How Does the Online Idea Party Work?
You have a dream or a wish, and an obstacle to getting there. (If you don’t think you know your wish, work through my kick-starter and read this post. To learn why you must put logic aside to find your dream, read the following.)
The online Idea Party is here to help you – and the other fellow party goers – with your wishes and obstacles.
Voices from Success Teams and Idea Parties:
Having a team to report to and hearing what everybody did each week is very exciting. It’s kept me moving all year. In the past I made some good starts on my own, but found, every time, when the energy ran out, I ran out. Now it doesn’t run out.
Jade G.
Children’s Playroom Therapist, New York Hospital
I would do a painting a year, a sketch a year. If it was only me I know I would never do it. Having to tell you makes all the difference. It’s crazy why I didn’t do this years ago, it’s so easy all of a sudden.
Caroline R. Personnel Executive, Macy’s Dept Store
Post Your Wish and Your Obstacle Here!
And help your team mates out when you can. Use the Reply link to help, the form below the comments to add your own Wish and Obstacle.
(Your first comment below has to be approved, so it may not display instantly depending on the time of the day. Once your email address is approved you can post instantly. If you want your own profile photo to show up beside your comments, instead of the cute little design, upload your photo on Gravatar.com and give them an hour or so to make it happen.)
Hello I am a singer/ songwriter and Inspirational Performer
My icon/ role model is Cher!
Since my 20s I have been compared to her as I look like her and my mannerisms as well as singing voice are very similar…even my style.lol
It is my DREAM to meet and get to know Cher as a person. I want to thank her for opening doors and for being an Amazing Role Model for the Independent Woman!
My obstacle: I dont know her and I dont know anyone who can introduce us.
I want to learn English.
Obstacle: I don’t know where to start, people don’t speak English in my country.
This is my most cherished dream, give me some advice.
I have a friend who teaches English online to people all over the world, and there’s always the Duolingo app.
There are lots of online courses – also free ones – . Just search with Google ” learning englisch (for free)”.
Examples: Berlitz, duolingo, Babel
Good luck
I am an English language coach. I would be happy to help you to learn and improve your English language skills. I can work with Skype or Zoom. If you wish we can have a chat on either platform.
Thank you very much, I have instagram and facetime
I am not on Instagram. I have never used facetime but I am sure I could learn how to use it. There is always a first time for everything.
If you would like to communicate further with me my email is mahaltrecht@videotron.ca. We can further discuss what you are looking for in an English lesson.
It’s not a good idea to sign up for Facebook if you haven’t already made that privacy mistake. Facebook has a bad reputation for privacy violations and owns both Instagram and Facetime.
If Elizabeth has trouble with using Skype or Zoom, maybe Jit.si is the best service and most easy to learn? It works in a browser and only needs a link and a password – very easy to use. (On Jit.si, there’s no limit on how long sessions are, which is nice.)
I think mashable.com has a feature on how to use jit.si which is easy to follow.
Patty will help you remove your email – it’s food for spammers here on the Internet!
Hi Angel,
Thanks for your pointers. I will think about it.
Patty is there any way to remove my email from my response? Angel is suggesting that it be done and that you know how to do it. Thanks.
I want to become a successful, six-figure life coach
Obstacle: I have no idea how to do it or what steps to take.
I really think a GOOD business coach would be helpful, but I do not have the funds for that luxury.
Any suggestions?
Hi, Teriyana. Maybe start with tiny steps:
-Read up on what knowledge, training, experience, and certification is necessary.
–Look for ways to get some of that: a course in psychology; learning how to communicate effectively, supportively, and compassionately one on one; how to write a simple, beginning business plan; etc.
–If you want to make six figures, are you thinking of being a splashy motivational speaker like Tony Robbins? (I know Barbara Sher was, too, but she had a different style and presence, and I don’t know if she made six figures–not my business, anyway.)
AFAIK, most life coaches and motivational speakers don’t make that much. And it takes time and work and luck to get to that level.
Maybe work on getting solid skills, solid experience, and a solid business–and then you’ll have something to build on.
