Archive

Tag Archives: making changes

Five New Year’s Resolutions That Won’t Fail

January 7, 2019
Living Today, Perspective
1 Comment

fireworks“Be the Change you want to see.” Gandhi.

If you want to make some major changes this year, the most important thing to realize is that you can’t do it all at once. However, just because this is true, it doesn’t mean that you can’t make amazing and valuable changes this year.

I have made several permanent changes that I wanted to make in my life. I wanted to quit smoking. I did. I wanted to live a healthier lifestyle. I am living one. I wanted to have a cleaner house. My house looks pretty good. I wanted to get my bachelor’s degree. I have it. I wanted to finally write the book that had been in my head since I was in the seventh grade. I have written eleven and have several more in the works. I have done all these things all because I learned the power of the habit. Currently my goal is to start a publishing business. That is currently in the works.

Here are a few things that I learned about the process:

1. Don’t try to change everything all at once. I learned that I couldn’t make all the changes all at once. Yes, I had numerous things that I wanted to do in my life, but I couldn’t do it all at once. I had to choose which one to start first. I chose to work on cleaning and organizing my house.

2. How do you eat an elephant? Take your one change and make it bite size. I have learned that I cannot do everything at once, no matter how hard I try. I had tried to do it numerous times with the same negative results. I had decided that I wanted to keep my house on a higher level of clean so I would clean the entire house all at once only to be too tired to keep up the maintenance.

What worked better was that instead of doing it all at once, I decided to focus on what was most important and do that first. I decided that the best place to start was in cleaning my house. I chose picking up around the house (one room at a time), doing laundry (one step at a time which only took five minutes or less) and doing dishes (right after the meal).

3. Take the same bite size every day. I keep the dishes, laundry and picking up done every day. There isn’t much to do because I do it every day.

4. After a month, build up on that one bite. Once I had control of the laundry, dishes and picking up, I moved on from there. I threw out stuff. I organized stuff. I did deep cleaning. A few minutes every day.

5. Determine to get up the eighth time- Never make the excuse to stop trying. Did I always keep it all up? Of course not. I had bad days, but as Edison said, “It doesn’t matter if you fall down seven times as long as you get up the eighth time.”

6. I am going to over deliver here by giving you a sixth resolution that will help you never fail at another resolution! Resolve to pick up and read my book and learn about the one habit that will help you create all your other habits and reach all your goals. Get The Ultimate Keystone Habit by following this link to reserve your copy now.

What’s Coming Next Week?

One of my own resolutions this next year is to build the editing aspect of my business and help other authors improve the editing process of their books. Each week I will go step by step through the editing process. My goal is to teach anyone, including novices, how to navigate the editing process like a pro.

Evening Routine: End with the Beginning in Mind

January 29, 2018
Living Today
2 Comments

blue skies

One of the things that I got good at last year was getting things done first thing in the morning. I wrote down what I wanted to do and got a lot done. I started doing some work in the afternoon and evening, but I didn’t get as much done as I would have liked especially toward the end of the year. Therefore, I am adjusting my evenings a little more by framing my day. I am ending my day with the morning in mind.
Here is what someone else suggested. I will try to get it into my own words and situation.

Begin at the End of the Day’s Work

Immediately after work, if I haven’t already done it earlier in the week, I will compile a list of to-dos for the next week. Then I will say yes or no for each item on the list.
Then I complete the list and review my calendar for the week and add tasks accordingly.
Next, I figure out the one thing that I want to do in the morning. That one big thing that I want to do.
Then I write that one thing on a post it not and put it on the corner of my laptop.
Now I outline related content that I want to focus on and add it to the corner of my laptop as well.
Now I review what I did that day. 10 wins, 1 thing to improve and 10 things that I am grateful for.

Attend to Your Usual Evening Routine

Then I attend to my usual evening stuff—cleaning, getting ready for work the next day, social business.

Finally Right Before Bed

Then right before bed, I set up the coffee maker, get ready for bed and then I go over my twelve month and quarterly goals, close my eyes and visualize having accomplished them. And dream about things that I will be doing as a more successful person, how my life and others’ lives will be changed for the better.
Next, I post a question to myself to work on while I sleep, put it on a post-it note, grab some water to drink in the morning, set the alarm and revisit my morning routine.
Then I read an inspirational book until I can no longer read.

