, meaningful, richer and more abundant.
- Let love rule! Love is the ultimate power in our lives. As human beings we have the capacity to love and be loved, and it’s when we open ourselves up, when we’re vulnerable, when we’re willing to give the very best that we can that we truly set ourselves up to receive the very best that life has to offer.
- Laugh! Life is not that serious. Have fun, and for some people it may be scheduling fun. If you need to do that, then that’s great. Life isn’t meant to be serious, we’re meant to have a great time. Make it a point to celebrate each day. Find time to make “now” moments “wow” moments because this is your life. Make it one of purpose, meaning, richness and amazingness. Celebrate each day and have fun.
Avil Beckford: What process do you use to generate great ideas?
Joann Lim: I listen to a play list every day, it called my big picture play list, and it has artists of all genres that inspire me. Just listening to their words, and the way they communicate truly inspires me. It’s in reading all sorts of different books. Dr Seuss is probably one of my favourite, and sometimes even just looking at a blank journal. Seeing a blank page and having colourful markers in front of me, that’s sometimes all I need to just let loose and be free.
Avil Beckford: What’s your favourite quotation and why?
Joann Lim: “Dying is an inevitable consequence of life, living is man’s privilege.” In that quotation we are challenged or invited to think of living as no longer an obligation of “I have to,” but it’s a privilege of “I get to.”
Avil Beckford: How do you define success? And in your opinion what’s the formula for success?
Joann Lim: Make success part of the journey. If success is the journey, every day will be a success. Love what you do, give everything that you have, give your best every single day, and you will set yourself up to have the very best that life has to offer.
Avil Beckford: What are the steps you took to succeed in your field?
Joann Lim:
- Identified what success meant to me. To make success meaningful to me I needed to understand how I defined it.
- Asking myself what it would look like to give my best to the world.
- How can I be more completely me? And that ties into the step above. How can I give more to this world? What do I need to give my best?
- Sharing, sharing with everybody. Sharing honestly and authentically. Just being me with the people around me. Be willing to be vulnerable, sharing the ups and the downs. And beyond that, giving them a space to be completely them.
- Perseverance – to not let one closed door end the dream. More often than not, one closed door results in another amazing door to open. Embrace opportunities as they come, and maximize very ounce of who you are, everything you know and everybody you know, take them along the journey, and the journey will be a success.
Joann Lim:
Avil Beckford: If trusted friends could introduce you to five people that you’ve always wanted to meet, who would you choose? And what would you say to them?
Joann Lim:
- Jesus Christ
- Mahatma Gandhi
- Mother Teresa
- Pope John Paul
- Dr Seus
The question I would ask is, on the days that you may have not felt good enough, what pulled you forward? What helped you to keep going, what inspired you, and what pulled you to the next level?
Avil Beckford: Which one book had a profound impact on your life? What was it about this book that impacted you so deeply?
Joann Lim: One of the books that had the most profound impact on my life was a journal that was written personally to me. It took place over the course of a year, and this person as opposed to writing a journal recounting things to him, he did it to me – he wrote it to me. There is only one in this entire world and I have it. it was beautiful because this person wrote this intentionally for me, sharing in an experience from a different perspective, and it is something that I will always hold close.
Avil Beckford: You are one of the 10 finalists on the reality show, So, How Would You Spend Your Time? Each finalist is placed on separate deserted islands for two years. You have a basic hut on the island and all the tools for survival; you just have to be imaginative and inventive when using them. You are allowed to take five books, one movie and one music CD, and whatever else you take has to fit in one suitcase and a travel on case. What would you take with you and how would you spend the two years? T he prize is worth your while and at this stage in the game there really aren’t any losers among the 10 finalists, since each are guaranteed at least $2 million?
Joann Lim:
Two Years
You know what, I actually don’t know how I’d spend my two years. I was thinking to take each day as it comes. I’d spend a lot of time reflecting, exploring, and just being in the moment. There is a great saying that says, “Man plans and God laughs.” We can plan all we want to the nth degree, but more often than not, it’s not the way it happens. So it’s embracing the here and now and making use of every moment, and giving my best into every moment.
Five Books
- Blank journal: For the inspiration, for the empowerment, for anything that came to mind.
- SoulPancake: Chew on Life’s Big Questions
by Rainn Wilson from The Office: It’s really a fun book, but has all sorts of questions that probe deeper, let us challenge who we are, that help make meaning in our lives.
- Dr. Seuss Beginner Book Collection #1
(Your Favorite Seuss (58 Volume Set)
): A large book that has 12 of his most famous books. They are fun and inspiring.
- Daily Readings from Love Your Life
by Victoria Osteen: She is a spark plug from Houston, Texas, who speaks with passion and vigor, and has a zest for life. She is someone who women can learn from.
- The journal that was written especially to me. It’s a reminder of how somebody feels for you, how somebody sees things, and what it means to care for somebody, and what it means to create a customized experience for someone.
Movie & Music CD
My one movie would be Something’s Gotta Give
Something’s Gotta Give – Trailer
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Soweto Gospel Choir – Amazing Grace (Most beautiful version!!)
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Avil Beckford: What excites you about life?
Joann Lim: The potential of it. There is so much to experience and so much joy to be had. The potential is truly outstanding, and I think it’s when we embrace what life has to offer with very little attachment to the outcome, life is amazing. It’s an adventure, and it becomes like a maze where we don’t necessarily know where we’re going to go next, but at the end, we know where we’re going to be.
Avil Beckford: How do you nurture your soul?
Joann Lim: Surround myself with amazing people, spend quiet time with my Heavenly Father, reading great books, spending time with mentors, and showing up every day. And not just showing up, but asking myself what I need to do to give my best, and to do it – to really give everything that I have, everything that I am, everything that I know to each and every day are the best ways I know to nurture my soul.
Avil Beckford: If you had a personal genie and she gave you one wish, what would you wish for?
Joann Lim: The group of people I would use it on are the people who feel most alone in this world, the people who have never been told that they matter, those are the people I would use this wish on. To let them know that they do matter, to let them know that they are loved, and no matter how dark it may seem, there is light and to offer them that glimmer of hope to remind them that you matter and there is more to life than what they have experienced.
Avil Beckford: Complete the following, I am happy when…..
Joann Lim: I’m happy when the sun is shining. I’m happy when I’m surrounded by people who I love, care about, and am fascinated by. I’m happy when I’m giving the world the very best that I have.
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Related articles
Mentor Yourself With Sandra Ann Baptiste, Consultant and Trainer, Part II
Mentor Yourself With Sandra Ann Baptiste, Consultant and Trainer
Interviewee Name: Sandra Ann Baptiste, Consultant and Trainer
Company Name: Carigold Associates
To get the most from The Invisible Mentor Interview, while you are reading it, answer the following questions:
- Are their similarities between Sandra Ann Baptiste and yourself?
- In what ways can you use the information?
- In what ways would you respond differently from the interviewee?
- What are your five takeaways from the interview?
- After reading the interview, what is one concrete action you can take?
Avil Beckford: Tell me a little bit about yourself.
Sandra Ann Baptiste: I’m a veteran communicator. I’m a former journalist with many years experience working internationally, including with the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) in Toronto and the Caribbean News Agency based in Barbados. I’m currently a business and communications consultant trainer, and I specialize in business skills training. I’m also still involved in writing. I have a monthly column in Caribbean Perspectives that focuses on issues affecting CARICOM (Caribbean Community and Common Market). I spend a lot of my time working on projects for the Caribbean.
Avil Beckford: How do you integrate your personal and professional life?
Sandra Ann Baptiste: For the 22 years that I was in media, I had no personal life. It was all about researching. When you’re covering CARICOM, you’re going to a meeting, you’re sent to Jamaica one day for an election, and Trinidad the next day for a Trade Ministers’ meeting, and then Antigua for something else, on a daily basis I had files in my bed reading the Caribbean Development Bank reports, reading national statistics, all that stuff so my whole life was focused around my career. There wasn’t much of a personal life. I had a little bit of that when I came to Canada, but don’t forget that I returned to Guyana to do consulting on investments.
My personal life is very difficult to integrate because I’m always on the computer researching, always in the newspaper checking something. So I’ve not had much of a personal life, which I’m trying to change.
Avil Beckford: When you have some down time, how do you spend it?
Sandra Ann Baptiste: Movies and cooking are my two big things. I love to cook, but I’m a fanatic for movies. While the movies are going on, I’m reading a report or on the computer.
Avil Beckford: What are five life lessons that you have learned so far?
Sandra Ann Baptiste:
- The biggest thing for me is do unto others as you would have them do unto you.
- Be kind and giving so if I have extra food I’ll give it to someone who needs it. If I have extra clothes or books, I believe in giving. I always believe it will come back, not necessarily to you, but to your children and family.
- Never give up on your dreams. When I was a young girl in high school in Guyana, I thought I’d like to be covering the Caribbean as a journalist. I was at the Guyana Broadcasting Service, and who would ever have thought that I would be in Barbados, being a global journalist, and being someone who is writing on the Caribbean and having the exposure to every single CARICOM country and having lived and worked in all of them, from Surinam to the Bahamas.
- You should be qualified in whatever field you want to be in. I went to university in my thirties. That was fine but I wasn’t going to give up on getting my credentials in journalism and international relations which was also my area of expertise.
- Always give back. I believe in life when you’re blessed you should always want to give back.
Avil Beckford: What process do you use to generate great ideas?
Sandra Ann Baptiste: I don’t have a process. I think about stuff and I write it down then I prioritize. In the middle of the night if I have an idea there is a book next to my bed and I write it down. The next day I put it on my computer. I may not go back to it for a month or even six months, but when I go back, I shape it and put in into a priority sequence on what I need to do to do this and what sequence do I need to do it.
Avil Beckford: How do you define success? And in your opinion what’s the formula for success?
Sandra Ann Baptiste: Success is very personal in terms of you achieving your goals and having whatever you achieve have an impact on others. So it’s not only about you achieving your goals. I would say the formula for success is to never give up on your dreams and have faith. I believe faith is instrumental, and I have said before I had a lot of challenges when I had to leave Guyana in the middle of the night and didn’t know where I was going because of journalists being threatened. I had faith that God was going to guide me and take me somewhere. I never thought I would end up in Barbados. You need to have faith and confidence, and try to achieve your goals and seek to be qualified in whatever you do because education is the key to people’s dreams. I truly believe that and I do not only mean formal education. You can self-educate, do stuff online, and be mentored by people. There are many ways to learn, but you have to have an interest in being educated to achieve your goals.
Avil Beckford: What are the steps you took to succeed in your field?
Sandra Ann Baptiste: There are two careers, one in media and the other in consulting. In the media, the steps I took were to be attached to the newspaper when I was in high school so I would get exposure. Once I left high school and I was hired, I tried to learn from the senior journalists that were there. When I was at Guyana Broadcasting I went to Barbados to take a six-month communications course. When I got into Barbados I went to the University of the West Indies because I was covering international affairs so I did international relations. I also gave back in Barbados because I was Chairman of the Education Committee of the Barbados Association of Journalism. I designed a certificate program in journalism, and coordinated it at the University of the West Indies. After that I did my Diploma in Journalism in the UK, and my Masters, and I also did many different courses on business and finance. I also had a lot of practical exposure that helped me.
In my consulting career, when I realized that I was going to GO-Invest, I did a lot of training in the UK in investment promotion. I did business management and international trade in Canada, and in the late 1990s once I realized that my passion was training, I decided to stay in Guyana and I did training for a year for a lot of the private sector companies. I set up my own training company, which I have now resuscitated because I haven’t done training for about 10 years. I have resuscitated my company Carigold Associates that does training – business skills training, leadership, trade show management, business communication, project management, performance management, tourism management and inventory management – specifically targeted at the Caribbean and a little bit here in Canada. In 2010 I completed my teacher training certificate for adults at Centennial College with honours. My goal has always been that whatever you do be qualified in it.
Avil Beckford: What advice do you have for someone just starting out in your field?
Sandra Ann Baptiste: Get qualified! Even when I had part-time contracts in Canada, many of those companies I worked for offered online training, and I did many courses, and I also went to Ryerson University to do project management and human resources management. When I’m doing consulting and training now, I am trained in the areas that I’m training people. It’s not just my own experience, I also have the credentials and I think that is important to have both the practical experience and the credentials to be respected and recognized in whatever field you’re in.
Avil Beckford: If trusted friends could introduce you to five people that you’ve always wanted to meet, who would you choose? And what would you say to them?
Sandra Ann Baptiste: That’s an interesting question because the people that I wanted to meet are people that I did meet. When I was a young journalist, the people I wanted to meet were Margaret Thatcher in the UK, India Gandhi, Eugenia Charles in Dominica, Fidel Castro and Pierre Trudeau, and I have met all those people.
I became very close to Eugenia Charles. She was someone I admired and I met her through my meetings covering Caribbean Heads of Government and became very good friends with her and used to visit her at her home in Dominica. When she came to Barbados to visit her brother, I would go there. I had a very high regard for this first female prime minister of the Caribbean who did a lot to enhance the economic development in Dominica. She was one of the outspoken people in CARICOM who tried to take it in a direction where it needed to re-examine itself, and she was one of those people who recognized what the weaknesses were and was never afraid to speak it.
She was also a very compassionate person, and I remember this because one of her biggest opponent in politics, Michael Douglas, was in hospital dying from cancer, and when I went to Dominica to visit her once, she said to me, “Are you going to visit Michael in hospital?” And I said, “Okay, sure,” because I knew him and felt bad. Here was a woman telling me to visit her biggest political opponent. She was a decent person and I really admired her.
The second person was Margaret Thatcher. Margaret Thatcher and Indira Gandhi were not people whose policies I necessarily liked, but they were such dominant political figures. They are people who had guts to get to where they wanted to go politically, that I wanted to know if I would ever meet them. I met Mrs Thatcher twice. I met her in Zambia at a Heads of Government conference. Another mentor who I did not mention, Hubert Williams, who was another famous Caribbean journalist at the Guyana Graphic, and also in Barbados at the Caribbean News Agency, was present in Zambia when Mrs Thatcher and I at a commonwealth summit exchanged words because we were talking about apartheid and sanctions against the regime in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) and South Africa, and the whole Commonwealth was in favour and she was against. We had discussions at a press conference where I asked her several times and didn’t allow her to get off the hook as to why she was fundamentally opposing what everyone else in the Commonwealth wanted. We had that exchange and years later I met her at another Commonwealth Conference in India, and we talked again and she was so nice and charming that I reminded her of our exchange at the press conference.
Indira Gandhi had such an effect globally and on the people of India and a big effect on the Commonwealth. I met her at the Commonwealth Prime Minister’s conference in India. At Commonwealth Summits, the press is allowed to meet Heads of Government without interviewing them – just chatting at special receptions they have for this purpose so I met Mrs Gandhi there.
Fidel Castro I met in Guyana when he came down for an official visit to see Forbes Burnham. We exchanged only a few words and I got to shake his hands. He is not someone whose policies I agree with because I’m very anti-communist so I do not appreciate Fidel Castro’s policies. However he is a dominant figure who shaped world politics and had a tremendous influence on the people of Cuba, so I had always wanted to meet this individual. He was so tall and I had on a white sari that got mud on it at the Prime Minister’s residence in Guyana. I am shaking Fidel Castro’s hand and he was towering over me because I am pretty short, only 5 feet 4 inches and so that was it.
The other person I wanted to meet, and it wasn’t the best circumstances, was Pierre Trudeau. Pierre Trudeau was someone I admired because he did so much for the Caribbean and I covered a lot of Canada-Caribbean relations as a journalist and knew how much aid the Caribbean had received from Pierre Trudeau. He built our schools, and airports. He was a very pro-Caribbean guy. I met him in St. Lucia for a meeting between Caribbean leaders and himself, and I went to St. Lucia to cover it. He was having a hard time with the Canadian press because he was breaking up from his wife Margaret Trudeau and he was very bitter with the press so when we approached him in St. Lucia he was not very accommodating I would say. That was very disappointing, but I still have the highest regard, and was very happy to come face-to-face with him.
Those are people I wanted to meet that I have met, and a sixth person would be Jimmy Carter who I met at the Guyana elections. He is another person who I had a tremendous respect for and wanted to meet. I met him in 1992 when I was at the BBC covering the Guyana elections.
Avil Beckford: Which one book had a profound impact on your life? What was it about this book that impacted you so deeply?
Sandra Ann Baptiste: The book is called Your Best Life Now: 7 Steps to Living at Your Full Potential
Avil Beckford: You are one of the 10 finalists on the reality show, So, How Would You Spend Your Time? Each finalist is placed on separate deserted islands for two years. You have a basic hut on the island and all the tools for survival; you just have to be imaginative and inventive when using them. You are allowed to take five books, one movie and one music CD, and whatever else you take has to fit in one suitcase and a travel on case. What would you take with you and how would you spend the two years? T he prize is worth your while and at this stage in the game there really aren’t any losers among the 10 finalists, since each are guaranteed at least $2 million?
