Earthquake

There is so much change happening in the world right now. It feels like a major earthquake has happened and now we are all looking around and figuring out how to rebuild. Even in terms of job loss, I can’t tell you how many people I have talked to recently that have lost their jobs or are in fear of losing their jobs. I equate it to an earthquake because when even the ground beneath you is shaking, you don’t know what you can count on. Everything feels so uncertain.

 

But I can’t help to believe that everything happens for a reason. That there are certain decisions that we don’t make ourselves and the universe makes them for us. For example, being unhappy in a job but staying in it anyway. Wanting to get out of a relationship but staying in it because it’s comfortable and easy. There are so many decisions that we avoid making due to fear of the unknown. And then one day, the universe forces us to make a change. And that’s what it feels like is happening now.  Our ground is shaking and foundations are falling. But when you take a step back and look at it from a different perspective, look at the possibilities for rebuilding. We now have a chance to recreate our realities to be anything we want them to be. It is a fresh start.

 

What is possible for you right now? What changes can you make? What will you do to make the most of it?

 

 

If you are going through a job change or are thinking about it, I have created a self-guided Career Change Workbook that you can download as a pdf. In this workbook you will find different exercises that help you to get clear on what type of work would be most fulfilling for you. People underestimate how much it affects your life when you are unhappy in your job, please take this opportunity to take the time to be really strategic in what work would make you happy.

 

The workbook includes exercises such as:

1.    Career Assessment Questions

2.    Ideal Job Exercise

3.    Strengths Finder

4.    SMART Goal Creation

5.    Resume Writing Tips

6.    Recommended Reading List

To download the Career Change Workbook for $15.95, click on the below link:

http://tinyurl.com/CareerChange

 

Feel free to contact me with any questions or to just bounce ideas off of me.

Career Change Workbook

A question that I am often asked is “How can I make a career change during such turbulent economic times?” While it is true that the state of the economy is extremely fragile, I also believe that the way out of this is to do work that we are passionate about. When we love what we do, we are more productive and have a true vested interest in the outcome of our work.

 

There are many out there who would say that to have job satisfaction right now is a luxury. They say that we should all be happy just to have a job. But what if going to work is draining you of your energy and only contributing to your stress and unhappiness? I believe there must be a better way to live. Who knows how long we will be in this economic slump? If you can find another job that you are happy in, isn’t that worth it?

 

In response to this, I have created a self-guided Career Change Workbook that you can download as a pdf. In this workbook you will find different exercises that help you to get clear on what type of work would be most fulfilling for you. It includes exercises such as:

 

 

1.    Career Assessment Questions

2.    Ideal Job Exercise

3.    Strengths Finder

4.    SMART Goal Creation

5.    Resume Writing Tips

6.    Recommended Reading List

 

 

 

For $15.95, you will be on your way to transitioning into a more fulfilling and successful career!

 

 

To download the Career Change Workbook, click on the below link:

http://tinyurl.com/CareerChange

 

Feel free to contact me with any questions or to just bounce ideas off of me.

 

Looking forward to hearing your success stories!

 

Looking Forward

As an alternative to the traditional New Year’s “resolutions,” I thought I’d pass on 5 questions to answer. Take some time to sit down and write down your answers to the below questions. Feel free to send them on to me as I love hearing what you are all up to!

1. If you could create a title for what your year will be like starting with “Year of…”, what would it be? (ex: “Year of Growing and Nourishing My Family”)

2. Rate your current level of satisfaction with each of the areas below on a scale of 1-10. Create one goal for each area.

Health
Career
Money/Finance
Significant Other/Romance
Friends
Family
Physical Environment
Fun & Recreation
Personal/Spiritual Growth
Self Image
Knowledge

3. What will you have accomplished or changed that would make you most proud at the end of 2009?

4. What two steps could you immediately take that would make the biggest difference in your life?

5. What one thing would you do if you knew you could not fail?

Reflective Questions for 2008

 

As we approach the end to another year, I thought it would be beneficial to send out some questions to reflect on the year we’ve had. Try to go somewhere quiet and write out the answers to the below questions:

 

1.    What are you most proud of in the last year?

2.    If there were a newspaper headline describing this past year for you, what would it say?

3.    What unfinished business do you want to resolve before the year end and when will you do it? (i.e. lingering relationships, apologies, goals yet to achieve)

4.    When were you most excited about life in this past year? What were you doing? Who were you with?

5.    Looking back, what would you have done differently in 2008?

6.    Who most inspired you and why?

7.    What new dream for yourself did you achieve?

8.    Where did you let fear hold you back from a goal you had?

9.    What was boring to you this year that you hope to change for next year?

10.  On a scale of 1-10, how satisfied are you with each area of your life in the past year?

Health ___

Career___

Money/Finances___

Significant Other/Romance___

Friends___

Family___

Physical Environment___

Fun & Recreation___

Personal/Spiritual Growth___

Self Image___

Knowledge___

 

Next year will be a very exciting one for me as we are expecting a little boy in February! I am sure that the experience will stretch me in ways that I didn’t know were possible. I am looking forward to sharing my experiences and continuing to stretch all of you to achieve things that you didn’t know were possible.

