My own 5 rules of living a great life

1) There is always a choice

No matter how hard the choice is, or whether you decide to take it, in every single decision there is always a choice to be had.

I constantly hear all the time how people don't have a choice. They complain that they can't leave their work because they don't have a choice right now, or that they have to take the train to work because they have no choice so they have to just live with the high travel costs.

Truth of the matter is that there is always a choice.

In the case where someone complains about the travel costs of getting to work, perhaps consider taking the bus, or riding a bike, or jogging to work. They might sound like choices you might not want to make, nevertheless they are options.

The problem with using universal stop language such as NO choice, means that you box yourself into a way of thinking that is closed and finite. If this way of thinking perpetrates you entire life, you'll be living a life where you'll feel totally constrained with everything you do.

I choose to live being actively aware that there is ALWAYS a choice. It sounds so simple and common sense, but just a small shift in your way of thinking will help to expand your mind and open up your thoughts to other ways of doing things. By absolutely living your life with choice all the time, you'll be able to see possibilities that might otherwise have been closed off to your mind.

By actively exploring your options, you are taking responsibility for your actions and decisions, and even then if you make the same choice as before, at least you made it knowing the other options that you could have made.

2) There is no such thing as luck

Call it luck, fate, coincidence or whatever, but when people claim they are not lucky in life or things don't got their way, I'm always reminded of the fact that what might seem like some random event or stroke of luck, is merely a string of events joined up to create the illusion.

This is the butterfly effect in motion, the theory that a small change in one place in a deterministic system can result in larger differences later. In layman's terms it means that everything that happens on this planet will have a cause and effect that ultimately affects the next thing in line.

Often times friends will tell me that I was "lucky" to have gotten into internet marketing back in 2001 and struck it big with the online gambling industry. It was just going through a boom time and I just so happened to encounter a news article on Yahoo about its rise.

I don't believe in luck, I would often remind them that I had been surfing and scouring the internet for 2 months, looking at news articles, websites and forums for ideas on how to use the internet to create a business opportunity.

Furthermore, of the 1000's of people who must have read that same article, only a handful would have recognised the opportunity, and out of those, only a handful would have acted upon it and done something about it.

None of that is luck. It is sheer will power moving an idea forward. It is identifying the opportunity and having the courage to setup a business to capitalize on it.

Earlier in the year I wrote about a boy meets girl story and how some might perceive that chance encounter in the street as luck, however in that story I chart the day's activities of both the girl and boy and it's clear that any one thing might have stopped them from meeting, but it was the unique causality of events that made it happen. That isn't luck, it's just unexpected that's all.

So, if you want to be lucky, make your own luck!

3) There will always be problems

No matter how hard you work, no matter how calm your life might be, there will always be problems. If you believe in this, you'll always be able to move forward.

Become a problem solver and your life will become a lot easier.

Ok, so why do I say this?

It's simple, problems will always exist, they only change in nature.
Let's say for example your problem is you don't have enough money right now. Your problems might be things like how to pay bills, forgoing the annual vacation, one less trip to the cinema.

What if you had money? You'd have a completely different set of problems. Which house do I buy? What vacation do I go on? Which day shall I go to the cinema?

What if you had a lot of money? Again your problems would change, but nonetheless they exist and are decisions and questions to be answered. Which helicopter shall I buy? Which tropical island shall we go on holiday to?
If you fundamentally live knowing that problems will always exist, you'll clear you mind up to solving them and not concentrating on the fact that you have them.

I hear of too many people complaining about their problems and not figuring out how to solve them. Accept it and move on, you'll always have problems.

4) Trust in people but always trust yourself more

Trusting in other people is very important. Nobody ever got anywhere by themselves, it's always a team effort whether that team is your family, your company, your business partners or your friends.

That being said, often people place too much trust on other people and forget to trust the one person who will always be 100% trustworthy, and that is oneself.

Always trust yourself more than other people because in this life, there is no one more qualified to give you advice about yourself than yourself.

As an entrepreneur I see a lot of newbie's trust the information given to them from other so called gurus and I honestly say, just go out and do something, fail miserably and then learn the lessons. Trust that you can fail admirably, trust that you can pick yourself up, and trust that you can learn and move on. Trust that you can implement your lessons and then do even better.

Trust that your gut instincts is telling you the right thing, and trust that no matter what happens, you can deal with it and you will care whether you fail or succeed, because whatever happens you'll be happier for it!

As Arnie would say, don't listen to the naysayers, trust in yourself and you'll be proud you did.

5) You are responsible for everything in your life

In most western societies, we live day to day knowing that there are many services which are there to help us. Services like hospitals, policing, schools and such like. However what seems to be lacking is the understanding of responsibility on one's own part to dictate what happens in your own life.

I'm afraid of a generation growing up not know what their responsibilities are, and relying way too much on other people and other things to deal with their own life problems.

Let's take a simple example. It snows in the UK from time to time in winter. When it does, most of the UK grinds to a halt. Trains stop working, cars get stuck and news reports always quote how many millions or billions in lost business there is due to the snow.

Switch over to Canada, where it always snows in the winter, to depths not ever seen in the UK and you'll see a different story. When it snows, everything just carries on working as if it hadn't snowed.

Why is that? It's a combination of many things. Not only are the local states more equipped to deal with these conditions, but individuals are also taking the responsibility for themselves. I have friends in Toronto who always tell me stories of how people just get on out and clear their driveways and bit of road, and since everyone does that, the street takes care of itself.

Do you see that here in the UK?

Ultimately that's just a story to show how we should all take more responsibility for things, and when you do, you'll soon see that your life changes for the better.

Think of it like this, being more responsible for your own life, means that you can't blame others for your failures which means you stand to learn more and therefore be even better equipped to move forward.

Being not responsible would mean blaming others, not learning a thing and not moving forward staying stuck.

Which do you choose?