Strange right? Yes!! I have found out that I talk to myself more often than the way I talked to people, like my friends and family.

Most at times, I felt like I'm going crazy, until I came across this piece of article - from The Sun Newspaper.

5 Interesting Reasons Why Talking to Yourself is not a Sign of Craziness.

Read below and enjoy:
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It has long been described as a sign of madness, before scientists found that it was far from it. Talking to yourself or self-talk is an action that not only helps you materialize your thoughts, but also helps you make better sense of things. Today, we share 5 reasons why talking to yourself is anything but crazy.

It Speeds Up Your Brain

Talking to yourself can actually help you complete tasks faster and helps improve your accuracy and performance. Repeating to yourself what you need to find or accomplish helps spark your memory and speeds up the rate at which your brain works in helping to accomplish the task. Talking to yourself also helps improve your self-control, reduces impulsive behavior and even helps improve your decision making.

It Helps You Organize Your Thoughts

When you’re confused or when it seems like your thoughts are running rampant through your mind, talking to yourself help you organize these wild and confusing thoughts. Conversing with yourself, especially when there’s no one around to really talk to, help you get a grip and clarify your thoughts enough to tend to what’s important and make decisions on whatever you’re contemplating.

It Helps To Improve Focus and Behaviour

Talking yourself through tasks helps improve your focus and helps you to better adjust your behavior to suit the work at hand. Verbally announcing each step of a task to yourself can actually help you perform much better at it because of improved focus, and it also makes it easier for you to set goals for yourself. So, next time you need to carry out a tasking, tricky or confusing project, try giving yourself verbal directions (in other words, try talking yourself through it). You’ll notice that your spoken statements actually help you determine what your next move should be, and what behavior you will need to complete the project.

It Helps You Feel Less Anxious

Giving yourself a quick talk out loud when you need to calm your nerves helps relax you, makes you less anxious and actually increases your chances of performing better. Talking or conversing with yourself before a stressful event can help you relax. Using second person phrases or pronouns during your ‘self-talk’ does a lot in helping you build confidence; this is because talking to yourself with second person pronouns helps create a psychological distance from the event, which allows you manage your nervous and anxious emotions much better.

It Can Improve Your Success Rate

Encouraging yourself out loud increases your chances of succeeding. Speaking positive and encouraging words to yourself especially when working to complete a task or achieve a goal, increases your chances of overall success in the task. Of course, this does not take the place of actual knowledge, hard work and effort, but it does make your odds of success a tad better. In addition, encouraging yourself is not enough; you have to take note of the pronouns you use to encourage yourself.

Studies show that encouraging yourself with second person pronouns actually has greater benefit than first-person pronouns. Second person pronouns reminds you of not only of yourselves but of those who believed or believe in you, and this in turn gives you an ego boost as well motivates you and grows your confidence to keep pushing.

Micheal Jordan

I love reading stories that will inspire me to do more with my life. When am not blogging, I'm reading and what am reading must be an inspiring stories of people that has made it to the limelight, and that led me to the story of Micheal Jordan.

It's so inspiring and a must read, read it and change your life to good.

Michael Jordan was born in 1963, in the slums of Brooklyn, New York.

He had four siblings and his father's earnings were not sufficient to provide for the whole family.

He grew up in a poor neighbourhood. Exposed to mindless violence and heavy discrimination in the slums, he saw for himself only a hopeless future.

His father saw in Michael, a lost soul and decided to do something.

He gave Michael, who was 13 years old, a piece of used clothing and asked: "What do you think the value of this outfit would be?"

Jordan replied,"Maybe one dollar."

His father asked, "Can you sell it for two dollars? If you can sell it, it would mean that you are a big help to your family."

Jordan nodded his head, "I'll try, but no guarantee that I'll be successful."

Jordan carefully washed the cloth clean. Because they didn't have an iron, to smoothen the cloth, he levelled it with a clothes brush on a flat board, then kept it in the sun to dry. The next day, he brought the clothes to a crowded underground station. After offering it for more than six hours. Jordan finally managed to sell it for $2. He took the two dollar bill and ran home.

