Empowering Small Office Home Office Business Women to Prosper

Did you know April is “Informed Woman Month”? In the spirit of being informed I thought it fitting to celebrate by injecting a powerful principle into your life that can be applied today. There is a scripture that states “my people perish from a lack of knowledge” Hosea 4:6.

I also believe that business owners perish from a lack of vision. If you don’t know where you want to go in your life or business, then how are you supposed to get there?

Here is a quick assessment to get you actively seeking out your vision…imagine for a moment…what kind of business you would want to have if you knew you could not fail?

• How much income would you make?
• How many employees would you have?
• What kind of lifestyle would you live?
• Where would you live?
• How much spare time would you have and what would you do with it?

It is important to have a vision so that you can create a roadmap to get there. Your goals are a part of that roadmap which leads to your vision. Your vision should be visual but not only that; it should be something that you can emotionally connect with now.

I challenge you to start creating success on your terms today! Start a Vision folder and begin to write out your life at its optimal peak. Write as though you are already living the life you want and deserve. Use the questions above as a warm up then sit quietly and let the words, thoughts and ideas flow from your spirit, to your mind, to your hand, through the pen and onto paper. Don’t edit as you go, just write!! Once you are done keep referencing your vision daily until it becomes your reality.
God says to “…calleth those things which be not as though they were” Romans 4:17. It is your divine right to live a purpose filled and blessings filled life. When we are successful we can use our blessings to help others live out their Vision and Purpose.

Start today informing yourself of your success and before you know it you will be living it.

Personal Effectiveness Exercise:
What is your vision for your business and your life? Write it out in as much detail as possible. Then find visuals and create a life book or vision board that you can post to remind you of where you are going.

By Anita Kirkman

Once again it’s time to build a vision of our new year and get a clean slate. We know our intention is to make our "New Year’s Resolution" Doable and real.

So we began purposefully executing our vision, and we even do great for a while. Then by March (if not earlier)… what happens? The gyms are almost empty, we eat what’s not on the food list, we spend more than the allocated amounts on our spending plan, and that charge card we committed to paying off?… well now the balance has increased!! Hmm, how did we get off track? Did we really make a real resolution with a purpose that can be supported when times got tough? Or, did we make reso-lies?

What are reso-lies? Lies we tell ourselves at the beginning of the year calling them ‘resolutions’. Yes, we start out with the best of intentions… at first… then somewhere along the way we began to lose the vision.

So how do we make this year and decade different? How can we keep the purpose in our vision and resolve to win in 2010?
Here are some simple tips to turn the reso-lies into true resolutions.
 

1. Know the "why" behind the "what"
We like to say – know the purpose behind your vision. The vision is the what, the purpose is the why. The "what" may be "I want to lose weight”. The why is your purpose or reason for why you want to lose weight?

You want your purpose to be strong, real, and effective in order to keep the vision alive. Imagine how you will feel once you’ve lost the weight? What will losing weight mean for you? You may answer, "I want to lose weight so that I can be healthy". Okay, dig deeper, what else? Remember, you are going after a strong purpose to this plan. "I would have more energy", you say. What would more energy do for you? You get the picture.

This is something I love to help clients do, discover the "whys". The portrait or vision of you goes well beyond just a slimmer body. You’ll want to focus on this because your true motivation actually comes from your purpose, the "why", which in turn helps make your ‘what’ sustainable.

2. Measure your goals against your values compass
Creating a values compass is one of the first things I do with new clients. It is a mirror of your purpose and is paramount to starting any plan. The values compass helps to guide you when you are faced with problems, decisions, and especially when creating your vision, setting goals or making your resolutions.

If you aren’t honoring your values in your resolution, it is a reso-lie!

For example, your goal is weight loss (the what), for health reasons (the why) and integrity is important to you (a value).

Then, you do a crash liquid diet to fit into a size 8 dress for your friend’s wedding. What happened?

