L = Levity Can you take it lightly when a prospect rejects your offer? You will be turned down much more often than not, you know. That’s just nature of sales. It always has been, always will be. It’s nothing personal, my friend. Really, you must internalize fact that no one is rejecting you. A prospect isn’t ready to take advantage of what you’re offering? It’s no big deal. Just remember, some will, some won’t, so what, someone’s waiting. Don’t even think about letting it affect your self-esteem!

I = Introspection We must all take a good, hard look inside our own selves to discover what is holding us back. No one, but no one has power to control your thoughts. It is worth all effort necessary to get your thoughts in alignment with what you want to believe. It’s not so easy, because society is constantly telling us what and how to think. It takes courage and a strong commitment to oneself to keep reins on our own thoughts. Thought is everything. Make no mistake about it. Read, meditate, affirm, visualize, don’t give up, and then do it all over again. And again and again…..

N = Nurture Nurture yourself. So you want to be your own boss, eh? Make sure you’re working for a reasonable and decent person. You wouldn’t stand for it if a “regular” boss called you an idiot and told you horrible things. So, please, don’t ever do this to yourself. Treat yourself with same dignity and respect as you would expect from a terrific boss. By same token, hold yourself to same standards of performance and accountability that any responsible employer would. You wouldn’t expect your boss to stand for it if you decided you just didn’t feel like showing up for work, right? Would a “boss” allow you to sit through TV reruns while there was work to be done? We both know better than that.

E = Evaluate What’s working? What’s not working? Make changes, modify, tweak, but don’t give up. Do you remember first time you tried to drive a car? When you slammed on brakes instead of coming to a nice, smooth halt, did you jump out of driver’s seat and cry out, “I give up! I can’t do this!” No, of course you didn’t. And analogy is really not that far-fetched, is it? Building a successful home business requires commitment, attention, patience and, yes, a healthy dose of discipline. Come on, you can do it! The rewards are tremendous!

CLEANING AND COMPRESSING YOUR MAIL DATA

This is an important part of your email management. When you no longer need an email, it should be deleted. When you first delete an email, your software will send email to Trash Bin. Your email is not actually deleted until you first empty your trash bin.

Emptying your trash bin compresses mailboxes from where email was originally filed. This is absolutely paramount to protection of your email data. If you go too long between compressing your email data, then your email data could become corrupted and you might need assistance in recovering your email data.

Even after you have emptied your trash, Compressing Folders is a recommended step to prevent other data corruption. Once you understand that an email does not actually move from one folder to another until folder is compressed, then you can better appreciate this advice.

As an example, when Email A comes into your main Inbox, data connected to Email A appears in two files. One file contains header and body of email. The other file contains only email header information.

When an email is moved from one folder to other, only header information is actually moved. The body information will not be deleted from original folder until which time original folder is compressed.

This explains purpose of emptying trash AND compressing folders. If email was simply moved from Inbox to another folder, then emptying trash is not enough. The original placement of email is not actually removed from file that contains body information until message has been designated for compression.

To empty your trash:

OUTLOOK EXPRESS: Click on Edit - Empty 'Deleted Items' Folder. To compress remaining folders, click on Tools - Options, then click on tab for Maintenance. Then click button that says, "Clean Up Now". Once compression is completed, click OK.

EUDORA: Click Special - Empty Trash. To compress remaining items that need compression, then click on Special - Compact Mailboxes.

NETSCAPE MAIL: Click on File - Empty Trash Folder. To compress mailboxes, click on File - Compress Folders.

I cannot stress enough how important it is that you utilize tools for emptying trash and compressing mail folders. Protecting your email data on a regular basis is good practice for avoiding disaster in your mailbox.

So many of us rely upon our email software to keep our online business running smoothly. Once you master tools provided in your email software, your online business will run smoothly also.

Let me share one important lesson I l've learned about computer software. One should never be afraid to try new things. Learning how to get most out of your software relies upon your willingness to dig in and learn how to use it.

Once you learn how to use your software to its full potential, then your life will be greatly simplified and your effectiveness will be dramatically improved.