live life with clarity + empowered velocity

2 entirely different paths has kept me paralyzed for the past 3 years. I have to make the decision now. Now is all we have! I cannot waste anymore energy sitting on the fence.

My heart wants to be able to be successful in real estate and advocate/provide affordable housing for families. This is where I have 20+ years experience in my life.

My heart also wants to get into caring for God’s Creation type of education teaching children cooking, gardening, about nature and helping them develope their creativity. Plus working with at risk teens. Also having a syndicated radio program, publishing books and producing uplifing TV/videos to help fight the negative temptations they live with everyday.

There are many people in real estate who make an excellent living helping people with their homes purchases.

When I write or speak of my vision of working with children, the creative arts center and production company my heart sings with joy. I get very excited and my eyes sparkle. I can even get others excited about it!

I haven’t pursued it out of fear of failure or the fact I am not a “qualified” person to do this. Fear has stopped me in my tracks. :(

Target Teams Assessments? I just took an on-line assessment of my business strengths and weaknesses. I got the assessment after registering for Keith Ferrazzi’s newsletter

I went to Jill Konrath’s book download and it was in her package as a free bonus.

Anyway, it was right on the money of who I am in business…good and bad. It is designed for potential employers to see where you fit into their organization.

It gave me quite an insight on where I would fit or how I’d need to surround myself in my business to make it a success.

Very cool!

are the things that keep me motivated each day. I have tried to be spontaneous and go with the flow but when I do that things go awry and nothing gets accomplished.

In the past I have always been a runner. When things went wrong whether it was jobs,finances,relationships or health issues I was the queen of denial. Just call me Cleo.

I mastered avoidance techniques to avoid taking responsibility for my choices. I learned to play the victim very well. That mastery has gotten me to where I am today.

Which is not all bad. I can actually help others who have coping techniques like mine become stronger and healthier like others have helped me.

Today I vow to stop running from my life. I vow to embrace it…to cherish it…and to live out loud for the remainder of it.

I keep coming back to the point that my natural talents are that of author, teacher and counselor. All other things fade away and that is what is left.

Even as a child I made all of the neighborhood kids play school with me and we put on big extravaganza plays for our parents. I loved school! To this day I love learning new things and sharing with others.

I have been putting a round peg in a square hole for to long now going around the mountain that isn’t even mine to go around. I haven’t been working on my 43T goals worried about making a living and just ekeing out an existence.

Even B knew if we do what we love life is adventurously fun. His natural talents are music and entertaining others. He is also an excellent writer.

I am feeling very relaxed…writers write, teachers teach, counselors counsel…if we do what our natural talents are there will be more peace and joy in our lives.

BELIEVE while others are doubting.

PLAN while others are playing.

STUDY while others are sleeping.

DECIDE while others are delaying.

PREPARE while others are daydreaming.

BEGIN while others are procrastinating.

WORK while others are wishing.

SAVE while others are wasting.

LISTEN while others are talking.

SMILE while others are frowning.

COMMEND while others are criticizing.

PERSIST while others are quitting.

William Arthur Ward

In my conversations with hundreds of top salespeople over the years, I have found that they all have one thing in common. They have taken the time to sit down and create a clear blueprint for themselves and their future lives. Even if they started the process of goal setting and personal strategic planning with a little skepticism, every one of them has become a true believer.

Becoming a True Believer
Every one of them has been amazed at the incredible power of goal setting and strategic planning. Every one of them has accomplished far more than they ever believed possible in selling and they ascribe their success to the deliberate process of thinking through every aspect of their work and their lives, and then developing a detailed, written road map to get them to where they wanted to go.

The Definition of Happiness
Happiness has been defined as, “The progressive achievement of a worthy ideal, or goal.” When you are working progressively, step-by-step toward something that is important to you, you generate within yourself a continuous feeling of success and achievement.

You feel more positive and motivated. You feel more in control of your own life. You feel happier and more fulfilled. You feel like a winner, and you soon develop the psychological momentum that enables you to overcome obstacles and plough through adversity as you move toward achieving the goals that are most important to you.

Determine Your Values
Personal strategic planning begins with your determining what it is you believe in and stand for-your values. Your values lie at the very core of everything you are as a human being. Your values are the unifying principles and core beliefs of your personality and your character. The virtues and qualities that you stand for are what constitute the person you have become from the beginning of your life to this moment.

Your values, virtues and inner beliefs are the axle around which the wheel of your life turns. All improvement in your life begins with you clarifying your true values and then committing yourself to live consistent with them.

Fuzzy or Clear?
Successful people are successful because they are very clear about their values. Unsuccessful people are fuzzy or unsure. Complete failures have no real values at all.

Build Self-Confidence and Self-Esteem
Values clarification is the beginning exercise in building self-confidence, self-esteem and personal character. When you take the time to think through your fundamental values, and then commit yourself to living your life consistent with them, you feel a surge of mental strength and well-being. You feel stronger and more capable. You feel more centered in the universe and more competent of accomplishing the goals you set for yourself.

