End: Begin with the End in Mind

April 23, 2015 | Posted in Leading Hartfully, Living Hartfully, Wealthy Woman | By

In making out your life plan as with planning a trip – know first where you are going, plot the best route to get there, then figure out what you will need along the way to make your journey successful.  Take the time to figure out how you will know when you have “arrived” at your goal and celebrate your achievement. Avoid the syndrome of always striving and never arriving. Take time to bask in your arrival.

Think of how your energy rises as your draw nearer to a trip. Just imagine what will happen if you have your whole life to look forward to. When we set milestones for ourselves, we are much more likely to meet and surpass them than if we never had any point of focus. When you know your destination, you arrive sooner and are less distracted by obstacles and detours. If you do come across a detour, when you know where you want to end up, it’s much easier to stay on track and get back to your pathway to the end state.

It’s less stressful when we have our directions to safely guide us. Try scheduling something enjoyable on weekends to raise your energy for the week and plan something equally as fun on Mondays to start your week out on an upbeat note. Start making your plan now for how you want to live in the next year, five years, 10 years, and into retirement. What do you have to do now to ensure your end you have in mind is the end that you’re aiming for by your actions today?

By making a life plan and being open to changing our route, we gain clarity and personal energy in our abilities to help shape our future and bounce back when life sends us on an unplanned pathway.

Be in the small percentage who has written goals as their road map. Buck the percentages and be one of the elite few who write down their long-term and short-term goals, and review them regularly.  List-makers know the thrill of crossing items off their lists.

Written goals keep you focused and remind you of the big picture.  FOCUS = Follow One Course Until Successful. Maintain bursts of energy while working on different goals by savoring the rewards and feeling successful while mixing long and short-term goals. When you prioritize your goals, remember people first, then things. . . people first, then things.

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Taking Stock of Your Best Personal Practices to Improve Your Happiness and Your Life

April 4, 2015 | Posted in Leading Hartfully, Living Hartfully | By

You know how businesses regularly share best practices with each other or study their competitors or benchmark other industries and copy their best practices, right? It’s how they improve in areas they’re not so great in. Well, how about taking inventory of your own personal best practices and sharing them with your mentors, coaches, friends or other role models to lift everybody up? When groups of people get together to do what they do best, they thrive. It gives them energy do to what they like to do and feel successful at doing. When they spend most of their time trouble-shooting, putting out fires and fixing problems, they become exhausted, unhappy and inefficient.

Focus on how you best run your life and build on it and take from others what they do best and see if it fits. If it doesn’t, throw it out. Gain energy by building on your successes and not fixing your failures. This is a great exercise for your mastermind group or success team or personal board of directors – whatever you call it – your support system. These are gleaned from the good folks at Canyon Ranch Spa.

Here are some constructive questions as a place to start. Now get out your pen and paper or digital tablet and start writing/typing:

  1. What makes you happiest?
  2. When were you happiest?
  3. How did you become happy then?
  4. What do you like most about yourself?
  5. What creates that quality?
  6. How do you make that quality last?
  7. When did you have that quality the most?
  8. How could you create more of it?
  9. What gives you peace of mind?
  10. What brings out the best in you?
  11. Who appreciates you the most? Why?
  12. What are your primary strengths?
  13. What re your core beliefs?
  14. What values do you live by?
  15. Who is in your emotional support network?
  16. What best helps you feel creative?
  17. What are you doing when you feel at your best?
  18. Who are you when you’re at your best?

There are hundreds more similar questions to help us take stock of our best practices in every area of life. These should help you get started and light the fire to illuminate what may be hiding in the shadows.  All the best in your personal Q and A session.