And Then in the Morning

When my alarm goes off in the morning, I drink my glass of water, follow my morning routine and then start working on the one big thing that I know will lead me further down the path to my end goals.

Living Today, The Power of Now

In my book Living Today, the Power of Now, I offer similar tips to make the most of each and every day.

 

 

2014 Was the Most Difficult Year of my Life, but I survived!

December 31, 2014
Total LIfe Makeover
11 Comments

Death and Disappointment

I am so grateful that 2015 is dawning! 2014 was probably the most difficult year in my life. I thought 2013 had ended on a difficult note because in October my father died and then suddenly in November, my brother also died. However, another death in the family rocked my world when my sister died in April  2014. Three deaths in the family within six months is difficult enough, but my troubles did not end there.

After I returned from my sister’s funeral, I was talking with my husband in a conversation in which I disagreed with him on something that I considered minor, and the next thing I knew he had me against the wall choking me. He had hit me a few times in the past, but this time, I realized that he could kill me. It probably would be an accident, but he was angry enough that he could accidentally kill me. I would be dead, and he would be in jail, and our 13 year old daughter would be in foster care. So as not to go into detail, I will simply tell you that was my wake up call. I knew that I had to leave. He agreed to buy me a truck so that I would leave. He told me that he wanted nothing to do with me and he told me that he now considered himself an agnostic because he doubted that God existed.

me_on_the_laptop

So what came next was for me to make plans. I talked with my son and he said that he would set me up with a place on his land (he just got over 30 acres). He would set me up with a trailer and I could raise gardens and animals. I had fun dreaming about that as I prepared my exodus.

Delays followed delays. He could not find me a trailer that suited him and he had his own work and housing issues to deal with finally, he found me a place that he said would be temporary. It was a house out on an almost undrive-able dirt road, with extremely poor cell service, no internet, and no land line.  To make matters worse, it was in the neighborhood where in 2009 we had built a house that we lost to foreclosure and a woman had been murdered and hacked up. The murderer had been caught, but several people said that he had been acting on someone else’s orders. I lived there for over 4 months.

Frustration

When I moved out, I had limited funds, but I thought that I would quickly be able to get a job and be able to get some cash flow. I started applying for jobs in the area before I ever moved. I applied for job after job with no offers of employment. I moved in July. July passed. I graduated college July 30th, surely someone would want to hire  a newly graduated with honors (magna cum laude)  individual with a bachelor’s in liberal arts.August passed. Still no job. Finally by the first of September, I was desperate for anything.

Depression Gives Way to Hope

By the beginning of September, I was so depressed I was actually contemplating suicide. I cried myself to sleep every night and wondered if I was going to survive the pain that I was feeling. Things continued to get worse for me. on September 5, my computer’s hard drive bit the dust. I took it to get it repaired and I was told that it would cost me more money than I had to get it fixed. The worst day came when I was on my way into town and I heard a loud sound coming from one of my tires. I pulled over to the side of the road and saw that much of the tread had come off the tire. I watched the tire blow before my eyes. I didn’t have a spare. I called my son who said that he would buy me a new tire. I called a friend who said that he would get the new tire come fix it for me. I realized that I wasn’t alone, that my hope was in the fact that God put people in my path to help me. I saw light at the end of the tunnel. It was a faint light, but it was definitely light.

A Different Direction

Toward the end of September I finally had a job that would at least provide me with a cash flow. I started working as direct care staff for an autistic young man. Even this minimum wage job was better than I had before and I am grateful to have it.  With my first check from that job, I paid to have the computer fixed. One of my friends agreed to take me on as a roommate in a house in town. We worked to fix it up to make it a really nice home. We all moved into the house in November. I again have the internet. When I was off the internet in September and October, I read a number of books and when I had the computer back I worked on the second draft of A Coward’s Solace which is the next book in The Locket Saga. In November I wrote the first draft of Sailing Under the Black Flag the book which will follow A Coward’s Solace in the Locket Saga. My direction has changed considerable in the past year, but I know that God is behind these changes. I look forward to making plans and meeting new goals in 2015.

%d bloggers like this: