Adventurous Mom

No I’m not fly­ing south for the winter…although it’s Spring time so I should be head­ing some­where trop­i­cal!  In an attempt to sim­plify life, take back my time and life adven­tur­ously, I have made the com­mand deci­sion to blog only at The Free­dom Ven­ture Project.

You can sub­scribe to the blog via EMAIL or RSS

You will still be see­ing tons of arti­cles on Tak­ing Back Your Time, Liv­ing Fear­lessly Free and Hav­ing Adventure!

I look for­ward to see­ing you over there!

Many Adven­tures!!

Maken­zie

Ulti­mate Lifestyle Design: How Are You Wast­ing Spend­ing Your Time?

Read Time: 6 minutes

As an avid Lifestyle Design fanatic, I have to admit, I have been bug­ging all of my Face­book and twit­ter friends about this topic.  I ask them, Which would you rather have? Time or Money? To which 99% reply, they’d rather have more TIME.

So my fol­low up ques­tion is, What is stand­ing in the way of your abil­ity to get more TIME? To which they all respond: Money or My Job.  So it seems to me that most peo­ple draw the con­clu­sion that inevitably TIME = MONEY.  But is this really true?

Retir­ing

As I write this post, my won­der­ful father will be retir­ing in less than a week after hav­ing “served” the phone com­pany for most of his adult life, 39 years to be exact.  Started as a line­man and worked his way up into impor­tant man­age­ment posi­tions.  I am so proud of my dad for mak­ing the deci­sion to retire.  They are finan­cially secure and will have their house paid off in less than 2 months! A mon­u­men­tal undertaking!

I said to him, “You know, you’re the last of a dying breed.”  He acknowl­edged and said that not many who retire after him will be receiv­ing a pen­sion and excel­lent ben­e­fits.  This rep­re­sented a major turn in our country’s work his­tory going from Defined Ben­e­fits (Pen­sions) to Deferred Con­tri­bu­tions (401Ks and the like).  I guess my dad was one of the lucky ones, but he cer­tainly did sac­ri­fice a lot to get to this reward.  But I do also know that part of him is ter­ri­fied, not because of the money, but NOW, what does he do with his TIME??

What will be my rea­son to wake up in the morning?

“Kenz, [my dad’s nick­name for me] I just don’t know what my rea­son for wak­ing up in the morn­ing will be if I don’t go to work.”  Ugh! Just pulls at my heart strings, and of course, I men­tion 101 things he could do aside from he and my mother try­ing to kill each other for spend­ing too much time together.

Retire­ment depres­sion is so com­mon among new retirees, that AARP addresses this issue on their web­site.  Part of me is fear­ful that my dad will end up one of these sta­tis­tics.  These are some of the things that they men­tion that can curb retire­ment depression:

• What do I want to do? (Go back to school? Be a gourmet cook or mas­ter gar­dener? Start your own business?)
• Who do I want to do it with?
• What resources do I have?
• What resources would be avail­able in a new com­mu­nity if I choose to relocate?
• How can I make this happen?

Now hold on a sec­ond… When I read this list, I was flab­ber­gasted!!  Why are we not doing this NOW? Why don’t we ask our­selves these very reflec­tive ques­tions today?  Do we have to wait until we retire old to ask our­selves these questions…especially this one:  How can I make it happen?

Oppor­tu­nity Cost

I recently read a great book by a won­der­ful Author, Tisa L. Sil­ver, MBA enti­tled The Time Value of Life.  Tisa was an esteemed finance pro­fes­sor at the Uni­ver­sity of Delaware’s Alfred E. Lerner Col­lege of Busi­ness and Eco­nom­ics, and unlike many pro­fes­sors, takes a dif­fer­ent (read: refresh­ing) approach in her view on money.  In her book, she looks at sev­eral fac­tors that play into the time value of money and then also explains why our time is so precious.

