Importance of Cyber Essentials and Steps for Certification

Do you think your organization is in need of a protection from cybercriminals? To preserve your official documents and customer details from hackers and criminals, Cyber Essential Certification is important. They are government implemented a scheme that helps you to protect your ventures stored details against online cyber-attacks.

GDPR or General Data Protection Regulation guarantee the privacy of your personal data, but they don’t provide any specific measures to do so. This regulation tells that you are responsible for your own personal data and it’s your duty to protect them. This part of security can be ensured by Cyber Essentials security schemes when it comes to system and stored data.

Why Cyber Essentials?

Cyber-attacks are the most common criminal activity taking place in recent times. Increase in these crime rates has affected the revenue and reputation of those organizations being attacked. Cyber Essentials were introduced to reduce these crimes and to ensure that all online businesses can be run safely.

These security systems protect those basic Information Technologies and software of the company, which are more easily hacked and used against them. The government collaborated with Information Security Forum (ISF) and the Information Assurance for Small and Medium Enterprises (IASME) consortium and developed some technical methods to create a protection for these basic vulnerabilities of your organization.

Once the customers understand that your organization has successfully certified to this security scheme, they get a confidence to approach you more often. This certification ensures them that you have taken the first step towards securing their privacy as well.

Getting certified with valid certification bodies can keep away hackers who look for unprotected and exposed organization system and software. This certification badge also creates an advantage of attracting more customers who consider your venture a successful, secure and trustworthy.

Certification of security scheme is mandatory when working with government contracts or certain technical products and services. Working with these central government contracts will require handling more sensitive and personal information, thus cyber essential certification is more important so that they can be saved from those cyber threats.

Types of securities

There are different ways to ensure that your system is secured against these threats. Not all the organizations will have time and experts to create a full-on security system for protecting themselves. The main types of securities are:

The easiest way is to gain your own knowledge of cyber securities and secure your companies ITs and software yourself.
Cyber essential certification can be adopted if you want to take security to a more reliable level.
For more advanced cyber security you can opt for cyber essentials plus certification.
Cyber Essentials and Cyber Essentials Plus

Cyber Essentials
This scheme gives the organization basic security against common cyber attacks. Securing your system from these easy vulnerabilities are important because, if exposed, they can make you an easy target for those cyber attackers.

Getting this certification is simple and less costly. The important advantage of this type is that you can decide how much the certification company, you chose, should interfere once the security is certified. You can ask for as much help as you need and avoid unwanted interference.

Cyber Essentials Plus
It is a type of security system with the same simplicity in technical methods and the place where to put them, as the Cyber Essential scheme. The difference is that the verification of security is done by the certification company, you chose, independently.

5 main technical controls provided by the cyber essentials

When we say that these schemes provide security against cyber threats technically, it means that they provide with the main technical controls as given below;

Boundary firewalls and internet gateways for your system
Secure your system configuration
Control the access to your system or software
Protection from malware
Patch management
Certification methods

After deciding, mentally, the type of security you want to implement to your system, you can start the step by step process towards certification of the cybersecurity.

There are three steps towards certification:

Selecting Certification Body through one of the main five Accreditation Bodies.
Making sure that your IT is secure and meets the standards set by the Cyber Essentials
Complete the questionnaire provided by the selected Certification Body.
We can know about these processes in more details:

Selecting Certification Body through the Accreditation Bodies
There are mainly five Accreditation Bodies currently: APMG, CREST, IASME consortium, IRM Security and QG management standards. Research about these bodies and select the best suit for your organization and your security needs. Once selected the Accreditation Body, click on their website link and go through their Certification Bodies list. These are the bodies that will verify your securities and provide you with cyber essentials certificate.
The processes Accreditation Bodies perform are:

These bodies provide the questionnaire for the certification process.
Conducts processes for auditing the Certification Bodies in them.
Checks whether these Certification Bodies meet all the technical competence demanded by NCSC
These Accreditation Bodies are regularly audited by NCSC
Making sure that your IT is secure and meets the standards set by the Cyber Essentials.
For the certification process, the Cyber Essentials will need some requirements for your information technology and you will be advised to provide various forms of evidence before the certification process.

