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Who’s The Company You Keep?

“You’re only as good as the company you keep”. Remember that quote? My grandmother used to tell me that and it’s so true isn’t it? The Law of Association states: Who you spend your time with, and who you listen to dictates the kinds of opportunities you attract and the level of your income. Who you associate yourself with, shapes who you are…for better or worse.

What are you talking about, thinking about, reading about, and complaining about in your current peer group? Have you ever noticed when you spend a lot of time with a friend or group of friends who complain about everything: their lives, their kids, their jobs, and their spouse that it pulls you down as well? It creates negative energy within you and your mindset. But notice when you are with high energy, positive, people who are interested in playing a bigger game, that it suddenly expands your thinking, stretches you, pulls you into a more abundant mindset?

It’s so important to realize your income is directly proportionate to the expectations of your peer group. You must surround yourself with advancing people; otherwise, you drown in the mediocre person’s negativity, fear and doubt. Remember, your environment is EVERYTHING.

How are the people you spend the majority of your time with now affecting your abundance? If you were to wave a realistic magic wand and spend LESS time with someone, who would it be? Who would you spend MORE time with?

You must surround yourself with people who are already living BIG or heading there. Study from those already living the life you want. Surround yourself with those happily going there. Learn everything you can from them. Study their lives, read their books, attend their seminars, model them. It will change your life-trust me.

“The simple but true fact of life is that you become like those with whom you closely associate – for the good and the bad” Anonymous

Keep Showing Up…It Does Pay Off!!

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It’s been a particularly interesting week in that I had a few commitments that, quite frankly, I wasn’t looking forward to. And I really questioned whether I should drop out of them, or let them go, but made the choice to go ahead and show up. And was I glad I did. Not only did they go better than I had imagined, but I picked up several pieces of interesting information for my business and two new clients!

Several years ago, I took Jon Kabat-Zinn’s Mindfulness Based Training Course at his Stress Reduction Clinic. It was there I learned the saying:

Show up.
Pay attention.
Tell your truth.
Be open to, but not attached to the outcome.

This little saying has really served me well over the years. And I have found it particularly beneficial to practice these four things in my business.

Show Up: When you want to give up, or you get tired of trying, or feel like what you’re doing isn’t working, it’s a nice reminder to keep going, keep trying, don’t give up. Where are you showing up? How are you showing up? ARE you showing up? As Woody Allen says, “Eighty percent of success is showing up”.

Pay Attention: It is so difficult in our culture with so many distractions to pay attention to just one thing. We get pulled in so many directions and lose focus. Particularly as business owners, there are so many things going on at once, that to remain present or in the moment seems nearly impossible. But I would suggest that the next time something seems like a lot of effort, or you don’t really want to do something or go to something, show up and really pay close attention to what is going on right before you. Stay focused on the conversation and the people in the room with you. I will guarantee you will see, hear and learn something that might have extraordinary benefits to your business.

Tell Your Truth: So often we don’t tell our truth, what’s on our hearts and minds and it could make such a positive difference in the world if we did. Give it a try and see what kind of difference it makes in your relationships and in your business.

Be Open To, But Not Attached to the Outcome: We sometimes have such expectations on how something “should go” or want to try and control the outcome of a situation. As someone who has high expectations of things, and is often times very attached to a particular outcome, it has become a practice of mine to let things unfold as they may.

And by doing so, I have been very pleasantly surprised with the outcome.

Whose Voice Are You Listening To?

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“There is a voice that doesn’t use words. Listen.”

Rumi

I can’t tell you the number of clients who have a great idea they want to implement in their business, or they’d like to expand their business, or perhaps sign up for a program that they know will absolutely take them to the next level in their business. They are so excited, and you know when you talk with them about their idea or expansion or program-it will absolutely work-you can just feel it through their own excitement.

But then they come back a week later, all deflated because their spouse, their mother, father, friend, cousin, et cetera gave them their own opinion and said “it wouldn’t work”, or laughed at the idea, or said something like, “oh, you’re always just chasing the next thing shiny object”.