I obvi­ously agree with her argu­ment that, money is a renew­able resource and time is not, “Time can be spent but only money can be replaced” (Sil­ver).  And one inter­est­ing con­cept that relates to both time and money is “Oppor­tu­nity Cost.”  In money terms, if you invest in a bond or other invest­ment, you’re giv­ing up your money for a cer­tain period of time for some­one to use it, and you for­feit any other ben­e­fit that you may have received by using that money in other invest­ments (or to spend on yourself).

Time works the same way. There is an oppor­tu­nity cost to time.  When we spend our time being angry we are for­feit­ing our time that we could be using being joy­ous, happy, silly, or even indif­fer­ent.  Even more delib­er­ate than that, when we choose to spend our time doing what we feel is an oblig­a­tion rather than a choice; we for­feit our time to do what we choose.

So there are choices with how you spend your time, every minute you spend holds an oppor­tu­nity cost.  Where and how are you spend­ing your oppor­tu­nity minutes?

If Only’s and Once I’s

Do you do this?  Do you wish for some­thing so badly and then once you get it, the result did not make you feel the way you thought it would?

Sil­ver calls these fal­lacy state­ments, I call them “If Only’s and Once I’s”.  We have all been vic­tim of these state­ments.  I remem­ber my hus­band early in our mar­riage would say, “Once I become a police offi­cer then every­thing will be alright, and I’ll be happy…finally.”  Take a guess at what hap­pened.  Yep, he was the same per­son, no more or less happy!

Do you say this to yourself?

• Once I get that really nice sports car, then I’ll feel good about myself.
• If only I had more money then I’d be happier.
• Once the kids get older, then I’ll have more free time.

Fal­lacy state­ments do not allow us to spring into action, instead we wait for the “per­fect tim­ing” of an occur­rence, or we wait for the occur­rence to hap­pen to us rather than go after it.  We give up our power to be present in the NOW when we use fal­lacy state­ments.  We would rather focus on wish­ful future events, rather than appre­ci­ate what we have in front of us.

How DO you Trade your Time?

I know what is true for me that I make a hor­ri­ble employee, and pre­fer entre­pre­neur­ship.  But I know a lot of peo­ple that LOVE their jobs and they make great employ­ees, this is how they choose to trade their time, for money, and I think that is won­der­ful!  I am not in the busi­ness to tell peo­ple to quit their jobs.

For these, the oppor­tu­nity cost is a fair trade.  They love what they’re spend­ing their time doing at work, and gladly col­lect money for doing it. In fact, time seems to breeze by, they feel free in their life, and they don’t nec­es­sar­ily feel their time is being sucked dry.

There are, how­ever, far more peo­ple that are mis­er­able, hate their jobs and the oppor­tu­nity trade off does not seem fair in their book.  So then what?

The Tim­ing is Never Right

You have options about how to spend your time, good and bad.  If you’re spend­ing it in a way that is not con­sis­tent with a fair oppor­tu­nity trade, then you have a choice to change it.  Some­times it seems impos­si­ble, but you do have choices.

One of my favorite reads, The Four Hour Work Week, by Tim­o­thy Fer­riss, tack­les this very issue of decid­ing when the time is right.  He describes the time he asked his mother about how she timed when she would have a baby, to which his mother responded, “We fig­ured we would do it at some point, the tim­ing is never per­fect to have a baby”.

I can cer­tainly attest to this one…and not just one baby, two!  My older son was a sur­prise pack­age when we least expected him, and our younger son came right before I was start­ing our mega ven­ture busi­ness.  The tim­ing was so wrong for both of them, but if I waited until it was right, I likely would have no kids!!  Yet I sur­vived and real­ized that my worst case sce­nar­ios never usu­ally manifest.

So with this in mind, are you wait­ing for per­fect con­di­tions to change?  Are you wait­ing for some­one else to tell you what to do you get your act in gear?  You can do it the Band-Aid method, make it fast, and let it hurt for a few min­utes until the sting­ing stops.  Or like jump­ing into a cold pool, it is numb­ingly shock­ing, but then you warm up to it.