All you need to take care of is that your systems and software can meet these requirements and can submit those evidence, the Certification Body you chose demands, before moving on to the next step of certification.

Complete the questionnaire provided by the selected Certification Body
After providing with all the requirements and evidence demanded by the Certification Body, they will start the installation, configuration and maintenance of your information technology. Now the last step is to answer the questionnaire the Certification Body supply you with and submit them.

Success Secret Formula For Work Online From Home

You can achieve success in working online at home; there’s more you need to do than have a pc and a secure online connection. Bear in mind this startup is different from the typical office environment. You want to make specific alterations on your driving style, program, and sometimes even mindset to guarantee productivity. You will find distinct technical online guides that could enable you to work well. Listed below are just six of these.

1. Have a certain workplace. The workplace is sometimes a spare space anywhere in your home or area in the bedroom. One thing you need to bear in mind is that your office or home office should permit you to work with minimal if any distractions. It needs to be well-lit and so – trained and broad enough to accommodate your additional gadgets. As soon as you’ve identified your office, orient your loved ones about it and ask them not to trudge in if you’re working.

2. Ascertain your operating hours. Even though there are online tasks that ask that you work during specified hours, even a few articles enable you to operate at any given time of your day. Pick the time when you’re productive and be quite disciplined. The same as at a corporate workplace, you aren’t likely to leave your job if you feel like it. Remember, you ought to keep a professional attitude without a maid supervisor or officemates.

3. Set daily goals. Doing this will allow you to determine your priorities and permit you to handle your own time. Write your aims in a diary and see whether you can accomplish them at the end of the working day. Without outlining your common objectives, you appear to be shooting and may accomplish nothing in the long run.

4. Eliminate online distractions. There are lots of them actually –social networking websites, video streaming websites, downloading websites, among several other things. Not only is it slow down your pc, but they’re also able to take a lot of your own time. Consider that, the entire 30 seconds you spend viewing a movie is potentially the same quantity of time that you want to type a single thousand-plus word. And you do not need that substantial reduction, do you? It is not that you’re not permitted to stop by at least one of these websites. It is you need to make decent use of your operating period and be as successful as possible. Bear in mind; there is a suitable time for drama.

5. Take a few breaks. Another extreme trend in getting a work-from-home online task is overworking. That is because labor is right within reach and it’s more straightforward that you spend additional time doing this than relaxing. Working too much isn’t the means to do this since this can burn out you. Rest if you will need to. Take your meal punctually. Consuming coffee breaks. Have a day away.

6. Go out frequently. Ever since your job today requires you, a pc, and a digital community, you want to interact and become connected with individuals. You, for example, go for a movie with your very best buddy or even a slumber party with your previous officemates. Never devote an entire week locked from home; find a means to spend no less than a day someplace.

When these guides can allow you to work well, a lot of your success in working online from home nonetheless is dependent upon your commitment, determination, and patience.

How to Improve Your Content Marketing

Improving your content can grow your email list, because it gives more opportunities for your audience to sign up. Plus, you will be giving them a reason to sign up by delivering excellent content that’s targeted toward their needs.

Add Multiple CTAs

Don’t just put a box on the right side-bar asking for people to sign up for your newsletter. That isn’t enough. Now you need to add CTAs in numerous areas to get their attention and increase sign-up rates. Put one under each post, on the right side-bar, in a lightbox and inside content with content upgrades.

Create Content Upgrades

A terrific and effective way to get more sign-ups is to be more specific by adding content upgrades to the content you offer free. You can do this within a blog post, within articles you publish on LinkedIn, and as a guest writer. A content upgrade is information that helps clarify and make the content the audience is reading more useful. For example, a free MS Excel chore chart template with an article on how to get your family to share chores would make an excellent upgrade.

Cross-Promote Your Content

When you publish content anywhere, have a plan on how you’ll promote the content across all channels. This makes your content better because it looks more cohesive. For example, if you write a blog about eating less sugar, you might share recipes on Pinterest that use less sugar, and videos of recipes on Facebook that use less sugar too.

Tweak Titles

If your content is not getting clicked on, you can’t get sign-ups. So, make sure your titles are compelling enough to get people to click through. Don’t trick them, though. Be straightforward but clear about what’s inside the content with the titles.