 

Wishing you all a warm and wonderful holiday season and a happy New Year!

Celebrate Small Successes

Do you ever get the feeling that there is so much you’d like to do and accomplish and you have so many fabulous ideas and then you lose steam? I have never run a marathon but I am starting to feel like running your own business is that way. There are times where the rush of adrenaline is undeniable and I feel unstoppable. There are other times (particularly on rainy days like today) where I think maybe it would be wiser if I let things just “flow” and didn’t really try so hard. But as I step back and write this, I realize that having your own business is truly a marathon. You celebrate small successes along the way while keeping your eye on the finish line, even if you can’t see it. And a lot of it is faith, faith that you are going to make it to that finish line. And knowing that once you do, you’ll want to train for another marathon. Despite the blisters and sore knees, it’s all worth it. Because this is my race.

80 20 Rule

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the Pareto Principle, also known as the “80-20 rule”. It states that for many events 80% of the effects come from 20% of the causes. This principle was named after Italian economist Vilfredo Pareto who studied and found that 20% of the population controlled 80% of Italy’s wealth and income. Later studies have been done to show this principle rings true in many areas. For example:

 

20% of your wardrobe is worn 80% of the time.

20% of clients account for 80% of an organization’s income.

20% of streets account for 80% of traffic.

20% of your friends account for 80% of your satisfaction.

 

How do we apply this to our life? It all comes back to thinking efficiently and getting better results. Doing less, gaining more. How great is that?! I heard one speaker who figured out that in an eight hour work day, 96 minutes works out to be 20% of our day. So if we focused basically an hour and half of our entire day on accomplishing something really important, 80% of the results we are looking for will follow. Everything on top of that is gravy.

 

My question for you is, what are you doing 80% of the time that is only accounting for 20% of your results? And how could you flip that equation in your life or work?

 

On that note, I have been hearing from so many of you that in this economy it feels unwise to take risks. So many of you have these brilliant business ideas and have such marketable talents but due to the financial state of the world, you are keeping your head low. I actually think boldness has never been more important than right now. I am not encouraging people to quit their day jobs but I do want keep your ideas and passions alive. Which is why I created the below class, “Dream Job…On the Side”. What if you dedicated 20% of your time to your business idea, would you get 80% of your satisfaction out of it? And if so, isn’t that worth it? We all need something to look forward to right now, something that fuels our fire. What fuels yours and what are you doing about it?

 

Mastermind Series

 

Dream Job… On the Side

Come meet fellow budding entrepreneurs and share a glass of wine while learning how to work on your business idea.

 

In this class you will:

1.    Learn how to create a basic business plan

2.    Find out how to ease your worries

3.    Discover what it takes to implement your big idea

4.    Establish concrete goals to achieve success

5.    Receive a free half hour follow up consultation

 

*Space is very limited

 

When: Monday November 10th – 7-9pm

Where: BIN 38 – 3232 Scott Street San Francisco, CA

Registration Fee: $15.00

Ticket Link: http://www.acteva.com/booking.cfm?bevaid=169773

Goals for the Week

If this morning is any indication of how productive my week is going to be, I’m in trouble. As soon as the weather turns cold and grey, I find it harder to get out of bed. I am less inspired to take my dog to the beach and lag on taking her. Once I returned home, I found myself calling to check with family members before getting to work. And then it was shower time and then reading my favorite blogs. Well, you get the point, a whole lot of nothing has been accomplished so far on this Monday morning.

I find that one of the only ways that I can truly accomplish what I want and move forward is to set clear daily and weekly goals for myself. And to differentiate between what is urgent to get done vs. what is important to get done. And so I am off to set my daily and weekly goals. I hope you will to!

Uncertain Times

“I bend but do not break”

– Poet Jean de la Fontaine

 

I don’t know about you but this week feels like it has a black cloud over it. It all started when we had to put our 6 month old puppy in the hospital for pneumonia this weekend (she is now at home recovering well), then I watched the stock market hit major turbulence and on top of it all is the stress of not knowing which direction our country will take in less than 2 months. Things feel really “hard” right now in our country. As I have been digesting all of this, I have realized that I can either sit back and complain and hope that something changes or I can be proactive and do something to make a difference.