Action Exercises
Here are two things you can do immediately to put these ideas into action.

First, decide for yourself what makes you truly happy and then organize your life around it. Write down your goals and make plans to achieve them.

Second, begin with your values by deciding what it is you stand for and believe in. Commit yourself to live consistent with your inner most convictions – and you’ll never make another mistake.

By: Brian Tracy

This strategy requires a commitment from you to work at scheduled times on large tasks. Most of the really important work you do requires large chunks of unbroken time to complete. Your ability to create and carve out these blocks of high value, highly productive time, is central to your ability to make a significant contribution to your work and to your life.

Thoughtfulness may be defined as a careful concern for the secondary consequences of each decision and each action. This is the essence of strategic thinking.

Start Immediately on Number One
Successful salespeople set aside a specific time period each day to phone prospects. Rather than procrastinating or delaying on a task that they don’t particularly like, they resolve that they will phone for one solid hour between 10 and 11 AM and they then discipline themselves to follow through on their resolutions.

Many business executives set aside a specific time each day to call customers directly to get feedback.
Create Specific Amounts of Time
Some people allocate specific 30-60 minute time periods each day for exercise. Many people read in the great books 15 minutes each night before retiring. In this way, over time, they eventually read dozens of the best books ever written.

The key to the success of this method of working in specific time segments is for you to plan your day in advance and specifically schedule a fixed time period for a particular activity or task.

You make work appointments with yourself and then discipline yourself to keep them. You set aside thirty, sixty and ninety minute time segments that you use to work on and complete important tasks.

Create Preplanned Periods
Many highly productive people schedule specific activities in preplanned time slots all day long. These people build their work lives around accomplishing key tasks one at a time. As a result, they become more and more productive and eventually produce two times, three times and five times as much as the average person.

Action Exercises
Here are two things you can do immediately to put these ideas into action.

First, organize each day to create large chunks of time you can use for key task completion.

Second, make a written appointment with yourself to work on a key task at a specific time.

By: Brian Tracy

How to set standards for excellence and back them with total integrity.

A Commitment to Excellence
Leaders have specific responsibilities and must fulfill certain requirements. One requirement of leadership is the ability to choose an area of excellence. Just as a good general chooses the terrain on which to do battle, an excellent leader chooses the area in which he and others are going to do an outstanding job. The commitment to excellence is one of the most powerful of all motivators. All leaders who change people and organizations are enthusiastic about achieving excellence in a particular area.

Be the Best!
The most motivational vision you can have for yourself and others is to “Be the best!” Many people don’t yet realize that excellent performance in serving other people is an absolute, basic essential for survival in the economy of the future. Many individuals and companies still adhere to the idea that as long as they are no worse than anyone else, they can remain in business. That is just plain silly! It is prehistoric thinking. We are now in the age of excellence. Customers assume that they will get excellent quality, and if they don’t, they will go to your competitors so fast, people’s heads will spin.

Have A Vision of High Standards
As a leader, your job is to be excellent at what you do, to be the best in your chosen field of endeavor. Your job is to have a vision of high standards in serving people. You not only exemplify excellence in your own behavior, but you also translate it to others so that they, too, become committed to this vision.

This is the key to servant leadership. It is the commitment to doing work of the highest quality in the service of other people, both inside and outside the organization. Leadership today requires an equal focus on the people who must do the job, on the one hand, and the people who are expected to benefit from the job, on the other.
The Most Respected Quality
The second quality, which is perhaps the single most respected quality of leaders, is integrity. Integrity is complete, unflinching honesty with regard to everything that you say and do. Integrity underlies all the other qualities. Your measure of integrity is determined by how honest you are in the critical areas of your life.

Integrity means this: When someone asks you at the end of the day, “Did you do your very best?” you can look him in the eye and say, “Yes!” Integrity means this: When someone asks you if you could have done it better, you can honestly say, “No, I did everything I possibly could.”

Integrity means that you, as a leader, admit your shortcomings. It means that you work to develop your strengths and compensate for your weaknesses. Integrity means that you tell the truth, and that you live the truth in everything that you do and in all your relationships. Integrity means that you deal straightforwardly with people and situations and that you do not compromise what you believe to be true.

Action Exercises
Now, here are two things you can do immediately to put these ideas into action.

First, identify the area of your work where excellent performance can contribute the very most to productivity and profits. Focus all your efforts in this area.

Second, do your very best on every task. Imagine that everyone is watching even when no one is watching. Imagine that everyone in your company was going to do their work exactly the way you do yours.

Never compromise your standards!

“Take your life in your own hands, and what happens? A
terrible thing: no one to blame.”

Erica Jong

“The best years of your life are the ones in which you
decide your problems are your own. You do not blame
them on your mother, the ecology, or the president.
You realize that you control your own destiny.”

Albert Ellis

“We are made wise not by the recollection of our past,
but by the responsibility for our future.”

George Bernard Shaw

“God has entrusted me with myself.”

Epictetus