Remember to Add Appropriate Headers

When people read online, they need a lot more white space than when reading on paper. Add headers that tell them what’s inside the next paragraph so that they can be propelled to keep reading more.

Use the Right Keywords

If you’re not sure what good keywords are, study more about the proper use of keywords so that you can improve SEO. Search engine optimization is important for building your list because that’s how people will find your content in a search.

Use a Lightbox Pop-Up to Gate Your Content

You don’t want to turn readers away, but you do want to maximize the potential of the viewer signing up. Add a lightbox pop-up to your website so that it waits a bit, then pops up asking for a sign-up to continue reading. Make it optional so that they can X out of it if they don’t want to sign up.

Deliver on Your Promises

When people do sign up, remind them of where they signed up, why they signed up, and what you will be sending them. Then deliver on those promises. More people will want to open your email messages if they find them valuable.

Choosing Between Various Passive Income Ideas

Passive income is a money flow that doesn’t require any consistent effort to keep, unlike direct income, like cash earned from an actual job. Broadly speaking, passive income is created by starting small businesses that, once an initial investment is made, begin to produce passive income without any ongoing upkeep on your part. The passive income definition that I like the best is the one that says you are earning income passively and not directly. This means that you won’t be bogged down with paperwork and meetings. It also means that you won’t have to constantly defend your business, and you will be able to spend time doing the things you love most.

I think this type of passive income definition is pretty good, at least in theory. I say it’s pretty good because many people don’t put much thought into making money from something that doesn’t work. Many people see passive income as an extra expense, but it isn’t. You can’t live off passive income, no matter how attractive it might seem. You need to have some financial planning practice, even if it seems so simple.

Here’s what you want to do if you want to start a passive income stream: You want to invest in some high yield savings accounts. There are many places where you can go to get a high yield savings account, but you should consider a high yield savings account tied to a real estate venture. Because real estate appreciates over time, your profits from this type of investment will be greater over time than a traditional savings account.

You can also invest in some sort of reips, either through yourself or through an entity. Reips are selling things on the open market. The best reips will pay out a higher return than the cost of buying and holding the item. An important part of passive profit is the ability to invest in a lot of different things and get very high yields on them.

This form of income will take a little longer to get going, but it won’t take too long to become a stable source of income. To get started in the business, you will have to create a website with a shopping cart. This is where your customers will come to. Your site will sell products or services for a commission. The products that you sell in this manner will be sold through your online store.

This passive profit stream includes stocks and dividends. Stocks provide a stream of payments that you earn every single time that you sell a stock. Dividends on stocks are paid out every December, quarterly, semi-annually, and yearly. You may also be able to get paid in cash, by checks, through direct deposit, and several other ways.

Another type of this income idea includes buying and selling mutual funds and bonds. These types of investments are great ways to make money from the comfort of your own home. To do these transactions, you will need to open a brokerage account. Once your account has been opened, you will be able to buy and sell stocks and bonds. One mutual fund worth $1,000 per month can make you a very nice monthly income stream.

Crowd-funded ventures provide another option for this passive income. This stream of income is provided by the project creators themselves. Usually, there is a set amount of money available up-front for projects, but if that initial capital does not come through as expected, the crowd-funded project creators can still make money by selling out their tokens to the general public.

The Pros and Cons of Starting a Membership Website

There are many ways to earn money online, and membership sites are a favorite of many marketers. With a membership site, you can offer content, products, or services only to people who have paid to get access to the site, and it will involve recurring payments for the site to remain active.

There are many reasons to start a membership site, but it’s essential to take a balanced look at the subject because there are some challenges to running a membership website too.

The Pros

1. Recurring Income

The best reason to start a membership site is the ongoing revenue. Instead of selling an item and getting a one-time payment from a customer, if you start a successful membership site, you’ll get paid every month or year as long as the customer remains active.

If customers have a convincing reason to keep their membership active and keep paying those fees, the value of the average customer will be high.

2. Predictability of Income

Membership sites provide a great level of stability of income. As the site grows and you build a solid base of paying customers, you can calculate stats like your retention rate. This will give you a good idea of how long the average customer will remain active.

