Get Ahead This Holiday Season!

I found myself at the gym this past week and I noticed something there that I think is so important for all of us out there who are looking to be more successful in our lives and careers. I usually go to the gym early in the morning and see tons of people working out. Typically, my gym is pretty packed at all times, so I’m used to walking into a pretty busy gym each morning. This time, however, my gym was a ghost town. I had noticed that I had been seeing almost no one at the gym for several days and so when I walked in and saw no one in the gym that morning, I had a realization about what makes successful people so successful.

What are the things that can set us apart as successful people and business owners? What makes some people more successful in relationships? What can we do to be that successful in our lives? Well, what I realized in the gym that morning is actually very simple. My gym has become a ghost town recently because it is the holiday season and this is the time of year when so many of us just kind of give up on our goals. We stop going to the gym, throw out our healthy meals and unbutton our pants to eat all of the holiday food we want. We push all of our professional goals out of our mind, let them fall to the side and tell ourselves that we’ll come back to them in the new year. It’s the holidays, I get it, but here’s the thing. Now is the perfect time to get ahead of the competition.

You have a unique opportunity at this time of the year when everyone else is slowing down to ramp it into high gear and do the best you can to beat out everyone else who is taking a break. If you are searching for a new job and haven’t looked at your resume and cover letter in a while, now is the time to sit down and update them. If you want to start your own business and get out of cubicle land, now is the time to start developing a clear plan.

This is the time to start doing the things that everyone else is giving up on for the next few weeks like going to the gym. No one is going to the gym right now. You can spend as long as you want on any machine without worrying about anyone else and have a much better time working out than you will next month when everyone is trying to work on their fitness New Year’s resolutions. The same is true for all of your professional goals. Now is the time to start preparing behind the scenes. Apply for open jobs if you can or get to know your cover letter and resume inside and out. Do whatever you can to work towards those career goals so that when everyone else comes back to the grind in January, you are already ahead of the game.

A lot of people spend December completely in vacation mode and that is important. We all need to take a break and recover when we are feeling stressed and overwhelmed. However, there is a reason why I was able to quit my job and work full time for myself. When everyone else is chilling out, I am still working hard to set myself up for the next year. I know that so many of you reading this right now have been dreaming of making a real and positive impact in the world. Taking this time off your 9 to 5 job will push you ahead of the game so that you can start your dream business or career and make a true difference in the world. If you want to set yourself apart from everyone else and be more successful, be the person that speeds up instead of slows down this holiday season.

If you need help starting 2019 off on the right foot, sign up for a complimentary clarity session with me here. Together, we will discuss where you’re at, where you’re going, what’s getting in the way and start developing a clear path towards work you love!

What's On Your Tray This Holiday Season?

The weather is cold, the stores are packed and the sleigh bells are ringing. Yep, it is definitely the holiday season! This time of year can be filled with good tidings and cheer, but it can also bring a huge heaping pile of stress in our lives. With that in mind, I wanted to share with you an analogy that will help you understand just why you may find yourself feeling like a bit of a scrooge this time of year.

For this analogy, I want you to go back to your school days in your mind. Think back to middle school or high school when you would have to buy lunch from the cafeteria. You would walk in line, grab a tray and start piling on all the different things you wanted to have for lunch. Then, you would carefully carry it over to a table to eat everything. I want you to remember that feeling of balancing your lunch tray because that is what we are doing every day with all the different parts of our lives - especially during the holidays.

Think about everything you have on your tray right now. Usually, you have a plate full of work responsibilities on one side and another plate for family obligations. With the holidays upon us however, you might find an extra side dish of holiday preparations on one side of your tray. Maybe your work plate is beginning to overflow as your boss adds on a scoop of tasks that need to get done before the end of the year. Maybe your family plate is the one that is filling up as relatives from all over fly in to celebrate the holidays. Add another side dish here for friends and another for office parties and before you know it, things are just about to spill off your tray and into a messy pile on the ground.

When we let those work obligations or family responsibilities on our tray fill up too much, our tray starts to feel heavy or lopsided. We get so overwhelmed by all of the plates we are carrying during the holidays that we spend all our energy on just getting everything done and we completely miss out on the holiday joy and spirit. The closest we come to feeling Christmas cheer is stress eating a holiday doughnut because that one relative we really don’t want to see insists on hosting the family get together this year. Now we are not only missing out on the holiday spirit, but we are also not taking care of ourselves and our personal goals.

So I encourage you to take a moment to look at what is on your tray right now. It can help to even draw out a visual of what your tray looks like. Take a piece of paper and draw a big rectangle on it. This is your tray. Now ask yourself, what is on your tray right now? What are you carrying emotionally and psychologically? A good starting point might be to draw a plate for work and a plate for family - your traditional work life balance. From there, start thinking about all of the extra side dishes you may have added on your tray and draw those. What is causing you stress right now? What is making your tray feel heavy and unbalanced?

