How to write a book, start a business or change the world in 30 days

Guest blogger John Williams is the author of the best-selling book "Screw Work, Let's Play (How to do what you love & get paid for it)", described by The Sunday Times as "A compelling 10-step escape from corporate life that could spell a rash of resignation letters".

Fired up by the Beyond Chocolate experience, you might now be thinking of other areas of your life you want to make changes to: Perhaps it's time to think about a career change, or to start a business, or launch a campaign, or write a book or blog you've often thought of?
So you've got an idea... but… it’s BIG. Too big.

It requires you to resign from your job. Or it needs a lot of money. Or a whole team of people. Or premises. Or it simply requires more time and energy than you have at the moment.
So what do you do?

Has your answer ’til now been to put your idea back in a drawer and get on with your life? If that’s the case, then it’s time to start doing something different. There are far too many people who have good ideas fading away somewhere at the back of their minds (while someone else has the same idea and goes and makes a success of it).

There’s nothing wrong with having big ideas – a big business, a best-selling book, a national movement, or simply making a full-time living from something you love. It’s a useful skill to be able to take an idea and envision exactly how huge it could become. But… you also need be to able to do the opposite and chunk it down into manageable projects, starting with one you can begin right now.

You can go ‘big bang’ on your idea; go hell for leather and enlist all the people you need, write a business plan and go looking for funding. Or resign from your job and bank everything on your first book being a best-seller. If you’re comfortable with the risk involved, it may be right for you.

For the rest of us, the thought of biting it all off in one chunk is overwhelming. And that’s not helpful if it means we end up doing nothing.

You don’t have to give up on your grand vision of a big business, national fame, or the most common desire – finding a way of making a full time income from something you love doing. You can start small, test it out, improve it, then grow it and scale it towards your original vision.

It requires you to be willing to think creatively. It means being willing to play it out one step at a time – even if you don’t know exactly where it will take you and you can’t yet see how it can make you a full-time income. You’d be surprised how many successful ideas and businesses started out like this! (It’s a lot of fun too)

Here’s how to do it:

Design a 30 day ‘Play Project’ that immerses you in making your idea happen (or at least some part of it).

Since you’re not trying to create your whole vision yet but just a part of it, choose the project to be centred on the bit that’s most exciting to you. If you want to be a public speaker, go and speak, don’t spend the first 30 days building a website for your future speaking career.
Make sure the project produces something you can share – some tangible result, not just 30 days of sitting and googling!

Set a deadline in 30 days’ time to share your result with others – show it to your friends, put it on your blog, tweet or facebook it. Share photos, recordings, videos on youtube. Write about the experience on a blog.

Start doing it – do a little every day if you’re fitting it around your current work, don’t wait for hours of free time to magically open up in your diary

When you complete it, look at how you could build on it to take it further. If it didn’t work out the way you’d hoped, adjust your approach to give you more of the results you want and launch your next Play Project. Each one can build on the results of the last and at the end of every one, you’ll have something real to show for it – the kind of stuff that opens doors to even bigger opportunities.

What will you do?

What do you want to do?

Here are some example play projects to help make it happen.

Do you want to write a book? Write the outline and one chapter. Or… start writing about your topic on a blog. If you want to be a novelist, you might start with a short story. Send it to some friendly readers.

Do you want to be a public speaker? Go to Toastmasters, learn some of the basics and set a deadline to give your first talk of 5-10 minutes at one of the meetings.

Do you have a business idea? Start blogging about the area or the problem you want to help with. Interview people, experiment with possible solutions. If you’re selling your own services, aim to get your first piece of work within 30 days, even if it’s at a reduced fee for a friend or colleague.

Do you want to be a de-clutter consultant or a personal stylist or interior designer? Go and volunteer to do it for a friend first – either for free or for a reduced fee.
If you want to be a standup comic… don’t just go to see standup shows, do a course where you stand up and perform!

If you want to launch a national campaign or change the world, create a Facebook group for your cause and then create an event that people can take part in to build a buzz.

Scary stuff eh? Yes it can be, so make sure you have some support. Ask some supportive friends to help, or join up with others making ideas happen. Or join up with us...
From idea to reality in 30 days

Stop waiting; make your idea happen.

On the 1st October, 200 people will be joining our 30 Day Challenge to do something they love with our support and guidance. Join us!

Learn more about the 30 Day Challenge

Say Ommmmm

Over the years I have developed, experimented with and refined an array of strategies to support myself in my relationship with food and my body. This is mostly what keeps me sane. Some come naturally, like writing and talking about it with other like-minded women, while others can be a bit of a stretch. This is especially true of meditation. And yet one of the most effective ways I know to support myself is to regularly take 20 minutes to stretch my body, focus on my breath and do some visualisations. When I do this, I have less back pain and am a happier person all-round. And when I am pain free and feeling happy, I don't use food as a reward or as a pick-me-up or as an excuse to take a break. I am more in tune with myself, more in tune with my needs. And that's always a good thing.