 

This is where I have come up with the decision to launch a “Mastermind Series” where I will be facilitating conversations with all of you and/or inspirational leaders in different industries. My passion for putting this together is that I believe that great things happen when we put minds together. I also believe in the importance of being really clear and focused on what we want. If you are floating around without knowing your final destination, then that is exactly where you will end up, nowhere in particular. In this series, we will hear the stories of how people got to where they are, find out what tools we need to be successful and bounce ideas off of each other to walk away feeling inspired by what is possible. I want the series to be intellectually stimulating, engaging and relevant.

 

 

MASTERMIND SERIES

***************************

 

FIRST EVENT

Survival of the Fittest – How to Thrive in Turmoil

While the economy is in a downward tailspin, it is easy to turn to fear for the future. In this series, we will discuss how to take control over your situation and take action not only to survive but to thrive. Out of this series you will:  

 

a)    Receive tools to remain flexible, nimble and powerful in uncertain times

b)    Change  your perception to maximize your success

c)    Discover and leverage your strengths

More details on the speaker and date of this event coming soon. If you or someone you know would be a great speaker in the future for this series (each event will have a different topic), please send me an email.

 

p.s. I am still accepting a limited number of new coaching clients this month. If you are interested in becoming a client and taking your life or your business to the next level, email me to discuss how we could work together.

50 “Impossible” Goals

As promised in my newsletter, please see below for my 50 “impossible” goals. I would love to hear your list so please add a comment to this post with your goals!

1. Skydive
2. Have dinner at the White House
3. Be an advisor to President Barack Obama
4. Be invited to Necker Island by Sir Richard Branson
5. Appear as a reoccuring “expert” guest on Oprah
6. Tango in Argentina
7. Win a ballroom dance competition (currenly have no idea how to ballroom dance)
8. Become a yoga teacher
9. Visit an ashram in India
10. Own a home in Sardegna, Italy
11. Have a latin guitarist play at my house every night before dinner for my family
12. Start a foundation
13. Live to see the cure of cancer
14. Write a bestselling book
15. Get published in a magazine
16. Be the keynote speaker at an event
17. Have my photographs published
18. Be in a movie
19. Visit the Shire in New Zealand
20. Go to the Seychelles
21. Have a loggia in my backyard
22. Speak Italian fluently
23. Speak French fluently
24. Learn sign language
25. Drive across the United States
26. Learn to play the guitar
27. See the Northern Lights
28. Go to all 50 states
29. Meet the Dalai Lama
30. Witness a miracle
31. Learn to play the piano
32. Sell a painting of mine
33. Plant a secret garden
34. Read War & Peace
35. Appear on Charlie Rose show
36. Go on a Safari in Africa
37. Visit Grand Canyon
38. Visit Niagra Falls
39. Win the lottery
40. Get a luxury suite comped in Vegas
41. Solve a mystery
42. Visit where my ancestors lived in Lebanon, Ireland and Czechloslovakia
43. Understand ins and outs of all world religions
44. Broker a peace deal between Israel and Palestine
45. Finish a triathalon
46. Knit a sweater
47. Dance on stage next to Bruce Springsteen
48. Be a speaker at the Allen & Company Sun Valley Conference
49. Live to see all of my grandchildren get married
50. Sit on a porch holding hands and drinking lemonade with Peter when we are 90 years old

Dreaming Big

As the college football season begins, I thought I’d relay a story that I read about the famous Notre Dame Coach, Lou Holtz. In 1966 he was 28 years old and his wife was pregnant with his third child and he was the assistant coach at a small school in the South. It was then that he lost that job and was out of work. He read a book called “The Magic of Thinking Big” which encouraged people to think big, dream big. And so he did. He wrote down 107 goals that he deemed “impossible”. They included having dinner at the White House, appearing on the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson, meeting the Pope, coaching at Notre Dame, leading his team to a national championship and shooting a hole in one.

 

Lou has now achieved 81 of these goals.

 

What I love about this is that it shows the importance of dreaming big before we even know how to accomplish it. The “how” is not important in dreaming. If you focus on the “how” all of the time, you’ll get stuck and held back on ever trying. You’ve defeated yourself before you’ve even tried. The more attached you are to the reasons something will never happen, the less likely it will happen.

 

So, what are your “impossible” goals? Will you make a list of 50 of them this week? I will do the same and I will post those “impossible” goals on my blog by this Friday.  Check back in to see what I’ve written and I would love for you to post yours there as well under the “comments” section of the blog.

 

“If you’re bored with life – you don’t get up every morning with a burning desire to do things – you don’t have enough goals.”
Lou Holtz