Taking a look at what you are carrying on your tray in life will give you a clear indicator on what you can let go of and what you can shift around on your life for more balance. You can look at the tray you have drawn out and identify what things on your plates you can possibly put on someone else’s tray who has more space. Asking for help - especially during the holidays - is the best thing that you can do for yourself so that you can feel balanced and really approach the holidays with a positive and merry spirit. ‘Tis the season after all!

If you are having trouble figuring out how to manage your time, I want to help you learn how to create a plan that you can use to make sure you have time for yourself and your career goals. That is why I am doing my planning workshop, Quit Your Job: An Intensive Workshop for the Aspiring Entrepreneur, tomorrow at 6:30pm at United By Blue. In this workshop, you will learn how to develop an actionable 90 Day plan to help you achieve all the goals you have for starting a new business that supports you. Learn more and sign up by clicking this link. I hope to see you there!

Why You Can't Stick to Those New Year's Resolutions

Can you believe that 2018 has almost passed us by? Now that we have all had a happy Thanksgiving, we have officially entered holiday season and the last few weeks of the year before 2019. In the spirit of the holidays, I want to give you a little gift for your new year and tell you the number one reason so many of us just can’t seem to stick to our New Year's’ resolutions.

You know the story, you tell yourself that you’re going to lose 30 pounds this year which is a great goal. Then the year passes you by and those gym shoes you bought in January haven’t left your closet since February. Whatever the resolution was for you, we have all been there and you probably spend every December wondering why you weren’t able to follow through on the goals you set for yourself. Well, it turns out that the problem isn’t with the New Years’ resolution itself. The number one reason we do not follow through with our New Year's’ resolution actually has more to do with the reason we are trying to pursue the resolution to begin with.

We may tell ourselves that we want to lose 30 pounds this year because we want to be healthy, but the reality is for many of us, that is not really want we care about at the end of the day. What we really want is to be able to keep up with our friends on their Saturday morning hikes. Or maybe we want to feel confident when we go to the beach in a swimsuit. Quite frankly, we might just want to lose 30 pounds so we can go out and get laid. That is okay!

Many aspiring entrepreneurs go into the New Year wanting to start a company and they say they want to create this business for money or to help people. Those reasons might be a part of your motivation for starting this business, but there is more to it most of the time. Everyone needs money or wants to help people, but there is a bigger motivation that is really driving your decision to become an business owner. It may be that you want to buy your first house or you want the freedom to travel.

While you may feel that motivations like getting laid or wanting to buy a house appear selfish, the only way to stick to big resolutions is to really get in touch with why we really want the end result. When we know what that motivation is, we can find the drive to stick to our goals this year and all the years to come.

Finding your real motivation is a really powerful way to follow through with your New Year's’ resolutions, but I know that really achieving the things you want to in the new year is far from easy. It is really freaking hard! That’s why I’ve got you covered.

I want all of us to cross off every single one of the resolutions we set for 2019, so I am doing a virtual vision and planning workshop on December 1st at 11AM called, How to Create Everything You Want in 2019.

THIS WORKSHOP IS NOT PLANNING AS USUAL! I have an alternative way to think about what you want that is going to help you get in touch with the real motivation behind your goals so that you can create your detailed 2019 plan. We will explore what you want and what your core desired feeling is in life, so that you know how you want to feel day in and day out.

I am so excited for this workshop because I know how much this method of planning has helped me achieve each year and I can’t wait to share that with you! If you are ready to become a planning guru so you can put in some serious work next year, sign up for How to Create Everything You Want in 2019 here!

As a special bonus, you can get a Cyber Monday Hangover discount by using promo code CYBER today to save over 65% on your ticket! That means you will be getting the tools you need for your most successful year yet for just $97! I can’t wait to see you there!

Work Life Balance: Is It Realistic? With Joanne Sapers

Recently, I had the pleasure of sitting down and talking with my good friend and colleague Joanne Sapers, the founder of Go Deep with Love, about a topic that I have been thinking about deeply for a long time. We talked about work-life balance and if it is realistic to expect that we have a balance between our professional life and our personal life. This question has been weighing on the minds of a lot of people lately, as more and more we find that our society is a 24-hour Society. Forbes just recently put out an article stating that it might not be realistic to expect a work-life balance in today's work culture. However, I don't think that's true.

While work-life balance may not be possible in the traditional fifty fifty way that everybody strives for, I think it is incredibly realistic to be able to find a balance between work and your personal life so long as you find what that balance looks like for yourself. Work-life balance looks different for everyone because life is fluid and always changing. I know what it looks like for me; and in my conversation with Joanne, I was really looking forward to hearing her perspective on what having a work-life balance means for her. Joanne mentions that for her, starting her mornings connecting with her spirituality is very important.

