It’s THAT weekend – the weekend after Thanksgiving and the weekend where your neighbors are vying for the most holiday lights, the earliest and the best on the block. It’s THAT weekend that starts with Black Friday, which actually happens on Thursday, but you don’t notice because you are in a turkey-induced tryptophan haze. It’s a weekend with Small Business Saturday and Doorbuster Sunday, followed by Cyber Monday, Tuesday, and ONLY “X” number of days to get your holiday shopping completed. But what is this really? It’s decision time.
How you feel going into the holidays is completely within your control – and it starts with a decision. How do you want to feel going through the holidays? Hectic, frazzled, and completed stressed out? Or would you rather choose feelings of control, appreciation, joy, and contentment? Well, good news, this is up to you. We often buy into the hectic mix of the holiday “hustle and bustle,” and you can hustle your bustle all you want, but let’s take some control over this so that it feels better. There comes a time where you have to decide whether it’s worth turning the page, or closing the book. With the holidays come many things that disrupt our everyday flow and events- it's no wonder so many people are stressed out! Holiday parties, shopping, crafting, decorating, baking, cooking, card-writing, get-togethers, potlucks, and the list goes on. These add-on activities aren’t just here and there, they are everywhere, non-stop. Throw in the pressures of keeping up with the Jones’ light show, spending more money within a month than you spend all year, and the fact that every car advertiser makes you want to believe that you should have a shiny new luxury car with a big red bow sitting on your snowy driveway, and it can make for an overwhelming bunch of emotions- and chaos. But there is GOOD news! In the midst of chaos, stillness resides in you. How you think about the holidays, especially right now, at the onset, can shift your entire experience over the next month plus. Layout a game plan. Going into the holidays with the big picture in mind and specific goals and objectives can greatly minimize feelings of stress and being overwhelmed. How do you want to feel is the most important question that you can ask, because from that we can lay out goals to achieve these feelings. It's much easier than saying, "I'm not." Instead you get to say "I'm choosing contentment and I'm doing that by doing this." Budget everything. Budget your time, your gifts, and seasonal foods. Your thoughts determine how you will feel, so if you don’t want to feel overwhelmed by excess everything, decide not to be. Decide how this season is going to be for you. Take back your power and control. If you don’t want to come out of the holidays 10 pounds heavier, thousands of dollars poorer, and sapped of all of your energy, there is a point where something has to give. Decide now what can be minimized or left out. Do you have to mail Christmas cards to everyone you’ve ever known? Or maybe you just send to a few of your dearest family members or friends that you won’t be seeing. Do you have to have the most impressive holiday lights? Or maybe just a few festive lights will suffice? Do you need to buy everyone at the office a gift? How about baking a tray of cookies for the office? Some things may be important to invest time in and others, not so much. Decide that no matter what you choose to fit into your schedule that you are doing so because you see the value in that activity. There are no victims of circumstance, there are only victims of poor choices. Choose wisely and with intent and purpose to feel empowered and in control of how you are going to feel about the outcome of these holidays. This should be a time of joy, happiness, and peace on earth. All of these are within your power to have and achieve. The circumstances around you will keep on churning. The chaos will keep whirling, but your inner peace is just one thought away – and it starts with “I choose….” Happiness is a choice that at times requires effort. Where will your efforts reside this holiday season? Be miserable, or motivated. Everything always begins with a choice. Make it yours.
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Never give up on something that you can’t go a day without thinking about. Do you want it? Then fight for it. Obstacles are put in our way to see if it’s really worth fighting for – and sometimes we create our own obstacles.
Have you ever wanted something so bad, but you just didn’t know how to go about getting it? You took some action. You started down the path, the best way that you could figure out, but then something happened – you just stopped. Sometimes it’s a slow fizzle and other times it’s just a full-fledged, hard stop – but the important piece to keep in mind here is that there was something much deeper that caused what you wanted not to happen – and that was your thinking. That seems really harsh, but everything that you desire starts and stops in your mind. There are five steps to getting what you want.
Commit today to take the steps that you need to achieve the success that you desire. #makeithappen #yougotthis Now let's get focused, obliterate doubt and fear, and start achieving! Focus, my dears! You got this! Do you remember what Saturday mornings were like as a kid? For some, it wasn’t so long ago, and for others of us, it was a bit ago. I remember getting up, hair a mess, maybe pouring a bowl of cereal and plopping down in front of some cartoons. By the time my mom got up to say, “Hey, go out and play,” I was fueled and awakened through humor.” She certainly didn’t have to kick me out the door. I was ready!
Going out to play, whether getting on my bike and riding pretty much all day, or riding over to a friend’s house, knocking on the door, “Can Vicki play?” was a typical Saturday morning scene. Playing all day was all that was on the agenda. Yes, food at some point was thrown in there, but it certainly didn’t rate that high, it was more of a necessary evil in the middle of playtime. Fast forward to where we are in life and think about what Saturdays mean to you, and if you have a non-traditional Saturday/Sunday days off schedule, think about this as your off time. What has Saturday become? Well, if you have kids, it may be a myriad of soccer practices or running here and there from various events and activities. Without kids, you may have so much to get done that you can’t during the work week, so your Saturday becomes a massive chore list. Think about the Saturday kid illustration that I provided. Cereal, cartoons, and uninhibited playtime. How many of us would love to have the freedom to just be a kid again and not have to worry about the report that’s due on Monday, cleaning out the gutters, and doing the laundry? Guess what? All of those things existed as a kid, and we did them, but we just didn’t allow our worry to destroy our playtime mindset. It seems like we still have the same ability to have Saturday playtime, but we need to relearn to how to live like this. We don’t stop playing because we grow old. We grow old because stop playing. So how do we get back to our inner child, despite our responsibilities doing this “adulting” thing? We re-engineer our thinking and rediscover the power that we have to shift our thoughts, feelings, and outlook on life. Albert Einstein said, “ Play is the highest form of research.” And it is true! When we play, we invigorate our creativity, we re-energize, and we embrace our authentic self – the playful child who loves life. Let’s look at my Saturday kid recipe for a successful Saturday. 1) I grabbed a bowl of cereal. Hey – that’s what we did! Could have been a better choice, but fueling up was just a natural thing to do – we just knew that you fuel up after rejuvenating the body with sleep. So this becomes the first step of retraining your mind – nourish your body. Make sure that you don’t just grab anything (like I did with cereal) for ease and convenience, make a conscious effort to realize that in order to enjoy life, the moment, and playtime, you need to be well-nourished. Fuel up, consciously. 2) I watched cartoons. This is a seemingly mindless activity, sitting in front of the television, but it worked. We started our day with humor! Wouldn’t you feel better starting your day laughing instead of worrying about deadlines and all of the junk you have to get done? That’s what we did as a kid, and it’s the same recipe for success today. However you get it, the funny column in the paper, YouTube funny spoofs or comedian videos, or the classic – cartoons (hey, you may actually begin to find Sponge Bob funny!), introduce humor into the start of your Saturday. Look, this is your play day. Even if you have a list of chores to accomplish, beginning with humor will shift your perspective and you will see your entire day in a new light. 3) My mom told me to go out to play. It wasn’t like I needed to be told, but it was this prompting that made me move away from the television and get moving! So our third element is movement, exercise, and fun. However you move, choose something that you enjoy, but do it and do it like you did as a kid, with everything you have in you. And you may have to be the one telling yourself, “Hey! Go out and play.” Make it your command. It’s expected of the Saturday child, so why not for you? Add imagination and dreaming to the mix, just as you did as a kid. You weren’t just riding your bike, you were a mighty explorer! Allow your mind to dream and come alive. I’m telling you, that business proposal or work project will benefit from your allowing your mind and body to take on the Saturday success recipe. All we need to know about how to live a successful life, we lived as children playing. The Saturday morning experience brings us to a balanced state because it creates alignment of our mind, body, energy, and our emotions. When we start our day with fueling our bodies with nourishment, our mind with laughter, and exert our energy in play and discovery, we are unstoppable. We set ourselves up to take on anything. If you could be Superman or Wonder Woman in your mind as a kid, you certainly can be now - but you need to stop thinking that you are too busy to enjoy life – as you did then. That chore list becomes so much easier when you are aligned. Remember, the gutters still had to be cleaned out and the leaves raked, and you made a game out of it – and when it was done? Playtime. Reward yourself. Playtime is not superfluous. You knew it as a child, naturally, because you were closer to your inner truth as a child. A puppy or a kitten even know this. Playing is training for adulthood, but somehow we forget how to play. So this week, regain the principles of the Saturday mindset. Nourish your body, fill your heart with laughter, and get out and move and play. Relearn to live again. Shift will happen! 11/4/2018 1 Comment Illuminating the Path to SuccessHave you ever tried to pull one over on your parent, your best friend, or your boss? You know, you didn’t think that they would understand or that they would be judgmental, so instead you choose to tell a lie. Sometimes these are big, huge, hairy, bold-faced lies, and other times they are, what we commonly refer to as, little white lies. Keep in mind that half a truth is often a great lie and the truth is like the sun.
