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by Jake Mogul on March 4th, 2010
I am not a tidy person. Clutter is the most obvious thing you would notice if you walked into the bedroom/office I have worked out of since I was 14 and in this challenge it is that place that I will aim to declutter. Working and playing and sleeping in the same room is something most teenagers and young adults have to do. But sometime between being 16 and being 22, I realized that the room had far more uses and purposes than it had space and equipment to cater for. And what you find starts happening is a form of microliving – open plan living taken to an extreme.
One corner of the room is an office, another corner is the sleeping area. There’s a music area in between. And a library near the door that is, by even the most conservative of estimates, going to overpopulate the shelves it has been allotted in the very near future. But of course the office – when you have to deal with companies house and the HMRC – starts producing tonnes of paperwork, which creates a need for files, which creates a need for more shelves.
Combine all of that with my blatant lack of organization and the result is what most parents and teachers around the country would refer to as a pig sty. Throughout my childhood, my messiness (there, I’ve said it), created a timeless reason for my mother to shout at me, but now, it has finally become a problem for me. I have reached a time in my life where I hate mess. I think it started a few weeks ago when I attended a film-making seminar in London. The hotel I stayed in that weekend was so clean and tidy and I liked it. Why couldn’t my own living quarters be like this? Largely because I don’t pay a Polish woman to come in at 11 o clock every morning to make my bed, change my towels and throw out all the crap I have accumulated the previous day.
A few days later began my tidiness challenge. Could I keep my living quarters tidy for 28 days? And if I could, how would this impact on my life? Read the rest of this entry »
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by Jake Mogul on January 21st, 2010
Sometimes things just don’t work out. It is a fact. No amount of coaching, training and self help literature can make any of us impervious to the eventuality that whatever we are doing, however well laid the plan is, sometimes things just don’t work out the way we want them to. And in the face of failure, staying motivated, keeping the faith, plough through and continuing to take action can be difficult.
I guess the motivational cliche is the quote of Thomas Edison, American inventor, scientist and business man who invented the light bulb … eventually. It famously took him more than a thousand attempts to create the device that we all know today. And after one thousand attempts, the press of the time accused him of failing, to which he famously answered, “I did not fail. I have successfully found 1000 ways not to make a light bulb.”*
Talk about reframing! To be unsuccessful at your goal one thousand times and still be undeterred from acheiving it would take an enormous amount of self belief and confidence. Most people do not have that much.
The important thing to remember at times of deferred success is that failure is a stepping stone to success provided that you learn from your failure, figure out why it was a failure and do not make the same mistake next time. There are only a finite number of mistakes you can make when trying to achieve a goal. As long as you attempt the task n+1 times, success should be guaranteed!
*I’m a stickler for correctness of information, so I’ll state from the outset that this quote may not be word for word correct. It has been requoted and misquoted so many times that it was impossible to find a source of the quote that I could rely on. Nonetheless, the meaning conveyed is the same.
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by Jake Mogul on January 4th, 2010
Last week marked the beginning of a new year and a new decade. In the first 24 hours of 2010 the usual torrent of text messages came from virtually everybody in my phone book. One of them referred to the next ten years as “the teenies”, in the same vein as the twenties and thirties.
I want to begin 2010 the same way I begin every year: with a manifesto; a wish list, a list of action items and ambitions, and this year I’m going to post that manifesto on my blog (because now I have a blog. Last year, I did not).
Recent years have required me to do things that were not really me so I want 2010 to be all about reclaiming myself and my life. Getting back in contact with childhood dreams and being true to myself. And as hairy-fairy as some of that sounds, I believe it is true that to be truly happy, you have to be the person that you would be if there was nobody else to judge you for it.
So, here we go, in priority order… Read the rest of this entry »
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by Jake Mogul on October 22nd, 2009
If slash when I eventually have children (I hope it is when rather than if), one of the single most powerful pieces of life information I will teach them is to appreciate the value of books. During my teens, I began reading a lot, largely due to not having the kind of social life I wished I had and not having much else to do with my time. And out of the hundreds of books I have read over the past ten years, there are five I have picked that I think have revolutionized my life and thinking in various ways.
The five books I’ve chosen have been so influencial that I can say with confidence that had I not read them, I would be a different person, and the worse for it. If you enjoy the posts on my blog, I strongly urge you to read these books. And if you’ve read any of these books, I strongly urge you to subscribe to my blog because, well, you’ll enjoy it!
Without further ado, five books that changed my life… Read the rest of this entry »
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by Jake Mogul on September 10th, 2009
The following article details goal achievement theories, techniques, philosophies and strategies that are some of the most powerful I have ever had the priveledge of learning: How to achieve the seemingly unachievable.
Throughout my childhood I had a reputation for being a bit of a dreamer; wanting and believing I could have things that most people saw as impossible. Needless to say that over the years a good few people have had a good laugh or two at my expense. This sort of negative influence is very destructive and if I wasn’t so irritatingly stubborn about the things I want, I probably would have listened to it and given up. But I didn’t…
What I believe I have now is a workable system that can be duplicated by anybody to make ANY dream more achievable and ultimately within realistic reach of regular people like you and me.
I’ve already used it to realize a couple of dreams.
Now I’ll share it with you and show you how you can use it too.
Here’s how it works… Read the rest of this entry »
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by Jake Mogul on June 10th, 2009
Finding happiness is, for most, the ultimate goal in life yet only a few ever find it. Comedian, Ray Romano, jokes that life peaks at three. It all goes downhill from there. At three, you have no worries and all it takes is candy to make you smile. While it is unlikely we will ever completely reclaim that gift of complete happiness that we took so for granted in our youth, wouldn’t you like to get as close as you can?
Scientists have spend some time studying what makes people happy and these “happyologists” (if I can call them that) can now tell us a thing or two about how we can make ourselves happier. And it is not as simple winning the lottery and marrying a supermodel. In this article, discover ten ways to get you dramatically closer to finding happiness. Read the rest of this entry »
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