Sandra Ann Baptiste: If I’m on an island I must have my music. I come from a background of family that has the oldest record store in the Caribbean for nearly 40 years so I’ve grown up in music. My mother used to bring a lot of the major artists in the Caribbean to Guyana, and we have DJs that still play out so I have always been involved in music. I’m a DJ so I play at family functions. Music is the biggest thing that I would have to have with me. I’m into the Bee Gees (The Ultimate Bee Gees
I would take lots of movies. My favourite movie is Cleopatra
Two Years
I would spend the time writing a book on my life experiences and do some introspection and meditation.
Avil Beckford: What excites you about life?
Sandra Ann Baptiste: That my life has so much variety to it. On a day-to-day basis it’s so interesting because I’m dealing with so many different things. Take today for example, I dealing with preparing for the Canada-Caribbean Business so I ‘m research Canada-Caribbean trade, I’m writing a training program for trade show management for teaching online, and I’m also working on a training package for training in Guyana and I’m also working on my column in Caribbean Perspectives. So my day is doing a variety of things so it’s never boring.
Avil Beckford: How do you nurture your soul?
Sandra Ann Baptiste: I’m a very spiritual person so I pray a lot. I meditate. I nurture my soul by reminding myself how blessed I am, why I am here and why I have the skills that I have. I try to be thankful all the time and ask for guidance. I’m a staunched Catholic.
Avil Beckford: If you had a personal genie and she gave you one wish, what would you wish for?
Sandra Ann Baptiste: The only wish I have is to always be living in a warm climate.
Avil Beckford: Complete the following, I am happy when…..
Sandra Ann Baptiste: I can make others happy. If I can put a smile on somebody’s face it’s a big thing for me. Little things mean a lot to me. For example if I go to the supermarket and I put 25 cents in the cart, I never ever retrieve it, I always wait until someone else is coming in the supermarket and I give it to them and say “Would you like a free cart.” The little things that you do for people are the things I count.
Cleopatra (1963) trailer Elizabeth Taylor
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Bee Gees – Too Much Heaven (Video)
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Michael Jackson – The Way You Make Me Feel
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Please let me know your thoughts in the comments section below. Many readers read this blog from other sites, so why don’t you pop over to The Invisible Mentor and subscribe (top on the right hand side) by email or RSS Feed.
Book links are affiliate links.
Other Interviews You Might Have Missed
- Mentor Yourself With Sandra Ann Baptiste (theinvisiblementor.com)
- Interview With Invisible Mentor Stefan Meister, Director, intercultures (theinvisiblementor.com)
- Mentor Yourself: Interview With Invisible Mentor Jo Ann Langer, Senior Level Retail Executive (theinvisiblementor.com)
- Mentor Yourself: Interview With Invisible Mentor Julie Daniluk, TV Host, Nutritionist, Motivational Speaker, Writer (theinvisiblementor.com)
- Mentor Yourself: Interview With Maggie Berry, Women in Technology Part II (theinvisiblementor.com)
- Mentor Yourself – Interview With Invisible Mentor Luba Rusyn (theinvisiblementor.com)
- Mentor Yourself: Interview With Invisible Mentor Julie Daniluk, TV Host Part II (theinvisiblementor.com)
- Mentor Yourself – Interview With Invisible Mentor Jo Ann Langer, Senior Retail Executive Part II (theinvisiblementor.com)
- Mentor Yourself: Interview With Pauline Crawford, Founder and Chief Executive at Corporate Heart Part II (theinvisiblementor.com)
- Mentor Yourself: Interview With Invisible Mentor Gary Vurnum, Author (theinvisiblementor.com)
Mentor Yourself: Interview With Invisible Mentor Gary Vurnum, Author, Part II
Interviewee Name: Gary Vurnum, Author
Website: http://www.vurnum.com
Avil Beckford: Tell me a little bit about yourself.
Gary Vurnum asks a question (Photo credit: Ralph Zuranski)
Gary Vurnum: I’ve been earning a living from the Internet full-time since December 2001, and in that time, I have created 15 products in the self-improvement niche, from general success to leadership to goal-setting to law of attraction to stress relief and so on. I’ve also written 20 books over the last few years, and set-up my own publishing house last July, and I publish other people’s books as well as my own.
Avil Beckford: How do you integrate your personal and professional life?
Gary Vurnum: My work really is my hobby because I love to read and write about self-improvement, marketing and the internet. I choose how often I work so I don’t need to integrate anything at all. I take time off whenever I choose, whether I’m with my daughters, fiancée and so on. It’s one big melting pot for me because I choose when and how often I work then there isn’t too much conflict between the personal life and the business life.