Imagine walking outside of a dimly lit building on a particularly sunny day and think about just how intense the sun feels on your eyes. You can’t help but squint and wince as the brightness is almost painful to absorb through your senses. It’s a pretty intense feeling, right? Okay, hold that thought! Our bodies are meant to be whole. When we cut ourselves, our blood cells rush to the wound to quickly start coagulating the blood and begin the healing process of making the wound disappear. Typically, within a week or so, you are good as new. Our mind is just as resilient – yet we understand so little about just how, on the inside, under the surface, our consciousness within our mind is trying to communicate and initiate wholeness and healing. When we lie, whether to someone else, or to ourselves, this triggers an internal default to correction, because like entering data into a form that doesn’t belong, it’s an error and it cannot be computed correctly. It’s similar to our walking out into the sun and wincing. The brightness of the truth can be almost painful when we see it with our internal eye. When we see it in our external world It can be blinding – and that’s uncomfortable. Truth is like the sun; you can shut it out for a time, but it’s not going away. It still exists. Fortunately, the truth may hurt for a little while, but a lie perpetuates endless pain, because of what happens when we lie within our subconscious. There is nothing about a little white lie that is innocent because it has the same effect as a big, hairy, audacious lie within. We manifest what we cannot control. This is why criminal investigators say that eventually a criminal that has gotten away with a lie will slip up. Our truth will always come out. It’s the same as our blood, automatically rushing to the wound. You are automatically trying to self-correct by manifested action, comments, or involuntary facial expressions or movements. This is how your mother could always tell when you were lying! Your body was tattling on you. And you thought she had magical mom powers! Lying to yourself, truly cannot be accomplished, and so this is an area that must be reckoned with. You may think you are getting away with it, but I’m telling you, it’s going to come out! This is also true when someone makes a statement about you, a situation, or life in general that isn’t particularly true, but guess what? Your auditory system or visual system took note of that. We are so darned efficient! Our subconscious stores away untruths all the time. They don’t fit anywhere, because they are not true to our truth, or to universal truths. This is why it is incredibly important to dislodge untruths that are stored away and re-engineering your thinking – re-writing the sentences in your thoughts so that they serve you better and support your truth. When we do this, we can make progress toward our goals and be free from limited or destructive thinking. A client of mine made a statement, “I’m not improving financially.” After some inquiry we realized the lie that he was telling himself was limiting his creativity and ability to free himself to make more money. His truth was that he has consistently improved his financial situation, year after year, but he’s not where he’d like to be, YET! Just this subtle shift in what he told himself was the key for him to unlock his ability to move forward. We often get stuck on the wrong thoughts. The sentence in our brain is wrong, driving a negative feeling. These limit our actions because we get stuck in a spin cycle and we limit our own actions. While stuck in spin, my client only could see his 9-5 job on repeat, never getting ahead. He saw, “I’m going to need to replace this job with another income source, but I don’t know how to get there” – and therefore he was stuck – not sure how to get out. The state of your life is a direct reflection of a state of your mind – Dr. Wayne Dyer As we begin to illuminate our inner truth, the path to our success is also illuminated. For my client, just realizing that dissatisfaction with a current state does not define him, rather it serves as a driver to set goals and an action plan. Your path to the truth starts with a simple question: Is it true? This is a yes or no question with no qualifiers or explanations. Yes or no. Can you say this, without a doubt is true? In my client’s example, is it true that you are not improving financially? At first, he said yes. Without a doubt he also believed this to be true. So, I asked, “Are you in the same place you were 5 years ago, or are you better?” Him: “Better.” Me: “Do you have a roof over your head and enough food?” Him: “Yes, but I’m living paycheck to paycheck.” Me: “So in reality, it’s not a true statement that you are not improving financially, because you stated that you are doing better than you were, which is progress. The truth seems to be that you are living paycheck to paycheck and that is no okay with you. Is this correct?” Him: “Yes!” Me: “So how does it feel when you tell yourself that I’m not improving financially?” Him: “Not good. I feel terrible.” Me: “Then let’s go with the statement that you felt was truer. That you have continually improved your financial situation year after year and that you want to achieve a level of financial freedom to not live paycheck to paycheck. Now we can develop goals to get you there.” Him: “That is perfect. And I feel like I can do it this way. I just couldn’t see my way out of it before.” Me: "That’s because you were stuck on the fact that you make a certain amount per hour at your current job. You started focusing on your current state and the lie you were telling yourself, so the path was dark. How can you get somewhere when you tell yourself that you can’t or that you are a failure? 'I’m not improving financially.' I am statements are powerful and when it conflicts with your inner truth, your default mechanism is saying, 'Send out feeling like crud, because this statement isn’t true.' Once we let in the truth, we now can see that we have a way to resolve this and feel much better in the process." It can be difficult to peel back the layers of the onion, and yes, it can bring you to tears, but the truth will set you free. It all starts with breaking down the boundaries in your thinking, and is the path to finally living the life of your dreams. And that begins with a choice to uncover your hidden truths. Start now. Begin by asking yourself what you want. Follow that up with what's holding you back? Start asking for the truth and allow honesty and humility in. If pain or dissatisfaction exist, there is a hidden truth. Let's find it. Let's get you to your successful mindset! Isn’t it crazy how when you want something so bad, yet no matter how committed you are, you just can’t seem to get past a certain point? Often we get stuck on a plateau and we can’t seem to get traction. No matter how hard we try, it just seems that what we want to accomplish is getting farther and farther away, and we just can't seem to be able to see around that darned barrier. What if I told you the answer you are looking for just might be with you right now? Yes, it’s true. The answers that you are looking for to unlock the answer of how to get from Point A to Point B may be much closer than you think. It just may be that you are looking at it all wrong. It may be that you are looking at the situation like an obstacle and not a challenge. Three great quotes come to mind: I can’t change the direction of the wind, but I can adjust my sails to always reach my destination. ~ Jimmy Dean It’s not what you look at that matters, it’s what you see. ~ Henry David Thoreau Only when my eyes have adjusted to the dark can I witness the splendor of the moon and the stars. Only when I have sat in hopeless loss can I appreciate every blessing. ~ Angela Yuriko Smith What is an obstacle? Well, the dictionary defines an obstacle as “a think that blocks one’s way or prevents or hinders progress.” So what is a challenge? What’s great is the definition as a noun or as a verb provide some delightful good news! As a noun, a challenge is “an objection or query as to the truth of something, often with an implicit demand for proof. As a verb, a challenge is to “dispute the truth or validity of.” Let’s think about this and how we look at that hump we just can’t seem to make it over. Are we perceiving an obstacle or a challenge? Everything starts with a thought. It is our interpretation of the situation that creates the sentence in our brain – out thought (i.e.- This is an obstacle, or this is a challenge). When we are stuck, it typically is because we are holding on to a belief that may not be true, but we are convinced that it is. Or, worse yet, there may be a hidden belief that is derailing our progress from a subconscious level. It seems like we should be able to use either word, obstacle, challenge, they both are problem, right? Negative, ghost-rider! Here we go with another definition! A problem is a matter or a situation regarded as unwelcome or harmful and needing to be dealt with and overcome. Obstacles are barriers that block and hinder us. Challenges, which are problems are meant to be dealt with and overcome! So when we look at our challenges for what they are – meant to be dealt with, overcome, and solved, then our plateaus are not unsurmountable. Our challenges become puzzles. Where is the missing piece? What is the missing thought? When “I don’t have enough time to work out” becomes, “I have SOME time to work out, even though it’s not the amount of time that I THINK is the only acceptable amount of time”, I begin to deal with the challenge of time. I find a valuable piece of the puzzle. When “I don’t have enough clients” becomes “because I don’t have enough clients I have more time to dedicate to generating interest or developing leads” then I begin to deal with the challenge of client volume. Again, I find a valuable piece of the thinking puzzle and I can start developing "truer" beliefs (remember we are going to dispute the truth or validity of our thought - "I don't have enough clients." The truer statement is that you haven't enough clients because you haven't been doing the right things to get those clients - now you can solve this problem! We tend to look at everything as all or nothing, but this is just a perspective. How you are looking at the problem is a big piece of the picture because YOU may be turning your situation or circumstance into an obstacle by building a barrier thought. This usually looks like – “It must be done this way.” “It’s only going to happen this way.” “This is what I need to do.” "I've tried everything!" If you had it all figured out, then it wouldn’t be an issue, right? Instead, the sentence in our mind is making a challenge into an obstacle. This means that when you don’t have enough clients, your challenge becomes, what actions and activities will help resolve this problem? What are you NOT doing now? You have the time, you don’t have enough clients - so let's get to work problem-solving! If it’s a lack of hours in the day to accomplish all you need to do, your challenge, “I don’t have enough time to do everything” is tackled by looking at how you can gain traction and gain footing on the item that you would have dropped (because you don't have enough time). Something is better than nothing. Progress is better than stagnation. Remember, slow progress is better than no progress. With that in mind, back to the client example, if today you have 50 clients and have a goal to have 300, wouldn’t even 1 new client be progress? This example can be used for losing weight, fitness goals, education, quitting smoking, you name it! Small progress is still progress. It’s not all or nothing. Think of it this way – you may not be where you want to be, but if you decide to deal with and overcome your challenges by changing your perspective and your thinking, the minute you decide this, you won’t be where you used to be- and that’s progress! That’s success! Challenges are meant to be taken on and overcome - it's just a game - it's just a puzzle. Shift your perspective and shift will happen. Success is in the challenge! 10/21/2018 0 Comments Do You Want Super Powers? Sleep on It!A dear friend of mine, said something that reminded me today of a very important element to a success-filled life. As we strive to achieve our goals and push ourselves each day, there is something that is so basic but significant to our power and strength yet many of us take its significance for granted.