Also, you can calculate the average number of new customers that sign up through you per month. This information will help you predict how much revenue you can generate month to month from the site.

3. High Value of Each Member

The fees members pay vary from one membership site to another depending on what members are gaining. But a site that keeps a customer for about a year will earn more revenue per member than would be possible selling the same product with a one-time fee.

The best way to increase your income through membership is to focus on increasing the amount you earn from each member, instead of trying to bring in more new members. A membership site makes this possible through the retention of paying customers and by getting them to upgrade to higher-cost membership levels.

The Cons

1. People Don’t Like Signing Up for Recurring Payments

Some people don’t want to sign up for ongoing payments. Yes, it’s true that customers will sign up for an ongoing payment in the right situation. So the offer needs to be compelling and you need to make them see the benefit of joining that membership site.

2. Getting Started Can Be Difficult

If you start a membership website and you don’t have an established audience, it’s challenging to earn significant revenue. Establishing a solid base of paying members will be difficult and growth during the first year will be slow. But, don’t give up. Nothing worth having comes easy!

Appointments – The Importance of Making Appointments for Entrepreneurs

Our businesses also differ in terms of interface with clients. If you do “business to business” transactions, the number of people you interact with on a daily basis may differ from someone whose business relies on interacting with consumers. Appointments may be more practical in some instances than others. You have to tailor-make how you manage access to your particular situation if you are to eliminate distractions. Having said that it is important to note that some people do not mind spending the whole day at the office entertaining friends, visitors, and casual acquaintances dropping into the office whenever they feel like it. Do not be that kind of person. It sets the wrong kind of example to junior staff and can harm one’s productivity because these people take up time that you do not have and besides you want to cultivate a professional environment.

The demands of the day are enough to fill the eight working hours available unless if you tend to stay back and play catch up. How do you stay competitive in the market if there is no separation between work and play? Anybody serious about success and achieving effective results will put boundaries that are clear so that there is no confusion. Entrepreneurs are more susceptible to this especially when the workplace is easily accessible. The fact that you are your own boss even puts more responsibility on you to maintain self-discipline and self – management. I have written a whole book called, “Achieve More through Self – Leadership. In it I walk you through the practicalities of how you can get better results through managing self.

Appointments are an important way of not only managing time but managing life. They help you become more structured and productive. Some people seem not to be able to honour their appointments. I once attended a job interview that was supposed to start at 10:30am. By 11:30am there had been no communication about what was happening or when the supposed job interview was going to take place. I decided at the point that this company was probably not good enough for me to join because if you don’t respect people’s time you probably do not respect them.

You may be saying appointments are just not for me yet you never rock up at the doctor, dentist, lawyer or hairstylist without an appointment. Why is that the case? Because you simply won’t see the dentist without an appointment. They have given you conditions acceptable to them. We tell the world around us how to treat us by what we allow.

Some people are always available when you want to see them. If you are always free to see people at short notice, you are probably not that organized. The one who owns a diary will manage the one who doesn’t own one. Why? Because the one without the diary is always available, even though he is very likely to forget important meetings, dates and engagements because of a lack of organization. I used to have a boss who kept a diary and whatever you promised to do in the line of work, he would write down, including the day and time you said he would have it by. You would of-course forget because you didn’t record it like he did and when the time to deliver comes, guess who would be found wanting. It was then that I decided that I do not commit to an action that I am not willing to write down because, what’s written gets done!

You may be saying, “what if my business feeds off the “walk-ins? The fact that your business relies on walk – in customers should not be an excuse for disorder. Sometimes those who drop in unannounced may indeed be potential customers, suppliers, cold-calling salespeople, and even worthwhile business contacts. There is nothing wrong if the call is beneficial to you and your business but I believe there must be a structure and way of doing things that follows certain pre-set principles. I remember seeing a poster in an office that said “if you don’t have anything to do please don’t do it here”. It’s humorous yes, but true. Appointments help to structure your day and helps you allocate time to what’s important. This means you can focus on your most important asset: the paying customer. There is nothing as bad as walking into a place wanting to do business and staff are inattentive because there is just a demand on their time. I am more understanding if the personnel are not busy entertaining social visits at work.

