Are You Torn Between Your Work and Your Passion?

Here is the question of the week:

How do I achieve work and life balance and my passion?

Sometimes we don’t feel balance because we want to be doing something other than what we’re doing. Find the tie-in between what you “need” to do and what you “want” to do. When I discovered that my passion for helping people achieve their goals in life perfectly blended with my weight-loss company, I suddenly felt a lot happier. Here are some of the steps I took to help me on my quest for balance.

• In the past, any time I could, I got my kids involved in helping with the business, doing anything I could have them do in order to be with them, teach them business and keep them included.

• Go into the day doing a time study. Look at your list of things to do and determine how long (honestly) it will take to do these tasks. The first time I did this, I discovered I had about 36 hours of work planned for one 10-hour day. YIKES!

• Find a great priority setting system. You need to know what’s truly important so you can focus your energy in that direction. Think on the things you want rather than the things you don’t want. We become what we think about, including being people with balanced lives.

• Be “healthy selfish.” Take time to recharge your battery. Doing the things you love is crucial to your health! Remember, balance looks different for different people. To one person it means being off work at night to attend to family needs. To another it means being able to randomly leave for 4-7 days whenever you want. To yet another, it means working hours besides the normal 9-5, so you can do what needs to be done personally throughout the day.

• Remember - Quality at work and quantity at home. This mean that professionally, 90% of your time should be spent on activities that make money. Delegate the other things out. You need to be producing when you’re at your business. Personally, don’t miss the moments that matter; be there for the special events. The work will wait, life won’t. Make memories! Walk around the block backwards, eat lunch sitting in the trunk of the car, have an “ice skating” party on the kitchen floor using shaving cream. Rituals create tradition. Have bedtime stories and annual holiday celebrations. My kids awoke to toilet-papered bedrooms each year on their birthdays.

• Family traditions keep families close. Children learn what they live, so be in front of them who you hope they will become. And remember, families that pray together, and play together, stay together.

To learn more about balance, check out the Life Success Event.

The 2008 Life Success Event Officially Kicks Off

To see and watch more of what you’re missing each day, check out this link!

www.LifeSuccessEvent.com

How To Stay Focused On Your Goal Pt 2

Today we’ll cover how knowing the reason for your goal, or your ‘why’ is absolutely CRUCIAL to you staying focused. We have an awesome exercise to help you embrace this reality as your own. I’ll also share a few precious tid bits on how to overcome obstacles that can tend to distract you from what you need to do in order to hit your goal.

For years perhaps you’ve set goals you believed you were excited about. You determined you were going to do it this time. You left a seminar, finished a book or program and said, “That’s it!!! I’m ready!! This time I WILL achieve my goal! I really want it!! I’m going to do it!” Sure enough, though, the Motivation Assassinator of Lack of Focus struck and you looked up one day only to discover you weren’t achieving the goal—actually you weren’t even working on it any longer! I can tell you- this has certainly happened to me. Once I acknowledged my powerful ‘why’ things began to happen and haven’t stopped happening! I’m seeing my goal become reality! What if I told you that it is possible to have such a burning, powerful ‘why’ that your goal not only stays in the front of your mind at all times, but is also buried in your heart constantly too!

Imagine a 20 ft. 2×4. You know, the piece of wood used in constructing a home. If you lay that 2×4 on the floor directly in front of you, do you believe you could walk across it? It’s 4 inches wide, so I’m sure you might walk heel to toe, but most people say, “Of course I could do that!” Ok, so you believe you could do that. Now, what if we place a cement block under each end so it’s sitting approximately 12 inches off the ground. Do you believe you could still do it? Again, most say, “Yes, I did it already. I could do it again.” Great!! Sure you could! Ok, so what if we suspend the board between 2, 30 story buildings. Do you believe you could walk across it now? Most times people just look at me with a blank stare, fearful even. This is different. I don’t know if I believe it or not, actually I probably don’t. Fair enough. Now imagine this. Your standing on top of one of the thirty story buildings and the other building is on fire. And standing on the roof of the other building is the person you love most in this world. It may be your baby (even if your baby is 30 years old). It might be a parent, spouse, sibling, best friend, whomever. But whoever it is, the flames are going to consume them. Can you get across the board now? The answer always comes back a resounding, “You better believe it!’ I’ll crawl, hang or dangle, but I’ll get there!”