Have you ever experienced this scene? Morning: Tired. Afternoon: Dying to rest. Night: Can’t sleep. Rest! It is that success factor that many of us overlook or see as a necessary evil. It’s anything but evil, it is a gift – a VERY precious gift! Cherish it. When we begin valuing our rest to our success, we gain an understanding that by valuing its rejuvenating properties, we invest in our success. In other words, invest in rest to invest in your success. Look, rest is as important as hard work, but we need to understand that whether you view your sleep time as a rapid charge or a trickle charge, understanding that you need this time to step away from the distractions and influences of your awakened state to keep your mind, spirit, and body in alignment for optimal performance mode is key. If you get tired, learn to rest, not to quit. Life can be exhausting. Chasing your dream, living your dream, or even just contemplating and thinking of your dream can be exhausting, but it’s never worth quitting. Instead, hitting the snooze button and powering down your conscious mind is imperative to your achieving your goals. Think about how well you think when you are exhausted. Not so great right? Well that is something that we often recognize, and we make comments like, “I’m just tired right now. I can’t think straight.” Your inner knowledge is speaking here buddy – don’t just play it lip service – take action! So, what can we do to value our rest time? Make it a habit! And how do we make a habit? We repeat it over and over, day in and day out, until it becomes a natural part of what we do. One of the most significant changes that you can make when it comes to your rest is changing how you view this time. Whether this is a rapid charge during the day, or a trickle charge at night, your attitude toward this time is key. Take it seriously and invest in this – great rest time has been shown to enhance your cognitive abilities, problem-solving, creativity, mood, and yes, your overall health. This is an investment worth making in you – ESPECIALLY if you have particularly significant achievement that you are shooting for! First, covet your rest time. Make whatever time that is your rejuvenation time reserved, just for rest. That means strip away the electronics or any other distractors, such as television or phone alerts for messages and social media at bedtime. And if it is a 10-minute time that you are putting your head down on your desk. Close the door and hang a sign on your door, do not interrupt. Protect and enforce this time – no interruptions! Second, make your rest time special. I just said strip away electronics, but there is an exception to this, and this is because there are so many wonderful smartphone apps out there that can enhance your sleep and help you experience a more restful and deep sleep. One thing that I use regularly is high vibrational frequency music designed for sleep. You can go to YouTube and search for this sleeping music, just type in high vibrational frequency music and you can find these videos ranging from 1 hour to 9-hour play time. I turn mine on low and then turn my phone upside down on the nightstand so that I don’t have any light. The super subtle music helps your mind slip into a rest state as you become freed from distractions of your day, or planning the next day in your head. Another way to make your rest time special is to look forward to it like a hot date! If you were going on a date, you would prepare in advance and put some thought and energy into it. Do that with your sleep! Go get yourself some crazy comfy pillows or sheets and blankets. Get a diffuser with lavender or other essential oils that softly scent the air with wonderful smells. Make it special! If you look at your sleep space as utilitarian, you are missing out on its awesome contribution to your life. Treat your bed like it’s your hot date! Love it! This leads me into our third recommendation for making an investment into your rest time. Appreciate your rest as the gift it is. Our bodies weren’t designed to run 24/7 without rest. Rest is a part of our natural system. I realize that sometimes we have more stuff to do than day, but it’s still going to be there, but you won’t be if you keep burning yourself out! Sleep is not a waste of time, it’s a gift. If we remember this each day as we stop and rest and sleep, we will begin to experience greater joy as we gain more clarity and focus. Don’t mistake this gift as a waste of time – it’s time that you are investing to be more awesome! Make the most of the time that you do get to rest and sleep. Value it, make it special, and appreciate the details. Winding down isn’t always easy, so by putting into practice visualization to take you into rest, you can accomplish two things, you practice placing the thoughts that you want in your mind and you distract your distracting mind so that you can rest. What to think about? Visualize what you desire and you living it. Remind yourself what you are grateful for. Keep these thoughts active back and forth, what you desire and what you are grateful for as you fall into the wonderful sounds of silence, a fan, your high frequency music, or whatever super special relaxation tool works best for you. Your sleep is your super power tool – Invest in it. Own it. Use it. Cherish it. ENJOY IT! NAMASTE! Are you doing what you love? Are you exactly where you want to be?
Change can be scary. For many, change is so scary that they find a place that they can be comfortable, sometimes so comfortable, that they miss out on fulfilling their deepest desires. This becomes the excuse zone. These are just a few things we might hear come out of the excuse zone: “I make six figures.” “I make a good living.” “I’m being responsible.” “I do this really well.” “I like my job.” These all sound like plausible reasons to stay put, but what if they are your safety net in the excuse zone? What if the excuse zone limits all of these statements? What if six-figures is just the tip of the iceberg? What if you could excel, with passion, and love what you do? Is the story in your brain absolutely true? Would it be true if you were guaranteed that your deepest desire could come true? Or is it only true for right now, as what you have accepted as your truth? If I told you that by this Friday, you would have $50 million in your bank account, no strings attached, and it was guaranteed and for you to use on anything you desire – tell me, would the statement still be true for doing exactly what you do today? If the answer is yes, congrats! You are in the flow and following your passion. Passion turns work into success. If the answer is no, especially if you say that you would quit your job, we’ve got some exploring to do to optimize your life. Our safety net feels good. We know that we aren’t going to fail. We are making good money, doing well in our jobs, have the respect of others, but at the end of the day if you haven’t failed, you haven’t tried anything. This is especially true when we are comfortable and by all measures of others and the world doing well – but not living our truth. Now, this doesn’t mean that today you need to quit your job and drop the safety net. There often is a way to get in the flow and live your purpose from your current experience. When you are making good money, but not necessarily happy in your current position (the job that you would quit if you won the lottery), you have more financial resources – but believe it or not, it can actually be harder to shift to your purpose than for a broke person trying to make the shift. The excuse are much more plausible for someone doing well – at least they sound good and seem to make sense. If your why is not big enough, your excuses will be. Why do you do what you do? To support your family? Because it’s the only thing you know? When we can be truthful about our ‘why’ we can move mountains. Our motives are fed by beliefs. These include what we believe is possible and deep-seated beliefs of our value – and both may be rooted by someone else’s belief. If you had $50 million in the bank, what is it that you would like to do? After you think of your initial purchases. If there was a business that you would love to start or something that you would like to do, what would it be? Perhaps you’d like to feed the hungry or you’d like to build race cars. WHY?! …and does what you would love to be able to do, if you had $50 million, differ from what you are doing today? If so, WHY?! – Did any of the excuse zone excuses come up? Remember, if your why isn’t big enough, your excuses will be! When your ‘why’ does not align with your truth, you are out of the flow – and you can be doing pretty darned good out of the flow, but dissatisfied. Where do you think mid-life crisis comes from? You haven’t been living the life that you have dreamed of. You haven’t been living a fulfilling life, because it has been out of the flow, not based in passion, but out of necessity… and some do necessity REALLY well! I have many multi-million-dollar clients that have done extremely well, but they are completely unhappy and dissatisfied. They make money well. That doesn’t mean that they are doing what they desire to be doing. That doesn’t mean that their passion is ignited, or they are in the flow. Here are some steps that you can take to help you begin to gain clarity on your purpose and why:
It is so easy to begin thinking super-critical thoughts- these are based on unconscious beliefs. These conversations in your head have no place (at this point) in your definitions. Think with your heart and be fully honest, no matter how your what and why sound. Even if it seems like a silly ‘what’ or it sounds like a cheesy ‘why’ – above all else, keep it real and keep it honest.
If it was literal, and you are seeking freedom, ask yourself what activities can you think of that help you to feel free? Is there any activity that you could do today that would help you feel free? If physically unable – are you able to sit quietly and imagine yourself doing this activity in your mind? Perspective – think without limits and judgement of your current situation.
Headwork in visualizing and planning is NOT senseless daydreaming. People like Elon Musk do this regularly. How do you come up with a vision to go to Mars without putting a lot of thought into this and thinking about the details of people and organizations that he might need to learn about and get to know? This is just the beginning of finding clarity and living the life of your dreams, but there has to be a beginning if you ever want to cross the finish line – and we all are going to cross a finish line. The question is, will your finish line be that of the rat race or the finish line to the life that you have always dreamed of? It’s not who you are that holds you back, it’s what you are thinking.
Commitment is what transforms a hope into reality. Think about a time that you wanted to do something, and you hesitated. What was in that pause? What stopped you from going all in and believing in what you want – and more importantly you? Questioning, “Should I?” can become a derailing question. To get past the derailment of the pause, we must become focused on what we want so that we can go all in. The better question when opportunity arises is, “Do I want this?” There is no time for “Yes, but…. (usually followed by, “I’m not sure how.”), but instead, a simple Yes or No. If yes, it’s time to go all in! If no, move on and look forward, never second guessing the decision. It takes being all in to be successful at anything. Look at life as if it were a game of poker, when you are confident and ready to receive and win, you are all in, and when you don’t see yourself winning, you fold. You have to decide, yes, this is the hand, and you put your chips on the table and bet on yourself. When a surfer decides to catch that killer wave, its time to be all in. One hesitation, and the moment is gone to ride that perfect wave. Paddle hard in preparation as you see the wave swelling, and say yes, I’m riding this wave out. What if the wave turns out to be a dud? What if the hand that is dealt is not a winner? Are you going to go over and over in your head for the next week, month, year, or decade how “if you wouldn’t have”? How is that going to move you forward? Likewise, we can’t sort of decide to catch the wave or make that bet. We must commit and that all starts in our head. “I’m going all in.” “There’s a difference between interest and commitment. When you’re interested in doing something, you do it only when it’s convenient. When you’re committed to something you accept no excuses; only results” ~ Kenneth Blanchard. Deciding to go all in starts with saying yes, despite not knowing how. There may be skills that you build along the path to ready you when opportunity arises, and then there may be skills that you gain along the way of building that dream. If you want to learn to surf, you are ready to go all in with every promising wave. You position yourself on the board as you begin to paddle into the flow, and then what? All in time! As you make your way onto the wave, you jump to your feet – and then kersplash! You are down. Then what? You ready yourself for the next opportunity to go all in! When you commit, you keep at it until you are finally successful, gaining additional knowledge and skill along the way. Instead of “Should I?” ask yourself “Do I want it?”. If you want it, it’s time to go all in. If you are ready to make real change, it’s time to change your thinking to get different results. Going all in is a commitment to yourself, a belief in you, and what you want. Your attitude determines your direction. It’s time to get what you want. It’s time to GO ALL IN! #letsdothis #makeithappen Someone totally did you wrong. All you want to do is pay them back so that they can suffer some sort of discomfort as you have had to suffer with the injustice that you have experienced.