Every Day Opportunities

While my dad was one of the “lucky” ones to retire with a pen­sion, he sac­ri­ficed a lot of time to get him to where he is at today. In fact my mom will argue that he was a work-a-holic.  He did not know any dif­fer­ent, it was in his pro­gram­ming.  He is now faced with a totally for­eign chal­lenge, and that is to learn to have, do or be what he loves!  Yet, what he did not real­ize all a long, is that he could have cho­sen that path every day!!

Which path are you on? One that mis­uses your oppor­tu­nity cost?  Or one to HAVE, DO and BE what­ever you desire?

Leave a com­ment below and let me know!!

Many adven­tures to you!!

Do you ever get par­a­lyzed with mak­ing a deci­sion?  Is it dif­fi­cult for you to decide when hard choices con­front you?  You get scared and you get fear­ful, so instead you do nothing?

Well, inde­ci­sion is some­times a curse that befalls us all.  We then pro­cras­ti­nate and then get noth­ing done.  Napoleon Hill sum­ma­rizes this par­a­digm in his book Think and Grow Rich and why it is dam­ag­ing to our suc­cess. “ACCURATE analy­sis of over 25,000 men and women who had expe­ri­enced fail­ure, dis­closed the fact that LACK OF DECISION was near the head of the list of the 30 major causes of FAILURE.”

We argue to our­selves that we need more time to think about it, and then we take more time, but often the deci­sion gets cloudier the longer we think about things.

There are sev­eral types of per­son­al­i­ties that strug­gle with inde­ci­sion.  There are those that make choices quickly think­ing they have all of the infor­ma­tion they need, only to back pedal on their deci­sion days or even hours after mak­ing it.  This is quite frus­trat­ing, even for these peo­ple because they have a dif­fi­cult time get­ting things done, they have to undo and redo.  Energy and time is wasted for their lack of decision.

The other per­son­al­ity type is those that fear any kind of deci­sion at all.  I call these peo­ple Ana­lytic Paralytics…frozen with infor­ma­tion over­load.  At some point in our lives most peo­ple hit this cross­road, espe­cially when big deci­sions need to be made. We want so badly not to make mis­takes, so we gather and gather and hunt for infor­ma­tion.  We ask ques­tions, we seek advice, we get opinions….but the more infor­ma­tion we gather, the more dif­fi­cult it becomes to decide!

Inde­ci­sion is par­a­lyz­ing, it keeps us from our goals and our dreams!  One thing for cer­tain is that it will be unlikely that any one per­son will have 100% of the knowl­edge nec­es­sary to make a good deci­sion, it’s just impos­si­ble!  So, you are doomed to make bad deci­sions in your life, and that’s okay.  Keep­ing this in mind, how bad might some of your deci­sions become?

Most deci­sions that we make are not irre­versible, we can change them back if need be.  I would even go as far as to say that 90% of the deci­sions we make are totally irre­versible.  If we decide we are not sat­is­fied with the out­come of our deci­sion, we can change it.  So for the bulk of our deci­sions, they likely have lit­tle to no con­se­quence, and are eas­ily fix­able if some­thing goes wrong.

For the 10% of dif­fi­cult deci­sions that may not be irre­versible, we can ask our­selves these series of questions:

1. Do I have choices?  What are my choices? (A good teacher once told me one option is not a choice, it’s a con­se­quence, two make a dilemma, and three make a choice.)
2. Am I lean­ing toward one decision/choice and how do I feel about that choice? (Keep­ing in mind that fear is a healthy emo­tion sur­round­ing change and decision.)
3. What do I have to gain if I make this choice? And what do I have to lose?
4. If I lose, how dif­fi­cult will it be for me to recover?
5. Lastly, what do I really want?