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Caps Lock: Capitalize on What Life Throws Your Way

March 23, 2015 | Posted in Leading Hartfully, Living Hartfully | By

You may not be able to control what comes your way, but you can control what you do with it. You know the old lemonade poem “if life hands you lemons, yadda, yadda, yadda”. Your confidence and energy will increase each time you successfully handle one of these situations. Take stock of your uniqueness, your strengths, your experiences, and your options to create the best opportunity for yourself. Capitalize on your circumstances to make a difference in the world or in your local community. Don’t dwell on what has been in the past; start fresh from today to make a difference in your circumstances.

Look at what you can learn from each of your experiences. It’s up to you whether you see each of your experiences as positive or negative and your choice of perception has everything to do with the outcomes of you capitalize on your experience. When you find yourself in the middle of a life lesson, learn from it so you don’t have to keep repeating it in order to get the lesson. Instead of saying “why me”, ask yourself what can be gained or learned from the experience. Your brain will answer any questions you ask it, so make sure you are asking the right questions in order to capitalize on your situation.

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Living Hartfully: Just Do It Now

March 4, 2015 | Posted in Leading Hartfully, Living Hartfully | By

Are you consciously living with your heart and purposefully living Hartfully on a daily basis or are you waiting for the new mate, retirement, to lose weight, to find a new job, to quit your job, to start your business, for the kids to grow up or go to college, or to move cities? I’ve been very, very lucky to have great friends as role models who are living Hartfully and have shown me how to make moments count on a daily, weekly, yearly basis. I feel so blessed to have them in my life to show me the way. Most of them are older. I’m guessing my old soul is more attracted to souls older than mine to share their insight from a life well-lived. I’d like to pass along some insights from watching how my buddies move through life that gives me great ideas on how to live mine. I learn from clients, customers and close friends on how to be or not to be and I want to share their teachings.

Don’t wait. Do it now. Doesn’t matter about any outside circumstances, make it work. Many of my friends are already retired or have closed their businesses to play more and explore themselves and the world more. Greg went back to school at 62 to learn how to be a chef. He says most of the “kids” in his class are in their 20’s and want to know why he wants to get his chef’s certificate or degree or whatever it is he gets after months of chopping, sautéing, slicing and dicing. He said it’s the joy of knowing how to do the art well.  He’s doing it for the sheer joy of cooking and the confidence of knowing he’s learning how to do it well. There’s no other outside influence. He had a cancer scare recently and took a semester off and is now back in the kitchen. Funny how those wake-up calls make things clear. His wife Kathie recently closed her business after 26 years and is pumping up the volume of leisure pursuits in her life such as yoga, beach walking, hooping, starting a writers club and a book club, kayaking and travel.

I’ve recently lost my friend Karen to cancer. We met in a mastermind group called a Success Team in Germany around 25 years ago. It was Greg’s wife, Kathie who started the group of women and we all remain friends after all these years. Karen was very healthy, ran daily, her husband retired and started a travel company and they travelled well. She was still working when cancer struck and she fought valiantly for several years and lost the fight last Fall. She had never retired. She got sick while working long hours. She was looking forward to retiring some day and travelling more with her husband on his fabulous trips. That never happened.

My BFF Barb is my adventure travel buddy. We met at ski club in Germany nearly 30 years ago and share the same passion for exotic adventure travel, experiencing new discoveries, and doing things most women just don’t do. We’ve sailed the Greek Islands in a small sailboat, hiked for days in the Austrian Alps, survived horse-packing in Ireland in driving rainstorms, and skied all over the world in blizzards and dirt-laced slopes. Barb’s life purpose is to follow her passion and share it and that she does very well. She’s a great role model for me.  More about our adventures and our lessons learned in future posts. She’s decided that she’s reached her point of enoughness, is retiring early and bought a tugboat to live on and sail around America’s inter-coastal waterways and throughout the Caribbean. Guess who’s tapped to help her through some of the stretches?  Ahhhhhh, it’s nice to have a friend with a boat. She’s going to do it while she’s young enough and healthy enough. She just met a woman who is 85 and sails her own boat around seeking great adventures. Doing things while we’re healthy is so important.