“When I start my day, I do meditation I do journaling I do beautiful exercise I do total silence I do anything and everything that is going to say yes to me and remind me, because I go deep on the spiritual level, that everybody is one everything is one and as I wake up in the morning I’m part of this oneness.” - Joanne Sapers

Work-life Balance depends heavily on the things you want and need out of life. Spirituality is a major component in Joanne’s life and what she needs to feel fulfilled each day. For me, art is my spiritual practice and in order to feel balanced, I need to take the time to be creative. However, there was also a time in my life when I was growing my business while keeping a day job. Work-life balance for me then meant that my previous full-time job was work and my life was my business; and that is what felt right to me. Work-life Balance is all about perspective. It is important to think about what is right for you personally not only in the present moment in terms of what you want to create and self care, but also in the long term. Without finding a balance that is true to us in the long term, we may not be able to achieve all of the things we want to do in life.

Lacking a balance in our professional and personal lives also can negatively impact us emotionally. Before we started working together, a client of mine was stretching herself really thin working and volunteering for a bunch of different organizations and causes. Even though she cared for these causes and places she worked, she was also a painter who didn’t have the time to paint. Because she had so much to work to do and so many responsibilities to her family, she wasn’t painting anymore. That imbalance in her life resulted in her becoming resentful and snippy with her loved ones. Without the balance between her work and her passions, she was caught in a cycle of anger and energetic exhaustion, unable to really engage in her life.

Together, she and I had to figure out what the balance between her responsibilities and her painting looked like. We realized that she needed to have a certain number of minutes in the studio everyday in order to feel like she was living the life she wanted to live. As we slowly began building time for creativity back into her life, she was able to start letting go of the negative emotions she had been holding onto because she was doing what she felt she needed to do in life. By releasing these emotions, she was able to clear her mind and make better decisions for herself. She was able to say no to work and volunteer opportunities that she did not have the time for, in a way that was compassionate towards herself and the other person. Now, she is able to create paintings regularly and recently did a show where she sold every painting she had.

Once you start feeling more pride in who you are and what you do, you realize that you are worth taking care of and saying no to the things that overwhelm you. We might not believe that the “me time” and the life part of the work-life balance scale is important, but it might lead us down a journey we could never have imagined. So I encourage you to take the time to really discover what you truly need to feel that sense of pride and fulfillment in your life.

If you are struggling with visualizing what you need to do to connect with that sense of pride, I have created a virtual workshop just for you called, How to Create Everything You Want in 2019, on December 1st at 11AM. This 2 hour workshop is designed to help you discover what you truly want in life, set realistic goals that will move you forward towards the life you truly want, as well as address the negative setbacks and challenges that can get in the way so that you feel confident in your ability to achieve your goals. Sign up and learn more by clicking here!

Five Things That Cause Your Procrastination

Let’s talk about procrastination. If you are like most people, procrastination is your worst enemy. Out of all my conversations with people, I find that procrastination factors into two big problems in our lives. First, Procrastination is preventing you from achieving your professional goals, and second, it is literally stealing away the valuable personal time that you should be using to relax, recuperate and work on that passion side project you have like starting a new business you are excited by. As a result, procrastination becomes the enemy of change and growth, especially if you are trying to build your dream career. That’s why I want to help you identify five things to look out for when it comes to procrastination. You may find that one or all five are hindering your ability to beat procrastination. The first step is being able to recognize which of these things could be causing your procrastination.

1. Fear of Failure

The first common cause of procrastination is the fear of failure. You think you won't be effective you believe you're bad at the task or at the other end of the spectrum, you have perfectionism. You feel that you have to be perfect at the task you need to do or else you're going to get rejected or some other negative thing will happen.

2. Overwhelm

The second thing that is a really common cause of procrastination is overwhelm. I know you’ve seen all those memes on the internet. “I have so much to do, but all I want to do is take a nap.” That’s overwhelm, and as funny as those memes can be, not remedying that overwhelm is really taking a toll on your ability to actually recuperate from your work day because we fall into a vicious cycle. When we're overwhelmed, we're not doing our work and when we do our work we get overwhelmed even more. We procrastinate and work continues to pile up. Before we know it, procrastination has literally ruined our week, then our month, and then our entire year.

3. Energetic Exhaustion

The third thing I find that causes procrastination a lot is energetic exhaustion. Usually, energetic exhaustion is associated with chronic worry about money or situations happening in our lives. When we are worrying all the time, that takes energy and it literally sucks energy away from what is most important to us in our lives. By the time we get to the work we needed to accomplish, we're already exhausted from worry. That is when we go back to thinking, “I'm so tired I want to take a nap right now,” and we slip into procrastination.