You know it’s wrong and mean, but you can help it. It consumes you. I mean, they really did you wrong! How dare they get away with that?! You can’t focus, and revenge seems to be the only answer. The toxicity of what you are feeling, that negative energy is all consuming. The energy that you spend trying to get revenge can be better spent creating an amazing life, but you feel trapped. You don’t die from the snakebite, you die from the venom that continually surges through your veins. The anti-venom is forgiveness. Forgive and forget about the past. Your ego is going to try to suck you back and attach you to your past so that you can’t take steps forward to enjoying today and having an awesome future. It’s time to remember you and your successful mindset. By delegating your power away in anger, hurt, and revenge, you drain your energy to create the life that you want. People who create their own drama reap their own karma. The word karma means action. It’s the actions that we take that attract like action. If you are full of toxic venom, what are you going to exude and attract? Pretty simple - venom. If you squeeze an orange, would you expect anything other than orange juice to come out? Do you think that you are going to get chocolate milk out of an orange? I know that would be pretty darn cool, but the answer is no. You are going to get orange juice, because that is what the orange is filled with. It seems like an overly simple thing to say, just forgive the person, but what you will produce is anything less than simple, and the power that you gain is immeasurable. Forgiveness is an attribute of the strong, because it is a choice to stay powerful and present and not get dragged into the garbage of the past – a period of time you can’t do a darned thing about. It’s done! You can’t change it. So how do we go about truly forgiving so that we can step into our successful thinking? It’s as easy as 1-2-3 Decide that you aren’t going to get stuck in what’s already happened. Forgiveness does not change the past, but it does enlarge the future. Choose to move on, focusing not on past pain, but on being joyful in the moment and creating a beautiful future that is free from toxicity and negative karma. Make forgiveness a part of your daily ritual. Forgiveness is not an occasional act, it is a constant attitude. Just like brushing your teeth or showering, forgiveness should be a part of what you do daily. I like to incorporate this into my nightly affirmations and prayers. I express my gratitude for the things that I have and will have in my life. I impress upon my subconscious mind that I am forgiving of myself and others – not allowing myself to drum up anything that someone has done in the past – keeping my thoughts current and forward focused. I state that I am a beacon of love and that I attract to myself that same love and forgiveness. Shift from blame to understanding. To forgive is to set a prisoner free and discover that the prisoner was you. We become trapped in the mucky mire of negative energy when we hold on to resentment and anger. We become imprisoned within our own thinking. Let it go and you will have unlocked the cell door to where you were trapped inside your own head, creating negative emotions through your thoughts. Forgive others, not because they deserve forgiveness but because you deserve peace. Forgiveness is another chance to make a new beginning. There is nobility in compassion, a beauty in empathy, and a grace in forgiveness that brings your back into positive alignment with your success. Forgiveness is the best act of love that you will ever give to yourself. Happiness doesn’t result from what we get, but from what we give. It is my wish that this week, you will bless yourself with the choice to forgive so that you may have an abundance of peace, joy, and love so that you can completely kick butt on whatever it is that you want to achieve. Now go be awesome! Have you ever wanted something so bad that you would do nearly anything to get it? Your thought being that by having that one thing that you would be happy? You are not alone.
The quest for happiness is the topic of much literature, films, blogs, and the essence of the spiritual journey for many. What if I told you that humility and happiness go hand in hand and that happiness is not a destination, but a choice that starts through humility? Pastor Rick Warren of Saddleback Church in Irvine, California provides three helpful tips to remain humble:
“It was pride that changed angels into devils; it is humility that makes men as angels” Saint Augustine. Happiness starts with a choice to look at what is and question who is in control – your successful thoughts or your ego? Your ego robs you of joy, demanding that you deserve more and pointing out your suffering and affliction. Your thoughts are actually the key to driving your happiness because it is in your thoughts that you can dispel the lies of your ego. When your ego decides to tell you how much more you deserve, ask yourself, is it true that I deserve more than the next person? If all are created equal, does anyone truly deserve more than another? I am not saying that you should not have desires and dreams. What I am saying is that your ego has a sneaky way of robbing your joy and happiness by twisting your thoughts and beliefs that happiness is based on you being worthier than another. When we invite humility into our thinking we can challenge ego and find happiness that is already inside. Humility calms the chaos. Rather than being in conflict with others, we are in unity and see that it is not “what I deserve,” instead it is “my desire”. What is humility? One definition is the “freedom from control of the competitive reflex.” A dear friend of mine and I like to spar on the concept of “friendly competition.” My position is that there is no friendliness associated with a desire to overtake another. My friend’s position is that through competition it challenges us to push our limits. If one person in the end is left feeling inadequate, where is the friendship? Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not advocating “participation trophies” for all so that everyone can feel good. What I am saying is that when we compete against others our humility goes out the window. What we need to be doing is competing with ourselves. Pushing our own limits, not measuring them against others. Ask yourself, is it true that I will be happy if I beat my brother at the game? Or is it my choice to be happy because I have the ability to be in the game and challenge myself to do great? Instead of competing against others, stay in your space and out of their Kool-Aid! Your space is your business, their Kool-Aid is their business. Challenge yourself to be a better version of you. A great way to do this is to know that through humility you have more control over the chaos of being in everyone’s business. Humility is a space of emotional neutrality and a space that we can exercise service, which builds our humility muscles. In this space we gain insight that we are not above or below others, instead, we are hand in hand. In this space you will find that rather than creating chaos through competition (having to be better), that by encouraging their achievement and helping them succeed in areas that they need a helping hand, you will feel peace. Through service, we humble ourselves to get out of the “me, me, me, I need to be superior” thinking and into unity and understanding of how happiness is cultivated through peace in our thinking. Let me just tell you, sometimes being humble hurts. Sometimes going up against the ego reveals things to us that aren’t so pretty, but it’s necessary if you want to find peace and happiness that resides within. “He who finds joy within himself discovers that his body is charged with an electric current and life energy that is not from food, but from God” Paramahansa Yogananda. We each have a river of joy and happiness running through us – finding it does not mean finding something outside of ourselves, or stepping over others to do so. Rather, humility is the key that will unlock the door to the happiness within. Humility is the wisdom of accepting the truth that what your ego is telling you is wrong. Strength comes from telling your ego to take a hike, that “I choose happy.” Go after that thing that you desire, with all your heart. Just make sure that you add a heaping helping of humility so that you understand that success does not equal happiness, but happiness equals success. Have a blessed week. Namaste. 8/19/2018 0 Comments Love is Never Lost in Having LovedTwo days ago, a loved one of mine passed. At first I thought that I had lost something. It became clear to me this morning that instead, I am a greater person because of the piece of this person that will always be a part of me. It became evident, just as the parables of the Bible or any other spiritual doctrine, our lives are about learning and growing through love, through the stories developed throughout our life exchanges as others become a part of our experience.
A parable is defined as 1) a story, usually short and fictitious that illustrates a moral attitude or religious principle 2) something (such as a news story or a series of real events) likened to a parable in providing an instructive example or lesson. Just as Jesus walked the earth and illustrated how to live and love, that is exactly what each of us are meant to do. I can’t say that I lost a loved one this week, because I did not. I gained so much more as I think of the parable of this person’s life and its meaning in my own and in the lives that this amazing person touched. I’ve always explained to those that I counsel that are grieving that the person that they are grieving is not gone, but remain alive within us. I explain that they are grieving the separation from the physical – our loved ones, friends, family, and people that we care about are always with us because they live on within us, in our memories, in our heart, and in our soul. The beautiful memories that we share, the wonderful things that they brought to our lives, they live on because we have learned though their parable how to be an even better version of ourselves. The instructive example of those that we interact with is part of our learning and growing experience. A person never dies – they live on through our love for them. As we reflect on the beauty of those that have passed, it is important to understand their purpose in our lives, no matter how brief, because we have been blessed with a gift from God – that person is our gift and we must realize that the physical component only served a portion of the purpose as the illustration and their story was developed and performed. We get to choose how to live the legacy that they shared with us because they loved us so much. Yes, I miss the physical element, but I know that there is more of me now, even more complete, because I was honored to have this person grace and bless my life with love. There is even more of me now to give, share, and love others. May this message comfort those who struggle with loss. Understand, you haven’t lost – you are so much more for having loved who you grieve. Grieving is a natural part of healing. Sadness is okay, just remember that it not detract you from this being a time of reflection so that you can understand the purpose and meaning of your dear ones. “The best and most beautiful things in this world cannot be seen or even heard, but must be felt with the heart” ~ Helen Keller I wish you a beautiful and peace-filled week. Namaste. 8/10/2018 0 Comments Coaching Employee PerformanceA relationship without trust is like a car without gas, you can stay in it all you want, but it won’t get you anywhere.
