The Last 108 Days

Just 108 days to go... Just 108 days left before 2016 is just a memory.

And since you and I know many of those days will inevitably be swallowed up by busy seasons like Fall Break, planning towards Thanksgiving and Christmas, and more maybe come to realize we need a new plan, right?. Fortunately for you and I we can still complete our key plans and goals IF we start now. Start what you might be wondering. Darren Hardy shares a great piece of advice. It focuses on taking personal responsibility for our success.The common sense point is simple.  Successful people commit to taking personal responsibility for their lives and careers.  We demonstrate our commitment to taking personal responsibility when we do three things.  1) Do the little things that others won’t.  2) Choose to respond positively to the people and events in our life.  3) We make sure our calendar reflects our life and it's priorities.  If we will do these three things, we’ll not only be taking personal responsibility for our life focus, we’ll finish strong in 2016 and start fast in 2017. 

“Make sure your calendar represents the priorities you claim to be most important in life.”

That’s my take on my last 108 days this year.  What’s yours?  

Please take a few minutes to comment on this post, and share your thoughts with me. 

Thanks for reading.

One Word That Can Change Our Lives In 2016

A few years ago I was introduced to the idea of instead of working at accomplishing a list of goals in the New Year, focusing on One Word. 

As the New Year approaches my thoughts of the past year reflect on the hazards, the difficulties, the challenges and the great joys experienced along the way reaching toward my choice word for 2015, "healing". 

Much of the year was about physical healing...My body needed it! Last New Year I would not have imagined it would take those turns yet the power of a word is deeply layered. Not only did my family experience healing of the body but it was also challenged to experience the healing that takes place when on recognizes the need to forgive the unlovable. The impact of keeping my eyes focused on a single word  toward achieving that goal and to describe my solidarity as the year unfolds is powerful. Unlike the regular dictionary meaning of "Restoration," which is to return something back to its original condition, the biblical definition of the word has greater connotations that go above and beyond the typical everyday usage. Repeatedly throughout the Bible, God blesses people for their faith and hardships by making up for their losses and giving them more than they previously had before. 

The word RESTORATION is my choice for 2016. I pray that as the year unfolds, so will the restoration of my body, spiritually as well as physically. I also want to thank GOD and my sweet husband and many friends and kind acquaintences that have come along side to help me throughout this experience. Luke 4:18,19

The New Year is just around the corner

Christmas has passed... the New Year is almost upon us. With it comes a few more oportunities to gather together, indulge in a few more favorite foods, enjoy a bit of glitz and sparkle as we talk of our plans for the New Year. As we reflect many of us resolve to reproritize our lives, find our bliss, sculpt a new body, overcome poor habits and more. If you are anything like me as the old year comes to a close I am thinking about those plans I made last year and what became of them. For many the frustration of not accomplishing previous New Years goals may lead them to declaring "No MORE Resolutions". For me it emphasizes the need for finding ways to keep my goals on track. I liked what one person had to say on this topic... "I have an action plan and day-to-day activities to make it happen." Today I thought about this as I read a blog article. It aligned really well with the idea of having an action plan and day-to-day activities to make our goals or resolutions become reality. The key is using inertia and then mixing it with momentum.

The Law Of Inertia says, "An object at rest tends to stay at rest and an object in motion tends to stay in motion with the same speed and in the same direction unless acted upon by an external force." Interestingly inertia is a property of mass and cannot change but momentum changes as an object changes its velocity.

So what does this all have to do with resolutions? When there’s a goal that we want to achieve, one of the biggest hurdles that we face is overcoming inertia in order to get ourselves started moving in the right direction. The good news is that once we initiate movement, the law of inertia helps us to keep moving and to continue taking action. I needed some ideas to overcome inertia and get myself moving toward my goals in this New Year, perhaps you do to. Here are seven ways I plan to overcome inertia and get moving towards my goals, my action plan.