Going through a deci­sion rubric such as this really brings down one’s fear lev­els regard­ing deci­sion mak­ing.  Our Ego mind is so quick to judge us! (How dare it!) It puts up the fear as safe­guards to doing any­thing out­side of your com­fort level.  But it inad­ver­tently sab­o­tages our suc­cess (are you going to let this hap­pen? How dare it!)

Lastly, don’t let your inde­ci­sion be the rea­son why you fail as Napoleon Hill points out.  Make a deci­sion, stick with it for a while, and if it doesn’t serve you, then change!  What do you really have to lose?

Join on in the con­ver­sa­tion and leave a com­ment below!!

For now, Many Adven­tures to You!

Maken­zie

Whether you are on the fence about what energy means to you, we all have it.  In fact, I can hook you up to an EKG machine and instantly tell you whether your heart has a healthy energy rhythm or not!  Our entire bod­ies are arranged on many lev­els of ener­getic prin­ci­pals and some that we don’t even know about!

So you know when you’re around some peo­ple or events that just drain your energy?  You know who I’m talk­ing about, is it Aunt Martha that likes to talk a lot about her health prob­lems, or is it the boss that pushes his agenda onto you?  Here are 6 Great Tips to Pro­tect your energy from them!

1.  Real­ize that it is YOUR energy and you don’t have to share it

Often times you feel an oblig­a­tion to share your energy with some­one that may clearly breach your space and energy. Women are very sus­cep­ti­ble to this because we think that we must be nice, or we must be accom­mo­dat­ing.  We don’t want to offend any­one, so we’d rather allow them to infringe our energy and suck us dry.  This does not honor your energy!  When you feel some­one breach­ing your energy, take a step back and eval­u­ate.  Ask your­self, “Who’s energy am I sharing…and it is worth it?”

2.   GROUND your Energy

Ever heard of the phrase, your best defense is a good offense?  This is the same con­cept.  Hav­ing in your aware­ness that your energy should be grounded will allow you to not be sus­cep­ti­ble to energy zap­pers.  One way to do this is to align your body in a straight up and down posi­tion, and close your eyes.  You can also imag­ine an imag­i­nary line run­ning from your belly but­ton to the ground (3 or 4 feet below you) and then from your belly but­ton, to chest through your head and to the sky.  In ancient cul­tures this would be called, “Align­ing your Hara”, but we’ll call it Get­ting Grounded.  Take three deep breaths and con­cen­trate on get­ting grounded.  This will allow you to align your energy to be fully aware of your sur­round­ings and your energy.  So key!

3.  Your Time, Your Money and Your Resources are Energy

Has any­one ever taken up too much of your time?  Is it that pesky sales per­son or the oblig­a­tions that you feel to run the PTA, or to clean the house inside and out every day? Or have peo­ple asked for money and you did not want to give it?  It just did not feel right?  These are all exam­ples that your energy extends to your resources beyond your body.  Hon­or­ing your time energy, and your money energy to be in align­ment with what is true for you instead of what is true for oth­ers is another way to elim­i­nate those energy zap­pers.  If you spend your resources because you feel oblig­ated rather than hav­ing the choice or the desire to do so zaps your energy.  Be aware of your choices regard­ing these energies.

4.  NO is the new YES

This is a won­der­ful say­ing that a good friend Ken Bech­tel at Find­ing You in the Goo uses con­stantly.  Instead of feel­ing ener­get­i­cally that NO is a neg­a­tive con­cept, real­ize that when you say no, you are say­ing YES to your­self.  And who is the most impor­tant per­son in this world to you?  YOU.  So, honor your impor­tance and be okay with say­ing NO to oth­ers, you are in fact say­ing YES to yourself!

5.  Bound­aries, Bound­aries, Boundaries

When I first real­ized I had bound­ary issues, I imme­di­ately thought “No way, peo­ple with bound­ary issues are those that are like door­mats, they’ll do what­ever, when­ever for whoever…that’s not me.”  But it was, and it was a hor­ri­ble eye opener!