The relationship that we have with our employees, and the quality of that relationship is like any other relationship. The more time, energy, and effort that we put into building a meaningful relationship, built on mutual respect and trust, the better the results. As leaders we are in a unique position to drive employee performance by shaping and changing attitudes in our employees about the work they do and their unique contribution. A 2006 Personnel Psychology report revealed that, “Although coaching can facilitate employee development and performance, the stark reality is that managers often differ substantially in their inclination to coach their subordinates.” Effective coaching is proven to contribute to higher employee engagement. Engaged employees have a higher emotional commitment to the organization and its goals, reducing costs from lost productivity in areas of organizational turn-overs, call-outs, and lack of motivation. “ A brand is what a business does, reputation is what people remember” ~ Ted Rubin. As leaders, how our employees feel about their workplace affects the reputation and brand of the organization. You don’t build a business, you build people, and then people build the business. Much hoopla has been spouted over the past decade about employee engagement as engaged, connected, and happy employees have been noted to contribute to the bottom line. It doesn’t matter whether you are a non-profit, large corporation, mom and pop operation, or local government, happy employees drive results and help organizations challenged with more work than employees to get stuff done. So how do we help our employees become happy? A 2014 study at George Mason University examined two factors that they found contributed to employee engagement, connectedness and gratitude. Both factors contributed to levels of absenteeism, which indicates that when managers can increase connectedness by increasing the gratitude that employees receive, they show up and don’t just take up space. Coaching employee performance through driving hope, job fulfillment, and happiness can help organizations achieve the results they want. When employees feel that someone cares and has their back, they give more and give more joyfully. Happy employees translate to happy customers. Steps that you can take to coach employee performance: 1)Give Them Something to Look Forward To – Employee Development Planning Develop a game plan for your employees. Most organizations do a poor job at developing action plans for their employees. During the annual performance review process, goals are usually developed by the manager and then those goals are never followed-up on. Equally as bad, poor goals are developed or no goals. The result, no growth plan is made for the employee. Zig Ziglar said, “If you aim at nothing then you will hit it every time.” Every employee should have a development plan and this plan should include success partners. Employees should be a part of the planning process and they should let the manager know what their vision is for their future. What are their career goals with the organization? The manager is responsible for developing an action plan with the employee. The plan should cover 1) career goals; 2) education/training needs/desires; 3) strengths that can be leveraged to accomplish goals; and 4) actions that the manager will commit to in helping the employee successfully achieve their goals. Partnering with employees shifts the manager relationship from one of a watch-dog, judging past performance, to a co-pilot in the success of current and future employee performance. This shift alone can dramatically shift employee attitudes toward the organization and their manager. 2)Gratitude to Change Attitude – Tell Your Employees that You Appreciate Them Business optimization expert, Ken Blanchard teaches, “Catch them doing something right.” I tell my clients, praise often and be genuinely appreciative of your employee’s efforts, even when things don’t go as planned. If you have ever missed the mark then you know how good it feels when someone gives you a “chin up” pep talk. Likely, when a ball team loses a game, the conversation turns to what the team learned from losing and how they will turn it around next time. It feels good to have someone appreciate that you tried. Your employees will appreciate you more, the more you appreciate them. Driving employee attitudes through gratitude is a highly effective way to increase engagement, loyalty, and performance. When someone appreciates you, then you don’t mind going that extra mile. Much research exists around employee attitudes when leaders express their appreciation for employee efforts versus those leaders that try to drive results through domination and fear of reprisal. 3)Solicit Input – Seek Employee Ideas to Improve Performance You’d be surprised how silly little things can both upset employees to the point of sabotaging your business or make them happy to the point of going above and beyond to create an exceptional employee experience. Asking your employees for input and having them be a part of the solution can prove to be an effective way to drive positive performance results. The key is that you ask, listen, and come up with solutions together. When I coach clients, the client comes up with the solution, I listen, and ask lots of questions. I coach the answers from my clients. Employees are the best source of answers because they are actually doing the work and can commit to making change. Coaching your employees means that you actually have to have conversations and listen. Don’t simply survey staff. If you aren’t willing to do hear what your employees have to say, calmly and objectively, and do what needs to be done to correct painful areas for employees, then don’t bother asking. Think of it this way, if you had fell short in a personal relationship and asked your friend or spouse how they feel and if there is anything that you could do to remedy the shortfall, and then you do nothing with the information – what happens? Hurt feelings and the situation usually worsens. If you aren’t willing to actually do something about it and show your employees that you care, that you have their back, and that you are partners in achieving organizational goals, then you won’t see the results that you desire. Effective coaching includes a high level of emotional intelligence on the part of the manager/leader. Feelings of employees are developed from the thoughts that they have based on their experience. If you want them to act better, your role is to help drive better employee feelings through your supportive efforts. Happiness has a domino effect. Aim to be the start.
Are you experiencing a block in productivity, creativity, or getting traction in achieving your goal? Often we have physical signs all around us (clutter) of unresolved inner issues in our thinking.
Clearing the clutter in your physical space will go a long way toward clearing the clutter in your mind and relationships. ~ Peter Walsh Clutter is a physical manifestation of stuck energy. The word clutter is derived from clotter, which means to coagulate. The log-jam in your thinking is transferred into coagulated quanta in your physical world. Clutter is representative of indecision. Once you make the decision to make decisions and take action you can free the log-jam and unclog your thinking and your outer world; this begins with breaking down your current thinking, unthinking, and practicing new thoughts. If you want to change your world, start with this simple exercise:
Unthinking starts with getting to the root of the clutter. It’s not as simple as looking at the trash in your car and saying to yourself, “I’m lazy and it’s just easy to leave the trash in my car.” It’s about the underlying feeling about your messy desk, house, or car. When you walk into your office and can’t find a thing, how does it make you feel? When you offer a friend from work a ride home and you must move a mountain of trash from the front seat before they can get in, as you make excuses, how do you feel? If you are like most, clutter doesn’t feel good, the stuck energy makes you feel like you are up to your knees in tar. So how do you break loose from the tar? Let’s focus on understanding the feeling. Is the feeling in your gut embarrassment, disappointment, or frustration when you focus on the feeling surrounding your clutter? Let’s choose embarrassment. What is the thought that you have prescribed to that feeling? One of my clients stated, “I feel out of control when my desk is a mess.” I explained to him that his thought, “I feel out of control,” behind his feeling of embarrassment over his messy desk is simply a sentence in his mind that he has the power to change. His sentence to himself, “I feel out of control when my desk is a mess,” just needed to be rewritten. His current thinking required re-thinking to come up with a better sentence, so that we could change his thinking, his energy, and his resulting actions. After some exploration we came up with something to give him back some control. His new sentence became two very strong statements. “I have the ability to re-organize my desk so that I can find what I need. By re-organizing and cleaning my desk, I will have the ability to change the feeling that I have every time I open my office door.” The strength in the new statements (new thinking) changed the energy for my client so that he was able to de-clutter his desk, throwing away items that he no longer needed and creating a space for everything that deserved a special place. Now, what if he didn’t believe these new sentences? Simple, they would keep him stuck. Editing thinking requires that we re-write the thought into something that can be accepted by the brain. It “feels” believable. Finding the right wording is important to make if “feel” believable so that you will own the new thought and take action to support it. Often we don’t realize that our thoughts are just sentences that can be rewritten at any time, re-writing the trajectory of our current path. We have far more control than we realize. By become our own thoughts editor we are able to change how we feel and the associated energy. By correcting our thinking and energy, we can unclog what has us stuck. We gain traction through the actions from our new productive thinking. You have brains in your head and feet in your shoes, you can steer yourself in any direction you choose! ~ Dr. Seuss All power is in the awareness of your power. Look around you- what is it that you see or are not seeing that you would like to see? How do you feel about that? Let’s get this rethinking started. “If I had six hours to chop down a tree, I’d spend the first four hours sharpening the axe.” ~ Abraham Lincoln.
The mind is an amazing system, designed to be highly efficient. The phrase “practice makes perfect” is directly linked to the power of our mind to be as efficient as possible. To illustrate this, think of when you learned to drive a car or ride a bike. At first, you had to think about every move that you made. After some time and lots of practice, what once involved a ton of conscious thinking became natural. This is extremely evident after arriving at home and not even remembering the drive! Although our natural efficiency-focused mind is a blessing, (you don’t have to think to breath or the myriad of other bodily functions or automatic tasks throughout the day ) it can also create conflict for us, especially when we are in auto-pilot in areas we’d like different results. Think about all the things that you can do at one time. For example, simultaneously my heart is beating, my blood is pumping, breathing, thinking of what to write, typing, and watching what is going on around me. There are so many auto-processes happening at once in our bodies – it is a highly efficient machine! What happens however when your brain learns things too efficiently that don’t serve you? Habits, anything that you do over an over, or things that bring you comfort or pleasure can be learned and accepted by the mind rather quickly. The reason that things that bring pleasure and comfort are so readily accepted by your mind is that our brains identify pain and discomfort with something that should be avoided. We are meant to be whole and free from disease and injury. Our bodies have natural healing mechanisms, your immune system for one, that goes to work to attack invaders and anything that contradicts wellness. If eating fatty foods that taste yummy bring you comfort, your mind will quickly accept that this is good. You have cravings in part because of chemicals from sugar or fats, but in great part from the pleasure they bring and the acceptance and desire within our minds to not feel pain. Habits form because you practice them. Overeating, procrastination, smoking, lying, sloppiness, these are all practiced acts. If it’s easy for your mind to learn, the quicker and deeper the habit sets in. If you have to make yourself get up an hour early to go to the gym, that takes much greater effort than sleeping in. Hitting the snooze is an easy habit to form. The brain loves easy! The less work it needs to do to accomplish a task – job done! Efficient! Congratulations, if you repeatedly have negative thoughts, insecurities, and fears, you may have a habit to break. Don’t worry, many of us do. I say congratulations because exercising control over your thinking will help you take back your amazing power within. The conditioning of our minds through environmental influences such as family, friends, work, and school over the course of our lives leaves us with quite a bit of unproductive thinking – but the good news is – you have the power to change that! We are what we repeated think about because this will lead to what we repeatedly do. Again, efficiency! What do you want your brain to be efficient at? Negative thinking or positive thinking? Wouldn’t you rather automatically make good food choices, dating choices, choices that get you ahead, or ones that you regret and beat yourself up over? If you allow your thoughts to run around unsupervised in your brain, on auto-pilot, it is the equivalent of a toddler running around the house with kitchen knives- dangerous. Supervising your thoughts and choosing to eliminate the ones that harm you is the first step to retraining your brain. Retraining your brain takes repetition and perseverance. Your breakthrough will usually follow the greatest displeasure. When repeating your new habit and new thoughts, keep this in mind - the more you feel like giving up, the closer you are to a breakthrough into your new thinking. A breakthrough is a moment in time when the impossible becomes the possible. It doesn’t matter how your day, your week, your month, your year, or your life started, right now is the time to decide how you want to be, what thoughts you want to have, what believes that you want to hold, and what actions you want to become automatic. Decide to think today in a way that will better serve your tomorrow. You can choose, on purpose, to not focus on not feeling well, your boring job, or your miserable relationship. Instead practice thoughts that you can accept as a new belief (the key is that you feed thoughts into your brain that you believe). For example, if your job is boring or you are upset because you have been passed over for a job, focus on the task (yep, the boring one) that you have mastered. The new thought becomes, “I’m a master at my job. I am a valuable employee.” This thought will help you to see your positive skills and traits as you put together a resume for a new position. If you don’t feel like you can get ahead, your new thought is, “I’m not a quitter. I know that my breakthrough will only come if I keep trying.” Practice throughout your day, every day, replacement thoughts for the ones that do not serve you. You cannot stop the waves, but you can learn to surf. Ride the tides on purpose and effectively. Today, right now, you are in control. You get to choose what you will be incredibly efficient at – choose the thoughts that will make you feel who you are- incredible. People often say, “That made me feel terrible,” or “He or she made me feel terrible.” I’m here to say that it is impossible for anyone or anything to make you feel anything, unless you choose to feel that way.
