Category Archives: success

goal, life, motivational, success

Big or small goal?

Basically, there is no difference between a big or a small goal. The only thing that separates them is a person’s mindset.

If you have a big goal, you must have a mindset to match. So if your mindset can only hold a small vision, you will get a small vision.

There is nothing wrong with having a small goal as long as you pursue and accomplish that goal. Otherwise, it will fester in your mind.  Accomplishing small goals will lead to bigger goals.

The only way I know to make a your mindset expand is to do things you don’t normally do.  Examples would be to visit a Ferrari dealership if you want to live a swank, rich lifestyle, or spend some time in a five star hotel.  You could have tea and cucumber sandwiches there while you admire the crisp linen and the polished silverware.  Get the rich feel of things.  Expansion is endless as long as you prove to yourself that you can do it.  People jump out of airplanes to prove to themselves that they dare to do something scary and outrageous.

I just watched a video of a man walking a “slackrope” across two buttes somewhere out west. One misstep and he would plunge to his death.  Not something I would do EVER, but I have my own small world to deal with. Challenge creates resistance and resistance stops us from moving forward.

If I want to paint a mural but only paint small canvases, say, 8X8″ inches, it would be hard to paint a mural. Not impossible, but challenging for sure. I would have to research layout and perspective and how to transfer a small image to a larger size.  That is just the technical side of things.

Would I dare to paint a mural that depicted people or flowers?  An abstract yes, but something realistic would be a real stretch.

But now I paint 8X8″ up to 36×48″ canvases, and painting large opens up to a freedom I don’t feel when painting small.

The point here is to actually DECIDE on a goal, small or big, and go for it. Don’t let anything distract, especially the naysayer within.

Why play it so small when life could be so much more? I ask myself that question every day. Since I’m aware of it, I make conscious choices to stretch my boundaries.

The gain: I have noticed that when I’m with people they often ask me for help or want answers to questions to things I have done, and they haven’t. I don’t mind sharing, and that also shows me that every small goal I have accomplished has a great impact. Results  accumulate quickly.

When you don’t stop and look to see where others are at, you blaze your own trail. The longer you’re blazing away, the farther you get, and that’s when people start asking your for help.

Working with increments really make a HUGE difference.

You accomplish a big goal as easily as a little one–in increments.  What is the biggest goal that you can dream?

reaching a big goal

A big stumbling block to achieving a goal is:

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Just do it now even if it’s not perfect

Just go for the goal and worry about perfection later (as in never.)

Have a creative Wednesday. xo

Maria

fear, inspirational, life, motivational, process, success, transformation

What do you fear?

What do you fear? I was thinking about that this morning as I had my tea in the backyard. Then I saw that my friend Tobi Camilli had written a blog post about How To Be Fearless today. (Link at the end of this post.)  Let’s kick fear to the curb!

I don’t live a life filled with fear, but it’s exactly what holds me back from creating a life that is truly great! As I had my tea I was watching a dove picking at my lawn, not showing much fear of me. I remembered a time when one of the feral cats caught a dove and the screams of fear the bird emitted. Animals (as far as I know) live in the now. I doubt they have a concept of life and death, but they feel fear at the moment of death, or at being caught.

We are born into this world as predator or victim. It is a world based on eat or be eaten, the jungle law prevails. That is the natural law of things. Animal and human alike don’t want to die. That is a built-in fear that can’t be avoided.

However, humans have taken fear to staggering heights. Through history we have tales of horrifying torture, greed, betrayal, you name it.  No wonder we don’t trust each other since history inspires nothing but mistrust of our leaders and people in general.

That fear is known and normal, but what about the fear that stops us from accomplishing our goals and desires? It’s like two strains of fear that have been downloaded through the ages: one for survival and the other to make us small and helpless.

Humans rule the world and the animal kingdom with a heavy hand, all due to fear. The strongest and the wealthiest is the one in power, but truly, that is just a huge buffer against the threat of being poor and helpless.

True greatness comes from the inner unfolding of the soul / spirit.  Mahatma Gandhi is a good example of that. As we know he didn’t have many worldly riches, and he ordained peaceful solutions to all conflicts. A truly masterful leader who created massive change through peace.  I don’t know if he walked around with fear of assassins, but I doubt it.

Bravery comes from within. It’s not the product of an outside situation. To grow true bravery we have to become intimate with our soul and its needs. It does not want small and fearful. It wants us to step up and unfold into true greatness. We are all seeds of the gods.  Your greatness is different from mine, and it’s there for the taking. We all compliment each other.