So why is it such a challenge to do it? 


Why is it so hard to ring-fence 20 minutes, to believe not only that it's OK to use those 20 minutes to stretch and breath and visualise, but really very advantageous to do so. Why do I so often let my nasty little Gremlin completely take over and collude with all those stale arguments it puts forward to dissuade me from doing it:

• You should be working
• It's not even 'proper' meditation. You made it up. It doesn't work
• Your back isn't hurting that much
• You're so selfish, you've got masses to do
• After breakfast. After lunch. After dinner. Tomorrow
• If you're not going to do it every single day, don't bother

So instead of rolling out my pink futon and giving myself 20 minutes, I move on to the next thing. I am in perpetual motion treading the intricate and laborious steps of the busyness dance. Doing, doing, doing. Never stopping, never breathing, never noticing. Day after day my pink futon stays rolled up behind the sofa.


This morning, I unrolled the futon, pulled down the blinds and set a 20 minute timer on my phone, all while keeping the Gremlin at bay by humming loudly so I wouldn't hear it.


The next 20 minutes fly by. I do some basic stretches. The same ones the osteopath showed me years ago when my back was so bad I couldn't walk. I breath, I send white, lava-like breath into my muscles. I see them lengthen and soften and repair. I thank my body: my feet for getting me places, my legs for holding me up, my backbone for keeping it all together. I relax every body part in turn, letting it melt into the futon and then covering it with a warm blanket of dazzling gold dust. I focus on my breath, pushing it into my lungs, my belly. Occasionally my mind strays and goes off to do the shopping list or my Gremlin tries to say something. For this I have a particularly effective visualization: I imagine a big broom sweeping the thoughts out of my head so that there is nothing left inside. This works surprisingly well. For just a few minutes at the end I am suspended in breath, I feel weightless and at peace.


The phone beeps and suddenly it's all over. I open my eyes feeling alive and refreshed.


This post is a note to myself, a reminder that these 20 minutes are one of the best ways I know to support myself, to stay grounded in my relationship with food and in owning my body. The next time my gremlin starts to act up and try to convince me to skip my 20 minutes I will come back to this post - and read it mantra style - until it gets the message.


How often you give yourself 5, 10 or 20 minutes to stop and just be? To do nothing, to think nothing, to feel...everything. What's your way of 'meditating'? Does it make a difference to the way you eat and feel about your body? 

When dieting works

A good friend of mine in Italy swears by dieting. For years, she has been successfully controlling her weight in the same way: about twice a year - usually in January and then again in July she puts herself on a controlled eating and exercising regime that lasts a month or so and she gets the results she wants. She's perfectly fine with this method and it causes her no great distress. Observing her over the years, I have come to the conclusion that, for some women, dieting really does work.


We often talk about our different approaches to weight-loss - I think we are mutually fascinated by each other's take on it. Sara's is quite straightforward: at certain times in the year, mainly Christmas and in deepest, darkest winter, she tends to sit around on the sofa eating too much and as a result she puts on a some weight. Her clothes feel tight and she feels sluggish and uncomfortable in her body. Her tried and tested solution is to cut down on sugar, refined carbs and processed foods and alcohol for a certain period whilst working out at the gym at least 3 times a week. Within 4 or 5 weeks, she has shed the extra pounds, has gone down a dress size and is back to 'feeling like herself', as she puts it.


When I ask her how she feels when she's on her diet and how she motivates herself to stick to it she says: "Well it is a little boring, I do sometimes crave chocolate and I don't always fancy going to the gym but I remind myself that it's not forever and that I really will feel better when I lose the weight. I know that I feel uncomfortable in a bikini if I'm feeling 'fat' and I hate the muffin top I get when I put my jeans on after all that eating at Christmas. It's no big deal, really. I've been doing it for years. It works."


"But don't you go off rails once you've reached your target weight. Don't you have the urge to make up for the deprivation and stuff yourself with all the stuff you haven't had for ages?" I ask. "Uhhh...no. I don't really see it as depriving myself - more like I'm doing myself a favour," she replies "in fact, I tend to carry on making healthier choices for a while after I've come off the diet. I find I eat less crap and move more. It's like it gets me going - until Christmas comes round again and then I just think, 'oh what the heck' and dive in!"