Feelings are based on thoughts. Think of your thoughts like sentences in the brain. When you feel a certain way, it is because you have developed a descriptive sentence – “He made me feel terrible.” In reality, you chose to feel terrible by telling yourself that what someone else did was prescriptive of how you were to feel. This is like giving away your power to someone else. Don’t delegate your power over how you feel. Assume your rightful ownership. How you feel and the sentences that you write are up to you. Someone does something mean, selfish, or unkind, but that doesn’t make you feel anything. It is the thought behind what they have said or done that you assign meaning to. It is this thought that will drive your actions and your behavior. “But you don’t understand how bad they treated me.” It doesn’t matter. This is simply a circumstance. A circumstance is what exists or is perceived, but it is not the end all be all – your thoughts are. Your thoughts are the beginning which determine your end result, so why not choose thoughts that serve you better? “They were so rude.” Okay, so that was the circumstance. Your thoughts determine how you feel and your actions will follow. If you believe that someone was rude, how do you act? Do you treat them kindly or do you snap back in defense? If you chose the latter, why? Will it change how you feel? Not likely. It’s very likely that you will go on angry and irritated, replaying the scene in your mind; but does it get you anywhere? Motivational speaker and author Wayne Dyer would use the illustration of an orange. During a presentation he would hold up an orange and say, “If I squeeze this orange, what would come out?” He recalls a little girl, matter-of-factly stating, “Orange juice. Duh!” He would then explain that what comes out is what’s inside, yes, orange juice. We wouldn’t expect grape juice or apple juice from an orange. Only what is inside can come out. Our emotions drive our actions based on the thoughts that we are having. If we choose to harbor ill feelings and anger, what’s inside? Ill feelings and anger – what comes out? Ill feelings and anger. Look, you can’t change other people. That’s their job. You can’t stop an alcoholic from drinking unless that person makes the choice and has that thought, just as you can’t stop rudeness unless that person decides to think differently – their juice is just coming out! Are your words going to magically change their juice? We try so hard to control what we can’t control, when what we can control is where true power and peace reside! We choose to feel terrible based on others, when truly we can choose to not be fazed. We can choose to learn from the experience. If a person cuts you off on the freeway, what is you getting upset going to do? The circumstance of them cutting you off does not automatically make you do or feel anything, unless you choose for it to do so. “But I think it automatically,” you say? Then it’s time to supervise your thoughts and actually think on purpose and not by default or on auto-pilot if you want to get to thoughts that serve you better - Better juice starts with better fruit. Instead of getting angry when someone cuts you off, recognize how you instantly feel – you might feel angry – acknowledge that feeling and develop a new sentence in your brain. I don’t like when people cut me off, I’m not going to drive like that. See how you shifted the power to something that you can do something about? This takes practice because of well-worn neuro-pathways in the brain, but through repetitively thinking productive thoughts, on purpose, you can retrain your brain to think better. We can make conscious decisions, better decisions, if we monitor our thoughts and take control and ownership of how we feel at any moment. Wouldn’t it feel better to feel in control and how you want? Only you can make this happen. Have you been struggling with the same old issues at work, home, or in your relationship?
Nothing goes away until you learn the lesson that you were meant to learn. I’m sure you’ve heard the term “going around the same ol’ mountain?” Life can be somewhat like the movie Groundhog’s Day, and like Bill Murray in the movie, until you learn what you need to learn, you will be stuck in repeat. Day in and day out, “I’ve got you babe.” Well, “You’ve got you babe.” Why is it that we get stuck in the repeat cycle? Because sometimes the lessons are re-introduced in another way so that we might have a new perspective and different thinking. It’s like taking a re-test where the questions are re-phrased or the multiple-choice answers are in a different order. Getting stuck in life’s lesson can be frustrating. You may find yourself asking, “How do I keep ending up here?” Quite simply, the thinking that got you there in the first place didn’t change. Until you realize what in your thinking is remaining the same, you will keep waking up to the same ol’ tune. How do you get out of Groundhog’s Day? First, let’s determine what is happening. What is the repeat? Are you broke? Depressed? Self-sabotage? You can never seem to get to the next step? Whatever the circumstance, let’s agree that right now is where your power is. Right now you can choose to get to the bottom of this and break the repeat cycle. No matter where you have been or what you have gone through, that was then, this is now. Even if right now you are penniless because of what happened then, right now you are penniless with a new outlook. Let’s hand you back the reigns on life’s ride, the power is yours to steer your future. Whatever your circumstance, you feel a certain way about that circumstance. Say you have been ill and you feel beat down. You remember when you could conquer the world, and now you feel like a defeated lump. Okay, so you feel that way. That is a choice to feel that way. What’s I’d like to ask is, “How is that serving you?” If you don’t like the feeling that you are having, let’s dish up a new one. Let’s stay with the sick example, because we could easily replace sick overweight, procrastination, and any number of things. Let’s explore this feeling of being beat down from having been sick or being in the process of overcoming an illness or condition. Let’s face it, not feeling well sucks, but if you are going to beat this thing, you need to change your thinking. Like anything in life, you will have some good days and some bad days, but those are defined by the thoughts that you prescribe to them. If you are a recovering alcoholic or coming back from a debilitating illness or accident, your thinking is what will change everything for you. I’m not talking about just thinking positive thoughts, although they don’t hurt. I’m talking about your choice of feelings. If you feel discouraged, what is the thought behind that feeling? Instead of focusing on what you used to be or have, let’s instead have you focus on what you are doing. “I am overcoming. I am healing. I am working toward being whole again. I am working on getting healthy.” ‘I am’ is powerful. It’s powerful because it is in the present tense and it is right now. It’s not focusing on what “I was” or what “I used to,” it’s here and now and it’s where you have great power. When you are sick you feel anything but powerful. When you lose your job, you feel anything but powerful. When you sabotaged your diet, once again, you feel anything but powerful. Stop spinning around chasing your tail. Heads is up. I great illustration of being stuck in spin and exercising heads up is like that of a bodysurfer being caught underneath an ocean wave. If you have ever experienced this, you know just how terrifying it can be to be trapped in the swirling wave, unsure of which way is up and which is down. To get out, you have to get your head up above the wave. You have to find the light and get your head above the water. When we allow ourselves to feel trapped in our circumstances, our thinking becomes like the swirling wave. We can’t think outside of the swirl. When we realize that our circumstance is something outside of our control, but we can control how we feel in that circumstance by changing our thoughts about the circumstance, we see a light and our head pops up. Hope is a light and it is ALWAYS in your control and power to have hope because it’s a feeling attached to a thought. Nobody can change your thinking. Nobody can make you feel anything. That is your choice. People can do things, but you control your thoughts. Going around the same ol’ mountain can change when you decide to change it. Once you determine how you feel about where you are, and you explore the thought driving this feeling, you can ask yourself, “What can I learn from this?” Again, with our sickness example, “What can I learn from this?” It may be as simple as, what makes you feel better? When you get more rest? When you eat certain foods? You can change how you think about your illness if you shift your thinking to a learning mindset. “I know when I do this, I feel better. I choose to do this. I am going to keep finding new ways to feel better and better.” “When I cheat on my diet, I feel like crud.” Pretty self-defeating thinking, wouldn’t you say? Instead, I love the way I feel when I see my pants getting looser. I feel powerful knowing that I am a beautiful being that can change my thinking and change my life. I don’t need to keep going around this mountain.” Once we learn to break the shackles of thinking the same way, Groundhog’s Day becomes a thing of the past. You must learn a new way to think before you can master a new way to be. 6/30/2018 0 Comments The Magic Recipe for SuccessYou have a goal and are looking to achieve it. That may mean some changes are in order. For many, the biggest challenge isn’t actually making the initial change, it’s in the actions that follow to support the initial change.
