inspiration

The New Years holiday is my favorite because it always sits me down to think about what I want to achieve in the fresh year. I am reminded of all the possibilities. When I focus my complete attention on creating my desired life, a few things come up that I know are vital to the process:

1. Develop a clear vision: Knowing specifically what you want to create or achieve enables you to play an active role in building it. Vague goals don’t give you anything solid to believe in, visualize or reach for.
2. Give yourself permission to be prosperous. Financial success comes from thinking that prosperity is your natural right, just as much as breathing. Work on making this belief your habit if it isn’t already.
3. Adjust your beliefs about your life with what you want your life to be. Become keenly aware of that little voice that is constantly telling you what it thinks is possible for you and make the commitment to override it with statements about what you want to be true for you.
4. Understand the power of visualization and use it to create the reality you want. Think of yourself as a co-creator of your life and see visualization as your tool for molding your creation.
5. Make a habit of consciously creating your life. Start each day focusing on your vision, be sure that your beliefs are aligned with your vision and follow through with a visualization that brings your vision to life.
6. Approach your work with positive expectations. Believing in your potential to succeed will inspire you to follow through with the right actions.

One of the greatest lessons I’ve learned is that challenging times are actually opportunities that lead you to what fits you better. Thirteen years ago my husband left me for another woman. I felt like the framework of my life had been ripped out from underneath me. My need to overcome my pain led me to study teachings that I would never have explored on my own. I’ve come to recognize that this experience laid the foundation for much of the work I now do.

I share this personal story because I know that so many of you are feeling the hard times. I encourage you to look at whatever might feel fallen apart in your life and see the opportunity to approach that something differently. So often we keep on trying to force something to happen in the same old ways, without considering that it’s not working because it no longer fits.

If you’re not getting the results you want in your career right now, ask yourself this question:

Why is this not working for me?

Then give yourself permission to look honestly and trust your instincts to point you in the right direction.

If what you’re doing right now isn’t working, what do you have to lose to try something different, or at least a different approach?

If this message speaks to you, yet you don’t know how to begin to experiment with something different, please feel free to contact us. Dean and I want to do whatever we can to support you.

It’s difficult to escape the messages of economic fear that surround us these days. Yet accepting the fear in your own life is the worst thing you can do.

Why?

You are unable to focus on your vision for success when you are focusing on disaster.

I don’t know about you, but I prefer focusing on my vision for success because I’ve learned that what I focus on is what grows.

Here’s how:

• Choose to believe that everything will work out fine. I’m not suggesting that you put your head in the sand and do nothing. Rather I mean that you accept adversity as an invitation to grow instead of a threat to your well being. Whether we like it or not, isn’t that what life is all about?
• Create a vision of what you want to achieve in your life, and absolutely, positively convince yourself that you are capable of bringing your vision to life.
• Begin each day focusing on your vision. Read this brief article about how to visualize.
• Create a plan for achieving your vision and outline the necessary steps.
• Think of your vision constantly throughout every single day.
• Your focus on your vision will motivate you to execute the steps every single day as tasks on your to-do list.
• At the end of each day, revel in the steps you’ve taken and acknowledge that you are that much closer to bringing your vision to life.

REMEMBER THIS: You may not have any control over the stock market, lay-offs, or bank lending, but you hold all the power over the actions you take to achieve what you want.

Dean and I had the honor Saturday of presenting to Job Connections, a wonderful group that supports unemployed Bay Area professionals. I lead the group through an exercise intended to bring their ideal career vision to the surface. Afterwards I asked what obstacles get in the way of pursuing that vision. The first reply was one I hear every time: MONEY.

There is no doubt that those of us who are not independently wealthy are more concerned with making enough money than nearly anything else. Yet most of us lose sight of how much control we do have over the money we make. Think about it this way. You are like a store that offers your skills and talents in exchange for money.

The amount of money you make is driven by:

1. The marketability of your skills and talents
2. How well you get the message out about the value of what you have to offer.
   

This holds true whether you want to maximize your earning potential working for a company or working for yourself.

If you are someone who has been a victim of a layoff, acknowledging your power over your paycheck may seem like positive thinking propaganda, but it’s not. You may be temporarily without a paycheck, yet you’re not without opportunities to increase your marketability and get the word out about what you have to offer.

In our quest to support individuals to create the careers they desire, Dean and I have recognized the real need to help people get beyond the fear of money. We have decided that we can do this better by expanding our training to more fully educate you in the hard skills that are necessary to be successful in today’s business world. For example:

• Learning how to be a more effective networker will enable you to exert your power to get the word out about what you have to offer.
• Learning how to blog will enable you to better promote your expertise to potential hiring managers or potential customers.
• Learning how to customize an inexpensive web publishing platform will give you the power to build and change your storefront without paying someone else to do it for you.

We’re in the process of adding this training to our event schedule. We are very excited about our mission to inspire you to reach for your dreams while educating you on how to use Web 2.0 technology to make your dreams reality. We’d love your suggestions on what kind of training would inspire you to take steps forward towards your vision.

So many of us fail to chase our dreams because we don’t believe we have the background, the resources or the connections to be successful. So we settle on a sure bet or what feels like a piece of security. Yet when we look at others who have built empires out of nothing, we might ask ourself, “Why can’t I use this person as an example of what is possible for me?”

Louise Hay sits at the top of my personal list of examples. In 1976, Louise Hay wrote a small pamphlet which grew into a book she self-published in 1984. With more than 35 million copies in print in over 30 languages, this book, You Can Heal Your Life, now a movie, launched Hay House, the publisher for over 130 authors, including Deepak Chopra and Wayne Dyer.

Louise was born to a poor family, dropped out of high school at age 15, got pregnant at 16 and gave her baby up for adoption. Louise learned much of the principles about the power of your thoughts that she is famous for while recovering from the devastation of her husband of 14 years leaving her for another woman.

Clearly Louise Hay is an example of a self-made success that has contributed greatly to our world. Whether or not you think of yourself as self-help enthusiast, a woman who has overcome hardship to build an empire has insights we can all learn from. I heartily recommend you invest the five minutes to watch this video and receive the wisdom of a legacy.