How to stay focused and make money on days you DON’T feel like it!

Did you lay in bed this morning unwilling, unable
to get up? Did every fibre of your body demand
more time in the sack? Was it a struggle to
open an eye… and get up?
Sure enough, if today wasn’t like this, some
of your many tomorrows will be. You need to be
prepared for such inevitabilities… because they
can and will occur and can and will sabotage your
ability to make money. Here are some suggestions
that’ll help you rise and shine… suggestions I use
myself when getting up and getting going are most
decidedly NOT my first priority!
1) Create a “to do” list before you go to bed.
The key to making tomorrow organized, efficient,
and profitable is what  you do today. Make it a
rule before you retire for the night to draw up a
clear, clean, specific “to do” list. Write it, read it
over, put it next to the bed… then turn off the lights.
While you’re sleeping your subconscious mind
will be busily at work helping you organize and
implement the items on your list. Even when your
body is screaming for more sleep and all the
creature comforts it can get, the brain — and
your crucial “to do” list — will be helping you get
up and at ‘em.
2) Take a cold shower.
The British empire, the largest the world has ever
known, was practically built on a cascade of frigid
water. Its young men, pillars of the imperium, were
shipped off to prep schools and immediately
subjected to the jarring temperatures which will work
for you as well as it worked for them.  Don’t stand
there and debate…. turn up the cold tap and plunge!
You’re about to be invigorated, rejuvenated,  primed
to run your empire.
3) Do some exercise.
Are you huddling in a corner of your kitchen,
hands gripping a cup of joe, comfy in your bunny
slippers? Whoa! This isn’t helping getting your act
together. You need some brisk, bracing exercise…
the kind guaranteed to send vital oxygen to that all-
important brain.
Put the steaming liquid down and kick up your
heels… or quick-step around your back yard or
up and down your street. With every step your
brain will exult. The key isn’t coffee… it’s oxygen.
Move bristly and infuse it where it must go for
maximum good.
4) Give yourself an easy, immediate success.
Don’t feel like doing anything? Then give yourself
an easy, immediate success. This should, of course,
have been indicated on your “to do” list. Before you go
to bed be sure to post on your list an easy thing,
a thing that will start today’s sequence of successes.
Once begun, as we say in New England, is half done.
What could this “easy” thing be?
It could be calling a long-time customer to get
a nice re-order or following up with a new customer to
whom you’ve already sent a proposal and quote.
One success engenders another. Even a small
success is sufficient. Start successful, remain successful.
It all begins when you least feel like it.
5) Put on your head phones and engage with
some stirring music.
Still need help getting into gear? Go to the play list
on  your computer and choose something rousing.
What? You don’t have such a play list? Start it
today. I can assure you, you are going to need it.
Here are some of my sure-fire upbeat selections,
guaranteed to get you going:
Wake up Little Suzie by the Everly Brothers (most
appropriate, don’t you think?)
Think by Aretha Franklin.
Natalie Cole’s version of Pink Cadillac, and
J.P. Rameau’s always motivating Tambourins I-II
from Dardanus.
Your list may well be different from mine; the
important thing is to have a list you can access at
once. Turn up the sound… and move your body.
Your uplifting selections are moving you towards
another successful day.
6) Visualize what you’ll get when you turn this day
into a success.
All too often we work without conceptualizing why.
We work today because we worked yesterday.
This is not nearly good enough.
Remind yourself just why you’re working and what
special thing today’s successes will help create.
In my case, for instance, I have a pile of auction
catalogs stacked high next to my computer. I motivate
myself on days when such motivation is needed by
looking at the things I want from auctions coming up
quickly. Getting myself focused and together is a
precondition for maximum acquisition. Visualize
success; then do what’s necessary to achieve it.
7) Still not alert and moving? Then take the day off
formally and properly.
Like most people these days, you are working
more and longer than either your parents or grand
parents. We are the most leisure-challenged
generation ever.
The plain fact is, you may be unable to get up and
resolutely face the day because you’re just worn
out. If so, take the day off… sleep in, sleep properly,
sleep, relax and goof off without guilt. You’ll be the better
tomorrow if you take what is necessary and do not
regard it as an indulgence but physical need.  Enjoy!