Fact of the matter is: that kind of fear is a flimsy excuse. It’s like smoke and mirrors, not really real. We are bamboozled by the specter of fear and we swear to its veracity.

But, if you have challenged fear in the past you know about the flimsy excuse and it gets easier and easier to act in the face of it.

The real challenge is to release the old patterns that our parents’ (and history) imprinted in us from day one. My parents’  message was, play it small and safe. But I have rebelled against that over and over so now is the time to eradicate such imprinting for good! I’ve been using EFT, Emotional Freedom Technique, with great success in the past, and it keeps on working. If you want to kick your fearful small self out for good, check out some YouTube videos on how to do EFT and get started.

Take charge of your life now and do the things you really want to do. You’ll be happier for it.

Tobi, as I mentioned above, has some other suggestions to releasing fear. Check out her blog HERE.

xo

Maria

P.S. If you are looking for some free or paid e-courses that I offer, please go HERE.

art, inspirational, life, motivational, process, purpose, self help, success, transformation, unstuck

Begin anywhere and anyway!

 

looking-muscle-21999417

Hello friends,

Begin anywhere and anyway; have you heard it before?  I’m sure you have. I have, many times, and I’ve told myself to “just do it” many times, and I do, BUT the tendency is to always fall back to the status quo of mediocrity.  I could call that laziness, but that word is like a bog of negative possibilities, all not supportive of life.  The solution to this is to strengthen the muscle of resolve.

So many TV programs and self-help books are dedicated to bettering yourself in some way, like losing those 30 lbs, or becoming a better parent. We get lost in the possibilities and the result is inaction, or in my case, boredom.

Let’s talk about the muscle of resolve. When you decide to stop smoking or losing weight for instance, you must have resolve, or that busy little devil on your shoulder will soon talk you into starting the new habit tomorrow, always tomorrow.

So, any time we take on a challenge we have to face making a decision. If you want to start exercising or stop a bad habit, you make that decision. There is usually a threat involved, like bad health that propels a person into action, but not always. I have seen people with stage 4 lung cancer wheel their drip bag stand out to the smoking room at the hospital and puff away. That is what I call giving up. The little devil won.

How hard is it to make a decision?  It’s hard unless you’re so fed up with status quo, or as Anthony Robbins says, “you’re in so much pain you have to change.” The old is no longer an option.  It’s something to pray for. Pain is good because it forces us to change, but why go that far?

That’s where the headline of this post comes in: Begin anywhere and anyway.  Say you have a dream of accomplishing something great in your life. It’s that thing that’s always bugging you at the back of your mind.  A deep desire for change.

I’m appalled at how stuck we are in the ruts and routines and the FEARS of change. But if you truly want to change, to create something new for yourself, start NOW.  You don’t need fancy equipment (well, you might at some point but not now,) you don’t need extra time, you don’t need a block of 2 days of me-time to get things straightened out.

All you need is to make that decision, and make it over and over when you fall of the wagon. As you keep dedicating yourself you build the resolve muscle you will have to re-make your decision. The trick to staying on the wagon is to get some excitement going about your project. It makes the decision easy every time.

Start with ONE thing to forward your dream. It could be as little as a phone call or email.

What can you do this week, Monday-Friday, to make strides? Make a short list of doable steps. Only you know what is needed. As you take small actions every day, your excitement will grow, and so will your commitment.

Then you fall off the wagon again…  and again.

BUT the tool is simple. Make tiny goals each day and accomplish them, and as you follow this path, your to-do list will grow because you can see the progress, and you want to get THERE, so you delve more deeply into the dream and find more possibilities for expansion.  One step can reveal a big revelation. One email can open doors to connections you only dreamed of in the past.

What do I do every day? I am an artist and writer, and those are the subjects I keep delving into every day. My morning looks like this pretty much every morning:

Cup of tea in my back yard.

Meditate to get in the flow.

Walk 20 minutes. Hot as hell sometimes in FL. I slacked with my exercise for years, but I used to be committed to keeping in shape, and I discovered that muscle memory still works! Now I’m addicted to walking.

Write 750 word in my online journal at 750words.com. I usually write more than that since writing is in my blood and I like to blog as well.

Have a green smoothie for breakfast, and after that I feel out what I want to focus on that day. It’s not always easy. The little devil will always sit there and jabber away, but he can be trained!