Barb and I recently sailed on the Queen Mary 2 for a Trans-Atlantic crossing from New York City to Southampton. It was on both of our Hot 100 Lists to do one day and we decided a few months ago was the time. We were the youngest ones on the ship by a couple decades. I was wondering why they all waited so long to do it. Then after lots of shipboard conversations, found out this was not their first time for many of them. There are some who spend months on ships to see the world and have their meals served to them and be entertained and meet new people. This is a lifestyle and not a one-time cruise. Hmmmmm, new ideas spring into my head as to what retirement can look like. We thoroughly enjoyed the white gloved high tea service and I could certainly get used to that. We also dined at Sardis in New York before hitting a Broadway play and experienced Times Square – something that we had wanted to do for a long time to have a quintessential New York evening on the town.

My other friend Sue is an Artist with a capital A. She is the most creative person I’ve ever met. She can sing, dance, act, paint, photograph anything, write and whatever else artsy fartsy you can think of. Sue has created a very cool life to suit her fancy. She combines all her talents and passions and does free-lance work in all the areas mentioned above. She also combines her travel writing with her photography and writes off her international travel as a business expense, sells her work which pays for her trip and enjoys once adventure after another – never a dull moment.

My friend Silvana is another explorer who never has a dull moment. She has travelled with her husband and daughter across country in an Airstream trailer doing speaking gigs and having her daughter test drive internships while they wrote a book about their adventures and teen internships about their experience. They’ve also travelled for several years around the nation sponsored by a non-profit setting up special events to raise awareness. She’s been on a reality TV show and her next adventure is to house-sit for several houses for several months in Europe so they can do more exploration in other countries. Free lodging, getting paid to travel, what’s not to love?

So what are you waiting for? What does Living Hartfully mean to you? How are you stepping up right now to live how your heart wants to live? Let me know of our adventures. I’m always looking for more role models who get it and I just may share your story.

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Delete: Delete Internal & External Clutter

February 23, 2015 | Posted in Leading Hartfully, Living Hartfully, Wealthy Woman | By

Have you ever known somebody who could just light up a room . . . when they left? Sometimes known as energy vampires, delete the people from your life who are overly judgmental about you, are not supportive, take more than they give, or who don’t believe in you. They will suck energy right out of you.

There are two types of clutter, internal clutter and external clutter. External clutter is anything around you that “bugs” you such as dusting, people who take more than they give, dirty laundry, unread newspapers and catalogs piling up, the tacky souvenir your neighbor brought you, or other stuff laying around that is visual pollution. This type of clutter distracts you and drains you by taking up your space. Especially draining is clutter left on the floor dragging you down with negative energy.

Internal clutter is such things as dishonesty, secrecy, deceit, debt, unfulfilled promises, worry, anxiety, fear, miscommunication, obligations, or any other “messalanea” which is clogging up your circuits to think freely and be charged up. Delete this emotional, intellectual, or physical baggage and watch your energy soar. There are umpteen books on Feng Shui and the art of de-cluttering and aligning your space to make the energy flow more freely. Check out the perpetual calendar in the back of the book Organized at Last: a Tip a Day to Keep Clutter at Bay by Pat Moore, The Queen of Clutter. Also see Appendix B for other things that drain our energy. Until you plug up some of those energy drains and delete them from your life, no amount of refilling and refueling will have any staying power. Take a good look at your internal and external clutter and delete those energy suckers in order to have a lasting affect on your personal energy and your stress levels.

Unload your excess baggage. Unburden your heart, your mind, and your space by unloading extra emotional and physical baggage you may have been carrying around. Take stock of philosophies, beliefs, behaviors, and the stuff that may have served you in the past that doesn’t make sense today. Take a look at the reasons why you do what you do – can it be streamlined? Review the reasons why you prefer a way of thinking or behave in a certain manner. Is it just a habit (perhaps a bad habit?) or a learned behavior taught by somebody whose behavior may or may not fit your personality or your lifestyle?

