Picture this: A lone elephant lumbers across the open savanna.

As you read that sentence, your imagination began painting a mental picture. You likely saw in your mind’s eye an elephant walking across wide, grassy terrain.

Stop and analyze what you just did. It’s really rather remarkable.

Chances are, as you read this, you aren’t on safari in Africa. There are no actual elephants in your immediate vicinity. But you’re still able to envision an elephant in widescreen detail simply by reading words on a page.

And that happened, automatically and without any effort on your part, because we humans are both visual and imaginative beings. Not only are we born with eyes that allow us to view the world around us, but our brains have the extraordinary power to record and recreate that reality within the limitless universe of our imagination.

And even more amazing, those imaginary constructs are often linked to our very real emotions. If you’re passionate about elephants, maybe collect elep...

Every business has a leader. In many cases, they call that person the CEO.

If you’re self-employed, even though you may not think of yourself as one, you most certainly are the CEO of your own business. 

Do you think of yourself as a CEO? If you do, then you are more likely to think like a CEO and to perform like one—in a way that consistently drives your business forward.  In this post, we’re covering some of the most important responsibilities of a CEO and the key ingredients that make CEOs exceptional at what they do.

The CEO Genome Project

It was a 10-year-study of the 2500 largest companies in the world with the purpose of determining what all top-performing CEOs have in common.  The 4 main characteristics shared by all of the most effective CEOs are:

• Decisive
• Engaging (with clients and employees alike)
• Adaptive
• Reliable

A CEO is also a visionary. As the leader of your business, you’re responsible for determining what your business model is, developing your busines...

Changing a Bad Habit or Creating a Good Habit is a process. It’s not easy, but it is scientific and you can control it.

Here’s an overview of the process to change or create a habit with more explanation below.

• Figure out what the cue is
• Replace the bad habit behavior with a new one, and make sure there is some sort of reward for the new behavior
• Start small and take incremental steps (the rewards can be small too)
• Prime your environment
• Focus on habits that influence other habits

Figure out your cues

Do you walk into the kitchen when you’re bored or restless, and you find yourself reaching for a snack when you’re not even hungry? It could be that your cue is the feeling of being bored or restless or even the action of walking into the kitchen.

Implement a More Positive Behavior

Sometimes, simply swapping a behavior in an existing loop for a new one is easier than eliminating the loop all together. Instead of walking into the kitchen when you’re feeling that way, tr...