Avil Beckford: When you have some down time, how do you spend it?
Gary Vurnum: Because I have my daughters for a couple of days each week, and half of any holidays I focus on them because I don’t have the quantity of time, I focus on quality. I read books on the topics that I write about and I watch very little TV. Apart from that, I spend time fiancée and we go out for meals and date nights and things like that. That’s essentially how I use my free time.
Avil Beckford: What are five life lessons that you have learned so far?
Gary Vurnum:
- You have more chances of making people miserable if you always try to make them happy because they need to make themselves happy rather than you doing it for them by bending over backwards. If you try to bend over backwards trying to make others happy, quite often, it’s at the expense of you being happy. And it ends up blowing up in your face.
- The best way to deal with a setback is to say, “So what,” and get on with it. Deal with what happens and move on. It’s not always easy but essentially that’s what I try to do.
- Being successful at anything may be complicated but not difficult, whether it’s internet marketing, being an author, trading stock, real estate, whatever. The steps involved are not difficult, you don’t need degrees, or need to be a rocket scientist, but there are usually a number of steps involved. If it’s important to you, you’re going to find a way to make it happen.
- Always get paid more than once for everything you do, which is a rule I try to stand by whenever I can, and refuse to be paid per hour. That’s why I have books and products that earn me money years after I created them.
- You always get what you expect. A lot of us in our lives expect the worst, and guess what happens, the worst. Again it’s not easy, I’m human and you have to catch yourself if you’re focusing on the things you don’t want to happen. It’s so easy to focus on what you don’t want rather than what you do want.
Avil Beckford: What process do you use to generate great ideas?
Gary Vurnum: If you’re doing the same thing day-after-day then new thoughts and avenues won’t appear and I never ever have a problem with ideas. In fact, I have too many of them. I have many product ideas and things I can do and that’s because when I approach a task, I keep on with it and look for new ways to improve it. There isn’t a set process, I just basically get on with it and solutions often appear.
Avil Beckford: What’s your favourite quotation and why?
Gary Vurnum: It may sound a bit vain but it’s one of mine, “Never ignore the obvious, that’s what it’s there for.” Too many people talk themselves out of starting because they over-complicate things. Start with the most simple and obvious thing first and then you find quite often that things start to fall into place once you get moving. Don’t hold back from doing the most obvious thing because it’s obvious.
Avil Beckford: How do you define success? And in your opinion what’s the formula for success?
Gary Vurnum: The formula and definition for such is really the same thing in my book. Success is doing what you love as often as you want to, whether that’s in business or life. In my mind, how happy you are should be the currency for success not a monetary figure. There are enough miserable millionaires and billionaires around to prove this. Unfortunately, the gurus will tell you that you should be a millionaire and aspire to this, but essentially everyone wants to aspire to be happier in their lives. My definition and formula for success is to do more of what you love in both business and life.
Avil Beckford: What are the steps you took to succeed in your field?
Gary Vurnum: I push beyond my comfort zone because if you’re not moving forward you’re moving backward while other people are moving forward and leapfrogging. We’re always in motion so you may think that you’re standing still by not doing anything, but you are going backward because you are nor learning and applying. The reason why I’ve become a speaker, author, publisher, marketer and so on is because if I didn’t believe I could do something, I looked and saw that other people could do it and thought I should give it a go, and sometimes it’s scary, but unless you can push your comfort zone you won’t find out what you’re capable of doing. Once you start doing a few things that you didn’t think you were capable of then you find that there are very few things that you can’t do.
Avil Beckford: What advice do you have for someone just starting out in your field?
Gary Vurnum: Work out what you’re already world-class at, and everyone that I’ve ever met whether they were failure, rich or poor is world-class at something – painting, motivating people, fantastic parent, whatever. Everyone has something that they find either easy to do or comes naturally to them, and enjoy it as well. Take that and see how you can build something around it and do it as often as you can. You do what you love and the money will follow except you have to look at it in a business sense.
But basically someone, somewhere will want what you can do, or wish they could do what you find easy to do. So if it’s organizing, you have very successful personal assistants out there, if it’s painting, people will pay you for your paintings. If it’s being a great parent, there are many avenues to monetize your world-class talent. Everyone has been given a world-class talent at something. That’s the best place to start from rather than follow a process to go and do this then that. Start from inside out.
