Skepticism

"Join us now at this EXCLUSIVE price of only $2399.00!"

"Sign up now and you can sack your boss in 2 months!"

"Discover the potential to earn millions in a single year!"

You may have come across these kinds of ads on the Internet, claims which you get tingling with excitement, but are these claims true? How do you know which ads you should place your trust in? You start to ponder whether it is true or not, whether you should give it a go, whether it is worth you time and money.

You are right to feel uneasy about claims which are too good to be true, which they often are. In fact you will be foolish to just dump in money into any opportunity you come across without checking the facts. Most Homo sapiens tend to produce all sorts of cocktails such as those above quoted to sell something.

However, it is important to remember that these kinds of ads, hype and claims exists because there are people who have achieved some level of success in internet marketing. It is duplicable and they are spreading the word. You just have to do some research. Skepticism protects you from scams, but can also blind you from the genuine ones. You just have to make sure that it does not turn into paranoia, shutting yourself from the opportunities out there and killing your dreams.

Procrastination

Procrastination is something which all of us know what it is yet most of us allow it to happen anyway. It eats up our time, cause us to overlook opportunities and it sabotages our efforts to achieve what we want. But why do we still procrastinate?

If your skepticism is still lingering, you're probably thinking that starting up on whatever you dream of doing is very difficult, overwhelming. Your office work seems to be piling up and never-ending...how to find the time to start? You put it off thinking that you will find the time to start when you finish up on the financial year report. Unfortunately that time probably would never arrive as this you may have another quarterly report to do, or your boss assigns you to another marketing project.

Or if you have started planning you find that somehow one piece of the puzzle is still missing, some important step is not listed in your action plan. You stop, ponder over it, and start to look for it. Go to online forums or Google to attempt to solve what may be just an over-zealous concern. Your action plan becomes a plan without action, a piece of paper.

Fortunately however, you do not need to assign massive amounts of time to start on what you want to do. Most successful businesses do not pop up in a big bang. They take weeks, months, or years to build before they are open for business. Start on a list of what you plan to do and break it down into manageable portions, place them in your own schedule and make commitments to attend those appointments as though they are dates with your spouse. You do not want to let your love down do you?

And don't try to make sure you get everything right before you start moving.

Plans are made on some uncertain grounds. Perfectionism will be certain your plan stays on the ground.

You will be sabotaging yourself if you impose standards that have more to do with giving yourself a sense of completeness than with functionality. Life is not perfect, so plan for a some days and get going. Pieces of your seemingly incomplete plan will show themselves along the way.

So much to do and learn!

What most people do not realize is the amount of learning you have to do while chasing your dream. It is so quick and easy to find information on the Internet that most people get overwhelmed trying to digest the information which seems to come together at once. And while you are carrying out your action plan, you find that it is not as easy as what you have heard or seen. Problems keep popping up, and you seem to be spending more time trying to deal with them then advancing in your plan.

Well, patience is a virtue. We have been fed this line since the cradle. It will certainly serve you well when searching for valuable information. Don't try and learn everything at once, you'll just end up dazed and confused, and probably learn nothing at all, wasting time and effort. Just pick one aspect to learn about, digest some info and move on to the next. You will be collecting more pieces of information as you go along.

Problem solving does not slow down your plan. Problems are part of the plan, and when you solve them, you are advancing in your plan. While running a business, problems inevitably occur, and we shouldn't cringe on the first sight of it. We have been solving math problems for our teachers, solving accounting problems for our bosses. Now you are solving problems not for anyone else but yourself! What's the fuss?

Distractions

As you go about achieving milestones within your plan and searching for information, you will be constantly bombarded by ads or sales copy, especially on the internet, promising opportunities that seems more lucrative and easier to achieve than the one you are already on. So even if you do see an alluring opportunity when you are researching information for your own home business baby, do not be distracted!

Treat your business as you would approach a girlfriend, don't try to hook up with other girls when you're out on a date with her. That will only get you slapped and dumped, so don't go searching for other girls when you should be working on your relationship with her. Cheaters never prosper!

The Comfort Zone beckons...

Failure is something which we are taught to accept and will come across, be it on your next business project or your very first one, which unfortunately seems to be the case most of the time. What sets you apart from those less successful is when you choose to identify what went wrong and deal with it and avoiding it in the future.

When facing failure, and if you do not come to terms with it, you will be adding more problems to yourself. There will be lots of people lined up to do that onto you, so please don't add yourself to that line. Take each failure as an opportunity to learn one way how things can go wrong, another reason why businesses fail, and you become wiser than someone else. Just don't trip into the same ditch again.

So now, having experienced what it is like to fail, you ask yourself do you want to carry on? Your present job is paying quite well enough for your present needs. Mistakes can be made in the office and I still get my paycheck, why bother carrying on to experience another fall?

Whether you choose to become a failure or an entrepreneur who become wiser will be why you started off in the first place.

What do you really want?

What is the reason that got you started in the first place? Was it a wish for more cash to buy that 52 inch Aquos LCD TV? Or was it that you desire to quit your job which is driving you nuts from the work you do not want to do or people you do not want to work with?

Desires unfortunately do not last long in motivating yourself, as you may find that living with your present problems seems to be easier than venturing into setting up your own business with so many unknowns and failures. Necessity and "I want" are more powerful words to keep yourself from destroying your dreams every time you think of giving up.

"I want to stop working for that idiot back in the office in six months," will be more effective in motivating you to solve problems for yourself than "How I wish that idiot can stop bugging me with unrealistic deadlines..."

Your business is your ticket to freedom, but freedom is always hard won. Any of us can do it, with dedication and hard work. You've probably slaved for years for other people, spend some of those hours on yourself, and you are sure to reap the rewards, as long as you know what you really want and prevent yourself from becoming an obstacle to whatever you want to do.