Best of luck!
Successful life coaches need clients. Successful speakers need fans. And in both cases, you need something that makes you stand out, so that influencers will mention you. It also helps to be so clear about who you aim to help that people who hear about you share your name with any friends who fit the bill–not because they have tried your services but because they feel they are helping that friend of theirs.
It is every bit as important to make it clear what you reject or exclude, too. No positive thinking, like Barbara? No men? No one outside the military? No one under 40? These are hard to do, because it feels like you are turning away business, but they actually attract clients who fit your insiders group.
Social media is a free place to begin making people familiar with who you are and what you help with. If you will work in person, your local news media is another place: offer them a column or pitch stories related to events or holidays coming up in a week or two.
Check your state’s website for free help with starting a business. Contact SCORE in your area for free, volunteer help from successful, retired business owners and executives. They are listed on sba.gov, which also offers free business help.
Announce lots of workshops online or with posters. Expect that many of them will get no takers, but announce the next one anyway.
And while you’re getting started, because it usually takes time and a few do-overs, make sure you have some low-stress, predictable or flexible hours work that pays enough to keep you fed and housed. This way, you can use your coaching and speaking profits to pay for whatever you need (training, logo design, coaching, a better headset, a website, etc.) to keep the business growing to the point where it can support you.
And do consider writing and self-publishing a book, so you can be introduced as “author of” when you speak at others’ events and casually drop the information that you have coaching clients, which is the most effective way to invite the audience to seek you out as their coach.
And search for ** life coach MOOC ** to find free courses to help you hone your coaching skills.
When travel starts to get underway again I would love to give tours around my city. I live in Montreal so there is lots to see. I don’t want to give just ordinary tours since there are so many other tour guides. I would love to do something unique that would pique peoples’ interests and make them say, hey that sounds like a neat tour. I love showing people around and pointing out things of interest to them. I would ask them to pay whatever they want and just do it for fun. Any ideas out there?
Another thing I love to do is to research destinations and plan trips. I would love to plan others’ trips and make some money from that. I would target those who love to travel but hate trip planning. Any ideas how to target people like that? I have a gig on Fiverr but not much in the way of bites.
Hope you guys can help me come up with great ideas for both. Thank you.
Hey, I had a thought about the first idea you have. In Glasgow UK a library runs tours. They organise their tours by area in Glasgow, and give tours of women’s history in each. Here’s their link: https://womenslibrary.org.uk/whats-on/women-make-history/women%E2%80%99s-heritage-walks/ It is nice as you can research more about the women described in the tour in the library afterwards if you’d like and the tour guides have lots of in depth knowledge. It is so interesting to learn about women’s history as it’s often and under seen / neglected area of knowledge too. I wonder if there would be a way that you could link up with a heritage/museum/arts/history site in Montreal and fashion tours in connection with them? Wishing you all the best with your adventures. Catherine
Wish-I want to find a matchmaker that will teach me what they do so I can find my own husband.
Obstacle-Don’t know how or who to ask for this?
Hi, I want to build a prompt-machine, or find a way of being prompted to overcome challenges. I am a very wandering-off kind of a person. I don’t finish conversations. I don’t finish applications. I don’t finish learning-points. I don’t do the parts of life I don’t want to, unless I have an iron to my neck (strange expression!) but a threat, a deadline, someone getting angry at me to DO something. All the important parts of life, like my intimate relationships, like any form of work, like self-care are left malnourished. I oscillate between dreamworld, where I am content, and a state of angry-anxiety, aroused by someone ‘disturbing me’ out of my fantasty at work, at home, anywhere. There is a sense of not really contributing to the world in a substantial way, because there is no real connection or conversation or information flowing between by my joys, dreams, interests, and daily life and its ‘boring’ tasks. As you can probably imagine, this can make me a grumpy person. In part, I think it’s a kind of shyness, a reluctance to do anything that could result in humiliation or difficulty. Maybe its the feeling I’m not much good at anything but dreaming! When faced with a difficulty, I tend to tense up and get panicked. I need a machine or something! for prompting me to get engaged with the parts of life I feel confronted by, and, importantly, to see them through. For connecting me with daily life in a grounded and practical way, rather than going off into my peachy place, dreamland, and staying there for as long as possible. I can’t only rely on my partner, as I have been doing, to prompt me: it’s too much for him, having to haul me through life’s difficulties, same goes for my mum. I depend too much on them. Perhaps it sounds crazy, but I wonder if getting a dog would help with this. Having a companion which I have to care for may get me out of my head, and on walks with the dog I could steel myself for the next ‘trial’ – the next challenge. These are maybe small things, like filling out a form, but I find them inordinately difficult to pay attention to, as I’m not interested (though I do understand that things can become interesting with practice this doesn’t excite me enough to undertake the task I’m avoiding). Then again, maybe the idea of a dog is delusional. It feels like it wouldn’t be the right thing. A prompting machine. What could that be. Something to support me in life, to engage and get involved with other people, with projects, with my dreams, like moving house, which in the state that I am in are beyond me.