After that, everyday he looked for used clothing, washed and ironed it, and sold it in the crowd.

More than ten days later, his father again gave him a piece of used clothing, "Can you think of a way you can sell this for 20 bucks?"

Aghast, Jordan said, "How is it possible? This outfit can only fetch two dollars at the most."
His father replied, "Why don't you try it first? There might be a way."

After breaking his head for a few hours, finally, Jordan got an idea.

He asked for cousin's helpto paint a picture of Donald Duck and Mickey Mouse on the garment. Then he tried to sell it in the school where the children of the rich study.

Soon a housekeeper, who was there to pick his master, bought that outfit for his master. The master was a little boy of only 10 years. He loved it so much and he gave a five dollar tip. 25 dollars was a huge amount for Jordan, the equivalent of a month's salary of his father.

When he got home, his father gave him yet another piece of used clothing, "Are you able to resell it at a price of 200 dollars?" Jordan's eyes lit up.

This time, Jordan accepted the clothes without the slightest doubt. Two months later a popular movie actress from the movie "Charlie's Angels", Farah Fawcett came to New York for her Movie promos.

After the press conference, Jordan made his way through the security forces to reach the side of Farah Fawcett and requested her autograph on the piece of clothing. When Fawcett saw this innocent child asking for her autograph, she gladly signed it.

Jordan was shouting very excitedly, "This is a jersey signed by Miss Farah Fawcett, the selling price is

200 dollars!" He auctioned off the clothes, to a businessman for a price of 1,200 dollars!

Upon returning home, his father broke into TEARS and said, "I am amazed that you did it My child!

You're really great! "

That night, Jordan slept alongside his father. His father said, "Son, in your experience selling these three pieces of clothing, what did you learn about success?"

Jordan replied, "Where there's a will, there's a way."

His father nodded his head, then shook his head, "What you say is not entirely wrong! But that was not my intention. I just wanted to show you that a piece of used clothing which is worth only a dollar can also be increased in value, Then how about us - living & thinking humans? We may be darker and poorer, but what if we CAN increase our VALUE."

This thought enlightened young Jordan. Even a piece of used clothing could be made dignified, then why not me? There is absolutely no reason to underestimate myself.

From then on, Michael Jordan felt that his future would be beautiful and full of hope.

He went on to become the greatest basketball player of all times.

How can I increase my own value? I am finding it a very interesting thought. I am sure, you too, will.

The above image contains a quote by Warren Buffett, a man that I adore, according to him; "If you don't find a way to make money while you sleep, you will work until you die".

Now, let's talk about making money online, especially while sleeping. Obviously a friend of mine sent me a message yesterday, asking me to direct him to the best business to do online to enable him make money online.

At first, I wasn't shocked, because the world is changing and lots of things are expected to change, including the ways to make money, and to be careful about being in debt because interest never stopped charging us, interest never slept, never took a day off, never took a holiday.

But, is your money making money while you sleep? Does it sound too good to be true? Since we still live in the age of the interest, it’s not that difficult to earn extra money on the side.

Here are some of the best ways that you can actually earn money while you sleep.

Start a blog

Perhaps the most popular way to earn a passive income is by launching your own blog. It only takes a couple of minutes to setup and is cheap to start – just purchase your domain name and pay for hosting.

After that, start creating amazing content that people would be interested in reading or sharing. For example, if you’re an accountant that has helped small business owners with their taxes, then that could be your blog. I personally have my invoicing blog to help customers know everything there is to know about invoicing. This draws thousands of signups a month.

Make sure the topics you write about are popular. If you still love your pet rock, I doubt there would be enough people visiting your our site to monetize it. But, you never know.

Once you’ve gained a following, you can start making money from of your blog by:

Earning commissions as an affiliate

This is where you push other people’s products or services on your site. Make sure these products or services are relevant to your blog. For example, that accounting blog could become an affiliate for accounting or invoicing software. Once you find an affiliate partner you’ll be given a unique code so that whenever a visitor clicks that link on your site you’ll earn your commission.