Avil Beckford: If trusted friends could introduce you to five people that you’ve always wanted to meet, who would you choose? And what would you say to them?
Gary Vurnum:
- Napoleon Hill: He is the man who wrote Think and Grow Rich and also Law of Success, which is my favourite book of his. I would ask him, “Can I have your original notes to your interviews of over 600 millionaires of the day?” He converted those interviews into Think and Grow Rich but it was a two-day seminar that was the Law of Success. I would want to see those original interview notes to get insights.
- Warren Buffett: I would like to get information from him on investing.
- Dalai Lama: Aside from meditation, I’d like to find out what he would recommend to focus on happiness as often as I can.
- Richard Branson: I would ask him how best to manage your to-do list because I’ve seen his to-do list at the back of one of his books, and he has a big to-do list.
- Leonardo da Vinci: I’d like to watch him but not necessarily ask him any questions. He was a polymath and involved in many different things.
Avil Beckford: Which one book had a profound impact on your life? What was it about this book that impacted you so deeply?
Gary Vurnum: There have been many that had a profound impact on me. One at the time when I was going through all my problems to quit my job and so on, which tuned me in to the more spiritual side of success, was a book written back in 1912 I think, The Science of Getting Rich by Wallace D. Wattles. You can get it for free online. It’s a short book and might be a bit too spiritual for a lot of people. It made me focus and took me away from the reality that I was facing and made me appreciate possibilities rather than restrictions.
Avil Beckford: You are one of the 10 finalists on the reality show, So, How Would You Spend Your Time? Each finalist is placed on separate deserted islands for two years. You have a basic hut on the island and all the tools for survival; you just have to be imaginative and inventive when using them. You are allowed to take five books, one movie and one music CD, and whatever else you take has to fit in one suitcase and a travel on case. What would you take with you and how would you spend the two years? T he prize is worth your while and at this stage in the game there really aren’t any losers among the 10 finalists, since each are guaranteed at least $2 million?
Gary Vurnum: This is the hardest question because there are too many books and I have eclectic music taste and I go to the cinema quite a bit.
Two Years
I would do a lot of writing, thinking, teach myself meditation and try to find a way to invent a happiness machine so I could work out whether I’m being happy or not. The hardest thing when you’re on your own is being happy irrespective of technology and the tools you have in your life. So I would work on a happiness machine so that I would come off solitary confinement happier than when I went on.
Five Books
- Law of Success, Napoleon Hill
- The Science of Getting Rich
, Wallace D. Wattles
- The Richest Man in Babylon
, George S. Clason
- Ask and It Is Given: Learning to Manifest Your Desires
, Esther and Jerry Hicks
- Reality Transurfing 1: The Space of Variations
, Vadim Zeeland – It’s just becoming known in the west but has sold millions of copies in Russia. It adds a completely different spin on law of attraction and spirituality in a completely different language and approach. Very few people have heard of it but it’s fascinating
Movie and Music CD
One music CD would have to be a compilation of 80s music because I was a child of the 80s. I was born in 1969 and it was my teenage years in the late 80s (Journey – Greatest Hits DVD 1978-1997 – Music Videos & Live Performances
The 80s – Greatest hits
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Step Brother, Trailer (iHD), Will Ferrell and John Reilly
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Avil Beckford: What excites you about life?
Gary Vurnum: Knowing that I am the only one who can choose what I do with my life. If there are any limitations in my life, they are due to me, which is a scary thing because you start to question yourself. Essentially I’m the one in control, that’s what excites me, if I choose to do something, there is no reason why I shouldn’t be able to do it.
Avil Beckford: How do you nurture your soul?
Gary Vurnum: My business life is about that side of things, the best way for me to nurture anything is to teach other people, share it with other people because you learn so much more by trying to teach someone or put it down in words. The way I develop and cope with things – problems or challenge,s is to get it down on paper, and take a step backwards and see how I would suggest other people do it. So I nurture my soul by getting things out of my head and see what other people think.
Avil Beckford: If you had a personal genie and she gave you one wish, what would you wish for?
Gary Vurnum: I would wish that everybody in the world would aspire to be as happy as possible instead of aspiring to be a millionaire.
Avil Beckford: Complete the following, I am happy when…..
Gary Vurnum: The people I love are happy.
Please let me know your thoughts in the comments section below. Many readers read this blog from other sites, so why don’t you pop over to The Invisible Mentor and subscribe (top on the right hand side) by email or RSS Feed.
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