Bound­aries come in many shapes and sizes.  Bound­aries, whether phys­i­cal, or ener­getic, are so very impor­tant to hon­or­ing your­self.  Are you get­ting pushed around at work because you are not will­ing to stand up and fight the good fight?  It is just eas­ier to go with the flow?  Are you uncom­fort­able with how fast your spouse dri­ves the car with your kids in the car, but you aren’t allowed to say any­thing?  These are all exam­ples of bound­aries.  It is really about you—not about them.  In order to be clear about your bound­aries, you must be clear about what you are okay with, and what you are not okay with.

6.  Push or Pull Your Energy When necessary

When con­fronted with a per­sis­tent energy, it may become nec­es­sary to Push your energy, or to Pull on another’s energy.  What this essen­tially does is gives you the POWER to be able to make change, get proac­tive and take back your energy.  I have found that when I am in con­tact with some­one who likes to pull my energy, or drain me, I often have to PUSH back.  Some­times I give lit­tle warn­ings, or lit­tle sig­nals, and when they do not respond, and then I give a decent ener­getic push.  It does not have to be mean, and the push can come from a sim­ple state­ment with good inten­tions.  “I’d really love to explain why I did what I did, but I do not feel that this is the right time or place to engage in such a con­ver­sa­tion.”  Assertive, respect­ful, and direct.  This is what occurs when your energy is in align­ment with your intentions.

You may be think­ing that a lot of this is deal­ing with nor­mal human emo­tions, but there is an ener­getic shift that occurs even before the emo­tions occur or the dis­cus­sion hap­pens.  This is the energy that I am talk­ing about.  Most of you have felt energy when you’re around some­one that is angry, the energy feels harsh, or when you’re around some­one depressed, the energy feels drain­ing.  Pro­tect­ing your­self from the volatile energy zap­pers starts with you, a good defense and an aware­ness of energy.

For now, Be Grounded, Be Whole, and Be Ener­get­i­cally Adventurous!!

Let me know how your energy is today, leave a com­ment or a ques­tion! I love feedback!

So you’re stuck in a pretty bad sit­u­a­tion huh? Seems like things couldn’t get any worse, and then they did.  How do we cope with when we’re in these hor­ri­ble situations?

To be hon­est, when I was talk­ing to moth­ers that were sin­gle, barely mak­ing ends meet, I felt awful.  I wanted so badly to alle­vi­ate their pain, to make them instantly suc­cess­ful, to end their wor­ries.  But I knew if I did this, it would only pro­vide tem­po­rary relief.  Much like those that win the lot­tery, they find tem­po­rary finan­cial relief, only to blow all of their money on friv­o­lous spending.

The best way I have found to help peo­ple swamped in Stress, in Debt, stuck in Life, is to show them the way, let them fig­ure it out with help and assistance.

If I were to do all the walk­ing for my kids when they were grow­ing up, they would not have a rea­son to learn to walk on their own.  Same is true for any­one stuck in a mis­er­able sit­u­a­tion.  I could hand you a life pre­server, and res­cue you, but it is bet­ter if I teach you how to swim so the next time you fall over­board, you can make it to shore on your own.

With this being said, when you’re stuck in a hor­ri­bly stress­ful sit­u­a­tion, “SEE” your way out of it.  What I mean by this is you have the capa­bil­ity of visu­al­iz­ing your way out of debt, out of stress and out of fear.  The three most debil­i­tat­ing human feel­ings are those I just listed.  But, peo­ple find their way out all of the time, why can’t you?

If you’re say­ing that it’s impos­si­ble, you’ve defeated your­self before you began.  All per­sonal devel­op­ment experts will tell you that the num­ber one way to get­ting what you want is to Visu­al­ize your Desire.

So then, let me ask you, if you are stuck in this mis­er­able sit­u­a­tion, WHAT DO YOU REALLY WANT?

