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What exactly does it mean to be a part of “the rat race” and how can “success mentoring” help you if you don’t wish to be in the rat race any more?

Before looking at the second part of my question, I thought I’d check out the phrase “the rat race” Google and when I did I found the following definitions:

• “A rat race is a term used for an endless, self-defeating or pointless pursuit. It conjures up the image of the futile efforts of a lab rat trying to escape whilst running around a maze or in a wheel.”
• “A mad scramble or intense competitive struggle, such as in the business world.”
• “An exhausting routine that leaves no time for relaxation.”

For me the first definition is the best; the rat race is an “endless, self defeating pursuit,” like a rat in a wheel. This definition of “the rat race” pretty succinctly describes what having an ordinary job while trying to gain some financial freedom is all about - running like crazy and “getting nowhere fast.”

As an employee you will be paid a monthly salary and in most cases the amount you are paid is set by the employer and not by you. It is a simple trade: you sell your time on a daily basis in return for money so as to obtain life’s necessities and, if you are lucky, a few of the luxuries as well. If you want to increase your income, “all” you have to do is increase the number of hours you work.

The fact is that if you increase you working hours then you tend to have less free time for yourself and your family because following an exhausting routine that leaves no time for relaxation. Over the long term it is just not a sustainable nor an effective strategy. It leads to burnout, or a fate worse than burnout; anybody who has lived in Japan for any length of time, as I have, will be familiar with the Japanese word “Karoshi,” which translates as “death from overwork.”

Ouch!

Another way to increase your income in the job market could be to improve your productivity within your regular working hours. In other words you could seek to become more efficient, learn new skills and improve your ability to do your job, in short, to do more work in less time. But while such a strategy may secure a salary raise, what also tends to happen is that you will land yourself more work, additional responsibilities, or both.

You may indeed be promoted, and get an increase in salary, but then the process begins again and you may wonder whether you have really made progress or simply jumped inside a bigger wheel? Since you are now marked as an efficient and capable employee, you may be required to work longer hours, which is good from the point of view of earning more money (unless you happen to be a Japanese office worker who does “voluntary overtime”), but disastrous from the point of view of your family life and free time pursuits…

Actually, in my experience of corporate life here in Japan, where I have often had an opportunity to glimpse behind the corporate facade in my erstwhile capacity as a freelance English instructor, longer hours and higher productivity don’t tend to go together… What happens is that many employees tend to work “long and slow” - going through the motions of work to keep up appearances, but freewheeling as much as possible to get through yet another long, tedious day…

So what is the answer I hear you ask? Well in my experience, the answer has to be that you take control of your future by breaking out of the rat race and getting off the wheel. Planning to get out of the rat race, and then taking the leap will be your first two steps on the path to financial freedom.

It may seem difficult, but it is not impossible if you seek to leverage your time so as to create income streams that are not limited by your employer or by the amount of time available to you in a single day.

The best way to learn how to do this is to immediately begin recreating yourself in the image of those people who have successfully achieved this very step and gone on to create true wealth for themselves and their families in every area of their lives.

The phrase we use to describe such people is “success mentors.” They are people who have come through trials similar to the ones you face today and who have succeeded and are willing to teach you how to follow in their footsteps to success.

Any mentor worth his or her salt will tell you,

“if I can do it, so can you,”

and then give you the proof that will serve to feed your self-belief and build up your self-confidence so that you too can set out on the path to realize your dreams.

The reason is that the best mentors are “they that have come through much tribulation.” Their testimony is that they have been tested and not found wanting. The tests they have undergone to achieve their successes are unique to each of them and give each of them a powerful facility to inspire.

Moreover, every one who is a mentor today was once mentored; truly, if you want to succeed you must find a mentor.

Do not underestimate the power of being mentored. My favourite example of outstanding success through excellent mentoring is Tiger Woods.

Success mentoring is therefore the most powerful single process to help and encourage or empower someone who has a dream, or who at least is seeking an alternative to the rat race, to get off the wheel of “just getting by” and begin to live life at an entirely higher level.

So if you haven’t got at least one success mentor, go and find one today as you take your first steps off the never-ending wheel that is the rat race. 

