Leo Gura

No, it is not realistic. The hardest part of any business is the set-up. It's like building a factory to only manufacture 100 things. If you are gonna to build a factory, you want it to manufacture 100,000,000 things. Because all the investment goes into work is in the setting up of the factory. Starting a business that earns you $10,000 can be just as hard as starting a business that earns you $1,000,000. Setting your sights super-low is not going to make your business that much easier. It will be a lot of hassle for little reward. If you're starting a new business, you should expect to work 50-70 hours per week on it for the next 3 years. And even then, your success is far from guaranteed. If all you want is $10,000, the best way to get that is through employment, not through starting your own biz. You can easily save up $10,000 from a waiter job (assuming you live in the USA) or something like freelancing (which would actually be harder because it involves you finding clients).

So basically you're suffering from the problem of not having a clear purpose. Saying you can do anything is the same as saying you will do nothing. The mind cannot move towards "anything", it needs a concrete vision that will generate motivation to wake up every morning and get to work. By being indecisive you remain like a ship without a sail. So moral of the story is: make a decision and say "No!" to all options but ONE! At least for the time being. This is an emotionally challenging thing to do, which is why most people don't accomplish anything. They make the choice of not making a choice.

@abrakamowse There is a magic formula, but it's different for every marketplace and sub-niche and business. Finding that formula is like finding a diamond in the haystack. A long search, but worth it in the end!

For me: Nature Sex Contemplation Long road trips by myself Relaxing in a bathtub/hot-tub Deep conversations with people Art Museums Travel Slowing down the pace of my workday Meditation

@abrakamowse Buying someone else's mailing list is basically spam. It's highly inefficient. Whatever emails you buy will probably have been spammed to hell and nearly worthless. But feel free to try it out. Marketing is all about finding loopholes and seizing unique opportunities, and that is done through lots of trial and error. Most initial marketing efforts will fail, so you gotta keep trying different things until you find one thing that actually works.

Doesn't sound like you have a very compelling bigger picture. Think bigger! Think beyond yourself. A weak vision is not worth working towards, so your body will not generate any motivation. Why should it?

@YM My forum comments are not coaching. They are bits of quick, crude advice.

@GoldenAge Philosopher Finding a good job has little to do with luck. As an employer, I can tell you, the quality of applications that I look at is generally so poor that 1 in 100 people is worth hiring. It's not hard to stand out from that pack if you are committed to excellence and passionate about what you do. Most people are so mediocre and sloppy, sigh...

Sounds like you have leaky gut syndrome, or candida, or parasites. Get that fixed before it does more damage and robs you of all your energy.

The meet-ups would not be organized or lead by me. I meant enabling you guys to create your own meet-ups in your local cities.

Fixed

I've added a location feature to the forum. You can now add a location to be displayed in your profile Also, the forum software now automatically displays a country flag on your profile based on your IP address (you must log out and log back in to activate this feature). With time, as people gradually re-log, everyone's country will become visible. Here's how it looks: http://screencast.com/t/IWXtsfcZuw4e

We have folks literally across the entire globe. With a majority in the USA, Canada, UK, Europe & Australia. Here's a map of countries that purchased the life purpose course: Right now the forum population is too small to do effective meet ups. Once we reach a large number of forum members, then I'll look into some way to possibly enable this. In general the Actualized.org audience is global. Which might explain why ya'lls English is so damn sloppy!

I can speak intelligently and in-depth about a wide variety of topics and I understand most people's problems better than they understand themselves. This comes naturally to me because my whole mission in life is to understand everything. Btw, the best way to close a sale is to convince the buyer that you understand his problem way better than he understands it himself. << This is true of ALL sales, not just coaching.

I was 27 or 28 when I started coaching. I am rather ambitious though and I did have quite a bit of life experience already and decent prior business success. I would say, don't let anything stop you if you really know you want something. If you really know you want to be a coach, then that's all that matters. Use that as fuel to study harder, coach more people for free, etc. Of course being visibly successful helps clients take you seriously, but it's not required. You can be a great coach without being a millionaire. In fact, most coaches are fairly simple folk. They are not extravagant titans of business. They are people-persons. They love to help people, and that's enough.

You're not going to effectively learn to coach on your own. It's like you're trying to prescribe people drugs without going to medical school. Enter a REALLY good coaching program where they will teach you tons of stuff you would never discover on your own in 20 years. My book list has 4 books on it about how to be a life coach. Definitely read those. But that's only the start. In the meantime you can focus on simply improving yourself. A good coach needs to walk his talk. Then again, practice never really hurts. If you're practicing on your Mom or friends, that's fine. Just realize it will be slow-going without the training program.