In conclusion, you know your business situation better than any of us. All we can do is make recommendations that will enable efficiency that leads to growth. Some of you may actually need a personal assistant who will put order in your office and focus on the things you are not willing to do that will enable to focus on the highly value things you ought to do such as running a business.

Find Out How Successful People Think So You May Be Successful Too

Do you think successful people are just plain lucky?

Successful people did not become successful because they were lucky.

They did not achieve success by accident. Being at the right place at the right time, meeting relevant people, reading the appropriate book, did not come about accidentally or by luck.

Luck is brought about by Labour Under Correct Knowledge.

Successful people prepared themselves. Instead of giving up on anything they started and wanted to achieve they got stronger by learning more.

Success is a methodical, orderly and deliberate process of deciding what you want to do with your life, what are the steps that you need to undertake to get you there, and lastly what you will do once you get there.

One of the most important aspects, if not the most important aspect to success, is the ability to visualise your successful outcome and stay focused on it until you achieve it.

“Imagination is more important than knowledge, knowledge is limited.” – Albert Einstein

Successful people understood the potential power behind knowledge, yet they also understood that, for them to close the gap between where they are and where they wanted to be, they would have to piece together the enigma that is most often referred to as “life”.

They had to build a picture, a vision, of success in their mind, and then go about taking action on creating that envisioned life.

In much the same way, you have to be serious about your present and future, you need to have the knowledge that is required so you, too, may close the gap: you need to be and remain determined to devote yourself to taking massive action to build your business of succeeding in life.

You, too, will need to see the end, your dream and destiny that you desire in your mind’s eye. It is up to you to take the necessary and relevant action to make it all happen. It’s just like going to the doctor with a particular health problem.

The doctor may prescribe a medication for you to take four times a day, yet he cannot be there with you to ensure that you are taking the medication.

It comes back to deciding to be responsible for your life.

Have you noticed how it all stems from that one attitude? Being responsible for your own life.

Your success, your being responsible 100% for you to live your dream life starts here.

When you accept 100% responsibility for yourself and your current life situation, you will have the power to move towards those things you truly desire in life: which is success in all areas of your life.

This life-changing article is about possibilities and opportunities, knowledge and tools. It will help expose your unique course in life.

It will inspire, support and motivate you to excel, to do what successful people do, to have all that successful people have, and to become a shining example of a successful person.

Here, you’re not being told what you couldn’t do, instead you are being told to shoot for the stars. And above all, you are being shown how to shoot for those stars.

“A person is what he thinks about all day long.” – Emerson

Interesting thought, wouldn’t you think? So much so, it’s worth repeating: “A person is what he thinks about all day long.”

Success and happiness cannot happen if you possess the same old thoughts and beliefs.

If you do not change your mind, if you do not get rid of the unsupportive thoughts and beliefs, you will inevitably remain stuck in your old ways. Not much, if anything, will change.

Let’s give you a quick overview on how change comes about:

Your BEHAVIOUR, how you act (or perhaps do not act), controls your success or failure. Your ability to attain high levels of success is dependent upon your actions and behaviours. Your results are the outcome of your behaviour. Now let’s consider where your behaviours come from and what controls them?

Your FEELINGS command your behaviour. Every action that you take is first filtered through your feelings that reside in your subconscious mind. How you feel about something determines what you do and how well you do it. So where do your feelings come from?

Your ATTITUDES create and influence your feelings. Your attitude is your perspective from which you view life. Whatever attitude you have about anything will affect how you feel, which, in turn, affects how you act. Where do your attitudes come from?

Your BELIEFS create, control and influence your attitudes. What you believe about anything will determine your attitude about it, which will create your feelings, and then which will direct your behaviour and action. Belief patterns are so powerful that two people who are in the same situation could perceive things completely differently. It only requires us to believe what we see and how we see it. We all have thousands of beliefs – big and small. And where do your beliefs come from?

Your THOUGHTS create, control and influence your beliefs. Your thoughts are real and are immensely powerful. Everything you accept from the outside world and everything you feed yourself from within is a product of your thoughts. Everything starts as a thought.