When I was a fulltime writer I made up my mind to write ten pages a day, and I have followed that for forever. The writing isn’t always glowing. It rarely is, but I keep going.  I have no fears around showing up on the page. Crappy writing can always be fixed.

Art is a different animal altogether. That muscle has a mind of its own… I have never been able to tame it, but my challenge is to show up at the art journal page or the canvas. I can do that, but the resistance is powerful most of the time. They say to push through the resistance and I do, and I find myself happy on the other side. The other kind of resistance is the one that says “this is not good for you.” It has a different feel, like facing a brick wall. Then I listen to that, and every day has a forward flow of small positive increments.

When I fall off the wagon I get so uncomfortable in my skin that I have to get back on, or DIE, (not really, but there is no compromise.)

To accomplish something worthwhile, start tiny and grow from there. Make that decision, dedicate yourself, kick the fears to the curb, take small action steps, and soon you’ll have something new and wonderful in your life. Grow your awesome self via the muscle of resolve!!!  🙂

asskickery, inspirational, interview, motivational, success

Success coach Karen Strunks.

2 Comments

Hello lovely people,

I have the honor to introduce you to British success coach, Karen Strunks. She inspires people all across the world and has been a successful online business entrepreneur for over nine years. I have learned a lot from her and gained some well-needed asskickery in my own business.  Here is the interview about smart time management and focus!

karen strunks (1)

1. How important is time to you?

Time is one of the biggest assets we all have. What we do with our time determines what we achieve and succeed at. I love this quote by Carl Sandburg:
“Time is the coin of your life. It is the only coin you have, and only you can determine how it will be spent.”

We have the luxury of time, but it’s not limitless. Squander time and we squander our lives.

2. Do you try to make the best use of your time, if so how do you do that?

I try to make the best out of every minute of the day! I plan ahead and decide how I would like to spend my time.

I love productivity ‘hacks’ and use a lot of them. For example, I don’t operate in ‘reactive mode’, jumping to every ping of my phone (actually it’s on silent) or email notification (I check in a
couple of times a day when I’ve scheduled it). I take charge of my time and my day and I don’t spend my time doing anything I don’t like to do, in my life or my business, and that includes who I spend my time with too!

I use Google docs to keep track of what I’m doing and when it’s got to be done. It acts as a kind of to-­do list. If it needs to be done, it’s goes in my diary. You have to create, or schedule, the time for the things you want to do and not just hope that it’ll get done one day.

3. How many hours a day to do you work and how is that broken down?

Well, I’ve recently made some huge changes in my working hours and I now work 16-­20 hours a week. That’s a huge drop from the 80­-100 hours I thought I had to do to run my business!

I made the change by simply deciding how many hours I was willing to work in my business and how I wanted to fill those hours. I cut the ‘busy work’, focused on the things that bring me the biggest results and I fill my time at work doing only the things I love. Well, except for admin I have to admit!

4 hours blogging/writing/video creating ­ which are most of the things I truly enjoy.

4 hours creating content for my online courses.

4 hours of coaching calls on Skype.

2 hours of admin/emails.

4 hours of marketing.

1 hour of connecting with people (could be new people or people in my network.)

That’s it!

We can ALL do more work in less time and create FREE time if we get a razor-sharp focus on what we love doing and what works for us.

4. What else do you like to do with your time and how do you fit that in?

So, apart from my 20 hours work week, I focus on my self­development. There are always ways to improve and learn. I love films and writing and just getting creative. That could involve  coming up with new things I’d like to  try in my business. It’s all easy to fit in now that I’ve cracked the ‘code’ for running my business and using my time really efficiently!

5. Tell us a bit about you and your business.

I help daring, go-­getting entrepreneurs create a life of freedom. Their work, their life, their way, completely on their terms. We throw away the rule book! It’s totally possible to have a life of freedom. We can have so much more than we realize, if we just take action and go out there and demand more of ourselves.

I made my escape from the rat race and I refuse to march to the tune of someone else’s drum ever again. Now I’ve got 9 years experience in running my own businesses, I’ve helped 1000s of people with their business and life success. I’m a qualified life coach and NLP practitioner.

I work with dynamic and driven people who are ready to go FULL OUT in creating a life and business on THEIR terms!

Are YOU ready to play it BIG? You can read about it in my e-book; 8 Secrets To Playing It Big In Life & Business. Get your copy HERE.

To find out more about Karen’s available online programs, please visit her website at KarenStrunks.com

Thank you so much, Karen! I know I have to be more focused and aware of how I spend my time…

xo

Maria