Are You Right?

What’s all this talk about world peace?

I mean, of course I believe that everyone learning to co-exist could only bring amazing things to this world…but WORLD peace? Really? Do we understand how large of a task that is? Do we really understand how many closed-minded opinions we would have to alter in order to get everyone thinking the same peaceful thoughts?

I am not trying to be pessimistic or remotely suggest that creating peace across the world is not possible. I am a firm believer that anything is quite possible, if done with intention and persistence. Just think, we could probably eliminate hunger and homelessness too, since we would then have a world filled with human beings helping other human beings. Sure, we may not be able to eliminate people dying of horrible diseases around the world, but if we could guarantee that all human beings were operating from a heartfelt place, wanting to love and feel loved, think of all the other unbelievable changes that could also occur.

What keeps us from world peace is that most of the anger, fighting and killing comes from a place of feeling right. A feeling that the way we think is the way it really is. As if our thoughts and beliefs are factual. It’s not that I don’t understand how it feels to want to stand strongly in your beliefs. I do. I come from a long line of debaters, a family of confident people that are willing to go to bat for themselves. But even with that upbringing, I was able to comprehend that it was my opinion. Did I talk relentlessly at times, too loudly, too persistently, coming across as though there were only one side to the story…yes! But in the end, what good can come of that? You can’t actually convince someone to think like you do. You can’t force someone to do things like you do. Well, you can actually, but that isn’t what you want. What you really want is for others to not only see your side, but also value it and then take it on as theirs as well. Yet that doesn’t usually happen.

Instead, you should only hope to offer a new perspective to those that see it differently. But you can only offer. It is still their choice to do with it what they will.

Even with that knowledge, though, if we all stayed within the boundaries of the laws, making decisions based on what was for the better good of society and the human race, then couldn’t we eliminate much of what now shows up as hate and create a peaceful world?

Maybe, but only if we could work on the true problem at hand. The problem is not that the world is too large…in my opinion. The problem is that the very same people that are fighting for world peace do not have peace within themselves. Peace will not come by changing others. Peace will not come from blaming others. Peace will not come by getting revenge on those that have not done it our way. Peace has to come from within ourselves. In order to be peaceful from our core, we will need to learn to be with the silence at times, as well as the noise; we will need to learn to be still. We will need to accept that our feelings are just that: ours. They don’t make you feel any particular way. Actually, you feel how you feel, because that is how you feel! So stop the blame game. Give up on your desire to change others, and focus on the act of sharing. Be mindful with everyone you interact with that we all want the same thing: to love and be loved. And that even though you are certain that you know…you don’t always know.

We have a long way to go before we can even touch the surface on a world that is peaceful always, and until we can each find peace within ourselves, no matter what our past has given us…world peace will remain out of our reach.

Do what you have to in order to find peace. It will change your life, which in turn, will change all the lives of others around you.

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Say What You Mean

I hear what you are saying, but even just listening is exhausting. Unlike others in your life who ask how you are and don't wait for the response, I actually hear what you are saying and am waiting for your response. Not only that, but once you tell me, I am secretly trying to take it to the next level and trying to help.

As I observe your actions though, I can only wonder if that is really what you want. You tell a passionate story. Your eyes gaze into the air above as if you can almost feel yourself having it all: passion, happiness, success, freedom...you are so passionate in fact, that I can almost feel it. Yet once your story-telling is over, your eyes seem to lower, creating somewhat of a defeated look. You appear to be resigned to having the life you have right now, exactly as it is.

"Impossible!" you say, "I do want more!"

Really?

The two largest complaints I hear are about wanting to move forward in life and wanting more financial success. While you may hear these topics as larger than life, I am clear that as long as you have actions that follow your words, connected with a real plan and an ability to truly imagine what they look like, you can achieve either...or both.

So you say you want to move forward? You want to stop having your past dictate your future? Of course you do! Who wouldn't want that? Maybe the answer is you. Moving forward is not hard to do. It can be painful, with its daily or weekly challenges, but it is about commitment. It is about honoring your word to stop looking back. It is about not treating people in your life today, based on what your life brought to your doorstep yesterday.

"Today's hysteria is history."