4. Rationalization

The fourth thing that is a common root of procrastination is rationalization. This is what is happening when your brain convinces you that you should take a break instead of working on that task you have been putting off. You spent a few minutes on work yesterday, but there is still a lot to be done. Yet, your brain says, “Hey, I did that one thing yesterday. I deserve to take it easy!” Then, three days go by and you are still “taking it easy.” When we find ourselves trapped in rationalization, we are focusing more on the present gains than we are in the future gains of living the life that we want to live. Everyone needs a break sometimes, but the key is to be realistic with when you need a break and for how long. Not being realistic here leads to procrastination.

5. Perceived Infinite Amounts of Time

Finally, the fifth cause of procrastination is perceived infinite amounts of time. This is a result of not only overestimating the time we have to do a task, but also underestimating the amount of time it will take to do that task. You might recognize this situation. You have a task you have to do by the end of the week. You think, “This task will only take fifteen minutes and I have four whole evenings after work to get it done, no problem!” Then, you get to the end of the week and you are scrambling to finish that task you put off all week - and even worse - that “fifteen minute task” ends up taking over an hour. When we underestimate how long things will take us, that makes it easier for us to put things off until later and later and later. Before we know it, we’ve procrastinated away all that time we thought we had.

What do we do?

All five of these things are roadblocks for us to get stuff done. More importantly, these things are costing us our time with our family, loved ones, and friends, and even our time to relax and binge on some Netflix guilt-free at the end of the workday. We need tools in our tool belt to be able to manage procrastination and balance our personal and professional lives so that we can handle those times when e-mails are following you everywhere you go and work worry is taking over your mind. We also need to know how to curb the impulses to jump into the opposite end of the spectrum where you are on a 10 hour Netflix binge and avoiding your work completely.

I want to help you escape procrastination. That’s why I decided to create my free online training, Work-Life Balance: How to Enjoy Life Without Sacrificing Progress at Work. It is happening on November 19th at 7pm ET and is all about having your cake and eating it too. If you are really struggling with procrastination, grab your spot here so that you can learn how to keep work and procrastination from taking over your life.

Why You Need to Take Time For Yourself

Lately, I have had a lot of conversations with people that are in transition. These are people who are either looking to transition from their current full time role into a new job or create a new business, or are also people who have been laid off by huge companies and are trying to reinvent themselves in their career. Maybe you can relate.

What's interesting about the people I have met is that many of them are working in their current position beyond the traditional 9 to 5 schedule. Nowadays, it is the expectation amongst employers that we will be there on our nights and weekends, ready and on call for any little problem that arises. Even the people I have met who have recently been laid off are working around the clock trying to find a new way to make ends meet. Every day, we fall into the cycle of overworking ourselves in positions or situations that we never even wanted to begin with. How do we find the time to get out of the job we accepted just because we needed to escape the financial hole we were in? How do we break the pattern of working all the time so that we can build the career we truly want for ourselves?

The obvious answer I hear a lot is time management, however, I think there is more to the story. I think a lot of people out there really do know how to manage their time. I think that if all you needed to do was create more time in your day, you could. What stops so many of us from creating the time we need to create the career we want is the underlying fear that we are being selfish. We can be so afraid that spending that time on ourselves is selfish when we have families and day jobs that need our attention. How do you make that time commitment to transitioning to a more fulfilling career without feeling frivolous or selfish?

One of the main things that I recommend to people who are trying to make a pivot in their career while they allocate a lot of time to their current role is to think about the value that you bring to the table and to think about the importance of this career transition in your life. Think: If you do not make this career change, what will happen and how will you feel? If you do make this change, how will you feel then? What does this career change mean to you?

I met a woman recently who was so in love with the work she does that she wants to work in her position at her organization for the rest of her life. Her career is focused on a spiritually driven purpose that she discovered within herself. Imagine how devastated she would feel had she not taken the time for herself to find it. It is important not only to think about the value you can give to society when your work truly aligns with your purpose, but also to think about the consequences of you not making that move forward. When you are in touch with your value and the potential you have, you reinvigorate a sense of motivation.

Remembering your value helps you realize why you as a human being on this planet are worthy of taking even just ten minutes a day for your goals. Create some time for your job search or your business each day - whether it is ten minutes or an hour - and the value you will see in yourself will grow. The more the value you place on yourself grows, the more you will feel worthy of using that extra time for your future. That way, if anyone tries to call you out on taking a little time for yourself, you can confidently look the in the eye and say, “It’s only a few minutes and I am doing the world a favor by pursuing my calling and helping others with my heart centered action.” The talents you have to share with the world are valuable to everyone, so use them wisely.

If you struggle with seeing the value in taking time for yourself, I am going to be giving a free online training called, “Work/Life Balance: How to Enjoy Life Without Sacrificing Progress at Work” on November 19th at 7PM ET. During this training, I will be giving you tools you need to remedy burnout and hit your personal and professional goals in the next year. Sign up here!