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David Hurley is an Internet marketer who is based in Japan and is the owner of http://grasp-the-nettle.com, which focuses on success mentoring for Internet marketing start-ups.Get your own work-from-home Internet business set up free and find out how you can build an online business and master the net.  

Following on from yesterday’s post, I have just added a “Four-Character Japanese Word and Idiom Dictionary to my listings over at:

•  http://japanese-games-shop.com/nihongo.html

furigana, so if you are familiar with the hiragana syllabry you should be able to read out the head words.

The entries come with explanations in Japanese, so as well as improving your vocabulary you will also be able to improve your Japanese reading comprehension skills.

Yoji Jukugo Jiten

David Hurley

http://grasp-the-nettle.com

I have just been reading an article from the Japan Times on my Google Reader by a chap called Roger Pulvers on the subject of jolly difficult Japanese words that consist of four kanji characters.

For the uninitiated, a kanji is a Chinese ideogram or written character that was imported - along with everything else - into Japan in the days of yore from, well, from where else but China?

Now, a difficult Japanese word will consist of just one rather complex Chinese ideogram. A very difficult Japanese word will consist of two such kanji characters.

However, there is yet another whole other universe of absurdly difficult four-character words which the hapless student of Japanese will have to digest before he may consider himself an adept in the art of reading (let alone writing) Japanese. 

Naturally, a few sturdy gaijin (a two character word - “outside” + “person” - usually translated as “Johnny foreigner”) such as Roger Pulvers and myself have cracked the nut, so to speak, and have attained proficiency in what St Francis Xavier, who obviously failed to do so, referred to as “the Devil’s tongue.”

(Incidentally, “Devil’s tongue” is something of a delicacy in Japan, but that is meat for another blog post…)

Now, for the practiced eye of a Japanese afficionado, a cursory perusal of Roger Pulvers’ discourse on four-character Japanese words will reveal much meat for Internet marketers to feed upon.

Japanese 4-Character Words In An Internet Marketing Context 

1. Isshokenmei - Isshokenmei ni yarimashita means, “I gave it everything I had.” Ah yes, that is every failed Internet marketer’s excuse!
2. Jigojitoku - If you brought failure down on your own head, you might say, jigojitoku da. If a fellow Internet marketer says this of you, it means: “You made your bed, now lie in it!” In other words, you should never have believed all the sales hype and loosed the strings of your purse so incontinently.
3. Anchumosaku - ”Groping in the dark.” The Internet newbie’s condition.
4. Bozenjishitsu - ”So disoriented that you have lost sight of yourself.” The condition of the Internet newbie who refuses to find a mentor.
5. Gyokusekikonko “A jumble of jewels and rocks.” This describes the website that attempts to offer everything going on a single crowded page irrespective of it’s worth or relevance. 

We turn now to Roger Pulver’s advice for the Japanese language learner, which may be applied with equal facility to the Internet marketing newbie.

“One way to stretch yourself in any language is to speak above your level, that is, to use expressions that generally only a native speaker would. Then, one day, you will wake up and find yourself speaking like a native.

That advice comes straight out of the “fake it until you make it” school of success mentoring, and sound and solid advice it is too. You have to start “punching above your weight” in order to make progress.

Keep practising and eventually you will achieve your goal of learning Japanese or Internet marketing (or even Internet marketing in Japanese). You will suddenly find yourself able to use your newfound skill freely and effortlessly, or, as they say in Japanese

ejiyujizai ni tsukaikonaseru.

Roger Pulvers continues:

“Mastering four-kanji phrases is, to my mind, the best way of achieving … effortless freedom.”      

Certainly Internet marketers are aware that for them, “effortless freedom” is best achieved by “mastering the net“.

However, both Japanese langauge students and Internet marketers ought to be aware that,

Isshokenmei ni yaru shika nai. 

There’s no other way but to give it everything you’ve got.

David Hurley

http://grasp-the-nettle.com

Source: http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/ek20080520a1.html 

It is funny how things occur in clusters of coincidences. Two days ago I had to place “no longer available” notices on one of my webpages over at http://japanese-games-shop.com for a pack of Ultraman Hanafuda cards. Then, I read the article about Mitsuta Kazuho the creator of Ultraman and wrote about it in my previous blog…

Then I went out and caught a tram into town.I do most of my reading on trams and trains. I had with me Seth Godin’s Internet marketing classic, Permission Marketing which, incidentally, is a “must-read” book for anybody who wants to succeed on the Internet today.

