From Amanda's very early writing (1990s to early 2000s), shared as it was originally written.
Michael Hill
I am sitting in the airport of papeete in Tahiti. I've just left a conference in Morea where I had an opportunity to listen to Michael Hill the jeweller. He is a very well known figure in New Zealand and in Brisbane and he has been incredible successful at changing hte face of jewellry retailing.
He preseted a session at the conference and was describing his philosophy to business. Both he and his wife are charming, very talented and amazingly unassuming for
unOne of the concepts I found interesting was to imagine we had just found a magic genie lamp adn that we rubbed it and of course out popped the genie , ready to grant us three wishes.ge!What would you wish for if that happened to you? Take a little time to think of the three things you would really like to have happen in your life. Michael's principle is then to go out and make them happen. I know, I know, you don't have the money or the time or the knowledge or the anything else. Excuses are incredibly easy to find and blame is much simpler than accepting responsibility for yourself!
Michael has in fifteen years built his dream of changing the way jewellers do business in New Zealand and beig one of the first retailers to expand into Australia. And he started with nothing. he had to go and find backing - but he was passionate about his goal and dream and he and his wife just kept going until they did.
Those three wishes you made are like your dreams and with varying degrees of effort you can make them a reality. It isn't always easy adn it may take months or years of planning and study - but Michael talks in terms of 13 year plans! Where do you want ot be and what do you want ot be doing and how do you want ot be living in 13 years?
I know it's a long time but without that long term focus and thinking we may not ever realize our full potential. anyway that all sounds very serious and like hard work but it' not!
If we spend some time thinking about our livesand how we would like to live and what we would like to be remembered for (if anything) thne we can develop a concept of what we might be passionate about in life or what our purpose might be. And once we are on track , that is , working towards our purpose or passion, things seem to fall into place; success seems easier; wins come our way; life loses it's 'struggle factor'. All with a little forward thinking and planning.
Go back to your three wishes and write them down - each one on a separate piece of paper. What would have to happen for you to reach that dream? Then 'chunk them down' further into smaller steps. Until you reach step one, and work out when you can start it and how. If we look at the final dream, tha major outcome, it's often too overwhelming to even think of it being reality; but breaking it into manageable sized pieces and if we focus on those intiial steps, beofer we know it we are halfway to our dream or goal.
It works for Michael and his wife and it's a remarkably similar story to other very successful people - successful in both personal and professional lives. The majority of us sit back and look at people like them and think it's all very well for them; they were lucky! OR 'they had help'. Not true! Most of these successful, entrepreeur types most of us aspire to be (ie rich), had really hard beginnings and had to work extremely hard to make their dreams happen. But that's what they did - they took responsibility for themselves, made plans, tackled the small chunks first and did it.
Use the same strategy as people who are already successful - it short circuits your learning curve! Who knows? You may reach your dream much more quickly than you imagined and then you can rub that genie lamp again and make another wish or two or three!
And then make them happen.