So, I guess my wish is to take responsibility for my life and find a tool that helps me organise what I need to do, and see it through. My obstacle is not knowing where to begin with this. Is it a filofax? Is it a tool that hasn’t been designed yet? Is it an artifical intelligence? Is it a matter of just picking up the phone to someone as soon as I don’t know where I’m going?
p.s. apologies, I entered another wish / obstacle below, but this one seems to get to the crux of where I’m at. Thank you to anyone replying to either!
You might want to contact Rachel Cornell at Pronagger.com for ideas.
Have you tried Fiverr? There are a lot of tech people there.
Tech-challenged person needs help to either (1) retrieve my website http://www.anewwayofthinking.com which disappeared from the internet around 18 months ago OR refer me to a person/resource who can inexpensively put me back online!
Use the Wayback Machine. Their last valid capture of your site seems to be
https://web.archive.org/web/20160420040840/http://www.anewwayofthinking.com/2015
I want to make a website with a built in map, so people can search for the information they need by location. The information provided when they find something near their location would be a bullet list of items. I have a domain name. But I don’t know what to do next. Can anyone point me to map software that can be embedded in a website? Or a professional I could pay to do that? I’m just not sure what the next step is. Thanks!
To balance my emotions and get a phd!
These are my desires. The obstacles are:
I am hopeless at committing and following through with a big task – I am out of my comfort zone in the face of a big task – I am distractable too
I suffer from terrible mood swings and can get overwhelmed by my emotions. In particular this inhibits my ability to have difficult conversations.
I think these two desires go hand in hand. I don’t see how I will get out of my rut without learning to stay calm under pressure, and to set my ship on a course to someone distant and sail it til I get there.
Many thanks for reading this,
Catherine
I think you just need a buddy to keep you accountable. You can get a PHD, despite your emotions!
That sounds spot on. Thank you Karla, thank you so much for replying!
You might want to check out Rachel Cornell at pronagger.com. She has gotten a lot of people through their PhDs.
This is good to know, thank you Patty.
Catherine–
This is totally FWIW, ok? Just what came to mind as I read your post. I’m not a doctor.
Maybe talk to a doctor, therapist, etc., about a) whether you might have a mood disorder, and would benefit from anti-depressants, etc.; and b) whether you might have ADD/ADHD. Lots of info online; and I think there may be casual tests for ADD/ADHD, and support groups.
FWIW, YMMV. Best of luck! 🙂
Catherine–
Just adding that *if* you do have ADD/ADHD and/or a mood disorder, they’re likely getting in your way. Getting advice and help with them might free you to get what you want.
Hello Catherine, it sounds like there is some inner work that is calling..when your emotions are out of whack you might consider started by getting an evaluation. Sometimes meds help when it is a chemical imbalance.
In the meantime…Journal Your Emotions
Getting them out of your head can onto paper is the 1st step in managing emotions.
As a Grief Recovery Coach, I have found that people are stuck because of unresolved issues. A compassionate ear with guidance tools is the support that becomes the wind beneath your new wings.
Namaste