You dishonored an important value – integrity. Results? The weight comes back with friends and you’re miserable. If you had honored your value of integrity, you would have lost the weight in a healthy way because you said you wanted to lose weight for health reasons. Then you would have not compromised your integrity.

This is why your values compass is so important. If you don’t have a values compass or know how to use one, I am happy to work with you to create this priceless tool so that you use it regularly.

3. Run them through the S.M.A.R.T. filter
You may have heard of setting smart goals, which is what I’m referring to when I say SMART filter. When you’re making a resolution, make sure it meets the following criteria:

S – Specific
M – Measurable
A – Achievable
R – Reasonable
T – Time oriented

Try these tips for this New Year and let’s see if you make your resolutions a reality that supports your vision, keeps you living within your purpose, and helps you to truly win in 2010!

“How many times have you set goals, only to see them remain incomplete….”

Stop whatever you are doing and write these words on a piece of paper that you can keep with you at all times. It is a quote from Napoleon Hill

“Dream big dreams; Only big dreams have the power to move men’s souls.”

By following a simple daily technique you can achieve everything you want in life.

What stops you from achieving everything you want in life? Here are a couple of things for your consideration.

Procrastination – is one main reason people do not achieve their goals. Nearly everyone is guilty of procrastination from time to time(although we sometimes use other names for it – well excuses really) even the most motivated are subject to it on occasions.

Stop yourself in your tracks and ask of yourself ‘Is what you are doing at this precise moment taking to toward or away from the goal you have set?’ Possibly your procrastination has come about because the goal you have set is too small. Your thought processes are – well that can be achieved that at any time at a drop of a hat so I will do it later.

Big joke – you are procrastinating nothing less. If it is a goal on your list it is a vital part of your major overall goal, and when achieved it will take you to the next stage of your main goal, the one that gives you motivation.

The second reason you procrastinate is the BELIEF you have in achieving the goal. This is such a large subject that requires discussion in another article.

It’s just too easy to put off something that doesn’t have a lot of appeal even if you were to achieve it.

BIG goals drive you to do things you would never do for major goals — in many ways they almost pull you through the obstacles you are likely to meet on the way to achieving them.

Because with big goals you plan and also want to achieve them so much they become part of your being. For example say your major goal is to move to a four-bedroom house in a better part of town. A minor goal you may set is a new suite of furniture for your new house. Compared to your main goal it is easy to dismiss the minor goal as insignificant – yet let look at it a different way.

Achieving the goal of the new suite of furniture, having it in your home now and sitting on it helps to bring your major goal into sharper focus. Just sit there and imagine it as if you were in your new house and you are enjoying the confort of the new suite, suddenly it will become an integral part of your overall goal.

What is one of the main secrets of high goal achievers? First they write their goals down. I’ll bet you have never heard that before???? But have you done it??? The fact is that writing goals down is so powerful it increases your chance of success by at least 1000%.

Their second secret is that their goals are always BIG. There’s no power at all in small goals. When the goal isn’t big enough, it’s too easy to give in to the obstacles that appear in your life. It’s very difficult to maintain the persistence that all great achievement requires when the goal is small and ordinary.

How big is BIG? If it doesn’t make you a little nervous, you know that feeling in the pit of your stomach; if it doesn’t take your breath away the first time you think about it, it probably isn’t big enough. These physical symptoms are the result of a chemical change in your body caused by your thoughts. When your goal is big enough that the thought of it causes your body to undergo physical changes then you are on the right path. Even more when the thought of MISSING the goal causes a feeling a nausea in the pit of your stomach you are pitching it just right.

Set yourself time to sit down on your own and with pad and pencil ask yourself what do you want in every part of your life for the next 12 months to 5 years. No matter what you think of just write it down without questioning your ability to achieve it, that is the subject of another article.

Developing your will power is directly related to your success in life. No one can over-estimate the power of your will to do.

Most people do not fail because of a lack of education. History is filled with uneducated or poorly educated millionaires who didn’t let this supposed shortcoming hold them back. On the contrary, what they may have lacked in education was obliterated by their overpowering will to succeed, no matter how many times they failed along the way.