Letting go of material items or self perceptions that no longer fit you or benefit you allows for a fresh start and can also lighten the stress load. Be prepared that a change in patterns may cause some uncertainty and stress at first. Sometimes the excitement and enthusiasm for creating a better way and a lighter life outweighs the stress that may accompany the change. Moving through the change at a pace that you are comfortable with and at a pace where you can assimilate it easily into your life will help ease the stress of the change and newfound energy will be a benefit to your life.

Simplify your life and toss out stuff associated with bad memories or junk. Better yet, don’t buy it in the first place and you will save your money/life energy and help the cause against unfettered consumerism and overuse of our natural resources. The same goes for junk food, over-packaging, and junk mail.

Contact the direct mail and telemarketing firms to have your name taken off their lists. For pre-approved credit card offers, call 888.5.OPTOUT to cancel solicitation from all three credit reporting bureaus for two years or permanently. For direct marketing solicitations, including catalogs, coupons, and sweepstakes offers, sign up for The Direct Marketing Association’s Mail Preference Service at www.the-dma.org for $5 or for no charge if you send your request to Mail Preference Service, PO Box 643, Carmel, NY 10512.

Put yourself on the national Do Not Call Register to avoid those pesky telemarketers by calling 888.382.1222 or visit www.donotcall.gov. The cost of saving junk is skyrocketing and takes its toll on your emotions and your wallet. Save your sanity and your spare time from their clutches. How much excess is in your life? What have your purged lately?

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Invite Awe and Inspiration into Your Life – Use Your Vacation Days

February 4, 2015 | Posted in Leading Hartfully, Living Hartfully | By

At the dentist recently, I discovered that my dental hygienist hasn’t taken a vacation in 30 years. I nearly fell out of the dentist chair on the spot when I heard the sad news. The first words out of my mouth were not diplomatic, “What the hell is that about?” I was so incredulous, I lost all sense of decorum and social graces in that moment of shock. I really count not relate on any level to that statement of not taking time for yourself in 30 years. I guess I’ve been very, very fortunate to not relate to something out of my realm of understanding. If you’re going to be a good role model for your kids or your work team, or a good leader of any type of group, you need to be inspired. What are you doing to invite awe and inspiration into your life to keep you going and keep you interested and keep you interesting?

I live for exploration, discovery, learning new things, seeing new sights and being awe-inspired every chance I get. I seek out beauty and inspiration, and surround myself with what I love as often as I can in daily life to keep the happy factor pumped up. Taking inspirational vacations is one of my favorite past times. These can be mini weekend get-aways, an overnight in a cool place, an afternoon at a local haunt, a multi-week extravaganza, or a multi-month sabbatical. I just don’t understand people who lose vacation days each year because they never took time off. This is your time, you’ve earned it. You deserve to refresh, recharge and get inspired by adding a little awe into your life.

I recently returned from a holiday Caribbean cruise and though I’ve done many, many cruises; this one held some awesome and inspirational experiences for me. Kayaking has been part of my life for a few decades and I wanted to try something I’d never done. We went kayaking at night in a bioluminescent bay that glows with movement from the organisms similar to fire flies. There are over a million organisms per gallon and they each glow only once per night when they sense motion. So off we paddled through the bay into a canopy of mangrove trees that was so narrow and so dark, you could only see the glow sticks on the kayak in front of you, the glow of the water off your paddle and from the bottom of the kayak and the glow of schools of fish you paddled through or if they jumped. It was a very eery feeling to paddle by feel instead of sight. A new and awe inspiring experience. Only when the guide turned on his head lamp could you see the tree roots hanging down from the branches, the iguanas hanging from the branches and the crabs scurrying across the roots. The tunnel of mangrove branches opened in to a lagoon a few hundred acres in size and we free paddled around and played in the water. It looked like glowing glitter as it slid down your arm. It was such a natural treat, nothing like it. We were giggly, gleeful, amazed, and agog with wonder of this ecological experience.

