Tell a New Story

Are you trapped in the past and telling the same old negative stories over and over again?  Do you find yourself repeating negative events that happened to you years ago?  Do you wish the events would have been different and are you holding on to blame and anger?

If you have answered “yes” to any of these questions, you are not alone. I saw a television show where women in their thirties and forties were still holding on to the fact they were teased in school.  One woman was homeschooling her children solely based on the fact that she was teased in school over 30 years ago.

It is easy to become attached to these negative stories and keep repeating them to anyone who will listen. Words are very powerful and reliving your negative stories may keep you in a victim role, disempowered, and stuck in the past, unable to move forward to a happy, healthy place. Become aware of the negative stories, how often you repeat them, and why you are telling them.  Is it for sympathy or attention?

Stop playing the blame game and take responsibility for your happiness and your life.  Forgive anyone who has ever hurt you and forgive yourself.  Forgiveness is a huge key to inner peace. Holding onto resentment and anger is like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die.

Change your greeting and how you respond to others. Instead of identifying with the suffering start affirming your strengths and always use a positive greeting.  Become empowered and identify with your greatness. Life is 10% of what happens to us and 90% of how we deal with it, so choose to tell a new story and get rid of that old tape recorder. Release the past with love and let it go, as it no longer serves you. Heal, move on, and choose to live in the present with peace and happiness.

Follow Through…You are as Good as Your Word

Do you have a list of good intentions but you have not followed through yet?  How many times have you promised something to someone and not followed through?

The best advice I ever received from a former boss of mine was the importance of “follow through.” While sharing with me his secrets of success, he felt this was one of the most important skills he embodied. Throughout my career, I have found that to be instrumental in my success.

One definition of follow through is carrying a project or intention to full completion. People who keep their promises are regarded as having integrity, while those who don’t may not be taken seriously. It also can affect how you feel about yourself. Unfulfilled promises to self can drain you of energy and make you feel badly about yourself and add to the unresolved baggage that you carry around.

I don’t think most people are insincere about their intentions; it is just that they don’t follow through. In this time of amazing technology, it’s faster and easier to connect to others yet it requires a new set of organizational skills and more of a commitment to go past the intention.

1.  Make a commitment to self to follow through.   Start small and build on that.  We don’t change overnight.

2.  It is about process and not perfection.  If you need to get back to someone, do it even if it is a one-sentence communication.  It does not need to be perfect.

3.  Do the hard things first.   Avoiding them just contributes to you feeling bad about self. It is so much easier to avoid follow through on perceived difficult tasks.

4.  Invest in yourself; get help with organization and accountability. One reason coaching has become so successful is that you contract out accountability to another person.  You can gain tools to move forward and have motivation and accountability at the same time.

“Those who are blessed with the most talent don’t necessarily outperform everyone else.  It is the people with the follow-through who excel.”
Mary Kay Ash

by Mardi Allen, Life Coach
Mardi@CoachMardi.net

Are you someone who believes you need to be in a constant state of change and improvement?  Do you spend too much time focusing on what you do not like about yourself and so spend very little time on acceptance, appreciation, and happiness in the present moment?

Maybe you believe if you accept and appreciate yourself that you will not change and yet just the opposite is true.  Many of my clients want to move from goal to goal without ever taking the time to be present, content, and peaceful.  They are on a constant search for being and doing better without any appreciation or celebration for who they are at that given moment. We can be awesome and still have things to work on.

Here are some ideas for putting an “action plan” in place that will help you acknowledge, accept, and appreciate where you are and who you are today:

Action Plan

•  Affirm your greatness by listing 100 things you appreciate about yourself. They don’t all need to be some huge accomplishment. Appreciate the small things. Don’t take anything for granted. Once you’ve made your list, follow up with daily affirmations to further combat negative self talk.

•  List all your accomplishments from 2009. Celebrate them and make sure to share them with others. Toot your own horn. Surround yourself with reminders of your successes.  Posters, post it notes, vision boards, and articles. Your immediate environment has a huge influence over you and can influence your subconscious.

•  Surround yourself with people who are positive, believe in themselves, and can support you and promote you. Eliminate toxic people from your life who drain you of your energy.

•  Be aware of negative self talk and eliminate as much as you can.  Studies show that 90% of our thinking is negative, redundant, and about ourselves.  You are in charge of your thinking so manage it well.  Love yourself.