That's right. Whatever upsetting or stopping you in this very moment, has so many legs from your past attached to it that you can't even see what is present in this moment. And if you can't see what is present in this moment, then you are choosing to live in the past and will not be moving forward. Not today anyway.

Tomorrow, however...there is a chance to start over by asking yourself a simple question:

If there were no limitations or fears what would I be willing to do to achieve my goals?

Got it? Great!

Understand that limitations are merely obstacles to climb over and fears, well, are just fears. You can thank them for showing up over and over, but then continue on your journey in spite of them.

Now we can go back to the original topic of what you really want and how long are you willing to let yourself get in your own way? Carve out what you want by being completely present in this moment. Put aside what your past has said you are capable of and create the path to get you there.

Say what you mean, then back it up with actions that truly show you mean it!

Investments that Matter

You work hard and are successful.

But what if the success you are truly capable of has barely been touched?

Do you have a support team? Do you have someone that expands on your thoughts, supports your ideas and holds you accountable for your action plans?

Why not?

The mind is a dark and dangerous place…don’t go there alone!

Clearly you have the drive it takes to achieve success, but what if you’ve barely touched upon what is possible? With the support of a Coach, you will experience success more efficiently and effectively. You will find yourself in constant motion, with fresh ideas and new perspectives. You will have two minds, working as one!

In order to be successful as a Business Owner, you will constantly need to assess whether something is an investment or an expense. Investments are critical to a successful future. Expenses can often wait. That’s what you need to decide: Is a successful business something you want to own and control? Or are you willing to take a gamble and see where it lands?

“Having a Coach is the difference between knowing what to do…and doing it.”

Cheryl Patnick, President of Capella Consultants

A Business Coach is perfect for:

· Helping successful business people exceed their expectations.

· Refining and building upon existing skills and talents.

· Increasing profitability, projecting confidence and organizing time better.

· Creating a successful system that fosters business now, while planting the necessary seeds for the future.

The value of having a Business Coach speaks for itself even in the very first session.

The time is now. It is later than you think.

The Road to Nowhere

Are you sure?

I am often asked how I am remain so positive no matter what seems to be going on around me. I am asked if I have some super human powers, or if I am simply a dreamer and it happens to work in my favor. My answer to that question doesn’t come as instinctively as my ability to think positively.

This morning the answer came to me clearly though, as I sat at my mac, and decided to change my screen saver. After scrolling through a few pictures, I found the perfect one. The photo actually made me stop and stare in almost a trance. It made me wonder, think and question. It silenced my ever-running mind that always thinks it has the answers. It stopped me in a place of question, yet in a place of comfort as well.

It was a black and white photo with a wooden pier that I guessed to be about 20-30 feet long. Surrounding it was a calm body of water that forced my eyes to stare into the distance and see nothing else but more and more water. The only land to be seen was a small area of sand near the beginning of the pier. An area so small, that my eyes had difficulty staying there.

I immediately could hear voices of worry from clients and friends looking at this same photo. I imagined them expressing feelings of concern about being alone or abandoned. I could hear their voices saying there was no reason to keep looking, since it was a road to nowhere. Yet as I continued to look, I could not see the picture of emptiness that most might see. I was not met with fears as I gazed down the pier. I was not engrossed with worry about what lurked in the open space. Instead, what I saw was very similar to how I see life.

It was not a road to nowhere, but rather, a road to anywhere. It was not a body of water that had nothing to offer, but rather a body of water that held opportunities that could not yet be seen. I was clear from this viewpoint, that all could not be seen, but that there was definitely more. I was confident that what lie in the unknown, had the potential to be great and felt comfort in the possibility of being able to create it any way that I wanted.

Check your road again. Is it really the road to nowhere? Or are the possibilities so endless, you are afraid to look?

Unemployment is a Full Time Job

The only way to turn around being unemployed is to work!

If only it were that easy, right? Wrong. While it may not be easy to find a job as quickly as you would like, the quickest way to turn it around, is to immediately treat the ‘search’…as your job!

