It’s now full of toys and chairs and a kettle and mugs and a very smart set of shelves, which I hand built at the weekend. (DIY is not something I get any pleasure from, so seaside shelf building is something of a first, haha).

Sitting on the beach is lovely. Sitting on the beach with a mug of tea is lovelier still. When you don’t have to carry all your gear down from the car park and can just amble down to your beach hut, then life really is super-lovely.

After my DIY heroics (did I mention them?) I enjoyed a mug of tea whilst sitting in front of the rolling, crashing waves and enjoyed a small slice of thinking time under the Sunday-blue sky.
Beach huts are full of potential. For fun, for taking a time-out, for thinking and for just ‘being’.

The world encourages us to run fast and we cram it with emails and tweets and calls and more work. We all need to stop and listen to the waves sometimes and give our brains a chance to free-wheel.

We have a beach hut now to encourage this, a friend has a thoughtful spot where they pause and take stock of the world and a colleague goes fishing to get away from the madness.

So, where is your ‘beach hut’? Where will you go this week to get away from your emails, drink tea and enjoy some quiet thinking time?

Think about it…

We talked about CV writing, interview practice, 25 different places to look for work, the importance of networking and the need to smile and sell yourself.

It’s all in the book Job Hunting 3.0 if you’re interested, which is a great compliment to a job hunting workshop.

This type of course can be hard to sell because many people don’t value job hunting skills as worth investing in. People who would like a salary of £20,000 are often unprepared to invest £200 to get it, which seems ludicrous to me.

However, this course wasn’t sold on the brilliant content or potential life benefits. It was sold because I ‘Richard Maun’, international speaker, multi-book author and TV star was leading it.

And if you’re smirking at this description just remember that it’s all true. The people on the course came to see me and were very pleased that I’d made time for them. They had been on to YouTube and see the interview with Fanny Kiefer and they’d checked out the book reviews on Amazon.

I was someone worth paying money to listen to.

And I am.

Whatever your business does – you are in it. You lead it. You give it soul. You deliver high quality products or services. You are part of what differentiates it from the competition. You are brilliant, lovely, talented, clear thinking, fun to be with, diligent and reliable! You matter!

The next time you are selling your services remember to include yourself in the package.

I delivered a brilliant workshop over the weekend and was asked to come back next month.

I’m talented and worth the money – and so are you!

So, go ahead and sell yourself this week!

Amongst all this, I was reminded that the people you have in your gang make a big difference to you. Therefore, taking care of ourselves means being surrounded by good people. For example…

A) If you network with chums do you offer contacts and advice and receive some back? Or are they stuck on ‘receive’ and always fail to ‘send.’

B) If you want to secure more customers do you talk to people who hate selling, thereby justifying your own poor performance? Or do you talk to successful people, learn from them and work hard to emulate them?

C) And finally (because I like to keep business in perspective to home and hearth) do you wish for happiness and/or love and spend time with people who soak up yours, like greedy sponges? Or do you enjoy the company of people who offer it willingly and make life a warm and pleasant place to be?

I mention this because if we want to get on, instead of staying stuck, we need to think about all aspects of life sometimes and make sure we have the right people in our gang.

Here’s a story from my own archive: At secondary school I was bottom of the class and took comfort that my friends were as lazy as I was. Then one day I realised I was going nowhere and that time was slipping away. I changed friendship groups because my old friends just laughed when I suggested we might change our ways.

Suddenly I was catapulted to the top of the class, as I worked hard to keep up with my new friends and I enjoyed the change round and liked being successful. When I won the class prize (to the astonishment of my parents) my old friends didn’t bother to say ‘well done’ …they just didn’t care any more as I wasn’t ‘one of them.’

Life and business is the same really, and the people we have in our lives shape things for us and can keep us diminished, or can help us to grow.

Wherever you are in your modern career, take a moment to think about your gang. Who takes? Who gives? Who is holding you back? Who is smiling and encouraging you forwards?

I’ve got some brilliant people in my gang and they all helped me to go round the world recently, which was amazing.

