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It’s that time of year!  Time to plan for next year and creating goals to move forward.  In thinking about goals for the year have no more than 3-5 at any given time.

The first step is to have a big overall Context that all your specific goals feed into. For example your Context may be to have peace of mind and harmony in all my areas of life. As you look at areas or categories in your life, select goals that will support this context.

Next, draw a large daisy with the word “YOU” in the center.  Each petal is a category of your life: self-care, finance, business, family, fun, spirituality, etc.  look at all your categories and pick the top three that you want to work on.  Let’s say self-care, business and spirituality.  Evaluate how you want to enhance or improve each area. Select a goal or two for each and make it measurable.  For instance: self-care: Lose 12 pounds in First Quarter 2016, increase sales by “5,000 per month, and meditate daily. These goals can be measured so you know when you get there.

The next step is to Chunk It Down.  This means to break down the goal to daily steps. So, for losing weight: 12 pounds in 12 weeks = one pound per week.  Pick a day of the week and weigh yourself each week.  Also calculate how many calories or intake you need to lose the weight.  Then plan your meals every week so you can be successful.  The more specific and detailed you are, the more successful you will be.  To increase sales by $5000/month, calculate how much your average sale is (let’s say $500) and identify how many you have to sell to make your goal. To meet $5000, you would have to sell 10 more per month.  Chunk it down to weekly: 10/ 4 weeks = 2.5 or 2-3 more per week.  Then calculate how many calls you must make to get a yes.  Let’s say 10 more.  For every 10 calls you get 1 sale.  You need 10 sales to meet your goal which means 100 more calls to make your sales.  Divide 100 by 4 weeks and you need to make 25 more  calls a week which means 5 more calls per day than you are currently doing.   Schedule your time for calls every day and make those calls.  If you do the calls every day, the numbers game will kick in and you will meet your target.

Each Quarter revisit your goals modify the existing goals. If you have achieved the goal, add a new or expanded goal all with the idea of creating peace of mind in your life.

In summary

1 Pick a Category

2 Select 3-5 goals to achieve

3 Make the goals measurable

4 Chunk it down to what to do daily.

5 Success

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Customers want to buy, but they don’t want to be sold. What does SALES mean to you?  I used to think is was convincing people they needed the features and benefits I had to offer. All I had to do was to say enough features and benefits and people would buy.  Wrong.  I learned something a number of years ago.  I was selling Energy Audits to large corporations. I tried an experiment.  I just asked questions about their energy costs, the status of their bottom line and if I could add some money to the bottom line, would they be interested? Absolutely! What shifted was I was not selling, I was engaging with them about their business and treated them like the expert. I was in service to them.  I sky rocked to the number one sales person out of 40 in 6 months.

People don’t care what you have to offer.  They care about what’s in it for them. So, that’s how you talk to them. Dig deeper into their wants.  Find out what is in it for them and give it to them as a choice. It’s all relationship and service.  Selling will get you no where.

Do you know what “they” want?  Do you know what their pain is in their position? Speak to that and they can relate to what you offer and see what’s in it for them.

Opt in on my website and get the Clarity Tool to help you get clear about what’s in it for them.

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How many of us can say with a straight face and no judgment, “I truly love myself?” There are very few of us that can.  Before I started my own work, I had an unbelievable number of conversations in my head-all saying not so nice things: “I’m not good enough, I shouldn’t have done that, I better do that, I didn’t get it right”…..Sound familiar?

We come into this world with no opinions and judgements and over our first few years we are taught to be full of opinions and judgements about others and mostly about ourselves.  How many times have  you looked in the mirror and said, “I am so grateful to be me.  I love everything about me”?

I thought I loved others, but how could I?  If I listened to those conversations about me, then I had conversations like that about others….love? I could get very irritable for no reason, drivers, slow people in the grocery line, kids making too much noise...can you relate?  This can’t be love.  I not only had those internal negative conversations, I had them consistently and constantly about others. The moral of this story is one must love themselves to truly love another.

How do you do that...love yourself?

• The first step is to admit that you do not.  Become aware of how you talk to yourself and how much room you give yourself to make mistakes.
• Then notice how often that occurs.  Our mind never stops talking to us.  How many of those thoughts are negative about you and others.
• The next step is the one that makes the difference.  Make a commitment to change the way you talk to yourself.
• The last step is to take action. Every time you catch yourself thinking a negative thought, turn it to a positive thought, “I didn’t do it right” turn to “what can I learn from this to do it better next time?” This takes practice. A LOT of practice.