Coming back to the ship, I experienced a couple other types of awe and inspiration. One was the after-dinner entertainment, which is usually quite cheesy. These guys had won America’s Got Talent national talent show and now had an act in Las Vegas – Recycled Percussion. They gave everybody in the audience drum sticks and things to bang on and they put on such a highly –charged show, there wasn’t a face in the place that didn’t have a smile. They also gave out ear plugs for the faint of heart. By the end of the show everybody was boogying to the rock and roll they remembered. It was awesome. The inspiration continued as we danced our way to the after party show with the BB King Blues Club All-Star Band. The best band I had heard in countless years. They had the ship rockin’. We enjoyed them so much, it was a nightly pilgrimage to wherever they were playing and I carried home a CD so I can recapture the inspirational sounds of the classic, funky blues music.

So it turns out that experiencing awe and inspiration can come in many forms. I just Skyped with a friend in Germany who visited a surprise Monet exhibit never before shown to the world in a mansion outside of Paris. Hearing about it and experiencing it through her was vicariously inspiring. Make your list for the year – what do you want to do to invite awe and inspiration? Add these things to your Hot 100 List – you know the list I’ve been writing about for years. Your annual exercise to write down 100 things you want to have, do or be. Next on my list of awe and inspiration is experiencing the aurora borealis in Iceland and seeing Machu Picchu. What’s next for you?

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Settling for Meh While You Seek Mahvelous: Up-leveling at All Levels

January 5, 2015 | Posted in Leading Hartfully | By

Are you settling for meh when you could have marvelous? What is it in your life that you consider meh? Is it your social life? Your cultural experience? Your wardrobe? Your job? Your surroundings? Your diet? What is it about these and other different areas in your life that you find meh and want to change? Are you settling because you don’t want to make the effort? Marvelous does take more effort, but the payoff is so worth it.

Take a look at each area and sub-categories of how you live and exam what seems too ordinary and how can you make it more extraordinary? What have you outgrown? What can you add or how can you change it up? As I’ve posted before, your space should represent who you are becoming and a place you feel good in, not a part-time job for upkeep and cluttered with meh or stuff that doesn’t represent who you are any more.

Lately I’ve had the itch to update and up-level a few areas I’ll share. I had already done tons of switch-outs with furnishings, color themes, rugs, linens and color of kitchen-ware when I moved the last few times. Seems the old, jewel-toned Chinese silk carpets were the hardest to let go because they were icons of having “made it” in my previous mindset. They were expensive, but they were dark and traditional and generally not at all the me of today. I switched out for fabulous, fun, colorful,  less expensive, modern rugs and I’m happy every day my toes roam across them.

I’ve up-leveled my shoes and ditched many more since I’ve experienced a knee replacement and plantar fasciitis in recent months. I now know what “older ladies” meant in my younger years by wanting comfortable footwear. I need good shoes – quality over quantity. Don’t get sucked into trends. I did a complete change-out of wall hangings several times over the past 10 years to show off all my photography. I’ve done another rendition of the switch to more colorful photographs. I’m having a love affair with color these days and want to be enveloped in bright, cheerful, fun colors. All the photos that now adorn my walls are the most fabulous colors of my most memorable trips.

One a recent jaunt to Europe, my friend and I decided to up-level our scarf collection. All the European women seem to wear their scarves so fashionably and the selection is delectable. Since I’m not a fan of unfettered consumerism, I told myself I needed to give away most of my old scarves if I were to buy better ones. I’m enjoying the heck out of the new neckware and giving somebody else the pleasure of having my previous purchases. Recycling feels good.