Or what about the clients that I speak with who tell me they wished they had majored in art versus accounting, or taken a job in the South versus staying in the Northeast, or that they had followed their heart and married their college sweetheart, rather than their spouse. The list goes on and on.

So what’s the common denominator that prevented them from following their heart? They listened to the “noise of other’s opinion’s rather than their own inner voice”.

This week I had the opportunity to reconnect with a young, but VERY successful entrepreneur, Ry Russell. Ry is the Vice President of VR Marketing Consultants in Portland, Maine. This year he has been a part of three different start ups consisting of the Saco Drive In Theater, TxTWave, and VR Marketing. This past summer, Ry and two partners had the opportunity to take over the failing drive-in movie theatre in a small southern Maine town. During his due diligence period, he met with ten well-respected people to get their opinion on whether he should take on this venture. Eight out of the ten told him to “FORGET ABOUT IT!”

Fortunately, Ry listened to his inner voice, made a very detailed business plan, raised the money needed and went for it! And oh, by the way, he increased sales over the previous year by well over 25% and was able to pay back the entirety of their debt three weeks ahead of schedule!

It’s so important to listen to your inner voice. Particularly when you feel CERTAIN that your decision or course of action or choice is absolutely aligned with your purpose. Don’t let others, or logic, talk you out of (or in to) something that doesn’t feel right to you. Trust your instincts. We all have levels of “knowing” that can’t be explained by logic. Don’t ignore that little voice in your head. Develop it by paying attention to it and act accordingly. So what’s the one thing your inner voice has been trying to tell you for some time, that you are now ready to listen to and TAKE ACTION ON???

3 Steps to Overcome Your Worry

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“You sound worried again, what is it this time?” I asked my client Susan. “I’m worried that if I don’t start getting more clients, I’m going to have to give up my business and get a ‘real job'”, she said.

This type of conversation seemed to be a theme with my clients and the prospective clients I spoke with this week. And believe me, I am an expert on worry. It’s something I work on with myself all the time.

Many years ago, I went hiking with a close friend who knew I constantly worried about everything. She had me pick up a stone every time I had a worrisome thought. The stone had to be a comparable size to and weight to the worry. Big worry, heavy stone, little worry, little stone. Needless to say, by the end of the hike I had accumulated quite a heavy load in my backpack! Just like in our lives, worrying can weigh us down.

I have learned over the years that worry is an abuse of our imagination. Instead of using our imagination to dream a beautiful future, we use it to manufacture nightmares. When we are full of anxiety, two things happen: one, our perceptions of reality are distorted and two, we simply do not see options that would be available to us if we were full of faith and confidence.

I have found the following three things very helpful in effectively dealing with worry.

1-Prepare for the worst, but expect the best. Whatever you are worrying about, make sure you are clear on what you believe is the worst thing that could happen in your “worry scenario”. Then prepare for it. Don’t expect it to happen, but know all the angles and the worst case scenarios.

2-Reprogram your negative thinking patterns. This is not easy, but with consistent practice, it can be done. There is always something to worry about. The challenge is to replace worryingabout problems with thinking about solutions.

3-Keep your attention anchored in the present. One of the secrets of overcoming worry is to keep your mind and body in the same time zone. Almost all emotional pain is caused by time travel-either built, regret and anger from the past, or fear and anxiety about the future. When you keep your attention anchored in the present, you can start to break the worry habit.

The images and messages you run through your mind today will profoundly influence the outcomes you get in the future. For example, if you really want to get something done, you’ll find the money to make it happen. But as soon as you worry you won’t have enough money to pay for a new project or expansion of your business, you’ve just taken the first step to killing it. So I urge you to think about these three steps and try to integrate them into your everyday thinking-you will soon find yourself on your way to achieving your vision!

Zap Your Tolerations: 10 Ways to Tolerate Nothing!!

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“If you wish to drown, do not torture yourself with shallow water”

-Bulgarian Proverb

As humans we put up with a lot of stuff, most of which isn’t necessary. Putting up with tolerations holds us back, causes us grief and wastes a lot of our time and energy. Many of us were brought up not to complain, that life is difficult, not to “rock the boat”, to go along with others, to be “grateful for what you have” etc. None of which is bad advice. Being flexible, adaptable, having gratitude-are all good virtues. But sometimes we operate at such a virtuous level that the virtues turn into vices.