So, it goes without saying you need to learn to control your thoughts. And when you do, you will automatically control your beliefs, your attitudes, your feelings and, consequently, your behaviour and actions.

The big secret to success:

Learn to control your thoughts and you will influence your behaviours and actions. It’s all a mind-set. That’s what we’ve been saying all along.

Success is predictable and is not achieved by accident.

Have the mind-set of the successful people and you will achieve success. Believe and it is yours!

“There is a great future in front of you, you can leave your past behind.” – Joel Osteen

Science of success experts have concluded that the brain is a goal-setting organism.

That is fantastic news for us: for whatever goal we give to our subconscious mind, it will work for us day and night, 24/7, to achieve it for us; to make it a reality.

The principal breakthrough that scientists made was that we do not need to waste our precious time and effort trying to change old thoughts and behaviours: we just simply create new ones.

And the other discovery they made was that we can continue to create new thoughts, new memories, new behaviours, new skills, and learn new things for as long as we are alive on this earth.

Now, with the new discoveries in recent years, it has been scientifically proven that our capacity to achieve and succeed literally has no limits.

Our brain has the capacity to continually learn during our entire lifetime.

Our brain can form new thoughts, can have new memories, and can learn new things by the millions, no matter what your age is. By the millions.

That’s how many new things we can learn, that’s how many new skills we can learn, that’s how many new thoughts we can have, that’s how many new behaviours we can adopt.

This is encouraging because there is no limit on your capacity to achieve new things.

No limits whatsoever for the human brain to learn, memorise, develop, achieve and perform at higher levels than ever imagined. It makes no difference what your age is: you are capable of learning anything new that you want to learn.

That adds to what we spoke of earlier: no more excuses.

“The future belongs to those who prepare for it today.” – Malcolm X

Your brain has the capacity to achieve way beyond what was ever thought possible. So now is the time to break out of your limited thinking and start dreaming big and imagining unlimited possibilities.

Becoming successful is not impossible.

It is a choice you make through a decision. Every day, step-by-step, you may climb the mountain of success if you’ve decided to do so, if you’re committed to accomplish what the others think impossible.

Design your future now.

Prepare to receive what you desire.

Thanks to the phenomenal advances made in cognitive science and the development of NLP (Neuro-Linguistic Programming), personal change, personal transformation, has come a very long way.

In fact, personal growth is no longer a mystery.

NLP has brought to light that change, transformation and growth can be fast, reliable, and even fun. It has shown us that we do not need to spend thousands of hours slaving away to increase our creative-thinking abilities.

By practicing a few simple exercises and applications, you can start your creative juices flowing, and you may even amaze yourself at the quality and quantity of good ideas that you can come up with to expedite your success.

It can allow you to achieve something you seek within days and months as opposed to years and decades. That’s the power of the progress science has made on how the brain works, and also how you can have your mind to be your best ally in achieving anything you want.

Learn to live as you like by no longer living as you dislike.

Are you ready to get on the road to success and fulfilment?

Bear in mind, much like everything else in life, success requires practice and massive, consistent action.

“Success doesn’t mean the absence of failures; it means the attainment of ultimate objectives. It means winning the war, not every battle.” – Edwin C Bliss

Time For A New Tribe? When to Leave Outdated Alliances For a Truly Supportive Community

Do you feel as if you’ve outgrown your circle of friends? Perhaps you do not feel safe or understood any longer. There may be fewer and fewer things you can share with people in your habitual circle, and it leaves you feeling lonely or isolated. If so, you are not alone. Welcome to one of the core dynamics of continuous growth!

As we continue to evolve, many of us struggle with a sense of not quite fitting in with our traditional community or tribe: we may have expanded or changed beyond the borders of tribal norms, and no longer find the same sense of belonging there. Other members may have tightened the tribal rules to foster a sense of security. As a result, we may feel a sense of disconnection or alienation.

In truth, each one of us belongs to many tribes simultaneously: there is your original tribe – the family you were born into – and then there are all the communities of choice you have joined: your work tribe, your social circles, your faith-based community, your neighborhood, and more. These communities are not static; they are in continuous flux because they consist of individuals who are in continuous states of change. When there is a lot of change happening in either the individual or the community, a sense of dissonance results.