We also experienced Angeline’s hot chocolate Africain. One of the top 3 places in the world for hot chocolate. The other place is in Budapest and I can’t remember the other. Angelines is in Paris, with the main café across from the Louvre with several other outlets around the city. The experience was indescribable. It is thick, molten dark chocolate served with a side of fresh whipping cream and a glass of water to wash it down. The usual hot chocolate will never be the same. You must experience this Chocolate Africain before you die. It is to die for.

Once you’ve lived long enough, you’ve experience many places and seeking a marvelous experience gets more difficult to try and top what you’ve done in the past. It’s that way for me with skiing and scuba diving in particular. Once you’ve done the great slopes, the great reefs and wreck dives, some of the lesser ones become meh. I recently experienced both meh and marvelous on a dive trip to Turks and Caicos on one of the largest reefs in the world that drops down 7000 feet. You never know what will be swimming up from the depths. It’s luck of the draw with any dive whether you see cool stuff or not. What is cool for the newbie diver can be ho-hum for the experienced. I’ve been diving since 1983, so I’m seeking bigger, better experiences than an angel fish or sea urchin. Our first dive on the reef was meh. Lots of beginners who sucked their air fast and we had to come up early when there was so much more to see and we hadn’t seen much. (In my eyes, anyway)

We moved to another site and took another spin…. Parrot fish – one of my favorites because of their intense colors and how they peck at the coral. Two sea turtles which are always a favorite. Not big enough to ride on as I’d done in the past when touching the wild-life wasn’t as forbidden as it is today, but very cool nonetheless.  Just when I was thinking, this is nice to be under water and all, but…. Meh.    Then….. from around the corner, I see the woman in front of me startle back. I thought somebody had maybe kicked her mask. I couldn’t see around the bend. Out from the bend came a magnificent, scary looking hammerhead shark as big as a full-grown man. He looked like he’d just eaten one of the local divers at 6 feet long at least. Wow. My experience that day turned from meh to marvelous in the blink of an eye. It’s what keeps me coming back for more. Seeking to up-level my scuba experience with another sighting of something new. It’s what keeps me golfing and skiing – in search of up-leveling the experience.

What do you need to up-level in your life? Your recipes? Your thinking? Your partner? Your dreams? Your activity level? Your mindset about how you want to show up in the world? Your money stories? Your haircut? The color of your space? Your view? Your Hot 100 List? Your wealth? Your knowledge or what you decide to do with your free time? Your community involvement or volunteerism? Your image?

Now is a great time to take on some projects. Start with your stuff close to home and work your way around your life. What doesn’t suit you any more? What is not exactly your style any more? What doesn’t make you smile any more? What just doesn’t do it for you any more? Up your courage to take a good, honest look and shove meh to the wayside as you seek out mahvelous.

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The 6 Tools to Happiness

January 4, 2015 | Posted in Leading Hartfully, Living Hartfully, Wealthy Woman | By

We’ve been sold a bill of goods for what we believe will bring happiness. Most of these false assumptions center around consumerism and buying your way to supposed happiness through wealth. One of the leading scientists in the study of happiness, Dr. Ed Diener, interviewed 49 of the wealthiest people in America and found that their happiness levels were only slightly above average. Similar findings have been uncovered in happiness and wealth correlation studies of nations. Among the more economically advanced nations, America ranks sixth out of seven with Switzerland, Denmark and Canada ranking first, second, and third. Of course as you would expect, the least wealthy countries were also the least happy. There is a moderate ground to seek – enough wealth to take us out of direct need but not so much as it leads to distraction. It what Vicki and Joe Dominguez termed “the Point of Enoughness in their 1990’s book.

Another study by a preeminent happiness researcher, Dr. David Myers showed the percentage of people in America from 1956 to 2000 pretty much flat-lined as their disposable income skyrocketed up since around 1960. What these studies indicate is that money not only can’t buy you love, but it can’t buy happiness past a certain point of enoughness. Of course all the advertisers and manufacturers out there try to convince us that if we buy their product, then we’ll be happier. It’s simply not true, yet we buy into it every time we make a purchase of something not out of necessity. We are all living proof of the grand conspiracy if we have closets, drawers, and garages stockpiled with things we can live without. I can’t even count the number of people I saw this holiday season walking around carrying flat-screen TV boxes. It was really quite a sobering sight.