Change management consultants often lead students through an illustration of the discomfort of change by having the students write their name with the hand they would usually write with. They then have the students write their name with the other hand. If you have never done this, try it. With your dominant hand, sign your name three times. Next, with your non-dominant hand, sign your name three times. How did it feel? Awkward, right? Change can bring discomfort, but it is in discomfort where the real magic begins. Change is hard at first, messy in the middle, and gorgeous at the end. ~ Robin Sharma How do we get through the messy part, the part where transformation takes place? It doesn’t matter what the change is, weight loss, new job, quitting drinking or smoking, or getting an education, it’s been thought that it’s the action that leads to results- this is not quite true. Your thinking is the true driver. When you are in the midst of the messy, it’s your thinking that either makes it messy, or helps you clear the path for your success. Let’s look at losing weight. What’s needed? Choices. You will need to choose to make better food choices and get exercise. You go to the store and fill your basket with healthy food options. Your initial actions to surround yourself with healthy food seems like a winning recipe for success. Strength and growth come only through continuous effort and struggle. ~ Napoleon Hill Why is it then that when you feel a hunger pain or get a craving for something that doesn’t fit into your plan that you eat more than you should or something that you should not? You took action to not slip back; so how did this happen? You were focused on doing and on action. Focusing on actions is not the answer. Discomfort drives a feeling. You feel a certain way which is attached to a thought. That thought is going to drive your action. If you focus on the action, you’ve missed where the true magic happens – in your thinking! We need to work on your thinking to drive true, sustainable change. Changing your thinking will change how you feel and drive your results. If you don’t feel like working out, will you? The only way that you will is if you do it, despite your feeling. This is a choice. When you understand that your power to do anything is driven by your thinking and how that makes you feel, we can get you to where you want to be. Often, we wait for results to drive us. Again, we are putting the cart before the horse. If you want to feel motivated, feel like you can achieve what you want, it starts with your thinking. Walt Disney said, “Think, believe, dream, dare.” Believing in your thinking is what drives the feelings which will support you through the discomfort of transformation. You can choose to look at the discomfort as a negative thing or as a positive step toward being one step closer to your goal. The feeling you assign through your thinking will drive the actions that follow. Until you change your thinking, you will recycle your experiences. Changing your thinking will change your life. At the heart of any change is your thinking. Your mind is a powerful thing. When you fill it with new positive thoughts about what you are experiencing, your feelings will change and your corresponding actions. This week decide on your goal and determine how achieving this goal will make you feel. Ask yourself why. Why you want to achieve is going to be the feeling that you need to have as a driving force to your successful thinking. When feeling discomfort, I’d like you to focus on why you want the change. Every time you feel discomfort, celebrate- you are smack dab in the middle of change! The next step – SUCCESS! Is there a recipe for success? Are there steps to take, that if followed, would ensure our success? Yes. The answer is simple, learn to fail, and learn to fail epically well.
Throughout life, the journey is filled with peaks and valleys, times of challenge and times of triumph. Along life’s path, on our quest for success, our choices, not our circumstances, set forth into motion our trajectory toward our desires. We aren’t victims of life’s circumstances, unless we choose to be. So, what exactly is success? Is it measured by prestige? A car? The corner office? A feeling? The dictionary defines success as “the accomplishment of an aim or purpose.” I like this definition because it gets to the root of success- its basis- thinking. Success is merely an accepted belief, a thought that we prescribe meaning, but how do we find it? How do we achieve it? I grew up under the mantras of, “If at first you don’t succeed, try and try again,” and “Just do it.” Have I ever given up? Heck yes. I, like many, have gotten tired along the way. We don’t see the results that we expected, so we stop. Sometimes we decide that what were doing wasn’t working so we try something new, abandoning the former path. Along life’s journey, through heartache, joy, and enlightenment, I have come to understand that when we give up, we miss out on the opportunities and blessings of failing. We fail to recognize the gift of the fail. Thomas Edison so eloquently articulated the gift of failing when he said, “I have not failed, I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work….Many of life’s failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.” With this said, let’s look at the definition of failure:
Let’s look at it this way, if I define darkness as lack or void of light, it does not mean that light does not exist. Darkness only exits within its defined parameters. One teensy tiny glimmer of light nullifies darkness. The same holds true for failure. Failure is a belief. We must accept a thought that our expectation was not met. One teensy tiny glimmer of hope nullifies failure. Hope is a feeling of expectation and desire for a certain thing to happen. Hope is the catalyst for success and is yet another accepted belief. When properly combined, the two definitions of failure provide us with a recipe for success. We run from failure, fear failure. Instead we should be embracing epically mastering failure. How well we fail, and our thoughts that prescribe our individual meaning of failure, determine our outcomes. Our expectation is a thought which when prescribed a meaning, determines how we feel about the thought. If I expected certain results and failed to achieve those expected results, then I simply had an omission of a required action. Wayne Gretzky stated that, “You miss 100 percent of the shots you don’t take.” What if the results that you expected or desired took too long? Who is setting the bar? Who is assigning the meaning? And if the results take longer than expected to be achieved, is it truly failure if you simply haven’t succeeded yet? Aren’t failures, an omission of expected or required actions, a part of the learning process? Learning to fail means that we are on the path of success, that success exists. Therefore, if success exists, failure cannot at the same time, unless you call it failure. Just because your results are taking longer than you expected, this doesn’t mean failure, it means omission. There is something missing from the actions that you have taken. If at first you don’t succeed, try and try again, truly spells out the recipe. It doesn’t mean abandon the dream and what you desire, it means learn from what didn’t work. We need to strive to fail because it means we are trying, we are learning, and we are staying in the path of success. Failing is just practicing succeeding. To get really good at something, you need to practice! Practice creates confidence. Confidence empowers you. Many have bought into the myth that failure is a bad thing. I’m here to tell you it means that you are on the road to success. If you were to have never tried to take another step after falling as a toddler, you’d have never walked, and never ran. Success is defined by you. Only you know what success means because you create that meaning. Nobody can define success for you. If you redefine failure as a step to mastering success and a gift, then you have given yourself hope. Hope paves the way to success. Only in darkness can you see the stars. ~ Martin Luther King Jr. 6/17/2018 0 Comments What's It Gonna Be?Every day when you awake you have an opportunity to reserve your dreams for your sleeping hours or you can live them in your waking hours. What would you prefer? I, for one, choose to live my dreams, but that requires action. You see, actions are a result of a decision, a thought to act. You can choose to sit idly by and let opportunity fly past or you can choose to make your dreams your reality. Let's think for a moment what is stopping you. Is it fear? Is it lack of knowledge? Is it a lack of confidence? What I am going to say next may seem a bit harsh, but these are all excuses so that you can avoid the truth. If you used any of these excuses, at the root is a feeling. Let me walk you through this. I will start with a simple recipe. A thought leads to a feeling which leads to an action and gives you your result. We typically make up an excuse because of a circumstance. I'm afraid because... I don't know how... I'm not sure if I can... A circumstance makes us feel a certain way. This thought creates a feeling such as fear, self-consciousness, uncertainty, etc. We then invest in that thought because of how it makes us feel. If we feel uneasy because we don't know how we will accomplish what we want, we accept a thought that we can't. That is our choice. Instead of using not knowing as an opportunity to figure things out, we use it as a crutch. Or we use fear of failure as an excuse to never move forward. Our thoughts create our reality. We have the ultimate choice every day to decide how we feel, which produces our results. Our lives are a product of choices. Why choose to limit yourself? In my individual and group coaching sessions, I love watching the light bulbs pop on when people realize just how much power they have had all along, regardless of their circumstances. Circumstances only have the power you prescribe to them - through the feeling you CHOOSE to assign. Be miserable. Or motivate yourself. Whatever has to be done, it's always your choice. ~ Wayne Dyer This week focus on the concept that your thoughts are driven by a feeling and that there is a pinnacle juncture for you when you CHOOSE to feel a certain way because that choice will set forth into action your results. If you want to live your dream, your choice will not be one based in fear, but one that better serves you. 5/20/2018 0 Comments Your Fault to Your SuccessIn each of us, success is hardwired into our DNA, but with that hard-wiring is a system fault. This fault in our wiring is the central component to doubt and fear. It is the driving force that holds you back from achieving your dreams, your goals, and provides you with justification for giving in or not achieving.
Your faith can move mountains and your doubt can create them. The fault? Ego. Ego is defined as “a person’s sense of self-esteem or self-importance.” Yet this is often based on unrealistic beliefs. When we refer to ego, what typically comes to mind is the imbalance of ego, egotism. An egotistical person is considered “selfish and arrogant, excessively conceited, self-centered, or absorbed in themselves.” Ego does not support your success, but instead keeps you focused outside of the single place that you can drive change. The ego’s role is to keep us trapped in the past or focused on lack. The only position of change is the present. Many have heard and accept the definition of insanity as provided by Albert Einstein, “ doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.” A definition of insanity that is better suited when it comes to combatting the effects of our own destructive thinking, constructed by our ego, is believing in something that has not happened more than truth that exists in the present. In other words, reality is rational thinking. Insanity is believing in unreal thoughts. It is common for the ego to introduce a negative thought by introducing something from the past to use as an excuse or predicting a negative outcome into the future. When we allow insanity to take precedence in our thoughts, believing more in what is not than what is, then we short-circuit our success. When we are self-centered, we cannot focus on the big picture and we cannot thrive in our talents and purpose. Ego holds you back. There is much talk of mindfulness, and much confusion over what it is and how to practice its peace-giving ways. Simply put, mindfulness is a focus on the present. Mindfulness is the quality or state of being conscious or aware. In this state, we can drive out ego and gain clarity and awareness to achieve. In my book Thinking 101: Fundamentals of a Successful Mindset, I explain how barriers to our thinking, whether self-imposed (by ego) or through environmental influences (to our ego), develop and hold us back from our natural state of successful thinking. As children we do not see limits. We seek guidance because we don’t pretend to have all the answers. We are in a pure ego-less state. Over time, limits become introduced to our thinking and we allow our ego, and its insanity, to drive our decisions. When we think, what are the odds of getting that job or anything else that we desire, we are allowing ego to introduce doubtful and unreal thoughts- insanity. We accept a belief of something that hasn’t even happened over what could happen. Mindfulness begins with self-love, and this has nothing to do with conceit. When we love ourselves, we protect our mind and our potential from destructive thinking and anything that can destroy our peace. When ego tries to drive you to a thought of being wronged, catapulting you into the past, it disrupts your peace in this moment- it robs you of your present peace. When ego tries to convince you of an undesired outcome, it disrupts your peace in this moment. Simply put, your ego, “sense of self-esteem or self-worth” is judgement. Love does not judge. Many of us are our own worst enemy, because our “sense of self-esteem or self-worth” does not focus on self-love- which is preservation of our present peace. Present peace is a place that we can operate most effectively to be successful. When we love ourselves and protect our peace, we are able to deconstruct doubt and fear and achieve our purpose. When we don’t allow fear and doubt in, we open ourselves up to opportunities that we would have otherwise closed ourselves off to. Mahatma Gandhi said, “Where there is love, there is life.” We cannot let fear and doubt rob us of the life that we desire. Anything that is not born of love is untrue and will not serve you. This week your exercise is to identify and acknowledge when your peace is being robbed, when ego is taking you out of the present. There is no “poor me” or “he/she did this or that to me” in the present. The present is, “I am”. The present understands that in every experience is a lesson to use to improve our future. You must be the change that you wish to see in the world. What will you base your reality on, truth or fiction? As you catch your ego introducing non-productive thoughts, anything that contradicts what you desire, acknowledge by saying, “That thought is untrue and does not serve me. I am love. I create my own reality.” Let your faith, belief in love, help you to achieve the success you were destined to achieve. Have a great week! 2/25/2018 0 Comments Engaging Your Success SystemWe are destined to succeed. This is built into the DNA of every human. There are examples of this that are involuntary such as the will to survive and heal. We cut our finger, and our body gets to work healing so that we are whole again. We have instinct which alerts us when something is wrong.