• Do you really want to become debt free? – ask for it
• Do you really want to find a bet­ter pay­ing job? – see your­self work­ing in one
• Do you want a bet­ter rela­tion­ship with your kids? – believe every day that it is happening.

Doing this exer­cise may seem what I call “woo-woo” or just plainly stu­pid and eso­teric.  But ask any of the super suc­cess­ful, the wealthy, the happy, the bal­ance peo­ple in this world, and they will admit, they had a vision of how their lives would be.

This Vision puts into play sev­eral prac­ti­cal steps:

• -          You declare that you desire some­thing to hap­pen, you openly admit it to your­self, and it goes beyond wish­ing, it is a request.  You believe this will hap­pen and you get past the fear of actu­ally ask­ing for it.
• -          Your Retic­u­lar Acti­vat­ing Sys­tem (RAS) acts as a “ful­fill­ment request cen­ter”.  It is given a demand to ful­fill a desire, and then seeks to accom­plish that request.  It is a very black and white issue, and does not deal with the com­pli­cated emo­tions that are involved, it doesn’t have to.
• -          So now that the RAS has its request, it starts shoot­ing out images and ideas to your sub­con­scious in attempts to ful­fill that request.  Some­times you may start see­ing more images, TV ads, signs or other “coin­ci­dences” that will poten­tially fill your desire.
• -          Lastly, as we declare a desire, and we see it vividly in our mind’s eye, we start doing the emo­tional work nec­es­sary to com­plete the goal.  Emo­tions like to get in the way of goal com­ple­tion, but hav­ing a clear and accu­rate vision will allow us to do the work nec­es­sary to make it hap­pen.  The ques­tion is, how badly do you want it?

It’s no won­der that gurus such as Tony Rob­bins and Joe Vitale sug­gest using tools such as Vision Boards.  It allows us to take our men­tal pic­ture and put it into phys­i­cal real­ity.  Sure, the phys­i­cal real­ity is only 2 dimen­sional when you’re mak­ing your vision board, but it is still a phys­i­cal man­i­fes­ta­tion of your desire, and is the first step in see­ing what the desire feels like.

This vision board also allows you to rein­force your desires.  If you look at the board once or even twice a day, it is that daily con­sis­tency that acti­vates the RAS, the sub­con­scious and the con­scious mind to work together to bring forth your desire.

So I know this is a lot of infor­ma­tion about a pretty sim­ple idea: Visu­al­iza­tion. Yet, believ­ing that you will not be STUCK in your mis­er­able sit­u­a­tion is so impor­tant to your men­tal health and to your abil­ity to dig your way out!

Think about this:

In all things it is bet­ter to hope than to despair. “ Johann Von Goethe

When things are bad, we take com­fort in the thought that they could always be worse. And when they are, we find hope in the thought that things are so bad they have to get better.

Let me know what you think…have you had suc­cess with Vision Boards, have you been able to SEE your way out of bad sit­u­a­tions?  Leave a com­ment below, I love feedback!

Many Adven­tures!

Maken­zie

Wel­come back!  This is the 2^nd post of 3 in my Tips for Stress Reduc­tion.  I cre­ated these posts when I real­ized that Stress is the num­ber one epi­demic in our coun­try, which leads to many life-threatening med­ical con­di­tions such as car­dio­vas­cu­lar dis­ease, dia­betes, obe­sity etc…

Yet, as I have per­son­ally expe­ri­enced, doc­tors will diag­nose your con­di­tion as “stress related” but then just hand you a nice lit­tle pill to take.  I’m not dis­count­ing the neces­sity of med­ica­tions in cer­tain instances, hav­ing been in the health­care field for as long as I have, I com­pletely agree med­ica­tions in cer­tain patients are a neces­sity.  But what if your con­di­tion is cre­ated in your own real­ity? What if the lit­tle pill doesn’t cure the under­ly­ing problem?

This is the ques­tion you can ask yourself.