It is important to acknowledge your growth. Personal evolution is slow and gradual. It is a process, not a destination. Life is a journey; enjoy it.

Be Part of the Solution

What are you doing to create your ideal life?  Are you taking responsibility for yourself, your health, your finances, your career, your marriage, your relationships, your habits, and your thinking?  Are you finding solutions for life’s challenges or are you blaming others and constantly complaining?

Complaining without searching for a solution is a waste of time and energy, and it is toxic.  It can hurt your career as it can lead to wasted time, loss of productivity, anxiety, and anger.  It can also play havoc in your personal relationships, as no one enjoys being around someone who complains all the time, except another chronic complainer.

It is not what happens to us in life but how we deal with it.  When confronted with dissatisfaction or a challenge, look for the solution and fix it rather than engage in mindless venting and complaining.  Take responsibility for what you want to create and make it happen.  When we complain or blame others, it takes us off the hook. Make the solution your responsibility and take action to fix the problem.

When I was in corporate America, I had an open door policy.  However, anytime an employee came with a challenge, complaint, or something they were dissatisfied with, they were to bring two solutions as well.  I got a lot of amazing ideas from people who were interested in fixing what was wrong instead of blaming others. This exercise works our personal lives as well.  It works in our marriages, families, and groups. Stop looking at the problem and ask yourself what you can do to solve it, then approach everyone involved with a couple of solutions.

Here are three ways to find a solution to any challenging situation.

1.  Change the situation. Brainstorm; come up with several possible solutions.

2.  Remove yourself from the situation.

3.  Accept the situation as it is. Stop complaining about it and move on emotionally.

Remember, if you are spending all of your time on the problem instead of the solution you will get more of the problem.  Focus on what you want instead of what you don’t want.

Are You Stuck and In a Rut?

Are you feeling depressed because you can’t find a job?  Do you feel like you’re in a rut and just unhappy in your life?  Do you just feel stuck?  Well, you are not alone.  There is hope!

Newton’s first law of motion states that an object at rest tends to stay at rest; and an object in motion tends to stay in motion.

When we are depressed or feeling down, we often become isolated and paralyzed.  Newtonianly speaking, we’re at rest, and we will stay at rest until a force is applied.  We must create a force to change our state from rest to motion.

Get yourself into motion – any motion.  It does not matter what you do as long as you move.  It might not be an action that will take you directly to your goal; however, simply being active is one step closer toward achieving your goal.

Start by changing the words you speak.  I had a client that said, “I don’t know” about 50 times in one session.  She felt paralyzed and unable to see the answers because she had been at rest for so long.  Starting with the affirmation, “I do know,” will provide an amazing change in mindset – a force, if you will – that will get you into motion.  Here are other examples that can get you unstuck and out of your rut.

•  Get together with a friend
•  Take a ten-minute walk
•  Do volunteer work
•  Make one networking call
•  Go to the library
•  Make a vision board
•  Reach out to others in need
•  Go to a networking group
•  Get a part time job
•  Go to church

Just do something!  Get into motion.  You will see an automatic shift in your energy.  Negative energy creates negative energy and positive energy creates positive energy.  Get moving and take a step today toward your ideal life.  Apply a force and get into motion.

By managing your time effectively, you can gain up to two productive hours a day, have less stress, have more energy, and increase your income. Here is a tool to get you started. Remember change requires action.

The backward planning process is an excellent method for goal setting and time management. It is just a different way to achieve the results you want. It forces you to think from a completely new perspective and it helps you see things you might have missed with the traditional chronological process.

Basically, you start with your objective, the end result you desire, and work backwards from there. It is like telling a story going backwards. If I want to speak at a noon luncheon, I start there and plan backwards. If I want to be there at 11:30 a.m., I always plan on arriving fifteen minutes early. In order to be there at 11:15 a.m., with an hour’s drive, I have to leave by 10:15 a.m. One hour to get ready, so I start by 9:15 a.m. I want 45 minutes to eat, so breakfast needs to be on by 8:30 a.m. I need my quiet time in the morning, so I get up at 7:30 a.m. and I know I push snooze a couple of times, so I set the alarm for 7:00 a.m. I have made time for everything I want to accomplish and to get there on time.

This backward planning process has been life-changing for me. I encourage you to embrace it. Effective time management is a matter of choice. You can learn the skills and behaviors which will ultimately become habits that will last a lifetime.