It was written about ten years ago, and was about ten years ahead of its time, so it is bang up to date right now! It is a well-written fast, easy-but-thought-provoking read.

When I reached page 24 of Permission Marketing, I had my third “Ultraman” experience of the day:

 I remember when I was about five years old and started watching television seriously. There were only three main channels - 2, 4, and 7, plus a public channel and a UHF channel for when you were feeling adventuresome. I used to watch Ultraman every day after school on channel 29.    

 Seth Godin is himself a kind of Ultraman of marketing. He comes to the rescue of the little Internet marketer who is fighting the gigantic monsters of Advertising Expenses, Interruption Marketing and Advertising Clutter.

Just how does the little guy get noticed?

Stop wasting your money on “interruption advertising” - Interruption advertising uses ads on television, radio, in the newspapers and magazines, on billboards and so on to “interrupt” people going about their regular activities and shout at them about a product or service.

People have got so used to it that they are now pretty good at filtering out the ads, so marketers respond by filling up more and more space with more and more advertising “clutter”. It is expensive, and for the little guy at least, and very often the big ones too - it is either ineffective or inefficient and famously difficult to measure. Hundreds and thousands of businesses fold under the strain of marketing expenses.

But there is a solution! Listen to Seth! He has the answer! If you’ve never heard of “Permission Marketing,” here are some of the chapter headings of Seth Godin’s book that will help to convince you that you don’t need - or rather did not ought to be - fighting the monsters of mass marketing. Instead, take advantage of the very impersonality of the clutter by concentrating on appealing to people on a warmer and more personal level.

The subtitle of Seth Godin’s book says it all:

Turning Strangers into Friends, and Friends into Customers.    

Chapter headings:

Chapter Two: Permission Marketing - The Way to Make Advertising Work Again. Chapter Four: Getting Started - Focus on Share of Customer, Not Market Share. Chapter Five: How Frequency Builds Trust and Permission Facilitates Frequency. Chapter Six: The Six Levels of Permission. Chapter Seven: Working with Permission as a Commodity. Chapter Eight: Everything You Know about Marketing on the Web Is Wrong!

David HurleyGrasp-The-Nettle.com 

…Overpowered humans fight a losing battle against tireless monsters until the 130 foot tall outer-space super-hero Ultraman arrives to save the day… 

Does that sound familiar?

Many would-be Internet marketers battle everyday with numerous tireless

monsters, whether they are the ones lurking on the Internet, or in their wallets, or even deep inside their heads… Mitsuta Kazuho, one of the creators of Ultraman, has turned 70 and was recently interviewed by the Japan Times, the the Japanese English language daily newspaper.

It turns out that much of what he has to say can be applied to Internet marketing…

“Having to struggle against limitations inspires more ideas.” 

“I joined Tsuburaya Productions in 1964 when our budget was tight so we had to come up with great innovations to make the shows exciting. For example, we would film a fight with one monster, stop filming and quickly added new features such as horns, fangs or wings and spray paint it to turn it into the next monster. It only took a short time to decide what do even though everyone was contributing ideas together. We must have made over 1,000 different beasts.” 

Application: When you Internet marketing budget is limited, do one thing well and multiply the number of ways you do it.

Recommendation: Set up a Pro level TrafficSwarm account. Next, make several different squeeze pages which offer cut-price packages and freebies for people who sign up to receive your newsletter.

Remember, you must do everything cheaply and multiply it. It costs no more to make ten different squeeze pages than it takes to make one. Make ten tempting offers - maybe you will have to get creative and use your imagination, stick a horn on here, or knock one off there to give each package a different look…

Your Pro account will give you a stack of credits, and you can keep your TrafficSwarm campaign going by surfing for more credits - at pro level your credits add up quickly. If each squeeze page brings in just two subscribers and one sale per month, say 10 x $6, then you’ve just doubled your investment ($30 for the Pro Account), and got yourself 20 new subscribers…

And you ain’t seen nothin’ yet because Ultraman has not appeared…. 

“A successful person is the one who does what he wants to do.” 

“I always feel that I am the happiest and most successful person I could ever hope to be because I made a life out of having fun.”

