March Forth! Or is it March Fourth?

Haha!  I love that joke!  Sorry, had to start the day with a corny joke.  I know.  Terrible, right?  But it made you smile, didn’t it?  Yeah.  Admit it.  It made you smile.  Smiling is important.  It actually releases neurotransmitters in your brain that splash dopamine on your ventral tegmentum.  That’s a fancy way of saying that smiling makes you feel good because it releases chemicals in your brain.  Amazing!

Well, I had my first Business Self-Reliance group yesterday afternoon.  It was great!  There are a lot of commitments and challenges to work on and fulfill every week, and these are to develop our business skills and teach us lessons about how the world – especially the business world – works through our own experience with it.  There’s a lot to think about and ponder.  We have a Business Notebook that we are ideally supposed to write in every day.  We also have an Action Partner every week that we keep in contact with so we can encourage each other, bounce ideas off of each other, and build relationships and networking skills with other entrepreneurs.  These could eventually become non-competitive business associates as well as being sounding boards for future endeavors.

Now, does that sound like a lot?  It seems like it.  And some of it is kind of scary because I don’t know what I’m doing yet.  That’s what this course and this group is for, though.  It’s here to teach me how to do these things.  I have to have the courage and the commitment to follow through.

Commitment is the big word here.  March Forth!  That’s a command, right?  Well, self-reliance is a commandment, too, in the Church.  Many don’t realize that, but it’s true.  We all need to be self-reliant for our own sakes as well as for the sake of others.  Does that mean your 9-5 job doesn’t count?  No!  There are many areas to be self-reliant in and business is just one of them.  Personal finance is another area to be self-reliant in.  Just keeping good records and being responsible is being self-reliant.  Getting the education that you need for a job is self-reliance, as is getting a better job – one that takes care of your individual and family necessities.  You have to commit to doing these things, though.  Commitment can be hard because it, in and of itself, is a lot of work.  We don’t always feel like doing that work, because it can get monotonous, tedious, and complex.  We all need to be as self-reliant in the rest of the areas of our lives as we are in climbing, though.  It will free our minds to climb better, stronger, and with more freedom, further enhancing our passions in life.  Just commit!