Here are six tools offered to you according to the book What Happy People Know to help dig out of the consumerism daze and lead you on the true path to satisfying happiness:

  1. Appreciation is the most fundamental happiness tool as it is the purest, strongest form of love. Research has shown that it is physiologically impossible to be in a state of appreciation and gratitude and fear at the same time. Love and gratitude are stronger than fear because they are products of the neocortex and not the lower brain. Something I’ve posted about in the past and will share again is the simple reply one of my spiritual leaders suggested in response to the ubiquitous greeting, “how are you?”, is to answer “Grateful, thank you. And you?”  If you stop and think about how many times a day you are asked the question “How are you?”, you can only imagine how often you will disperse to the universe that you are grateful. It is a great way to remind yourself to remain in a state of appreciation.

 

  1. Choice, the book says, is the father of freedom and the voice of the heart. When we have no sense of choice, we feel deprived, defeated, and in despair which leads to depression, anxiety and a condition called learned helplessness. We have choices and most of the happy people have consciously chosen their path, while unhappy people tend to choose fear and give in to that automatic sense of fleeing or freezing. Use your intellect and spiritual senses and make wise choices. It reminds me of what Anthony Robbins teaches; you don’t have a money problem, you have a lack of ideas problem. You have choices.

 

  1. Personal Power is similar to character that gives you control over your feelings, your actions, your thoughts, your behavior and your fate. Take 100% responsibility for your actions and I do mean 100% responsibility to avoid victim status of what happens for you, not to you. When you have a good sense of personal power, you’re secure with who you are and what you have and are immune to what others say, think or do to you.

 

  1. Leading with your strengths and being bigger than your challenges and situations without giving in to fear. Taking a truthful assessment of your strengths and leading with them feels good and allows us to conquer everyday challenges and builds self-confidence. Success leads to bigger success and it continues to spiral up and out.

 

  1. The power of language and stories to create our world is a heady stuff. We don’t describe the world we see, we see the world we describe. How do you describe your life? What is your life story? What old stories are you hanging onto that you’ve outgrown? Language has the power to alter perception. What kind of language do you use? Are you saying you have to, want to, or get to do something? What message is that sending to your sub-conscious and to your body? The stories of our lives and the stories we tell ourselves become our lives – how do you see your life? What spin are you putting on the experiences in your life and the actions you take? We have the power of choice to tell healthy stories or horror stories.

 

  1. Multidimensional living which embraces three main components of relationships, health, and purpose, which is usually our work. Make sure you are putting energy into all three areas. Usually if we are unhappy, we discover we’ve put too much energy into one area or not enough in the other areas and our lives get lopsided. Because of our fear of scarcity and not feeling that we have enough, let alone not be enough, most Americans focus more on their work. I say work instead of purpose because in my work experience, most people have no clue as to their personal purpose. We can help you discover that very easily if you’re interested – it’s in your personal GPS system, Genetic Purpose System in your fingertips. We’re all born with our purpose and it was formed in utero for us.  We just need to decipher what it is, but I digress…..  Many research studies have concluded that we simply have this scarcity fear burned into our brains. Face the facts of the studies that no matter how much you have, you won’t feel that it is enough and then decide to be happy no matter what.

 

Just accept that we generally won’t feel we have enough and stop waiting to accumulate enough, whatever enough is for you, and make a decision to be happy with what you have. Enjoy the now and practice the six tools to happiness and the other guides to happiness over the past year and have fun re-creating happiness in your life. Happy New Year – may you be more happy this year than last and even happier next year as you practice the steps.

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