It is the lack of determination and will power that is the true reason so many people fail. Just as an athlete trains for a physical game that takes concentrated effort, the mind must be trained with the proper skills to win in life.

The process of obtaining this self-mastery — the complete command of your mind’s powers — is a gradual one. It involves determination and the daily task of making it a habit. Once you have self-mastery, the cost of obtaining it will bring a real sense of accomplishment and a realization how minimal the cost really was in the long run.

You don’t need to be a genius to succeed — just make yourself do the thing you need to do when it has to get done, whether you like it or not. This is one of the best lessons you can learn.

When Henry Ward Beecher was asked how he could accomplish so much more than others, he replied, “I don’t do more, but less than others. They do all their work three times. Once in anticipation, once in actuality, and once in rumination. I do mine in actuality alone, so I end up doing things just once.”

Beecher could concentrate his mind on what he was doing at a given moment. Then he’d go do something else and concentrate on his new task. One of the secrets of a successful life is the ability to focus all of our energies on one thing at a time.

Don’t waste time worrying as it only crowds your thoughts with worthless clutter. Focus on what you’re doing when you’re doing it, and stop worry before it stops you. Worry is an energy vampire. It reduces your chances for success and it can make life miserable for those around you.

Learning to focus your efforts is the only way you will achieve the success you’re capable of achieving. The earlier in life you learn this simple fact, the more likely you will overcome everything that slows you down and prevents you from reaching true success in everything you do.

Here’s a recipe for a wasted life — just go about every day trying to do too many things all at once. Splitting yourself up into a hundred little parts leads to nowhere.

Yes, there are some people who like to juggle a number of tasks, and they may be good at it, but for most of us the need to concentrate on one task at a time is imperative to getting the job done. It’s not the amount of work you get done in a day or week or even a year, but it’s your persistence in constantly moving forward that will get you where you want to go.

Keep at it! And remember …

Focus, Focus, Focus.

Napoleon Hill, one of the first great self help gurus, thought that persistence was so important that he devoted a chapter to it in his landmark book “Think And Grow Rich.” Chapter IX refers to persistence as “The sustained effort necessary to induce faith.” He called persistence the eighth step toward riches. However, another sentence on page one of this chapter really defines how important persistence is. That sentence is: “There may be no heroic connotation to the word “persistence,” but the quality is to the character of man what carbon is to steel.” Persistence strengthens the character of a person so much that he can do whatever it takes to reach his goal or complete the task he has undertaken.

Throughout history, there have been many examples of this. Dr. Jonas Salk, who found the vaccine for polio, persisted with his research even though he failed 200 times before he found a vaccine that worked. Thomas Edison kept working at creating a light bulb even though he failed more than 10,000 times. His persistence paid off and we use his invention every night to light our homes after the sun goes down.

If you read autobiographies, you will learn that most famous and wealthy individuals failed numerous times before they were successful. Each time their persistence allowed them to gain what they were striving for. The power of persistence is that all individuals who persist long enough will eventually reach their goal. No other characteristic has that power. A persistent trickle of water running slowly over the same place on a rock for a long period of time will wear away the rock. Even though water is not as hard as stone, through persistence, water will always win. That is the power of persistence. Persistence at something will always win.

So, how can you make persistence a habit that you always use? These four little steps will create this valuable habit:

1. Have a specific goal and support it with a burning desire for fulfillment.

2. Have a definite plan you follow and take continual action on that plan.

3. Do not listen to any negative or discouraging suggestions. Also, do not let any negative occurrences dissuade you from continuing your action.

4. Find a mentor who will encourage you in your endeavors and who will push you when you slow down.

It doesn’t matter what it is you are trying to do, if you follow these four steps you will be successful in everything you do. These steps are what you can use to improve your wealth and obtain power, fame, recognition and freedom of thought. These steps will change your dreams into reality.