Someone asked on a forum what the world would be like without the Internet.

A world without the Internet huh?

That would be when we went to a library for our info products (only we called them books and the only ones who ever said ebooks were elderly Yorkshiremen).

That would be when social networking meant going out to the local youth club. Or, Heaven forbid, becoming a Boy Scout or Girl Guide.

That would be when a facebook had black pages and the ‘faces’ were stuck in with little paper corners.

That would be when a forum was a place for debate and usually involved cold beer and tipsy girlfriends.

That would be when calling someone a blogger would get you a black eye.

That would when watching a monitor involved staring at the school prefect.

That would be when the most advanced keyboard was attached to a Moog.

That would be when a floppy disc would give you a bad back.

That would be when a payment processor was made of brass, had keys with the denominations and a drawer that went ‘ting’.

That would be when the superhighway was the M1 in the UK or Route 66 in the US.

That would be when CD meant you didn’t have to pay your fines.

That would be when the only time you needed a RAM was when you had a few ewes to be covered.

That would be when a bit was more than you could chew or a byte would need a visit to the dentist.

That would be when Amazon was a river and Google was a misspelled number.

That would be when traffic stopped you getting home for dinner.

That would be when hacking meant you had a nasty cough.

That would be when ‘CB’ would be followed by ‘Ten-four, breaker-breaker, good buddy.’

That would be when file sharing involved manilla cardboard.

That would be when a chat room was thick with cigarette smoke and spilled beer.

That would be when the only place you’d find virtual real estate was on a Monopoly board.

That would be when the only autoresponder in the world was called Kit.

That would be when good hosting meant happy guests.

That would be when second life was what we all prayed for on Sundays.

That would be when Go Daddy involved an egg and a spoon.

That would be when a hard drive was accompanied by ‘are we nearly there yet?’

That would be when being digital meant you could count on your fingers.

That would be when banner ad was a big flag you waved at a football match.

That would be when your bookmarks were made by your kids as school projects.

That would be when one cookie was never enough.

That would be when cross browser support was a patient salesperson in the bookstore.

That would be when going to a flash site got you locked up.

That would be when showing someone your holiday pictures involved a darkened room and a Kodak Carousel.

That would be when an impression was something you made.

That would be when My Space was something you didn’t enter.

That would be when spam was a Sunday treat.

That would be when peer-to-peer networking happened at the water cooler.

That would be when the world was a simpler place; when we didn’t have friends all over the world; when our differences were more frightening; when our horizons were limited; when our imaginations were fuelled by HG Wells or Gene Roddenberry.

That would be when almost everything we take for granted today about technology, the Internet and computers was at best an impossible dream and worst simply thoughts of magic.

That would be the days of our parents – or for some of us, our youth.

And thinking back, it wasn’t so long ago was it.

I wonder what the days of our children will bring.

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How much are you worth?

I don’t mean how much are the component parts of you
worth – the water and minerals that make up your body
(a bit less than a dollar for the raw materials, a bit
more if you could sell your working parts).

I mean how much does it say on the invisible price tag
that you have hung around your neck.

$10 an hour? $100? $1000?

You are worth exactly as much as you believe you are
worth.

My friend David is a joiner. He makes stuff out of
wood. Recently he was asked to price up a job that he
really didn’t want. Rather than turn it down, he simply
double his normal rates in the hope that the customer
would be put off.

The next day they were on the phone asking him how soon
he could start.

THAT made David rethink how much he was worth!

Another friend (also called David, coincidentally) is a
central heating installer. He told me that he normally
quoted £800 to fit a new boiler, but recently has been
losing jobs to other companies who charge much more.
When he started asking why he’d lost the job, the
customers told him that they figured the more expensive
companies would do a better job.

Dave immediately added £1000 to his standard price and
has been booked solid with work ever since.

Mike is a management consultant. He recently decided to
increase his hourly rate from £200 to £800. He is still
billing exactly the same number of hours but his income
has quadrupled – and he reports that his clients are
now FAR more likely to do as he recommends.

It happens all around us. People everywhere are
undervaluing their worth because they put their own
value on themselves instead of the value that their
clients and customers would put on them.

Take a look at the value that YOU put on yourself.

Look harder.

Now, whatever that value is, increase it. Live with it.
Let that new value sink in to your subconscious.

Then go out into the world and show them what you’re
worth.

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In Alice in Wonderland, Lewis Carroll wrote “Sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.”

Today, I don’t know if you’ve had your breakfast or not yet, but I certainly don’t want you to believe six impossible things. Just one will do
to start with.

The one impossible thing that I want you to believe today – and I really mean BELIEVE it with every ounce of your being – is that you CAN.

You CAN achieve success.

You CAN do anything that you WANT to do.

You CAN … fill in your own blank!

With that fundamental belief, anything that is physically possible is within your range. At at times, even disability isn’t a barrier if you
have sufficient belief.

I read just this morning about a young man who was a successful mountain climber. He had a fall and trapped his arm between two rocks. He had a
choice that most of us couldn’t imagine having to take – he could hang there until he died, or he could cut off his own arm. He chose to live.
But that horrific tale isn’t the end of it.

He could easily have decided that without an arm, his mountain climbing days were over, but not this guy. He has the fire of ‘I Can’ burning
like a torch inside of him.

He now has a prosthetic arm, shaped like a pirate’s hook and he is back climbing mountains like he never left off.

You don’t need to cut off your own arm to prove that you can climb mountains – and we all have different mountains to tackle in any case. What
you do need is an absolute, unshakeable certainty that you CAN climb it.

When you KNOW that you CAN, actually doing it doesn’t seem so hard after all.

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