Our success wiring is not an aftermarket item. It is a standard feature. Just like any system, our success can be compromised through manual disabling or manipulation. Sometimes others manipulate our wiring- yes, we allowed them in to disable our systems- sometimes willfully, by giving in, and sometimes subtly, by allowing disabling and deflating thoughts. What we must understand is that we can choose to support success disabling systems within us or we can choose to protect our success system through a series of ongoing system updates. One way is to work on eliminating worry- stop thinking about, entertaining, and accepting doubt or anticipated outcomes of something that hasn’t even happened yet, or may never happen. Why believe more in what you don’t want to happen than what you do?! But for some reason, we allow this system virus in. Worry does not take away tomorrow’s troubles, but instead depletes today’s strength. Therefore, do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. (Matthew 6:34). Our success is always with us; not something elusive that we are continually chasing. Success means many different things to many people, but the elements of success are the same. 1) You are great, because you were created to be great; 2) You can achieve, because every moment that you breath is a new opportunity to achieve; 3) You were meant to thrive, not just survive. Think about #3. You were meant to thrive. Our survival instinct is so strong. If you have no air, your body will fight like heck to get the precious air that it needs. We are born natural fighters, and it is this fighter instinct, that is your catalyst to thriving- but in order to thrive, we must identify what is driving our inner fighter. What is that thing inside of you, that you simply must do? It is you. It defines you. Finding your ‘It’, that something special in you that sets you apart from everyone else in the world, is the key to your tapping into your destined success. Then there are the things you dream of. I wish I could…. There is a link between your It and your dreams- your It is what is going to get your there. In my coaching sessions, I ask a series of questions, probing to help individuals identify their ‘It’. These people range from students to executives. What do you wish you could achieve? Why? What are you good at? How do others perceive you? If you could leave a legacy on this world, and money were of no concern, what would that legacy be? Success is personal. I ask these questions because I need to help shift individual’s mirror back onto and into themselves. We can easily get so hung up on worrying about what someone else is thinking, if something has been done before, on what others say, or don’t say, and the list goes on. We can become paralyzed when our mirror gets clouded for us to see our greatness. Worry becomes our fog. We can easily drag ourselves down to the levels of other’s expectations and choose to be beaten by their experiences, or we can choose to just look at the person responsible for our own success, irrespective of what others believe or have experienced. Advice is one thing, but when we seek advice from others, we should be seeking perspective to engage our thinking, not accept and file what the other person says. Don’t allow other’s opinions to manipulate your success system. They might think I’m stupid. Why? Do their concerns have merit? What can be done to eliminate their concerns? The answer all too often is to quit. They were right. It can’t be done. I was stupid for even thinking that could be done. Instead, look inside. If you have a desire to achieve something, but perhaps your original plan was logically flawed, look at it another way. Cutting off your dreams, or worrying will not get you to where you need to be. Remember, you were destined to achieve. You are designed to succeed. Your existence is not accidental. We all have a purpose. We all have It. We are all responsible for our success. The price of greatness is responsibility. Winston Churchill Today you are charged with the responsibility of your success system. As you find yourself worrying about outcomes that you do not want, instead focus on what it is that you want. Want it like you are fighting for air- fight for it! You are a fighter! Go for it now! Make this a week great! Jolene Church is a Human Resource Executive, Professor of Business, a coach, author, and professional speaker. Her academic and professional career has been devoted to helping others unleash excellence by breaking down success barriers. Jolene’s books are available on Amazon. 12/10/2017 0 Comments The Cost of KindessThere is something about simply being kind that cannot be underestimated. The power of the connection between people is so strong, yet so many choose to go at life alone, afraid to reach out. This goes for both those in need of kindness and those who choose to deliver. We are known as humankind for a reason. Kindness is an integral part of our life experience.
“You cannot do a kindness too soon, for you never know how soon it will be too late,” Ralph Waldo Emerson. You may never know the impact of your kindness on another, however your kindness could potentially change someone’s entire day or life. That may seem a bit melodramatic, but it’s true. A smile, a kind word of encouragement, you just never know. I was talking to an amazing song writer earlier this year, discussing how love truly is the language of our existence, and without it, we cannot survive. Kindness is a bi-product of love, the heartbeat of the universe. When we give of ourselves freely, without an agenda, just giving, we provide a beat for the pulse where one may not have existed. Our kind words and actions are life giving. If you have ever had someone give you a complement or offer you sage advice on a problem that you were facing, you know just how good it feels to receive kindness. A couple years ago while waiting on my prescription, I noticed a young couple scrambling to find enough money to pay for their prescription. I could see they were embarrassed and the young lady was visibly ill. The young man with her was so obviously in love with her; he just wanted to be able to take care of her and at this moment, he couldn’t. I quietly motioned to the other clerk that I’d take care of the cost of their prescription. The couple didn’t see this interaction and I’d hoped that I could get away before they knew that I had paid for the prescription. I didn’t have my way and they graciously thanked me. Why did I not want them to know? I believe that kindness is not something that should be on display. The young couple were about the age of my kids. I thought to myself that I would hope that someone would do the same for my kids if in that situation. I could see that they were embarrassed that they didn’t have the money for the prescription, but they needed help and I could assist. When we live to be the reason that people believe in the goodness of humankind we affect the pulse of the universe. It’s like chi cardio! Kindness doesn’t have to cost a thing, but there is a huge cost without it. Think of just how beautiful a day can be when kindness touches it. You will never have a completely bad day if you allow kindness in at least once. If you can be one thing- be kind. We rise by lifting others. Make this your mission this week. Make it happen! 5/14/2017 0 Comments How to Challenge Your LimitsHave you ever woke up and made a mental list of all of the things that you needed to do that day? Did you accomplish everything on that list? What about a goal that you had in your mind? Did you accomplish that?
It is quite amazing what we are capable of when we set our mind to something and more importantly when we are willing to come clean with ourselves when we are making excuses. I am a “lister.” I mentally list and/or physically take out a pen, paper, and list. My fellow “listers” can relate to the great personal satisfaction it is to cross something off that list. I even know people, and admittedly, I have done it myself, that go back and add something extra that they did to the list, just for the sheer satisfaction of crossing it off! For those who are not physical listers, chances are very good that nearly everyone has at some point, if not regularly made a mental list of what needed to be accomplished. It feels great to accomplish what we set out to do. Why is it that the majority does not do this with something that we greatly desire? Why is it that we look at the big things different from the little operational tasks? This is what I have found in working one on one with my clients and in my seminars to be a key factor between people achieving success and reaching their goals or not. In his book, The 4 Disciplines of Execution (2012), Sean Covey explains why most organizations fail to meet their objectives and stated goals. They have their sites affixed on the wrong thing. This translates well into us reaching personal success. For every goal and every dream, there are steps along the way. If you want to be a pro basketball player, there are hours and hours of practice and dedication, honing your talent. And for a CPA, much studying, practice, and diligence to pass the exam. There are steps along the way that we must cross off our list, but instead, we just focus on the end-result. We want to keep our eye on the prize, but we also must focus on being present, and what we can do today to keep things going in the direction we want them to go. Of course there will be set backs. Giving up on your goal is like slashing your other three tires because you have one flat. Do not limit your challenges, challenge your limits. If it does not challenge you, it will not change you. This takes knowing what your next step is and ensuring that the next step is crossed off the list. This is where shift happens. As you take on each challenge, getting one step closer to the prize, you become motivated and with your eyes affixed on the prize more and more. The exhilaration of crossing the item off the list is incredible! Another roadblock seems to be experienced by those who have achieved or come very close to huge success, enough to have a good taste of it and know they really like it. It seems that these people want to try to replicate their past list, as if they just erased the cross out and had the original item back on the list. It does not work that way. Circumstances change and because something worked in the past one way, there is no guarantee of it working in the future. Develop your list with fresh reflection and insight taking into account the circumstances that exist today. The power to change your future is alive and thriving now. Never let waiting become your habit. Live your dreams and take risks. Life is happening now. |
AuthorJolene holds Doctorate of Management in Organizational Leadership and is a certified master success coach. Jolene's writing is continually inspired by the challenges that her clients are facing. She finds constant inspiration in the world around her and is profoundly honored to be living her purpose helping others turn impossible into possible. Archives
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