Out With the Old, In With the New!

December 23rd, 2011 at 3:12 pm by admin

It is the final week of the year. How are you doing?

Are you swamped in last-minute holiday preparations? Are you dashing out to the overcrowded malls to try to grab the perfect (or any) gift for everyone on your shopping list? Are you finalizing the menu for your holiday get-togethers?

In this time of busyness and rush, I’d like to invite you to reflect on a few questions. Not only is the final week of the year a time of tasks and to-do’s, but it is also a beautiful opportunity to celebrate what is most important. Family, togetherness, spirituality, hope, endings and beginnings.

I invite you to take some time in the coming week, ideally prior to the start of the coming year, to sit back, relax, grab a pen and paper, and ponder some important questions. If you can give some time and energy to answering these questions, you can receive the gifts and lessons of the closing year and set yourself up for a coming year that fulfills your hopes and aspirations.

Here are some questions to help you reflect on the year that is ending:

What are you grateful for?
What did you learn (about yourself, others, your work, etc.)?
What are you most happy or proud about completing?
What remains incomplete or unfinished?
What would you need to do before the end of the year to feel complete with the year?
Where did you show courage in the face of fear or anxiety?
If you had to sum up the year in one word or short phrase, what would you use?

Here are some questions to help you look forward to the coming year:

What advice would you like to give yourself for the coming year?
What would you like to learn (about yourself, others, a new skill, etc.)?
What would you like to accomplish or complete?
What talents would you like to explore in the coming year, or what new things would you like to try?
What would you like to change or improve about yourself?
What do you want less of in the coming year?
What do you want more of in the coming year?

After you have thought through these deep and meaningful questions, you may want to pick a word or phrase that could be your “theme” for the coming year. When my clients do this, they often choose words like:

ease

grace

balance

focus

release

joy

hope

peace

fun

strength

Whatever word feels right to you is the right word. If you decide to choose a word like this, you may want to write it on a card to carry with you or put in a visible place.

However you choose to reflect on the past year and move into the coming year, I encourage you to seize this opportunity to close this chapter with reflection, learning, and gratitude as you move into a fresh year full of possibility!

Tags: balance family & work, goal setting, self help
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Goodbye Comfort Zone — I’m Moving Up!

December 12th, 2011 at 8:26 am by admin

The year is winding down, and I am fully engaged in planning for 2012. My team and I are cooking up some fantastic programs and products that just make me giddy thinking about them — I know you are going to love them!

But the kicker is that most of the things that make me the most excited and really get my blood pressure up are the BIG things that move me out of my comfort zone. I could continue to play safe, enjoying the success that I am currently experiencing, but I know I can do so much more, make such a bigger impact on like-minded, values-driven entrepreneurs, enjoy even greater abundance and prosperity and bliss in my life.

Big Impact Requires Big Thinking AND Big Actions!

The impact I want to make includes inspiring, empowering, and motivating entrepreneurs who are really out there showing up with businesses that reflect their deepest values and truest essence. The impact I also want to have within my own family includes experiencing even greater financial abundance and prosperity, as well as enjoying greater time with my family, more freedom to make choices, and deeper relationships with those I love.

Are you playing to win, or are you playing not to lose?

Are you running in the direction of the things you want in your life, or are you running away from something you don’t want? It’s much more fun to see a fantastic light at the end of the tunnel that you run toward instead of feeling the teeth of something you don’t want in your life chomping at your tail-end!

The moments in your life that make you really stretch outside your comfort zone are those that you will remember. I vividly remember taking the bar exam, but I don’t remember all the mundane days of studying. I strongly remember giving birth to my first daughter after 31 hours of labor, but the many days of pregnancy seem to blur together.

What moments in your life made you stretch? I bet those are the moments that you can recall in the most detail, that you really feel are the amazing moments that were pivotal in your life.

So for 2012, what will you do to stretch yourself and your business? What will you look back on as moments of discomfort as you left your comfort zone for something bigger and better in life and business? Staying in your comfort zone will never get you to where you really want to be, so stand up and do the bold thing that you know you must do to move yourself to the next level — I know you can do it!

Tags: business building, business management, self help
Posted in Business Building, Mindset, Prosperity, Success Coaching, Time Management | Add your comment

Expect Great Things, and Do Great Things!

December 6th, 2011 at 9:19 am by admin

Having the right mindset is critical to your success. As a business coach, I certainly coach on business nuts-and-bolts, but I always start with coaching about having a mindset that supports and literally helps you create your ideal business and lifestyle.

In your life, you will receive what you expect. And, your expectations are created and born out of your beliefs. When you want more out of your business or life, you must actually expect to receive more. This is more than just simply thinking about something in an expectant way. We must learn to create the very conditions and situations that allow what it is that we expect to come into our lives.

This is more than “woo-woo” stuff — it is mandatory to your success. Many people just wish things to be better, but they don’t actually believe that things will get better. Sometimes they believe that things will stay the same. Sometimes they are very negative and always expect the worst. They don’t really expect anything good or even great to show up in their lives. And because they don’t have this expectation, they don’t act in a different way that aligns with that expectation.

I have seen so many examples of people who expect great things in their life and fully believe that those things will happen, and, voila! Great things happen for them. On the other hand, I can tell you stories of people I have coached or even in my own circle of friends and family that constantly expect the worst and, unfortunately, negative things keep popping up in their life.