How are we to deal with this? First, it is important to recognize that tribal allegiances were historically forged for survival. They were adapted over the course of centuries to ensure the safety and survival of the group. Survival required that individuation be sacrificed for the trade-off of security.

In modern society, the tables are flipped. Whether we enjoy it or not, change is essential for survival at every level of being. The pace of change is driven by technological advances and happens with increasing rapidity: sociologists estimate that more change has taken place in society over the course of the past 100 years, than in the totality of the previous 6,000 years. Individual adaptation now is a requirement for survival, and the pace of individual change does not always match the pace at which our various tribal communities evolve. The resulting dissonance can cause intense friction and pain.

Dissonance also results from confusion between the concepts of ‘connection’ and ‘community.’ We tend to equate one with the other, when they really relate to different qualities. Connection relates to connectivity: the objective physical technology or media that enables us to build community, but which does not represent the quality of that community. Connectivity simply offers the opportunity to connect with others through internet, texting, phone calls, or any other social networking options.

Community is the result of building relationship through meaningful interaction over time. There is no shortcut; it is a process that develops when bonds of trust and intimacy are nurtured and honored.

And here lies a caveat: When we confuse connectivity with community, we depersonalize the sacred nature of true community and start relating to people as objects. Instead of developing intimacy over time, we collect friends on social network sites or try to buy people’s allegiance. Yet friending is simply an act of connecting; it does not create intimacy.

In fact, social experiments indicate that technologically dominated connectivity results in alienation and social collapse over time. In a groundbreaking social experiment conducted by Josh Harris, one of the founders of social networking on the internet, he found that the more people’s private lives were exposed by 24/7 technology, the more their sense of intimacy and relationship deteriorated until the community collapsed in violence and self-destructive behavior.

It is time to revisit our concepts of community so we can create tribes that offer a true sense of intimacy and belonging.

In his 1987 book, The Different Drum: Community Making and Peace, psychologist M. Scott Peck described several core characteristics of true community. Beyond the obvious components of inclusivity, commitment and participatory consensus, Peck pointed out the quality of embracing diversity through realism. When each member contributes their unique viewpoint from a place of humility and goodwill, the community benefits from a broader perspective in which to better grasp the full context of a situation. In other words, mutual tolerance helps members to embrace one another’s different viewpoints as an integral part of the whole, instead of imposing a forced compliance to groupthink or cohesion.

In an environment like this, members experience and express compassion and respect for one another. They allow others to share their vulnerability, to learn and grow, and to express who they truly are. When conflict arises, they learn to resolve it with wisdom and grace. Members listen to and respect each others’ gifts, accept each others’ limitations, celebrate their differences, and commit to find solutions together rather than to fight against each other. Indeed, the true spirit of community is the spirit of peace, love, wisdom and power. The source of this spirit may be seen as an outgrowth of the collective self or as the manifestation of a Higher Will.

Does this description of community sound spiritual to you? It is indeed, because Spirit is the common denominator among all of us, regardless of how separate we feel from others.

As human beings, we often experience a socio-economic sense of separation from others because of different opinions, beliefs, expectations, language, culture, or interests, since each one of us expresses these in a way uniquely different from anyone else. And still, we continue to differentiate! In this ongoing process, we continue to evolve or devolve in response to life. A community that felt like a good fit last year may no longer work today; the places where we felt embraced, now may suffocate us. Over the course of a lifetime, we can expect to outgrow and change allegiances to many of the tribal communities we once belonged to.

And yet, when we transcend the layers of physical appearance, mental beliefs and socio-economic conditioning, we find in the presence of Spirit a common denominator in everyone around us. Perhaps it is time to expand our tribal definitions to embrace a spiritual community that includes all of mankind as children of God.

Mother Teresa admonished her nuns to see Jesus in every leper they encountered, to find His presence as they looked into the eyes of the homeless. When we can look past the issues that divide us to find omnipresent Divinity in each other, we will uncover the foundations of true community.

Spiritual community transcends all socio-economic borders, beliefs and backgrounds. It is inclusive because it operates on voluntary self-responsibility and mutual compassion, and its doors are open to everyone.