This is generally true, but also false in many cases. Just because there is some tangible "payoff" for helping someone, doesn't mean that's why the helper does it. It's more a matter of the helper's state of mind. For example, I of course do have a financial stake in writing this comment and sharing my thoughts with you because I own this forum and it is a business asset. But that isn't the thing that motivated me to actually answer your question. My motivation in this case came from a genuine desire to help out without needing anything back from you in return. Of course that doesn't mean I'm selfless. It just means that people can be generous simply to be generous because generosity makes people feel good in and of itself. Folks on the Moderation team are doing some thankless work to run this forum, and many of them volunteered simply because they want to give something back to the community because it makes them feel good. One of the struggles that humanity faces is: How do we survive and thrive as individual selves AND also as a community of selves? This is perhaps the single biggest force shaping human activity on the planet today. If you've studied the Graves or Spiral Dynamics model, this is basically what its describing. It show you how the psyche attempts to resolve this question at various stages of its development. As the psyche becomes more self-aware, it starts to become more and more sensitive to the genuine needs of others. As the ego dissolves, space is created for genuine connection and, dare I say, LOVE. But yes, at a practical level, as long as you're a human being, you have to still look out for your own survival. But the good news is, you can dramatically decrease the harmful fallout from your self-survival process and you can become a powerful force for selflessness at the highest Graves stages.

Interesting topic. I'm curious to read some stories for how women balance that and what obstacles you face most.

That's a challenge. To sell stuff online consistently you need a MASSIVE audience usually or a highly useful or highly desirable product. To become a successful artist you need to create a very unique style and make exceptional art. Your work has to WOW people. Then you can start to slowly build up a fanbase. If your work is not remarkable, it will be almost impossible I would think. So one thing you need to really focus on as an artist is developing that WOW factor that sets you apart from every other wannabe artist. Marketing is one of those things that no one can really give to you. You gotta be very persistent and dogged, doing tons of research, running tests, and looking for weaknesses and opportunities in the marketplace you wish to enter. There are thousands of different seminars and information products out there on the web about various kinds of marketing. Define more clearly how you want to sell your art and then you can do some Google searches for marketing products. It might be helpful to find an artist you already admire who is financially successful and research the hell out of his business model and marketing methods. Then emulate and refine and customize to fit your needs.

Your purpose doesn't have to be about helping people directly. You could contribute to humanity in many many ways. A lone-wolf scientist could discover the structure of the DNA molecule without directly trying to help people. But he has still made a valuable contribution to humanity. You could also choose to help not just humanity but animals, the ecosystem, the planet, etc. It's not really about helping others. It's about whatever you feel is meaningful for you to do with your ONE life. If you find it meaningful to sit at home alone and jerk off. Hey, that's fine! Do that then. But in truth you probably don't find that meaningful. For human beings, meaningful activities usually involve contributing positively to humanity in some fashion.

Man... getting ideas is the easy part. Executing on them is the hard part. If you're struggling to get good ideas, you are not researching enough, not studying enough, not exposing yourself to a wide enough variety of source material. Creativity comes from exposing yourself to many diverse sources. If you want to get a lot of practical biz ideas interview your prospective clients and ask them: What frustrates you the most? What keeps you awake at night? What do you fear the most? What do you need help with? Get them to spill all their problems and frustrations to you. Then come up with solutions for all their biggest problems. << And now you got product/service ideas!

There's no magic trick. Just keep hammering on the consistency until you build the habit. Until then it will be rough going. Keep your eye on the big picture of what you're working towards: you are gonna transform your whole life! One baby step at a time.

Don't forget to start the day off with a super-clean, preferably raw veggie or fruit meal. No wheat or corn or refined sugar crap. I do a healthy smoothie.

You're walking the path now (or crawling on it) so let that be okay. It takes a few years of consistent effort for the fruits to ripen. At your age -- basically all of the 20's -- you are in a struggle to find your identity and establish your financial independence. You are still just learning how the real world works and it's difficult and scary. Just keep in mind that this is a normal phase of human development. We all go through it. (Some of course better than others.) Focus on finding your life purpose. It will ground you and give you some solace. Keep building good habits, trusting that it will all pay off in the next 5 to 10 years.

The reality is that we need much more scientific studies done on these kinds of questions by enlightened scientists -- which unfortunately are lacking at this point in human history. The exact relationship between consciousness and the brain is not known. But it's clear that the standard scientific model which says that consciousness is simply a collection of neurons is woefully inadequate. Science has not been able to reconcile the ultimate question: what is the relationship between mind and matter?