So in Part 1, the idea was to get you to iden­tify that you, as a par­ent, need to take care of your­self first.  We talked about iden­ti­fy­ing your energy lev­els, and slow­ing down your speeds.  Step 1 was to bring into your aware­ness WHEN you noticed that you were stressed out.

Now in Part 2, we iden­tify 3 Sim­ple Steps to get into action to reduce your stress.

Step 1 — Do Less

What? Do less? ….I can hear all of the “yeah but” com­ments now.  So let me clar­ify: Just Do Less.

This step in its sim­plic­ity can some­times be a dif­fi­cult step to rec­on­cile to your­self because you will argue for your stress.  Doing less is a sim­ple deci­sion you can make.  Let me ask you these ques­tions: Do you need to attend every birth­day party for every child in your son or daughter’s class?  Do you need to have your child enrolled in every extracur­ric­u­lar activ­ity leav­ing you run­ning from base­ball to bal­let to piano lessons?

Doing less can extend to spend­ing less money and pos­si­bly elim­i­nat­ing the need to work so much!  Sim­plic­ity is a very free­ing feel­ing. We were able to man­age as humans in a sim­ple world before there was money, can we not man­age now?  Leo Babuta writes a beau­ti­ful blog at www.ZenHabits.net that focuses on sim­plic­ity.  Check it out, you may learn that there exists another real­ity about a sim­ple life.

Doing less can also mean instead of hav­ing to take the fam­ily to the lake, or ski­ing, or on activ­i­ties to feel like that is what proper fam­i­lies should do when spend­ing time together.  Doing less can sim­ply mean, stay at home, read books, have mean­ing­ful con­ver­sa­tions, be still and enjoy your time together.

Step 2 – When you have a lot to do, then con­sider Batching

Per­haps you’ve heard of batch­ing as some­thing that peo­ple do when they send out large amounts of mail.  At least that’s what I think of when I think of batch­ing.  I first learned about batch­ing from Tim Fer­ris, author and Lifestyle designer.  I have been employ­ing the idea of batch­ing for a while now.  It is some­what against what my mother taught me grow­ing up, but it allows me to focus my atten­tion and my time on pro­duc­tiv­ity rather than menial tasks all day long.

Here are some exam­ples of how you can employ batch­ing in your life today:

1. Laun­dry – The dreaded laun­dry!  My mother always used to say that it was eas­ier if I did a lit­tle bit every day, but hav­ing to think about laun­dry every­day was a men­tal drain, and a time drain.  Instead we batch our laun­dry once or twice a week.
2. Bill Pay­ing – If you don’t already have a great sys­tem set up, per­haps bill pay­ing can be batched weekly or bi-weekly.
3. Gro­cery Shop­ping – Mak­ing daily trips to the gro­cery store not only drains your energy and your time, but can inevitably drain your pock­et­book as you are more likely to spend over your bud­get with fre­quent trips.  Instead batch your gro­cery shop­ping into a weekly task.

I am sure you can come up with other ideas for batch­ing.  The con­cept is that you get to allow your­self to tem­porar­ily for­get about a task know­ing that you’ll get back to it at a pre-determined time. You are not ignor­ing the task; you are just defer­ring it and instead putting your atten­tion to get­ting other things done.

Stress is some­times a prod­uct of multi-tasking.  New research on this phe­nom­e­non shows that peo­ple are most effec­tive when they can UNI-task, and their stress lev­els are lower.  So focus on ONE thing at a time.  Other, more mun­dane tasks can wait!  So batch on!!

Step 3 – Elicit Teamwork!

I was recently coach­ing an over­worked an over­stressed mom that had 3 teenage boys at home!  She says, I’m so tired when I get home, but there’s so much to be done!  We came up with a plan to elicit team­work from her fam­ily so that she does not feel that all of the work needs to fall on her shoulders.