There are many stages one enters (or sometimes settles into) after being laid off, and this process is often what keeps once successful working people on the unemployment line. Stages of depression and low self-esteem (I should have worked harder) often combined with an entitlement (I am sick of working so hard and not being appreciated anyway!) usually lead to a defeat of doing nothing or an acceptance of ‘time off’. Either way, you have already begin the job search a few steps behind.

This is not the time to wallow in your self-pity, nor start vacationing. Instead, this is the time to get motivated and/or get even and begin your search. You can’t change the current situation, but you can create a different perspective, which will ultimately design a new future. Assume that your job search is now your full time job, and your severance pay is what you are going to live on minimally, until you find the next place to land. While in this situation there will be no time to wallow, celebration and time off will be just around the corner, if you follow a few ground rules.

Just like when you were working, you will need to set up a daily and weekly schedule. You will need an especially strong system in place now, since there won’t be anyone to hold you accountable to your tasks and goals.

To start your system:

1 – Get your planner ready and write in daily and weekly tasks. Be specific. If you simply write: call recruiter, most likely it won’t get done. Write their name and number, as well as the day and time you will call.

2 – Choose specific times for scanning the web to find the right recruiter for you, or job postings through the classified sections on the web and then stick to that plan.

3 – Include in your schedule when you will update your resume, make calls to friends that may have leads and even when you will check emails. (A simple task of checking emails can consume your whole day if you let it.)

4 – If you are overzealous about tasks and find some aren’t getting done, simply move them to the next day. Do not assume it will get done. If it isn’t done on Monday, rewrite it on Tuesday. Your brain will need the reminder and you will feel good about accomplishing it.

5 – Find other places to work besides your house. Sometimes the process of getting yourself up and out of the house is just what you need to get motivated. Most places that sell coffee also have free Wi-Fi so take advantage of it!

6 – Add breaks to your schedule, to keep yourself feeling fresh. Actually add to your calendar when you will meet with friends, take walks or hit the gym. If you see it written you will feel less guilty about doing it.

Perspective will make all the difference in your search. Treat the search like an opportunity to find what is truly next for you. Who knows, it may be better than you ever could have anticipated. Don’t give up. No matter how shut down you feel, remind yourself that there is no time for tired now, but there will be later. Do what you have to in order to land a new job. Then once you do, celebrate and even take some time off by telling your new employer when ‘you’ are able to begin.

Stay present in this moment and know that it will never again occur in just this way.

Be Productive Now.

It is later than you think.
Ever wonder why your energy level has so many peaks and valleys? Do you wish you could keep your level at the highest peak, or even somewhere in the middle, so you could be more productive all the time?

Typically as human beings, our weeks are filled with highs and lows of energy because we allow our emotions to dictate our productivity. If only we had no heart, right? Wrong. Actually, the fact that we do have great emotions can be very healthy and can help us be more productive on a daily basis, but only if we learn to regain the controls.

The key is to focus on what you feel when in the middle of an energy high. What occurred that gave you that energy in the first place? If it was something as simple as a well balanced meal and 8 hours of well needed sleep, then great! That will be simple to replicate and will be in your control. But usually it's not that simple.

Typically we get physically charged when we are emotionally charged, which often stems from a specific event. For example, the start of a new job, a new client signing on, or a promotion may provide just the energy you need to stay focused and excited all day long, allowing you to make those cold calls you have been putting off, or finally completing a days long list of tasks. The problem is that if outside stimulation is needed to create action, when it doesn't exist, you may feel unable to be productive. The solution lies in acknowledging your lack of control and the desire for change.

Before I give you back the well deserved controls, though, think about what goes through your mind when you are at your peak performance? Do you feel unstoppable and wish you could bottle the feeling? Perfect! Because you can...

In that moment, become aware of every sensation in your body. Be conscious of the smells, the sounds you hear, your thoughts and the adrenalin rush. Be acutely aware that these feelings continue, even though nothing around you is occuring. What began as a result of great news on the horizen, has now formed into sensations actually separate from that event. In fact, the burst of energy is an event all by itself and can be recreated again and again, without an outside event even happening.

Let's return to the idea that this excitement all began because you learned you were going to be signing on a new client. Perhaps nothing else has occurred beyond that point. Yet even without papers being signed, or money in hand, you feel energized based on what 'will' occur. Get it? That energy you were feeding off of was really just from the desire of great things to come!