I like to define tolerations as things that bug us, zap our energy and could be eliminated. For most people I’ve coached, as much as 80 percent of their lives involve carrying tolerations around. Tolerations are holes in your personal success cup, they drain away your contentment and your good fortune. As an infant or child, we didn’t tolerate ANYTHING, did we? But as we grew up, we were told to not be so selfish, so we learned how to tolerate (i.e. accept, be patient, wait your turn, be understanding, look on the bright side, compromise, etc.)

Quite frankly, the more you tolerate, the less attractive you’ll be to yourself and to the people to whom you matter the most. Because when a person learns to take a no-tolerations approach to their life, they are happier, more fun to be around. They have extra energy to express their values versus their egos because they have developed the confidence to speak up and change things, because they want to.

Assignment: The 10 Steps to A Toleration-Free Life-Take the time to complete the following 10 steps to start to reduce the tolerations in your life!!!

1-Understand that putting up with things is good for no one

2-Make a list of ten things you are tolerating at work

3-Make the requests and/or take the actions to eliminate those items

4-Make a list of ten things you are tolerating at home

5-Make the requests and/or take the actions to eliminate those items

6-Understand that you are getting “juiced” or payoffs by tolerating things

7-Be willing and committed to being toleration free

8-Stop complaining: instead, make a strong request

9-Invest $1000 to handle the tasks and/or chores that pain you (housekeeper, lawn service, handyman service, virtual assistant)

10-After doing steps 1-9 above, do them again with a new set of 10 tolerations

You will find by committing to this exercise, you will stop wasting energy, trying to manage situations that shouldn’t be there in the first place. You will have more energy to devote to your quality of life and will become a model for your business associates, friends and family as to what’s possible for them in this area.

Are You Specific Enough About What You Want?

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I’m constantly asking my clients questions like, “How much do you want to make next year-be specific”, or “How many new clients do you want in the next 90 days-be specific”.

It’s absolutely crucial that you know how much you want to make six months or a year from now. You need to write down the number on a piece of paper and put it up where you can see it every day. Same thing is true for how many new clients you would like to have in the next 90 days-write a specific number down on a post-it note and put it where you can see it every day.

This is one of the things I struggled with when I first started my business, I certainly wanted new clients, but I wasn’t clear on how many clients I was looking for. I’d get a new client and be so excited that I actually got one, that I’d forget about working to get more clients to help me achieve my business goals.

I was setting vague intentions or goals in terms of the amount of money I wanted to make or the number of new clients I wanted to bring in. However, the Universe LOVES clarity, specificity and focus, and when we are clear, specific and focused on what we want we tell the Universe exactly what we want and it brings it to us – or rather brings us the opportunities to attain it.

So, when I was being vague about what I wanted, the Universe responded with, “Ok, so I’ll send you something vague since that seems to be what you want.” And I can tell you that didn’t work for me.

I started being very clear every month about the amount of money I wanted to make. Here are some simple steps you can take to start getting clear about what you want:

1-At the beginning of the month, write the dollar amount of additional revenue you’d like to achieve for the month on a post-it note and put it on the wall of your office.

2-For every dollar that comes into your business that month, subtract that number from your goal and put a new sticky note under your original one. For example, if your goal is $5000 and you bring in a new client that pays you $1000, your new post-it note says $4000. Be sure to include the name of the person you are helping that is connected to the $1000.

3-CELEBRATE!! Whatever the amount that came in and express your gratitude and say, “Yes, I want more of this!”

4-What Action Can You Take? As you look at the number that still needs to come in for the month-ask yourself, what actions do you need to take to affect the number? Do you need to do more networking, circle back to some prospective clients, and call some former clients? It’s important for you to take advantage of the opportunities put before you and TAKE ACTION!

5-Remain positive and be patient. This process is like developing a new skill and will take a little time to develop, but know the money and clients are here NOW.

When I started to be very specific about what I wanted it made a HUGE difference in my business and in my life.

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