Application: If you aren’t yet making mega bucks on the Internet, at least enjoy the ride and hang in their until Ultraman arrives!

“Ideas cost nothing.”

“Even with the lowest budget you can make a masterpiece.”

Application:Learn HTML so that you can improve your site yourself and make squeeze pages; write your own articles and post them manually to article directories and so forth; blog away to your heart’s content; adopt the TrafficSwarm strategy I mentioned earlier.

The more you do it, the better you will get at doing it, until you create your own online cash-cow masterpiece out of nothing more expensive than shoelaces, eggboxes, cerial cartons and old newspapers and a pot of fish-paste glue…

“If you make an effort, someone will always help you out.” 

“But don’t expect help quickly: Just as the humans in the series struggle with the monsters until they are almost defeated, we also should fight for what we want. Of course, Ultraman might end up saving you!”

Application:Maybe Kazuho Mitsuta has been on some of the more salubrious Internet marketing forums and seen for himself how those people who present themselves as being self-driven, willing to learn, willing to share what they have learned, and above all willing to ‘make the effort’ to succeed online will indeed get the help that they want…

Sometimes one of the Internet Ultramen will even arrive on the forum scene and come to the rescue of a floundering newbie humanoid!  

“Show you care about others — even in the toilet.” 

“I have been married for 42 years, and my wife and I always set the toilet seat for each other. After I use it, I close the cover for her, and she always puts it up for me.”

Application: Hmm, although the Internet certainly does have a toilet, it is not a place you would want to go to if you are in your right mind - and you certainly don’t want to touch the toilet lid, let alone lift it up for anybody…

It is, however, a touching picture of marital bliss, as might be enjoyed when the partner who spends all his free time and nocturnal hours hunched over the computer finally starts to bring home the Internet marketing bacon…

David Hurleyhttp://grasp-the-nettle.com

Source: http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/fl20080513jk.html 

Sir Edward Gibbon, the English Enlightenment historian who wrote The Decline And Fall Of The Roman Empire, observed that,

 ”All that is human must retrograde if it does not advance.”    

Our quest therefore should be to seek constant improvement and progress in everything we do. The problem, however, is that we often seem to have too many things to do at any one time and end up leaving many things half done, half baked or not done at all.Unable to see the woods for the trees we leave many a project or good intention to whither on the vine. That is especially true of the aspiring Internet marketer who is trying to set up a home business while maintaining a day job and running a home and family.

Sound familiar?

Earlier this week I received my monthly DVD and CD package from Success University. The CD presentation by Albert Mensah was called The Secrets To Effective Goal Setting. Success University students can also hear the talk online as part of SU’s life-enhancing streaming video and audio courses. During his talk Albert said the key is to prioritize, and the way to do that is to remember that,

 The main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing. 

Pretty neat, eh?

It reminds me that a few months ago I was reading Steven Covey’s bestselling “7 Habits of Highly Effective People” and how he advises that you plan your whole week and use a four-part prioritizing system,

1. Important/Urgent
2. Important/Not Urgent
3. Not Important/Urgent
4. Not Important/Not Urgent

In terms of “keeping the main thing the main thing,” the main thing is actually number 2, Important/Not Urgent - those things are all your big projects, you know the great ambitions you have that always get put off by number 1, 3 and 4.

I was impressed with Covey’s ideas at the time. But at the end of last year I bought a day-diary, thinking that I could plan my day in great detail. That was a non-starter. Instead, I ended up with lists that were half completed and then forgotten once the day ended and the page was turned…

I went out on Monday and bought a week planner - and from next week I’ll try to put Covey’s suggestions into practice in order to restore focus to my “main thing”!

Interestingly, Covey’s books and his son’s spin-off products, a series of up-market designer schedules and filofaxes with diaries designed to accomodate Covey’s system and with a quotation from one of his books on each page, have become popular in Japan. Tokyu Hands, the famous Japanese gadget-packed hobby, home improvement and lifestyle department store started stocking them towards the end of last year, and one of my students asked me to accompany him to the store to help him choose a suitable one for his needs. Apparently it has proved very effective in helping him focus on his “main thing” and get the rest of his act together too!

Well, I hope that my new week planner will arrest my retrogradation and help me to get back into “advance mode” with my “main thing(s)” …