Development Solutions Consultancy

Reading different books and listening to various podcasts on entrepreneurship and personal development is something I enjoy doing often. The information I get from these sources greatly aids me in expanding my thinking and it also continuously serves as a reminder that life is full of many possibilities if one is willing to put forth the work.

One podcast I particularly like is "Entrepreneur on Fire" hosted by John Lee Dumas, which can easily be found on iTunes. His whole podcast is based on interviewing successful entrepreneurs who have and are continuing to make a significant impact in the world. I have noticed two practices that have been very consistent amongst successful entrepreneurs in the 50 or so episodes that I have listened to. As you will see shortly, these two practices or qualities will greatly aid any person who wants to be successful in any endeavor.

These entrepreneurs had a basic idea of what they wanted to accomplish, surprisingly in most cases, it wasn't so clear but they started fast and they stayed focused. The two key words I want to bring to your attention here is start and focus. Continue reading...

Whatever career path you embark on whether it be entrepreneurship, being a doctor, being a teacher or what have you; most people will engage in employment for a period of time in their lives. Although time spent in employment varies, most people spend the greatest part of their life in employment as they work to retirement. In this sense employment is one's business in which it is imperative to work strategically to ensure a rewarding work life. The fact, as I have mentioned in a previous post , is that employment is not just a place for one to get a paycheck but rather a platform that can and should be used to propel one to greater career advances and personal success.

Below are 2 tips to propel you higher in employment:

Tip #1: Keep improving your abilities.

In employment you are required to deliver certain results and you currently have a certain level of ability in delivering those results. When you improve your abilities by strategically gaining more key skills and working with the right attitude, the quality of your results will automatically improve. Continue reading...

The concept behind living a driven life simply refers to living life more fully. Often people live lives of quiet desperation but living a driven life means living a life filled with enthusiasm, excitement and meaning. One of the risks of not living a driven life is that it drives people to live in state of weltschmerz whereby they dwell on what could be without implementing any of the necessary action steps.

Now assuming that you have both a clear purpose and goals that you are working towards, here are 3 ideas to jumpstart your life put it on the driven course:

1. Focus on controlling you: The fact is you cannot control everything in life, but you can control yourself. Controlling yourself sets you up to living proactively rather than reactively and this enables you to live a much more meaningful life which ultimately makes you feel good about yourself. Now to succeed with self-control, you must do the one thing that has ever helped anyone design a different destiny: "consciously choose a new self-image and fight to bring it into existence by consistently aligning your thoughts and behaviors to it."
2. Avoid the negatives: Your self-image plays a huge part when it comes to self-control. To therefore develop a strong self-image, it's important to better guard the information you consume. Continue reading...

For the most part, a lot of people often spend quite a huge percentage of their lives in employment. As you know, time is the most valuable commodity that, ironically, is available to every one. To the extent employment results into personal success depends on the way we look at employment and what we put into employment time both in terms of quality and quantity. We have the ability to control much of the success from employment. Here are a couple of tips that could help you change the way you look at employment and open the door to personal success through employment.

Tip # 1: Take personal responsibility

See your job as an important business that you own. In other words instead of simply coming to work every day, see yourself coming to your personal business that is focused on providing the highest value to its intended customers. This will drive you to think of better and more efficient ways to do your job. Taking personal responsibility therefore makes you realize what you have to do to improve your "personal business" in terms of investment, growth and customer satisfaction. Continue reading...

Success is something we all would like to have and experience. Success is also different to many people but to sum it up in a definition, I like the way Earl Nightingale put it when he said, "Success is the progressive realization of a worthy ideal." Now, in order to move in the direction of your worthy ideal, it's imperative for you to become the person that takes the necessary actions on a consistent basis. In other words, in order to have and experience the success you want, you have to first master yourself inside.

Personal Mastery is really the idea of becoming the person you need to become in order to have the success you so desire. To succeed in life you have to be growth conscious and not just simply goal conscious. If you focus on reaching your goals, you may hit them but that does not guarantee growth. On the other hand if you focus on the activities that stretch you and grow you to become a better you, you will then always hit your goals. Continue reading...

The concept of failing forward is based on the fact that, we all have to go through a learning curve where things don't really work out at first to get towards the success we want. Thomas Watson the founder of the IBM Corporation summed it up best when he said, "The key to success is massive failure." This may sound strange when you first hear it but the point is that, great lessons for advancement and meaningful accomplishments are hidden behind the failures we experience.

While some people may succeed with little failure, the majority accumulate success wisdom by learning from their failures, which propels them to success. With everything coming to our lives for a reason, there is an opportunity for learning every time we fail. Our perception of failure as defeat needs to change and become replaced with an understanding that, we cannot fail in life, we can only learn from our failure and grow. Understand that failure is a necessary process that we have to go through that opens up the opportunity for learning provided your vision is clear.

"The only way you can get ahead is to fail early, fail often, and fail forward."

Every dream that anyone has ever achieved, came as a result of dedication to a process. Continue reading...

For many of us, we have heard it said that our mind is very powerful. We have heard that we can accomplish a lot more if we can change our mindset. Often times when we hear these statements, they seem to make sense but we don’t think much about them. The fact is, these are not empty words, our mind really is very powerful and it always sets the direction of our lives.

There are two parts of the mind, the Conscious Mind and the Subconscious Mind. The conscious mind is known as our thinking mind. It gets information from our five physical senses which are seeing, hearing, tasting, touching and smelling. The subconscious mind is also known as the emotional mind, our beliefs and expectations are stored in here. Wrong beliefs can be dangerous because they signify the truth to the person who holds them. Consequently, they shape up our actions and since our actions determine our results, wrong beliefs hence shape the results that we produce in our lives.

Our subconscious mind is 1000 times more powerful than our conscious mind but it is also influenced by the conscious mind. Continue reading...

A closer look at successful people reveals that they are very good at what they do. What we normally don't see are the countless numbers of hours, months and years they invested in generating their admirable skills. The bottom line is that people who identify what the market needs, invest time in generating and perfecting the necessary skills will always be valuable in the market place. Other people may say that successful people are lucky, but through close observation we find that, luck gets created through relentless hard work. Since we get paid for bringing value to the work place, naturally these people will always be well compensated.

It's important to constantly carry with us the attitude of continuous and never ending improvement of how we do what we do. As we improve we, almost unconsciously and potentially, begin to position ourselves for higher achievements and success in life. Sometimes our jobs are challenging, and it is precisely at these times when such challenges are opportunities for developing our skills be it in technical or inter personal areas. As we work we are always challenged to look for personal development opportunities in our jobs Continue reading...

History reveals to us that King Solomon was the richest man who ever lived. He was the King of Israel who reigned around 1000 BC. It was said that the he was rich in both wisdom and wealth. In fact, as the story goes, it was his wisdom that made him wealthy. Just as there are physical laws that govern the physical universe, King Solomon reveals "laws of living" that invisibly govern all aspects of life.

Here are a few highlights from King Solomon’s wisdom that still hold a firm truth today and sure enough, they can absolutely enhance the quality of our lives when applied:

• The diligent are rewarded. Diligence is about being very time conscious and making every hour count towards achieving what we want. Diligence is not just about being persistent, but it's about being persistent in doing the right thing and in the right way. True diligence will make a person the most valued employee in any workplace.
• Without vision, people perish. A personal vision fuels our hope, provides direction and gives us the momentum in our daily lives. Continue reading...

• What is it? Enhancing Personal Success through Effective Performance
• Where? Corridor Springs Hotel, Arusha, Tanzania
• When? 14th & 15th March 2013
• Daily start and end times? 9:00AM to 4:30PM (with breaks in-between)