Several things strike me when I speak to Sara about her approach to weight management. The first one is that she has a relatively simple relationship with food. She likes it, she sometimes has too much of it but ultimately - food is just food. Although she's not what would commonly be defined as an 'intuitive eater' - she does tend to label foods as good and bad, she does manage her weight with deprivation - somehow, she has that 'take it or leave' attitude that is common to intuitive eaters. She doesn't have that tortured, out of control relationship that is common to so many Beyond Chocolaters. The other thing that stands out for me is how kind she is to herself. Sara views her dieting as something positive that she is doing for herself. As she puts it, she sees it as 'doing herself a favour'. On the flip side of that, I've never heard Sara berate herself for overeating or about her body. She'll say things like: "I really stuffed myself at Christmas, I practically lived on panettone! And look where it's all ended up!" as she grabs a roll of fat around her middle, "It's time for a little self restraint ladies. Salad bar and gym - here I come!" There's humour and kindness there - something which I rarely hear coming from Beyond Chocolate newbies.


So where is all this leading? Well nowhere special except to say that there will always be people who will diet successfully. People like Sara who don't understand what all the fuss is about and who really do live successfully by the 'east less, move more' mantra.


And then there will always be people like us. Women for whom chocolate has never been just a 'naughty indulgence' but the friend and the enemy. Women who feel guilty whatever they eat and ashamed by the way they look, whatever their size. Women who feel despair when they are on a diet...and despair when they come off it. Women who go on diet after diet after diet and just end up getting fatter and fatter and fatter. Women who feel out of control, weak and hopeless whenever they think about food. For these women, Sara's approach to weight-loss will never work. It will only make things worse. 


For us, dieting will never be the solution. It's not a simple equation. It's about working on our relationship with food and our bodies. It's about changing what, but also why and how we eat. It's about finding ways of dealing with life in ways that don't always involve food. It's about self esteem, it's about love, it's about patience and kindness and acceptance. It's about awareness. It's about not comparing ourselves with the 'happy' dieters like Sara and wondering why we can't do it that way. It's about support and community and talking with others who understand. It's taking one day at a time, taking one small action that brings us closer to a life Beyond Chocolate. 

Beyond Chocolate Mistake number 8 – Thinking we can do it on our own

Gretel Hallet, is a trained Chocolate Fairy and is running the Getting Started half day workshop in Norwich. If you live in East Anglia and want to know more about Beyond Chocolate, get in touch with Gretel.

As I’ve said before on this blog, diet clubs have sprung up like low-fat, low-calorie mushrooms all round the town where I live. Their cheerful notices feature a slim woman crouching by a set of weighing scales and give details of the nearest club to the notice. One of the reasons I suspect that these diet clubs are so popular is because they offer dieters a chance to be in a room with other people in the same boat. And we like being with other people who speak the same language as us, understand the issues we are facing, sympathise with our failures and celebrate our successes – they understand. 

From what I gather from women who attend these groups, they go mostly for the support, not necessarily for the products or the weighing in etc. I have even met women who carry on going to the classes even if they’re not actively dieting, because they enjoy the support and company of women who speak their language – and, as I’m sure you all know, the language of dieting is very pervasive among women. 

Beyond Chocolate Principle Number 9 is ‘Support Yourself’. Right at the end of the list, along with ‘Be Your Own Guru’, these principles can be overlooked by ex-dieters keen to get to grips with formerly forbidden foods and developing their own self-awareness. But these principles are just as important as the earlier, more ‘sexy’ ones. 

If we attempt to work with the Beyond Chocolate principles without input from other like-minded women, we run the risk of becoming isolated, feeling hopeless and eventually giving up and re-enrolling in our former diet class with our former diet buddies (they’ll all still be there!). 

We are social animals, we humans; we need the company of others and particularly those who are walking the same way as us. Swimming against the tide is for salmon! Being a Beyond Chocolater can be a lonely thing; we are still comparatively rare – so when there is a chance of meeting up with others, we should seize it with both hands. 

Spending time with other Beyond Chocolaters is a wonderfully reviving experience – even spending half an hour a day on the Forum can re-vitalise us and, perhaps, nudge us gently back on track if we’ve been veering off into a cul-de-sac of diet-ridden despair. 

Even if we’ve been working with Beyond Chocolate for some time, it’s still vitally important to seek that validation and support from other women, particularly from those who are just setting out – they can have some startlingly valuable insights into things we may have forgotten about. 

Being with other Beyond Chocolaters is one of the best ways to ‘Support’ ourselves – so I would encourage you all to look at the list of courses available across the country and see if you can get to one of them – you certainly won’t regret it. If there isn't a course near you, take a look at our membership which gives you access to the forum and monthly phone-ins.

 

Above all, support yourself – it’s harder to do anything alone. 

How do you support yourself?