• Shock Therapy Did you know that individuals are “frozen in place” and we tend to resist change, even when presented with favorable opportunities. Therefore, something is needed to act as a "shock therapy". The idea is that some sort of disruption, shock, or “unfreezing” is necessary. Then it allows for a change takes place as a result of the disruption and finally we area able to re-form or “refreeze” into a new and different state.
• Short Term Wins Creating small goals for myself between the really big goals helps me to see my progress for what it is...Success!! Quick wins—to energize the change and create momentum. One small goal I have set for myself is to reward myself when I have acheived a 10% loss in my overall weight loss goal.
• Dangle A Carrot The idea here is to find small appropriate rewards to give yourself for doing what you set out to do. For instance rewarding youself with a healthful smoothie after completing your planned exercise routine or watching your favorite TV show after you’ve published a blog post.
• Use A Stick Discomfort and pain are also powerful motivators . How can you use it to motivate yourself towards your goals? Deny yourself a treat, such as your morning cup of coffee, unless you take action toward your goal. Another idea...Charge yourself for every day that you fail to take action. For example, you could ask a friend to charge you $5 for every day that you fail to take action toward the achievement of your goal.
• Fill My Tank Sometimes we don't tack action on our goals because we lack the ooomph or energy to do so, we haven't feuled our body. Here are some practical ideas to overcome fatigue. Take a twenty minute nap. Drink some water. Eat a nutritious, healthy snack. Pray. Get up, stretch or laugh out loud to get your energy flowing. Once your tank is full, it’s much more likely that you’ll have the energy that you’ll need in order to overcome inertia. Clear Vision Paint yourself a crystal clear vision of what you are trying to accomplish. It should involve all of your senses. Include emotions in your visualization; allow yourself to feel the satisfaction that comes from hitting your goal. As you visiualize your goal allow this vision to pull you toward it. That is, allow the image that you created to pull you out of your state of inertia, and get started towards it.
• Stage It When you have all the tools prepared to fix a leaky sink it is much more likely you'll tackle it. If you are getting ready to embark on a weight loss plan,it is far more likely you'll start at the planned time if all your shopping has been done and the new food choices are already in your refrigerator. It’s so-oooo much easier to overcome inertia when everything that you need in order to carry out a particular action is laid out in front of you and ready to go. Remember, the key to the speed of our success as we reach for our goals is using inertia and then mixing it with momentum since momentum changes as we change our velocity. Reaching our goals quickly is much more desirable than reaching them slowly. I look forward to the New Year with anticipation, excitement and a joy as I plan what I will accomplish and become. I hope you will join me in the journey into this New Year.

"Whatever you do, or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius and power and magic in it."~Goethe~

What is Metawork?????

Here we are just 18 days into the new year.  It has already been chock full of activities, some that spilled over from the old year and some that really were part of this brand new one. Did you plan out your new year? Well I discovered a new word in this new year, metawork. I really hadn't thought about the meaning of the word althought I certainly had heard it used in various technical conversation snippets here and there.  I discovered it is something most of us do and mostly what I discovered is that it is the part of getting going that can keep us immobile because in doing it we sometimes think we've done what our goal was. Confused? Ok I'll break it down because it can be really important to know and understand the difference. First let me state a camparison....Real work versus Metawork...Oh, hmmmm whaat? Perhaps it would make sense if we compare it to other meta words. Metadata – data about data. Metajoke – a joke about jokes. Metameeting? A meeting about whether or not you need to plan additional meetings. So-ooooo now is it more clear?

Of course, to some degree metawork is necessary – if you don’t take some steps to plan our how you will achieve your goals, you won’t know when you’ve accomplished them. And....left without direction we tend to wander aimlessly.

Compared to metawork, real work is just plain old fashioned work that has a direct impact on progress towards completing our tasks and goals.

Thinking in terms of a concrete example might help here – consider someone who wants to improve their health by lifting weights. Planning your workout schedule, thinking about how many repetitions to do, the cadence at which you want to lift the weights, which exercises to do all on which days – these are all decisions that i would classify as metawork. It’s important to consider them and have a plan of attack, but at some point you’ve got to actually to go the gym if you want any results...Which brings me to why I am ruminating over the word metawork.

In this New Year we tend to all create resolutions, make plans, etc. I want to make a positive difference this year in my life and the lives of those around me. Its been said that Vision without action is merely a dream. Action without vision just passes the time. Vision with action can change the world. -Joel A. Barker

Can metawork help us to get to the dream? I believe it can but I also believe it can be the very thing that can keep us immobile and ineffective in life.

Can I raise a toast to this New Year, a challenge if you will?
"May we all move past the metawork in our lives and accomplish the real things that make a difference to us." Cheers!