Strong positive relationships are crucial to success and happiness in all areas of our life. Unfortunately, we live busy, hectic lives and it can be really easy for the days, weeks, months, and even years, to pass before we take the time to tell people how we feel about them.

Sometimes we never do. We just assume that they know. 

Here are 10 simple strategies to nurture relationships in both our business and personal lives:
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• Spend time brainstorming ideas of thoughtful things you can do for your friends, family or clients.

Thanks to Kev from Kev's IT for this really useful reminder. We put our cars through a service every year to make sure they are running efficiently, so it makes sense to do the same with our PCs.  I can manage a few days without a car, but I couldn't manage a few days without my computer! 

​“My computer doesn’t need maintenance, it's running fine” is the most common phrase you hear when IT maintenance is mentioned.
 
After all, why would you want to spend money maintaining your PC or laptop if it’s still running?

Following on from Tip 306 about visualisation, here are my top tips for visualising a great movie in your mind.

1. When you first start, it's easier if you write your visualisation down. Think about exactly what you want to visualise. What does happiness/confidence/success look like?  What do you want to achieve? What will you be doing?

The easiest way to do this is to write out your movie scenes by listing them as simple bullet points.

So, let’s talk about the fantastic power of visualisation and clarify exactly what visualisation is.

Also known as Visual Mental Rehearsal, visualisation is the process of imagining events or objects in your mind’s eye to achieve a desired outcome.

Most people can visualise. Let me give you an example – what colour is your door?

When you thought about that question, you probably brought an image of your door and what it looks like to your mind to identify the colour. 

Massive thanks to Jerry from Associated Commercial Finance for his really useful business tip. 
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Raising finance for a start-up or young business can be extremely difficult without the ability to provide tangible security. However, the Government’s Start-Up Loan scheme is designed for just this reason.

The scheme operates throughout England and Scotland, welcoming applications from new businesses and those trading less than two years.