Well, gang, you just came up with one seriously powerful ‘why’. I call this the Burning Baby question. You got across the board to the other building because the one you loved most, the biggest why you could imagine was about to burn! So, with regard to your goal— what’s your ‘burning baby’? You need one if the goal is to be continually focused on. To weigh a certain weight or look a certain way is but a vanity goal. There is nothing wrong with a vanity goal; it’s just going to provide a temporary result. Burning baby goals produce permanent results because they matter so much to you. What’s your burning baby with regard to the goal you have? This will be the key factor in you staying focused on your goal and thereby achieving it.

Let’s talk every day distractions like email, voice mail, interruptions and TV. Set a specific time, two or three a day if necessary, to check your email and voice mail. Do NOT check it all the time or have it sitting on your task bar open. These things are seductive and their goal is to attack our focus. And they always achieve their goal! Schedule meetings and/or appointments with yourself and don’t permit interruptions. Trust me, if the building is crashing down around you, someone will let you know. Otherwise, remember your ‘burning baby’ and don’t let interruptions occur. Set an hour or so for a program you like to watch, and then call it quits for the night. Be sure the program is sending a positive message to your brain, not a negative one. Your focus gets foggy and time gets robbed (a serious focus stealer) when you spend too much time putting negative stuff into your mind. Remember, we become what we think about. And the more you put negative into your mind, the tougher it is to focus on your goal naturally. And there’s the secret. To allow focus to become a natural thing for you here is one last tip. Figure out through journaling what distracts you. It might be music, turn it off. It might be phones ringing elsewhere in the building, close the door. It might be talking too long in a meeting, set an agenda and stick to it, save the other information for another time.

Want to see your motivation maintained this time and the goal achieved? Be healthy selfish with your focus. It’s the vital factor to you finally hitting that goal permanently.

Think Yourself Thin Article in Woman’s World Issue May 2008

Think dieting is too hard? Not anymore! Some simple mind tricks were all it took for Adah Ellerbrock to lose 54 pounds. And they can work for you, too!

Why put off ’til tomorrow what you can do today? We’ve all heard that before. Maybe even thought it when we’ve had clutter to conquer, or a habit to change or a diet to start.
Yet as anyone with extra pounds knows, it’s east to procrastinate–because losing weight takes effort!
But it doesn’t have to, Glandorf, Ohio, mom Adah Ellerbrock discovered.
Big as a little girl, Adah knew early on the heartbreak of being heavy. “Tell us before you fall so we’ll know when the earthquake’s gonna hit!” kids taunted.
So by junior high, she was counting calories–and sometimes not eating at all–to get slim. Then, thankfully, she got into sports. Now she had a healthy way to keep her weight down. And a boyfriend–one she didn’t have to be skinny for. “Just be healthy,” he said.
Keith was a dream come true. And after a job with a weight-management company post-college, she made another dream come true: opening a weight-loss center.
After her own struggles, she was a natural at helping others. There was jsut one problem: her own weight!After putting on 70 pounds with her first baby, 50 wouldn’t budge. She knew she needed to eat better and move more. But nine months after welcoming baby Emma, she wasn’t doing it.
Every Monday, she’d tell herself, “I’ll start this week!” But by Tuesday, it was, “Maybe next week.”
So she cringed at work. It was embarrassing, helping people lose weight when she was so big herself! She felt so low, she wound up on antidepressants.
And she still weighed 204 pounds.Pills aren’t the answer, she sighed. But what is?

Melting pounds the easy way!

Then she heard some buzz about fitness expert Donna Krech’s Never Ending Motivation CD’s.
Donna’s claim: You can think yourself thin.
So how could Adah resist?
And Donna’s tips were easy to put into practice. Tips like writing down her goal–to get happy and healthy–to lock it in. Hanging a size 8 where she could see it–and repeating “That’s me!” whenever she passed by–to stay focused.
Hang around with positive people, Donna urged; their positivity rubs off! And make a “victory board”–a collage that “shows” your goal coming true. To help yourself believe.
Gazing at it, Adah felt hopeful. And within weeks, she found herself eating healthier meals and finding time to exercise!
“It’s working!” she thought.
In less than five months, she lost 54 pounds–and fit into that size 8 skirt!
“Now I’m unstoppable!” says Adah, who slimmed right back down after baby number two, Haley, and became a life coach, too! “With a simple change of mindset, the impossible can be possible. Just look at me!”

article from Woman’s World magazine May 5th, 2008 issue.

