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Here I am, at my workaholic size 22, working from home, before I got the 'get fit', message and learned to incorperate it into a creative self employed lifestyle.
Tips I have learned, during 50 years, successfully, self employed.

Set work hours and ask friends and family, to respect them. Sometimes it is hard to convince others that you have work hours. People can assume, you are a person of leisure and they can drop in at any time, when you work at home, you need to be firm and let people know you have work hours. Sometimes you cannot take your mind off home chores and focus on the income generating work.Focus on the job. Self employed people; need to develop strategies that allow us to complete the work we commit to doing.  If you cannot ‘turn off’ from the home chores to focus on an income earning job your trying to do at home, try setting  yourself,  work hours and knock off from work hours. Write these down even put you work hours on the front door, so visitors know when you are at work and not there to socialize. To help you focus, try playing, ‘mind games’ with yourself.  One successful tip, many home workers have used, is to walk out the front door, lock it, as if going out to work. Then walk around the house and come in the back door, then head straight to the home office, as if you have entered a different world, a world where the washing machine and house work has been left behind ‘at home’, far from your place of work, where it can not distract you.

Extend your skills into your changing life. The same skills that can help you earn an income from home as a young mum(or dad), can, later in life, convert to skills you could travel around the country with and use to earn an income ‘out of the caravan’, as a gray gypsy, nomad J, a great lifestyle. Many seniors, travel from Caravan Park to the next, sharpening knives or doing sign writing or selling art cards.Act on opportunities or go out and make them. Successful people are not those who sit around and complain that ‘ends do not meet’; they are usually too busy doing something productive to make sure they can provide the basics.  Want to earn money from home – or the caravan? The formula is simple,

1/ Chose to sell something or provide a service that fills a need

.2/ Commit to set work hours. For example I  treat my writing as a profession and I commit to a 40 hour working week,  4 hours writing in the morning, 4 in the evening, extra time when I can to allow for me to take time off when I need to.

3/ Learn and stay in ongoing training, learn from the experts, in the field you want to pursue. Remembering the saying, ‘a self taught person has a fool for a teacher’.

4/ Be persistent. Successful self-employment rarely happens overnight.  If you are not earning an income after six months, do not quit. Learn. Learn to work smarter, not harder, review what you have done and understand we learn valuable lessons in observing what not to do as well as what worked. 

5/ Fine tune your work to make sure you are providing a valuable service to others.

6/ Add in a touch of your own unique, creativity to personalize the service  you offer and to make your business stand apart from rivals.

7/ It goes without saying, but ‘be friendly’, so people will enjoy interacting with you  and coming back to deal with your again.

8/ BELIEVE in yourself and your potential.  If you do not believe your work is good, then how is a customer supposed to believe it is?.  If someone praises your work, accept the compliment with grace, thank them, and even say something along the lines of ‘I am proud of this too’.  Do not say, ‘do you think it’s OK’, or you are going to fill your own customer with doubts as to whether the item or service you are selling is worth buying. Sigh, some parents ‘over did’, their efforts to teach little girls to be modest and unassuming, in my day and  I spent most of my art teaching career teaching women to accept a compliment and believe in order for them to be able to achieve. Self-confidence is essential for success. If you have an issue with it, then focus on developing your self-confidence, as you are also developing your home business, the two skills are interdependent on each other.

9/ Make sure you plan and take adequate rest and exercise breaks.

10/ Resist the urge to take fast snacks and eat on the job, self-employed people tend toward workaholism. At the very least, if rushing for an important deadline, eat healthy fast food like nuts, fresh fruit or have a protein drink,www.proteinpowder.net. Try to stay away from the self abusive habits. I have saw in my own workaholic and now deceased due to life style disease, family members self abusing with cigarettes, lollies and even alcohol consumed on the job. Working for ourselves should be a joy, not a self-destruction. If it is not going to benefit you to work for yourself, then ‘sack the boss and get a decent one’J. I once self abused by over consuming food, using ‘work’, as an excuse for inactivity and over eating.  I ‘woke up’ to what I was doing to myself, made corrections and literally saved my life.  Don’t let self employment become an excuse for self abuse.
 


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    _Happy New year :-)
    I am going to combine several seemingly contradicting eating and exercise programs and put together my own Artslim Naturally slimming and Gray-Nomad fitness program.  I plan to bring these out as a low cost EBook and small paperback. They will suit anyone interested in managing weight with son=me difficult health conditions such as metabolic syndrome and past injuries.

     I'll be showing you some of the books I am reading that have some excellent qualities, although they will not be exactly what I am putting together to suit me and my style of doing things.
    I will be focusing on eating and exercising for wellness, weight loss if obese, weight management and balanced fulfilling lifestyle..

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    "Instead of giving myself reasons why I can't, I give myself reasons why I can." Spring garden with pansies. Large Fridge magnet featuring the Art of Kathy Shell
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    "Get to know your neighbour!" Rusty and Rosco the Clydesdales. "Don't approach a goat from the front, a horse from the back or a fool from any side. Three heavy horses, side on. Large Fridge magnet featuring the Art of Kathy Shell.
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    "Believe in yourself." Churchill Island farmyard. Large Fridge Magnet featuring the Art of Kathy Shell.
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