Sell-advertising

If you’re site has the traffic to become an affiliate, then it may also be good enough for advertisers to purchase ads on your site. You may start off small, like making under $20 per ad. But, you may eventually be able to charge triple digits. Again, you site must be quality.

Find sponsors

This is slightly different than just selling ads on your site. Sponsorships may be a one-off piece of sponsored content or permanent logo embedded in your footer.

Sell your own information product

If you’re knowledgeable in a certain area, then you can start creating products, such as eBooks or videos, and selling them on your blog. It may take a lot of work to create and market your products, but once all the leg work is over, you can just set back and collect the proceeds.

Create a membership community

If you’ve proven yourself to be an authority figure, then you can create a membership community where you pay a monthly fee to receive additional high-quality content and information that’s not available to non-members. One of my favorite examples is Timothy Sykes who makes more than $100,000 per month in passive income through his membership community which discusses how people can make money in trading penny stocks.

Sell physical products

Just like with a blogging site, there are several ways to earn a passive income by selling physical products. Probably one of the best known ways is by selling your old junk on eBay. But even if you don’t have anything left to sell you can start drop shopping.

This is where you sell products for a company on eBay or Amazon and they’ll take care of the rest – including shipping. You can also launch your own eCommerce store by using Shopify.

They literally give you everything you need to sell products online from a complete online shop to including buy buttons on your social media channels.

Culled from Inc.com

Just five simple tips for women to start a Business | Photo credit: iStock

As time goes on, more and more women are starting their own businesses these days as more of them are getting aware of the opportunities in entrepreneurship. 

Although, not all of them have been put through to these simple tips on what to do to make it grow bigger and better.

But, here are some tips  for women who want to launch their businesses and who need to attract money to their business.

1. Talk about your vision. One way to get an investor to buy into your vision is to be able to sell your idea in short and clear sentences.

Experts say you need one or two lines that sum up your product or service. The key is to be able to get your success story out of your mouth in a clear, succinct manner. You may want to include a cogent example of how a customer would use your product or service.

2. Know your market/customers. To get a solid grip on the potential size of your customer base, ask yourself what niche am I trying to carve? Is it crowded area or am I blazing the trail.

The Managing Director of Wood etal, Mrs Omololami Ajani, speaks further on this, “Know your customers what they are willing to pay for your service/products and what do competitors charge. Also, know what your customers want and monitor your customer inventory closely. For instance in my line of business as a furniture manufacturer, I have come to know that many clients don’t like furniture made from white and bright colours. So, I don’t make them to showcase in the workshop no matter how I like bright colours. I will make such on demands. So, know clients and what they want.”

3. Be sure of your  current finances and financial needs. Know  the financial details of your business. It’s important to be able to answer questions such as ‘What are the capital needs of the business now and over time? What’s your profit over a period of time.?  Ajani  gives this advice. “ Do a weekly cash flow plan and then monthly and then annually. Know the expected sales and the actual sales. And remember, if you don’t have what you are doing in black and white (written down), you are not in business,”she said succinctly.

4. Don’t hesitate to ask people you know to invest. Men are more likely than women to tap networks of close friends and business acquaintances, according to studies. However, that is changing. For finance to start your own business, the C.E.O of Hatlab Ice Cream, Abuja, Mrs Latifat Balogun, said you most not wait for loans from banks. Leverage on your relationship with family and friends.

 “A lot of times, you don’t even need bank loan. Sometimes if you have a good relationship with family members and friends who can borrow you money, you can get funds. Sometime ago, someone borrowed me five million naira without collateral. Leverage on those you have around you and friends. But, you must pay back the debt,” Balogun enjoins.

5. Hire those who love what you do. Just like your real baby, you want to hire a nanny that loves your child almost as much as you do. That’s what fosters a healthy, happy baby.  The same goes for your business. Hire those who love what you do.

Again, outline the key people you need over the next one year and recruit them. They may work for you part-time until you get enough funding to hire permanent staff.

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