So, pause this week and take a hard look at your gang. Who needs a ‘thank you’ hug? Who have you been putting up with for too long? What changes are you avoiding?

As ever – the choice, and your modern career, is yours.

I know I’m not alone here and it’s easy for us to work hard, then work a bit harder and then worker harder still and keep squeezing the lemon to get out every last drop of juice.

Recently a good friend of mine asked me to promise that I would take care of myself and I instantly said ‘Yes of course I would’ in that knee jerk way have sometimes, when we react without really thinking it through.

However, their words have struck a chord and have made me more aware of my own health and fatigue levels …hence the weekend off.

I think it’s okay to work hard and to push the boundaries a bit, if it’s helping us to make progress, achieve ambitions or create space for growth and friendship.

However, we can lose sight of our own needs and forget to take good care of ourselves.

Therefore, when you’re galloping through your own helter-skelter life this week ask yourself:

‘How am I going to take care of myself?’

Working hard is laudable, but burning out isn’t fun. So, take good care and remember that time off is still an essential part of a successful working life.

Be kind to the lemon!

Heading home in an hour, to complete the final leg of my round the world trip. It has been amazing and I can’t wait to do it all again.

Yesterday I was on the Fanny Kiefer show on Canadian TV to promote ‘How To Keep Your Job’ and if you search YouTube for the 11th April episode you’ll see me for 15mins having fun.

The actress who was guesting before had her PR and her mum there. The latter produced a pot of green goo to drink, some ‘healthy’ tablets and an orange, which she hand fed to Miss Precious.

My PR, Kim, was doing child care at home, so I had to pour my own water! Can you believe it! Oh the shame…. *hangs head*

TV was fun though and do give it a try if the opportunity presents itself. The make up was ace…perked up my tired skin a treat…give it a go guys! Hahaha.

I practiced for my slot, gargled with warm water to ease my throat and thought about my stories, so in the moment it all came good and I looked really professional.

I did well. Hooray for me, another win! So… what have you done well this week? Have a think and award yourself a smile, a latte, or a choccy biscuit.

And I need to say thanks to the people who have made this trip work so well.

UK crew – Beck, Lucy, Theodore, Oscar and Harvey and also Julie for holding the fort at Future Radio

Australia crew – Kevin, Monique, Erin, Rachel, Kerry and Jacob

Canada crew – Kim, Julie, Sam, Meghan and Lauren

All these people have done something – whether sorting tickets, booking hotels, collecting me from the airport, going fishing, flying in tiny planes, or just making me feel welcome.

I like being Round-the-World-Rich and I will do more of it. For now I would like all the people above to take a bow and be celebrated, because they’ve done well over the last three weeks.

Thank you teams for making this production possible.

See you again soon!

Lots of time zone changes …hence the two early flights!

At the start of my trip I was worried about all this. It felt like a complicated travel plan with lots of things to go wrong and yet once I arrived in Canada it all seemed relatively simple.

Do ‘A’ first then pause and do ‘B’ and so on. When you break it down into smaller steps what had felt daunting was much easier to accomplish than I had first thought.

It’s easy to see the ‘big picture’ and get scared at making a change. The road ahead seems long and arduous with traps and pitfalls waiting to catch out the unwary. People often fail to start something as a way to stay safe. Even though they want to make a change they become overwhelmed at the size of the task ahead.

Flying around the world solo might seem a difficult task to do and yet having (almost) completed it the tricky bit that I was worried about wasn’t really so hard after all.

So, if you’re a bit stuck and want to make a change, don’t worry about the entire road ahead. Instead focus on a reasonable chunk that takes you somewhere good, break it down into easy bites and have a go at the first one.
Before you know it you’ll be in Canada having fun at an Easter party!

It’s easier than you think!

A few people think I’m on holiday, perhaps because, to them, any activity outside the UK must be a holiday. Yes, I’ve seen some sights and yes I had a go at beach fishing today in the rolling surf, under a magical blue sky. All good! But a holiday? Er… no. I’ve been working until 3am to prepare workshops and have worked two thirds of today (Sunday).