Building this type of community takes time: time to listen, to hear, to respond and to participate. Take a few moments to read the description of spiritual community again. Then, make time in your life to foster that type of connection with people who matter to you. You are one of the architects of community in your life, and you can participate in building a tribe where you belong.

Appointments – Manage Your Time Better At Home to Be Effective

What would happen to you if your home life was more organized than it is right now? Can work-life balance be achieved? What are the tools at our disposal? Could scheduling appointments and keeping them at home help us save time and prioritize?

What is the challenge we face? I sometimes find that time spent at home can be the busiest time, especially in the times we live in. Imagine someone working from home, home-schooling children, and sometimes even doing a side hustle. Imagine also the full-time home-based entrepreneur. How do they manage to do all they need to do in a day?. We are living in a time when many entrepreneurs and even company employees have adopted work- at – home culture. This comes with its challenges as the lines become blurred between home and work. These blurred lines and constraints on the limited resource called time result in over-worked, under-rested, burnt-out individuals. Whilst good time management has been encouraged and indeed, embraced in the workplace, I believe more needs to be done in changing the mindset for the elusive work-life balance to be achieved.

What are the tools at our disposal? To manage time effectively at home, there are many interventions one can employ including setting goals for the day, prioritizing wisely, setting a time limit for every task, organizing oneself, and instituting the discipline of appointments. Yes, an appointment at home! We can spend time pontificating on the pros and cons of each intervention, however, I believe we need to focus on appointments and see how this can powerfully change the course of one’s day regardless of whether it’s a workday or weekend. Life is busy as it is without any intrusions. The question is how do you handle the one who announces that they are at the gate. These can be friends, neighbors, a salesman of some product you do not even need. I am not promoting regimentation here but rather a culture of filling your day with what’s important. Everything that we succeed at is because we carefully plan and execute it. I am a firm believer that you cannot manage time if you do not manage yourself thus I implore you to incorporate planning and appointments into your repertoire. I am not talking about something I do not do. I have to achieve many things in a day therefore I set appointments with my work, others, and myself.

Could scheduling appointments and keeping them on the home front help us save time and prioritize? Whereas we have established that it is a normal business practice to set appointments and keep them, we need to abandon the liberal open-door policy of allowing all and sundry to have access to us as and when they please on the home front. Please understand where I am coming from. We each have greatness within us but for us to achieve it we need to culture great habits. Employing the use of appointments at home and seeing only those people you had agreed to see removes non-essential encounters especially during the most productive hours. I know this will vary with culture, geographical region, or even level of affluence, whether you live in a low density or high-density residential area, but doesn’t negate the need to be organized and effective. Controlling access determines how organized you are and how well you will work and rest when the time for scheduled rest comes.

What do we need to do differently? We need to be disciplined and diligent, learn to say no, now is not a good time, let’s make an appointment for next week. What are the benefits of this approach? You are not always fire-fighting to meet deadlines, You are not always tired because you have not taken time out to rest. You have set aside enough time to spend with your loved ones or a loved one. If you are a busy person, I am sure you appreciate what I am saying. Whether it’s time to work uninterrupted, family time, or “me-time”, it takes some kind of order to enjoy it.

I am not saying that those that come unannounced are bad people. No, not at all, they probably are people you enjoy spending time with. Nevertheless, there must be prior communication so that you can attend to your visitor(s) when it is convenient for both you and them. It can be quite disrupting and a whole day can just pass by without achieving anything that you had planned to do.

As we grow older we begin to appreciate that rest and recovery need to be scheduled. The fact that I am relaxing doesn’t mean that I don’t have anything to do. One therefore cannot assume that just because you are at home you are available. Maybe you have scheduled that time to rest. That is important. You need to make an appointment with yourself, spouses need to also set aside time for each other. Parents need to schedule a time to spend with their children. When you have some sort of order in your life you determine who sees you and who you see. It also means that your relationships will be healthy and that makes you a happier person.

In conclusion, I believe that the work-life balance can be achieved. There are many tools at our disposal just like it is in the workplace.I believe we could do more and be happier if we are disciplined enough to make only the commitments we can keep.I am certain that setting appointments and keeping them at home help us save time and prioritize.

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