Think about it this way: if you want to go out and get a cup of coffee, you go on your way to the nearest coffee shop and purchase it. You know that when you walk into that coffee shop, you can expect there to be coffee for you to purchase. You believed that the coffee shop would have coffee for you before you even headed out the door, or why would you have gone? Likewise, set your vision and have belief. Act as if you know that your expectation will be realized. That will keep you moving in the direction of your vision and its ultimate appearance in your life and business.

Action steps:

1. Decide what it is that you want in your life. Be clear. Have clarity in your vision.

2. Believe that your vision will come true. Expect it, and change your behaviors to be in alignment with your belief and expectations.

3. As always, don’t cling too tightly to your vision. Trust that everything will come to pass just as it should, and be deeply grateful for all that you already have in your business and life.

Tags: self help, success
Posted in Mindset | Add your comment

It IS the Small Stuff!

December 3rd, 2011 at 12:02 pm by admin

“The invariable mark of wisdom is to see the miraculous in the common.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson

It’s that time of year again – the holidays. A season that is supposed to be filled with joy and wonder, but instead is often filled with year-end deadlines, endless shopping and wrapping, snarled traffic due to weather, travel plans, cooking, baking, office parties … and on and on.

And while we “get through” it all, are we really enjoying it? All of these things that are intended to be fun and add to our season – they end up depleting us and leaving us relieved to see the calendar change to January 1.

Wouldn’t it be nice to regain that childlike joy in the small, seemingly inconsequential things in life?

What would that be like for you?

What if, instead of only seeing the burdens, the stresses, the over-commitments, the to-do list, we started to look for the small, but beautiful things around us every day.

Read again this powerful quote by Emerson: “The invariable mark of wisdom is to see the miraculous in the common.”

As lawyers, we are pretty intelligent people. We often pride ourselves on being intelligent, able to see things in new ways and articulate in convincing ways, able to read and write “legalese” with the best of them.

But are we “wise?” There is a difference between intelligence and wisdom. And when we can become “wise” enough, as Emerson suggested, to see the miraculous in the common, everyday occurrences in our lives, we will also gain that elusive joy and happiness that we forgot how to access long ago.

You can choose (and “choose” is the operative word) to focus on things of beauty in your life. Can you choose to marvel at those holiday decorations that you put up, rather than putting them up and forgetting about them, allowing others to enjoy them but forgetting to enjoy them yourself?

Can you choose to savor the foods that you prepared or that others prepared for you, rather than scarfing them down as fast as possible, barely tasting them, or having your mind so pre-occupied while eating that you can’t even taste the food?

Can you look out the window in the morning and, instead of cursing the snow because it will delay your commute, take just one moment to think to yourself how beautiful the world becomes when covered in white?

Can we enjoy the sparkle in the eyes of our children or other children as they enjoy simple, “silly” things, or experience the “wow” of things that we take for granted? Can we emulate them and have that same sparkle in our eyes, even in the midst of the busiest time of the year, by just delighting in a good cup of coffee, some holiday music, and our favorite holiday treat?

It doesn’t take much – a few seconds here or there, or just a shift in focus – but this time of year is not only filled with stress and strain, but joy and beauty. It is all around you, if you choose to see it, to focus on it, to appreciate it.

When you can focus on the small wonders, the small things, it may just shift how you see everything. And when you can do that, you can become just a bit more “wise,” and you can reclaim the joys of the season.

Tags: self help, success coaching
Posted in Success Coaching | Add your comment

Not Your Average Lawyer

November 22nd, 2011 at 7:56 am by admin

I’m a lawyer. Go ahead — start the lawyer jokes, I’ve probably heard most of them. Most people who get to know me are surprised when they find out I’m a lawyer (among other things.) Yes — I went to law school, did pretty well, studied for and passed the bar exam on the first try (while pregnant with my daughter), but somehow others think that lawyers walk around in austere black suits carrying stacks of heavy, leather-bound books and speaking in archaic Latin phrases.

So when others find out that I am a mom, a wife, an entrepreneur, a coach, a social worker, and a handbell choir director, they really don’t act surprised. But they do when it comes out that I also have “Esq.” after my name. And many folks ask why I am doing what I am doing instead of practicing law (my grandmother asked this recently!), because another stereotype is that lawyers make fantastic money, which trumps everything, right?

When I was in college, I knew I had a deep sense of service to others in my heart. That’s what prompted me to earn my Masters degree in social work. And while studying for my social work degree, I realized that the laws of our country don’t always support those who need support the most, and my friends and colleagues in private practice were having a terrible time getting the services they needed for the clients who needed services most. So I decided to attend law school to focus on public policy work, as well as learning skills that could serve non-profit agencies. I also knew that I wanted to be fully present for my husband and kids, and that meant I couldn’t be working crazy-long hours in private law practice so I could make “partner” in a firm.

Most of my friends from law school now work in law firms, some big, swanky firms, others very small. Many of them really enjoy what they are doing, and more power to them. I, on the other hand, used my law degree to run for public office, direct a non-profit organization, practice some civil litigation and now to inform the work I do building my own business that makes a difference in the world and coaching others on how to do the same. It has never been about the money for me — even though building abundance and prosperity for my family and having resources to give to causes I believe in is an absolutely terrific feeling. My focus has always been making a difference in the lives of others — my clients (be they law or social work or coaching clients, or even my piano students!). And when we come at our work from a spirit of service and making a difference, it doesn’t matter what we call ourselves — we are doing good, valuable work, and we can live well doing it.

Tags: leadership, self help
Posted in Personal | Add your comment

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Out With the Old, In With the New!

Goodbye Comfort Zone — I’m Moving Up!

Expect Great Things, and Do Great Things!

It IS the Small Stuff!

Not Your Average Lawyer

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