Recently we, who are business mentors, who spend hours enhancing other people's businesses, decided to spend some time focusing on our own business. We have our website, our Facebook page and our LinkedIn site but now, strategically, everything must link, correspond and correlate so that we broadcast a common message.

For 2 days this has been the main business activity... Who is responding to all this high-energy-time-consuming-activity? Currently our existing client base. The result begs the question: what will the value of social networking really be? Will the cost yield benefits? Or will we be doing the work that we always did and just spend extra time that we never had doing extra activities for zero result?

Einstein said that the most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. He maintained that it is the true source of art and science.

The hot musty air breedlast illness in me as we spend a few fascinating days working in Botswana. It's a privilege to be welcomed into people's lives in an environment where everyone is friendly, helpful and kind. It's hard to imagine any form of conflict emerging here as everyone seems so pleasant. But work is to be done so regardless of the weather, the nice people and the great temptation to take the rest of the day off!

Part of the enjoyment of this experience is the mystery of people minds and actions. We plan and strategize and consider and finally implement to make our client's businesses better. It's a detail-specific process laden with contemplation and scenarios. Our final act of implementation is their introductory steps to this process. We cannot implement for them. We cannot take control of each person and drive them to perform in the way we see fit to achieve results. We cannot transform an organization through concepts and ideas. We are obliged to develop the people in order to gain momentum within our structures so that the process becomes exactly that... A process towards success.

So in reality, our finale is actually our induction. We plan and strategize and consider and then we try very hard to make our clients also plan and strategize and consider so that our partnership works in tandem and that their business achieves results.

 The mystery of human thoughts and actions blares in each discussion. How diligent it would be to take plans and implement. How satisfying it would be to watch the business grow. How rewarding it would be for each person whose lives we touch to be genuinely uplifted. how simplistic our jobs would be if that were the case... So I guess I don't get to take the rest of the day off...
 
 Once again, it was Einstein who said that the only source of knowledge is experience. The Botswana experience is magical, productive and very enjoyable!
 
 Thank you.

There's an expression that New Year resolutions are something that go in one year and out the next without any action being taken. The array of smirks and knowing looks which follow when most of us share our resolutions, find their source in an awareness of human fragility to plough through the hard stuff - The actual steps and habit-adjustments which transform a resolution into a new way of life. For me, new year is a creative and introspective time.

The symbolic arrival of a fresh start denoted by the literal calendar shift, presents the clean chapter of the year ahead. The pages of the year appear blank and through our decisions, choices and actions we have the opportunity to draft the path which will mark our life and translate into memories, when this year reaches completion. The occasion to design an improved self coincides with the sun’s movement which reminds us that time is passing and there is a need to seal off the old and to engage with the new. Resolutions are goals and goals are only achieved when the goal-writer is really committed to the end result.

All the milestones and activities or self-restraint required to succeed form part of the planning and specification of how each self-improvement can emerge. The new year is a gift, in which each person is rewarded to examine his or her life, dreams and aptitudes, and then endowed with the chance to grow themselves into the person they would prefer to be. Chesterton worded it perfectly when he said "The object of a New Year is not that we should have a new year. It is that we should have a new soul." Happy New Year.