And amongst all this my Canadian PR colleague has managed to get me booked on a top TV show on Tuesday morning next week. So, we’re now preparing for this as well.

If you’re reading this and thinking ‘lucky old Rich’ then do pause and remember that I’m getting adept at making my own luck. We can all make our lives work for us and allow ourselves to be ambitious, celebrate our strengths and push the boundaries.

To make the most of the pick and mix world of Modern Careers we have to look to ourselves to make things happen and if we wait too long then life flows around us and we could get left behind.

So, what are you waiting for?

Make something happen this week!

I have to deliver a keynote and six workshops and then fly to Vancouver! I can’t wait!

I was musing on my way through the check-in process about the question: ‘who am I’ …I mean… am I writer, a coach, a keynote speaker, an international sherry god? All of these most likely! And that’s fine with me.

We are what we say we are because the words we say shape our self talk and vice versa. If we say ‘we’re just a…[insert a role here]…’ then that’s where we put ourselves and that’s where we stay.

Given how tough life can be it makes good sense to ‘Be’ really positive. We can always find ways of enjoying ‘being ourselves’ and of describing ourselves in a good light.

This will make us feel happier, and will lift our horizons.

Currently my horizons are literally global and I say ‘Yay’ to that. The world is a big place and there’s room for all of us to make our mark, have fun and meet new and interesting people.

So as I look around at all the travellers in Terminal 3 I wonder what they might say about themselves.

Change your self talk this week. Be positive. Go global!

We’re all as good as we say we are!

When you read this I will be somewhere en route to Australia and probably asleep. And back in 2009 none of this seemed possible …but if you talk yourself up, life perks up!

So, have fun and be positive.

Oh and do keep an eye out for the #RtWRich hashtag on Twitter. I could be popping up in a time zone near you! Do bring cake!

And I thought I’d experiment with simplifying this blog and avoiding adding photographs for a while, to speed things up.

Pictures are great because they help to ‘sell’ a story and they also add an hour to the time it takes to post the blog each week. I don’t have a spare an hour at the moment so have decided that for the time being a blog without a picture is better than no blog with a picture.

And as I’m talking about ‘Change’ to my Australian audience it seems a appropriate to make a change as part of my Change talk!

It’s good practice to ask ourselves why we do things and if they add value or just soak up time. If we find ways to simplify what we do we make life easier for ourselves and nobody really wants unnecessary complexity …do they?

So, what can you simplify this week?

What do you do that looks ‘pretty,’ but doesn’t add any value and just steals an hour of your time?

Pop your cork this week!

At last I finished my fifth book! I was about to hit the deadline a week ago and found that Microsoft Vista had frozen and lost the last 18 hours of edits. This was not a happy experience, as you might imagine – my elation at almost beating the deadline was replaced with quiet despair that I would now have to find the time and the focus to re-edit the final 60 pages.

The irony was that my book is called Bouncing Back …and at the end of the writing process I now needed to bounce back myself!

I’d like to say it was plain sailing to keep going, but it wasn’t. I’ve written 52,000 words in 6 weeks and was exhausted at the pace and the late nights. My writing time had ended so I needed to juggle editing with clients and a busy diary.

The central theme of the book is simply – keep going.

There’s often no magic to being successful, just the diligent plodding that slowly takes us forwards. To complete my editing I had to keep going.

And I did.

So now I’m happy that the book has been completed and has been sent to the publisher for proofing. I’ll get to edit it again in a few weeks, but at least I’ll be able to catch up on my sleep before then.

Another theme in the book is to celebrate ourselves when we have bounced back. Effort without reward becomes grinding and we all need to give ourselves a pat on the back, dance around the house, or take time out to acknowledge a job well done.

We need to celebrate ourselves!

I’m going to buy a Kindle …and then I’m going to buy my own books first! (And wouldn’t you?) Amazing to think that this technology didn’t exist when the first one was written.

So, well done me!

And well done you too! I’m sure you worked hard over the last six weeks as well. How are you going to celebrate yourself?