• Keep a positive attitude. Have you ever noticed how we want to be around happy, upbeat people? If there are two candidates with the same experience and background, wouldn’t the employer want to hire the person with a positive attitude rather than a negative one? If a company has to lay someone off, the employee with a positive, “can do” attitude, who is working on solutions rather than complaining about problems, will stand out from the others.
• Stop complaining and worrying and take action. It is easier to change lanes if you are moving, so start taking action, even if it is one action step a day. While it is easy to complain, it does nothing for you, especially if you are complaining about something you can’t control. It just makes you feel down and depressed. Negative energy creates negative results and positive energy creates positive results. It also does not help you to worry. Around 90% of what we worry about never happens!
• Keep your mind focused on solutions instead of problems. In every market there are opportunities, but you’ve got to stop focusing on how bad things are in order to see the solutions. The unemployment statistics may be close to 8%, but turn that thought around. That means 92% of the population is still employed! If you are in a positive mindset, you will be able to see the opportunity, find a solution, and take action.

We may not like the choices we have, but in fact we have choices. Even if we choose to do nothing and not make a choice, that in fact is a choice. You might think you do not have a choice because you need your job to pay the bills and that may be true. However, you can make a choice to get a different job or you can choose to change your attitude about the job you have.

We can choose to be happy or sad, to workout or not, to lose weight or not, and to be healthy or not; there is always a choice. Our lives are the sum total of all of our choices. Understanding we can create our ideal lives is a key awareness and is very empowering.

Start replacing “I have to” with “I choose to.” The spoken word has such a tremendous impact on our lives and words can transform. We are responsible for our lives. When we say “I have to,” it suggests we have no control or say in our own lives. On the reverse, when we use “I choose,” it takes us from being the victim to being an empowered individual. For example, saying, “I choose to workout” instead of “I have to workout,” puts you in charge.

Choose to take responsibility for your life and create the life you desire.

Clutter depletes your energy and sabotages your efficiency. You become paralyzed and stuck, unable to make healthy decisions and create healthy habits. Clearing clutter from your life allows you to focus on your priorities and achieve your goals, making you happier and healthier. An uncluttered living space helps to define an uncluttered life.

Begin the de-cluttering process by starting with your closets. Having a well-organized closet is a great investment that will pay off every single morning when you get dressed. Spring is the perfect time to start the de-cluttering process because you are changing out Winter clothing for Spring and Summer clothing.

Studies show that we wear 20% of our wardrobe 80% of the time. Start by identifying everything you did not wear this Winter. If you did not wear it this year, you probably won’t in the future, especially clothing items that do not fit properly!

Put them into two piles: donate and sell. Fortunately, we live in the age of Craigslist, eBay® and consignment stores, and couldn’t everyone use a little extra money these days? I also believe it is good for the soul to donate what you can.

When eliminating things and thoughts that no longer serve you, you will be reclaiming your space, organizing your surroundings, and clearing your mind. By doing this, you will reduce stress and it will free you up to create your ideal life!

by Mardi Allen, Life Coach
Mardi@CoachMardi.net
www.coachmardi.net

Most everyone has something they would like to improve. The challenge with New Year’s resolutions is that most people do not make it past the fifth week before their resolve weakens. They never go on to make a lasting life change and they keep making the same resolutions year after year. Why is this? Negative thoughts get in the way and they end up believing they cannot or will not attain their goal, and so… they don’t! They give up.

You can make this the first year you will finally be able to follow through with a New Year’s resolution and make a permanent life change. To follow through with our goals and resolutions, we start by changing our thinking.

Everything we do starts with a thought. Every action we take comes from a feeling initiated by a thought. Our actions then create our habits, good or bad. In order to change a habit, we must change the action that precedes it, and in order to do that, we must change the feeling before that which is caused by a thought. We change our negative habits by changing our negative thinking. Once we do that our feelings, actions, and habits will change and we can create positive habits and obtain our positive goals.

When you have a negative thought, immediately replace it with a positive one. Staying focused daily and keep the can do attitude. That will keep you on track toward your goals. Believe you can and you will and never give up!

We all have the power and ability to create the lives we truly want and unlimited possibilities can be achieved. The lotus flower grows in muddy water and rises above the surface to bloom with remarkable beauty.

by Mardi Allen, Life Coach
Mardi@CoachMardi.net
www.coachmardi.net