Now you can own the controls! The next time you are feeling in a slump and can't get motivated, visualize exactly what you really want to happen. If you're in sales, imagine that today is the day you are finally going to get that large order. Create the visual in such detail that you can actually see it, taste it and feel it. Don't roll your eyes at the thought of it and say, 'yeah, I have seen this day before...it's not going to happen.' Everything lives in your speaking, so once you change the conversation in your head, you can change the way you act as well.

Be productive now. It is later than you think!

Race Day

Race day is an interesting day. Interesting, at least for me, because I am a late blooming athletes that believes the only way to complete a race with success, is to follow the training guide like your life depends on it. I mean, if there are training guides listed on the internet, surely they have been tested and approved, so why reinvent the wheel...or pretend that I know what to do to successfully complete a duathlon?

And so, while my boyfriend and 17 year old son, both supposedly training for the race, are hardly even glancing at the training schedule, I had printed it out, posted multiple copies and checked it several times a day. In addition, I checked each workout off as I went, to make sure I didn't miss anything. All the while, I didn't say much because I knew that what they lacked in "rule-following", they would make up for in race-day gusto. Or was that male-ego?

I wasn't wired with race-day gusto, or ego. No matter how hard I trained, nor how hard I wanted to reach a specific finishing time, the race would ultimately decide my fate. I wouldn't.

We wake up before the sun on race day to recheck our gear and equipment and fill our bellies with warm oatmeal and a banana. My stomach is in knots, making the oatmeal difficult to swallow, but I keep breathing and begin my positive self-talk: You're ready for this. You have trained. It is cold and windy, but it is just weather. Just...weather. I then say a silent prayer that the two days on my road bike was enough to keep me fast and upright on the hills, and try not to cave into my fears that 'taper week' had successfully sucked all the strength from me.


I lose myself in preparing to leave and pretend that this is just about packing, not really racing. My mind seems to be sold on that until we actually arrive at the race, which is when I am certain that I don't even know how to run. That fear, though, gets completely lost in the next worry, as we head to transitions to set up our stuff and I begin to tremble. Not from fear at all, but from cold. The winds had picked up and while the temps were at a mere 40 degrees, it felt about 30.

I worried about frozen toes and being able to run on feet that I might not be able to feel.

I then asked myself again why I chose to race, when really what I prefered was the training. It was structured, gave my workouts a purpose and made me feel strong. I wondered why that wasn't enough. I wondered why I tortured myself through all the worry of racing, when the training really seemed to serve its purpose. I mean, wasn't this all about being strong and fit? What was the race going to prove that the training hadn't already?



When it was finally time to listen to last minute race directions, I thanked the weather gods for holding off on the rain, which might have been snow by now and stayed grateful that this was a duathlon and not a triathlon. That was all I could muster up in the way of being grateful, but hoped that would be enough to make my race an easy one.

That last wish was probably part of the problem, since my desire for race-ease, always takes over my desire to win once the gun goes off. It's not that I don't play full out. I do! It's just that when I start to feel winded, and am only five minutes into a 90 minute race, it seems appropriate to back off a little. It's at that moment when my goal becomes a strong finish, not so much a strong race.



I did begin the race wanting to place in my age category, but when I heard that there were only 150 participants, battled the winds and cold and unbelievably steep hills on the bike and by foot, and then saw my boyfriend right behind me and walking...I had a new goal.



"You don't have to slow down for me," he said.



"I'm not," I added, "but what's the hurry?" I said putting my arm in his while we took a walk break and then thought, I already got my trophy.



And at that, we proceeded to bring in the last leg of the race together, posing for each photographer, laughing as we went and pushing each other to the finish.



"Kick it in girl," he said to me when the finish line was in sight. "I'm right behind you..."



As I rolled up on the balls of my feet, and my legs pushed me across the finish, the meaning of race day became again all too clear. It wasn't about the training, my 17 year old eating up that race with no practice at all, nor my boyfriend finishing with me because he missed a turn. Race day was about showing up, facing some of life's greatest fears and then kicking in it to the finish...merely because I said I would.