For more information, visit www.neverendingmotivation.com or www.donnakrech.com

How To Stay Focused On Your Goal

Focus gets assassinated when you find yourself being distracted. If you find yourself disoriented, scattered, or if you have no plan, your focus is going to get nailed in the process. If your focus is gone, you will not be able to do what you need to do in order to see the goal attained. Remember, we must ‘be’ before we can ‘do’ and we must ‘do’ before we can ‘have’. If we want to have a certain benefit from a certain goal, we must do what we need to do in order to see that take place. When we become the kind of person that sets goals, stays focused, believes the goal can be hit, manages time well, organizes details, maintains a positive outlook and thinks with a solution mindset (all examples of ‘being’) we end up exactly where we want to end up.

We’ve all learned that what we believe is what we become. It’s really that simple. When we believe life will go our way, it does. When we believe it won’t, it doesn’t. BELIEVE IT AND YOU’LL BE BLESSED; DON’T AND YOU WON’T. I have learned in my years in the weight loss and fitness businesses that what you focus on can totally change what you believe. Focus controls everything. It’s amazing. What’s even more amazing is that it takes only three steps to stay focused.

Today we’ll talk about:

1) knowing what the goal is and

2) the value of revisiting it at least weekly.

Next week I’ll share step 3.

Is your goal in your conscious mind all the time? You see, when your goal is in your conscious mind all the time, you’ll stay focused on it. The way to put it in your conscious mind all the time is to sit down and write out five-year goals. Why? Because your goal isn’t a one or two month thing. It’s probably something you want forever, right? I want to live for a long time, and I want to pass on to my babies and my grandbabies a legacy of health, positive attitude, happiness abundance and energy. That’s a lifetime thing.

Sit down and do a five-year goal sheet, and from there a three-year, a one-year, a six-month, a three-month, a two-week, and a one-week goal sheet. Then, every single week, go back and look at those goals. It doesn’t take any time to look them over once a week and the effort is well worth it. That will keep them in your mind and keep you focused.

If you are focused on your goals in your conscious mind, you are much less likely to become distracted. Even without knowing it, you’ll begin to do, say and think things that will get you to that goal AND you’ll stop doing things that will prevent the goal from becoming reality (distractions). Motivation lives inside you. Writing out your goals and rereading them will help you keep tapping into that motivation. Here’s an exercise to prove this.

After reading these words, practice this exercise. Look around you and find a point on the wall or a point anywhere in the room, and focus on it. Find a point and really stare at that point. Stare at it hard. Don’t look away. Are you focused on a certain point in the room? Now focus on the center of that point. Don’t look away; stay focused on the center of that point. Don’t look at anything else. Really stare at that point. Now focus on the center of the center of the point. Do you see it? Do you see the center of the center of the point? I want you to keep your focus on the center of the center, and raise your hands to shoulder level, and shake them, but keep your focus on the center of the center. Okay, focus back on this article.

Could you tell that what was moving was a set of hands? Not if you were focused on the center you couldn’t. You saw a little movement, but if you were focused on the center of the center of that point, you probably didn’t see much. When you’re focused you don’t see the distractions.

When you focus on your goals, the distractions of life are less likely to take you down and keep you from reaching your goals. When we’re focused, many times we don’t even see the distractions. If we do see the distractions, we don’t give them so much attention that they take from us the ability to keep focusing on the goal. It’s our goal we see the most when we’re focused. The five-year plan, the three-year plan, or even just a one-year plan will help you maintain your focus.

For more tools to achieve success visit http://www.lifesuccessevent.com. If you haven’t already reserved your seat for our May 2^nd and 3^rd event in Chicago, you better hurry. It’s only 10 days away!