Jamie Smart | Archive

JST 225 – The 5 Paradoxical Clues To The Work You’re Here To Do

Posted on June 12, 2018 by Jamie Smart

Photo courtesy of Kevin Dooley and Flickr

“Anything on earth you want to do is play. Anything on earth you have to do is work. Play will never kill you, work will. I never worked a day in my life.”
– Dr Leila Denmark (the USA’s oldest doctor)

I often hear people saying things like, “I’d do what I love, if only I knew what it was” and “I’d do what I love, if only I knew how to do it.” Back at the beginning of the year, I did a Facebook Live broadcast on my business page called “The 5 Paradoxical Clues To The Work You’re Here To Do”. People really loved it, so I thought I’d share the 5 paradoxical clues here in the JST over the next 5 weeks. So here’s the first clue: Read More →

JST 224 – Your Calling

Posted on June 5, 2018 by Jamie Smart

“We must therefore be willing to get shaken up, to submit ourselves to the dark blossomings of chaos, in order to reap the blessings of growth. Rejection is a writer’s best friend. If you are not failing regularly, you are living so far below your potential that you’re failing anyway.”
― Gregg Levoy

I’ve been preparing for an online masterclass I’m doing this Thursday called “The 5 Paradoxical Clues To The Work You’re Here To Do” and I’ve created a free guide to give you an idea of the kind of things we’re going to be covering in it. Read More →

JST 223 – Confession: Sometimes I screw up and don’t want anyone to know

Posted on May 29, 2018 by Jamie Smart

“Everybody hurts. You are not alone.”
-Michael Stipe

I wrote this post on Facebook yesterday and it caught fire, so I thought I’d share it with you here:

[CONFESSION] Sometimes I screw up and don’t want anyone to know

People regularly tell me that it seems like everything I do turns out well.

I assure them that isn’t the case; that lots of the things I do don’t work out the way I want them to. Read More →

JST 222 – Cool things will happen

Posted on May 22, 2018 by Jamie Smart

“You do not belong to you. You belong to the universe.
The significance of you will forever remain obscure to you,
but you may assume that you are fulfilling your significance
if you apply yourself to converting all your experience to highest advantage of others.
You and all men are here for the sake of other men.”
– R. Buckminster Fuller

The power of surrendering to life
This week’s JST is the transcription of a rant I kicked off on during a chat with my buddies Garret Kramer and Michael Neill; I tore off with a bit of a rant and IMHO, this is the ‘secret sauce’ that’s behind truly outstanding results. Read More →

JST 221 – Resolving the Roots of Youth Violence

Posted on April 24, 2018 by Jamie Smart

“Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent.
It takes a touch of genius — and a lot of courage to move in the opposite direction.”
― Ernst F. Schumacher

The UK has recently seen an increase in youth violence, with claims being made that London’s murder rate now exceeds that of New York City. As usual, media pundits are quick to point to the “causes” of this increase, but it looks to me like that many of these so-called causes are in fact symptoms of a deeper cause. We saw a similar scenario in August 2011, following the riots that broke out in London that month. Here’s an excerpt from my book, CLARITY (©2013 Jamie Smart, published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd): Read More →

JST 219 – The unlimited abundance game

Posted on April 10, 2018 by Jamie Smart

Photo courtesy of Rawen Balmaña and Flickr

Back in the 1980s (during an era of high unemployment in the UK), standup comedian Kevin Day told a joke that went like this:

Kevin went into the Job Centre and the bloke said, “What job would you like?” Kevin told him, “I want to be an astronaut.” The bloke looked at him and said, “Don’t take the piss” to which Kevin replied, “You started it!”

I feel like I might be opening myself to a similar response when I say, “You can earn as much as you like”, but it’s worth taking a few minutes to see what I mean. Read More →

JST 219 – The ultimate objection-destroyer

Posted on March 27, 2018 by Jamie Smart

Whether you’re parenting your teenager or applying for a job; enrolling a client or pitching for a new project… if you’re inviting people to make changes, decisions or investments, you’re going to run up against objections and concerns. Last week, I ran a poll asking what the number one objections and concerns people got when enrolling clients. The top 2 got more votes than all the other options combined! Here they are:

1) It’s too expensive / I can’t afford it.
2) Let me think about it and get back to you.

So how do you ‘handle’ these concerns? I’ve worked with a lot of people helping them answer this question, ranging from coaches, therapists and consultants to salesforces in large organisations. My answer points them in an unexpected direction. I’ll unpack it in a moment and reveal the ultimate objection-destroyer, but first I want to tell you a story. Here’s an excerpt from my Sunday Times bestselling book RESULTS: Think Less, Achieve More..(©2016 Jamie Smart). Read More →

TTE 140 – Horror, romance and the house of love

Posted on March 22, 2018 by Jamie Smart

1. A quote I’m resonating with
This one’s from author Robin Hanson during his recent interview with Sam Harris:

“We have this part of our brain that’s all the time thinking about what we’re doing and trying to explain why we’re following good motives. And that’s in a sense the conscious part of your mind. You are the conscious part of your mind and you aren’t necessarily the one in charge of your mind. There’s this idea that instead of being the president or the king, you’re the press secretary. You don’t actually know why you do things but you’re supposed to make up a good excuse. And you do that. You’re constantly looking at what you’re doing and asking yourself, ‘What would be a good explanation for this thing I’m doing.’ And you’re good at that, you’re good at coming up with excuses for what you’re doing. But you don’t actually know what you’re actually doing, but you don’t realise that you don’t know.” Read More →

JST 218 – How much should you charge for your services?

Posted on March 20, 2018 by Jamie Smart

“Price is what you pay. Value is what you get.”
– Warren Buffett

I’m currently doing a series of Facebook Lives about ‘money beliefs’ in the Profitable Coaches Group. Last night’s video will be relevant to you if you charge for your services (or if you wish to charge for them). In this excerpt, I answer a question from Doreen Ritchie who said, “There seems to be a median price charged round here for coaching. It would be very difficult for me to charge a lot more than that…” If you want to watch the full video this excerpt came from, you can see it in the group here. Read More →

JST 217 – Money and power

Posted on March 13, 2018 by Jamie Smart

“It is not the man who has too little, but the man who craves more, that is poor.”
– Seneca

I’m currently doing a series of Facebook Lives about ‘money beliefs’ in the Profitable Coaches Group, and a particular section of one of them seems to really be impacting people. If you want to watch the 90-second video of this, you can find it HERE.I decided to transcribe it here as a blog post because it reads almost like one of those modern poems 😉

Cash is totally neutral; it has no power.
It has no power to give you a feeling.
It has no power to give you a good feeling.
It has no power to give you a bad feeling.
It has no power to give you a feeling of security
It has no power to give you a feeling of discomfort Read More →