As weird as it may sound, a lot of times people find themselves giving up simply because “everything is tough right now” so might as well stick to what’s familiar and what works, right? HARDLY!

Our WMT honorary guest blogger, Caroline Donahue of Remabulous Coaching is here to share with the rest of the WMT readers just how fresh inspiration and perseverance can lift your business when things get tough!

Read on for your August inspiration!

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Often, when we work outside the corporate box, we end up coming up with ideas all by our lonesome. At first, leaving the grind of 9 to 5 can be a huge source of inspiration, where we can finally indulge all those plans that the red tape wouldn’t let us put in motion.

But often after a few months, or even a few weeks out on our own it starts to get hard to generate content or ideas in a vacuum.

How can we stay inspired to keep offering our message in new ways?

Recently, on a group coaching call, we discussed Angela Jia Kim of Savor the Success’s vlog where she discussed her secret weapon tip: 100 things. She doesn’t give up on an idea until she’s tried 100 times or come up with 100 possible solutions to a problem.

After having some eye-opening experiences this week: feeling like I saw my neighborhood in a whole new way from a bicycle, doing an interview where I got to talk about my philosophy in a totally new context (Stay tuned for when this interview is posted!), and continuing to put in place new ideas that I learn through connecting with new people, reading new books and seeing new movies.

Whenever you feel stuck, try to look at your challenge from 100 different angles before you give up. Remember being a little kid and lying on the ground to look at things? Or climbing up on chairs to feel tall?

• How would it be to look at your business and your creative projects this way?
• Try imagining a worm’s eye view, or the view from outer space on your situation.
• How would it look through a telescope?
• How would a close friend describe your challenge?
• How would the competition articulate it?
• Take your explorations into the physical world: take a walk and think about your challenge or explore a new street in your neighborhood and see if the change of view opens up your mind.

Keep challenging yourself to look at new ways to view your situation and then see if you don’t start having new ideas pour in!

If you have angles you have discovered that were helpful to you, please share them in the comments below. I know that part of the beauty of working with groups has been to see people learn from each other and their ideas. Share yours! It may be just the clue someone else was looking for.

Read more of Caroline’s inspirational blog posts for WMT!

True to form, Caroline Donahue has provided us with another fabulous post about how to play to win in the game of business. Read on for your inspiration of the week!

Caroline–Thank you so much for yet another fantastic post! WMT blog followers-enjoy!

**Guest Post from Caroline Donahue of Remabulous Coaching.

Business can be a game: Three tools that help you play to win.

Let’s face it- given the choice, you’d prefer to win in your business, right? You’d love to celebrate a tremendous victory, a slam dunk, or slide that championship ring on your finger.

So how do you make the equivalent happen for your work?

These three tips will help propel you to a higher RBI when you apply them consistently:

1. Focus on the outcome you are seeking. I have to thank Jariek Robbins, who I have been working with the past two months, for this one. If you focus on your outcome and measure your progress by how close you are to that outcome, you are more likely to succeed. Rather than making a lot of to-do lists that feel like obligations and busywork, simply shoot for the goal you want. Fall in love with results, not the elaborate process you have created that you think will take you there. You have succeeded when the end goal has been reached. Put your attention there.
2. Train your weak muscles. Many of us are taking on new roles by becoming entrepreneurs and owning businesses. I like to think of familiar skills as large muscles- biceps and quads that we can count on to carry a heavy load. However, we have a lot of other skills we need to learn and these are like the tiny muscles you find out about after a yoga class that tried new poses. Don’t expect all yoru skill sets to perform like large muscles. Do smaller reps of new activities or get help. For example- writing is a large muscle set for me, but bookkeeping is a small one. I can write for hours, but if I tried to do all my bookkeeping, I might tear something. Be gentle on yourself when you learn something new, practice regularly for short spans of time, and you will race ahead!
3. When you fall off the horse, get back on. A batter who makes a good hit one out of three times is considered exceptional and probably commands a huge paycheck and even more respect in the game of baseball. Yet we expect ourselves to hit 100% of the pitches that are thrown at us 100% of the time. This gives us no room for failure, which is one of the greatest learning tools out there. Congratulate yourself on the hits you make, and know that you will lean from those who pass you by. If you choose to take a lesson from each unexpected outcome, you will win every time a ball gets thrown your way. And if you gave up each time you missed a pitch, or never got back on the horse after you fell, you would be wasting that knowledge you worked so hard to gain. Failure is knowledge, too. The approach to failure Spanx founder Sarah Blakely describes above in this video is particularly useful- check it out!

So, try these tips out this week. If you focus on outcome rather than staring at a long laundry list of to-do items, I am sure that will push you ahead all by itself. But do remember to avoid straining new skill muscles will too much pressure and catalog those unexpected twists of fate as more value in your experience file and I am sure you will be slamming business baskets in no time!

Keep up the good work!

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Caroline Donahue is the founder and owner of Remabulous Coaching, which serves and entrepreneurs and business owners through business coaching and training in video marketing.  Caroline has over ten years’ experience working both in the worlds of psychology and the arts. She holds a Master’s Degree in Counseling Psychology and Expressive Arts from the California Institute of Integral Studies in San Francisco and also trained at Johns Hopkins University, NYU, University of Pennsylvania, and in Expressive Arts at the European Graduate School in Saas-Fee, Switzerland. She works in person and through phone sessions, workshops, and teleseminars. Look for a new package that incorporates business coaching AND video training coming soon! When not firing up the creative community, Caroline is an avid reader, novelist, knitter, film fanatic and conscious bookkeeper.  She eagerly awaits the opportunity to work with you on creating your dream job as well as your dreamed-of life.