There are two concepts that must be at play here.  1. Even though you become your thoughts, you are NOT your thoughts.  Your ego/mind is your thoughts.  Your ego is who you think yourself to be and it will fight to stay in existence…..thus negative thoughts. You can change your thoughts through practice.  2. A way to love yourself is to keep your word.

Make a promise and keep it.  Make a promise and keep it.  Make a promise and keep it.

When you do this you begin respecting yourself more, your confidence in yourself increases and you begin appreciating and loving yourself more.

You CAN manage those internal conversations when you know they are not the truth about you.  Can you relate?  Try it….you will be pleased with the results.

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Often the words accountability and responsibility are used interchangeably. However, I believe there is a major distinction between the two.  Responsibility may be given/delegated, but accountability must be taken. In other words, responsibility can be given or received, even assumed, but that doesn’t automatically guarantee that personal accountability will be taken. Which means that it’s possible to be responsible for something or someone and still not be accountable.

I’m sure you have been involved in a major project where the “ball was dropped.”  This happens when individual tasks are not clearly defined. “I forgot”?” “I thought you had it?” “It wasn’t my job!”— are frequently offered as explanations.  Clearly defining responsibilities is certainly essential, and there is a step beyond where personal accountability will secure better results every time.

Let’s go a little deeper and look at how react to ourselves being responsible or accountable. As an example, I am in a class and we are to “call in” for a conference call every other week for the next 3 months. It’s my responsibility to call and often I forget or I am busy.  I know I will get an email every other week telling me the date and time of the call and the call-in details. When I forget, I feel badly, beat myself up a little and make excuses. AND I don’t take ownership of calling.

When I take accountability I take on “I’ll do what it takes.”  “I’ll rise above my circumstances and demonstrate the ownership necessary to achieve the result.”  I put all the dates, times, and call-in information on my calendar and enter the call numbers in my phone. My calendar gives me an alarm 5 minutes before the call so I can call in and be ready when it starts. I have taken ownership of getting that task done every other week.

Now here’s the great part.  When I take accountability I respect myself, trust myself and actually love myself more.  This is the work I do with people. I teach them how to take accountability for their business and their life….And they get the result they want with ease and grace.

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This is one of my favorite topics.  Us human beings take ourselves so seriously.  We’ve got to get it right, do the right thing, look good and be accepted.  We will do ANYTHING to make this happen. All we really want is to love and be loved.  It’s that simple.

People watching is a great thing.  Go to a coffee shop or a mall and just get really curious about the people there.  See how they react to each other and their situation.  Here are a few examples:

• People bump into each other: one says, “Oh, excuse me.” (looking good) The other frowns with disgust. (you get it right)  Both are taking the incident too seriously.  What if they both said, “Oh, thank you for connecting with me.”
• A little girl is hungry and starts to whimper.  Mom gets irritable with the little girl because mom is embarrassed that she is making noise (looking good) and she wants to complete her shopping. (get it right)

We will tell lies to look good, get angry when things aren’t as they should be, and belittle our loved ones and ourselves with judgement of not being good enough.  All this is so silly.  If we look at ourselves and those around us, we are hysterical.  Watch those people at the coffee shop and the mall with a sense of humor.

People do the strangest things.  If you can, laugh to yourself at how funny people are.  THEN take a look at yourself and begin to laugh at yourself.  Watch yourself on the freeway….do you get mad at other drivers? Laugh! Watch yourself at the customer service desk when you are in a hurry….do you get irritated at people taking too long?  Laugh! and say. “There I go again, taking life too seriously.”

In the big scheme of things, it’s all pretty funny:  people hurrying like ants on an ant hill, men acting like boys in the sandbox playing king of the mountain, women being catty and judgmental of each other out of jealousy…...it’s hysterical.

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I should have…, I shouldn’t have…., I could have…..Do these statements sound familiar? It is always amazing to me how hard I was on myself.  I could be so loving and giving to others (I thought) and I totally bashed myself.  I had no room for making mistakes or being human.  I held myself to expectations that no one could attain…. Are you with me?

That was how it was up until I got the message: you can’t truly love others unless you love yourself.  That was HUGE.  I began giving myself permission to make mistakes and get the learning from them.  EVERYTHING happens for a reason and I was missing that part because I was  so busy beating myself up.

I forgave myself. Everyday I had to remind myself that I forgave myself until I FELT it.  My definition of forgiveness is “letting go of a better yesterday.”  I would look at each situation and ask myself, “Did I do the best I could given the circumstances?” Most often the answer is yes.  If I knew how to do it better, I would have. So the next step is to be loving toward myself and give myself permission to learn from a mistake vs beat myself up.

We all are doing the best we can at any given moment.  Again, if we knew how to do it better, we would. When we beat ourselves up, we miss out on the learning because our focus is on making ourselves wrong vs thinking there is learning (gold) in this situation. THE what happens is we repeat the mistakes because we didn’t get the gold.

Forgiving yourself is a key to really being present and expressing yourself freely. When you come from here, people want to have what you have. It’s contagious.

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I was so busy doing what others wanted of me or what I thought others wanted of me, I didn’t know what I wanted for me.  Several years ago I found myself by myself for the first time without a husband, children or pets or anything I had to be accountable to.  I began asking myself what I wanted in my life. Amazed, I discovered I had no idea what I wanted for me. after several months of trying various avenues, I found myself irritable, impatient and short tempered...all things that were not my usual self.  How many of you are in this place?

An introspective journey uncovered that I had no purpose.  Nothing to get up in the morning for.  No WHY I should get up.  In deepening my inquiry I kept coming back to I want to make a difference with people.

I LOVE to show people how to be accountable to themselves (make promises and keep them with themselves) Why?  Because when I am accountable, I CANNOT be in a victim place.  I become in charge of how I feel, what I do and how I react to what happens in my life. And that’s what I was going through.  I had no accountability to myself for anything.  No promises to keep, no deadlines to meet and no sense of accomplishment.  No wonder I was a grouch.

So, what is your deepest desire?  What do you love about what you do? What if you could always do what you loved and get paid?

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Oh! The agony of looking bad to others; looking foolish; looking like I don’t know what I’m doing!!! ARG!  I remember feeling this.  Can you relate?

Why is it we’re so afraid of what other people think of us? Years ago I can remember doing ANYTHING to look good, be smart, and fit in.  What I’ve learned is that risk taking is a major part of success. Being willing to look bad or foolish is part of the process of becoming a success in business or personal life.

When my daughter was 2, she learned how to go up and down a step without using her hands and scooting. She decided to learn this at the Zoo.  All day long her interest was in going up and down the curb.  Sometimes she fell, sometimes she got it right, sometimes she got frustrated and in the long run she mastered it.  She didn’t care that she was there to see the animals or if people were watching her with judgement. She was willing to “look bad” (doing the unexpected or unpopular thing) in order to get to mastery.

We all look foolish when we attempt anything for the first time.   But somehow as we grew older we lost the ability to be ok with this particularly if it was leading us to a place of great gain.

Before you can get really good at anything, you need to practice.  AND you may not look good while you get it right.  Or, in other words, you’re going to occasionally look bad on your way to success. You may be smart, gifted, and talented.  You may have innate skills and  ability beyond your peers. And if you are unwilling to risk not looking good, you’ll never, ever reach your full potential.

God has given you a purpose for being on the planet: maybe to write a song or a book, to start a business or help others.  When you get out of your area of comfort in order to achieve what you’ve always dreamed of doing,  you can’t let your fear of what others think stop you.  And in the beginning you might look like you don’t know what you’re doing.  And ironically, no one knows what they are doing until they do it, until they do it over and over again and they fail and get back up and attempt to do it again.

The question is not, “Will you ever look foolish?”  Of course you will.  All of us will.  It’s unavoidable.  The question is, “What are you willing to look foolish over?”  If there is something you want to do, need to do – ah, MUST do – then dare to look foolish and embrace it. And that requires that you jump in without having all the skills to succeed.  To learn to swim, you must start to swim.  You must go through the struggle until you get to the fluid motion of an accomplished swimmer.  You have to sometimes risk drowning in order to swim to the goal. Where are you holding back?  Are you willing to look bad and foolish to accomplish your dream and fulfill your purpose?

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