I owe this solu­tion to my dad, a per­fec­tion­ist with house­work, retired Navy and raised Navy brat, he was a stick­ler for a clean house.  When I was 9, he sat my sis­ters and I down, and asked us to out­line every sin­gle chore that had to be done in the house.  When we were done, we divided the chores into 3 areas.  One was kitchen/dishes, then there was the bath­room and linens, lastly was the liv­ing area.  We were then each respon­si­ble for our areas each week, and we rotated once per week.  It was easy for my dad to keep track of who’s area of respon­si­bil­ity it was that week, and then he was able to be the house­hold man­ager, instead of the custodian.

Can you pull together your team?  Who is your team? Your fam­ily, kids, grand­par­ents?  As the man­ager and leader of your house­hold, you can elicit their team­work.  Gain their inter­est, ask for their involve­ment, and get their feed­back.  It is eas­i­est to get buy-in for chores and duties when it is THEIR idea, not yours.  But they will want to be a part of this great team.  Team mem­bers as young as 2 can also take part in con­tribut­ing to the house!!

Thank you for fol­low­ing along!  Please feel free to post any ques­tions or com­ments below!  I’d love to hear how you get into action to get out of Stress!! ~Makenzie

Part 1 of 3 of the Stressed Mom­mies to Suc­cess­ful Mom­mies Series

I recently read mul­ti­ple post­ings by moth­ers that are so stressed out, that they would likely sell off one or both kid­neys to be able to cre­ate more time and have more money to devote to them­selves and their family.

These were just a hand­ful of the situations:

“I’m a sin­gle mother, I work full time, I have a 7 and 4 year old, I’m exhausted when I get home, but then I have to do school work, laun­dry, make din­ner, clean the house and then get ready to do it all over again!  I have no time for myself!”

“I have three kids, I work full time, go to Grad school and still feel like I can never get ahead!”

“My hus­band is in the mil­i­tary and gone half the year, my son has lost all abil­ity to potty train, and my daugh­ter does exactly oppo­site of what I tell her to do!”

My heart just ached when I read all of these stressed out Mom’s post­ings.  They were scream­ing for help onto a ran­dom forum post­ing, not know­ing where to go, just hop­ing that some­one would lis­ten to their cries for help!

Are you this mom?  Are you burn­ing the can­dle at both ends?  Are you cry­ing for help and think­ing that no one can help you?

1. Lis­ten to the flight atten­dant:

The first rule here is just to be aware that if you are at this point in your life where you are hang­ing on by a thread, do what every good flight atten­dant sug­gests in the event of cabin pres­sure fail­ure: “Put the Oxy­gen Mask on your­self first before you put them on small chil­dren.”  Eas­ier said than done?

If you con­sider the rea­sons, you are like the HUB of the WHEEL of your fam­ily. You are what keeps the fam­ily together, ungreased, the wheel doesn’t turn well, it’s squeaky and sticky.  With a well greased HUB, the wheel turns smoothly, effort­lessly and can do more rota­tions than an ungreased hub.  Con­sider your goal to be as smooth as a greased hub.

Tak­ing care of your­self means doing what you need to do to stay healthy. Eat well, take time for your­self, exer­cise, med­i­tate etc…  Imag­ine what your fam­ily would do with­out you? If you are not tak­ing care of your­self, you may con­tinue down the road to sick­ness due to stress.  So first things first –You are first!

2. Slow down to ½ speed!

It is easy to feel that because we have more to do, we need to do it faster, more hur­ried, and feel rushed.  Yet, when we delib­er­ately slow down the speed of our life, we are able to think more clearly and specif­i­cally about the task at hand.  It really is a funny para­dox! You may not actu­ally be doing less tasks when you slow your reac­tion speed down, it just feels like it!  What hap­pens often is you feel more delib­er­ate, your aware­ness comes into the present, and you can con­cen­trate on the NOW task and not the FUTURE task.

3.Notice How Your Vibra­tions are Felt Through your House­hold Like ShockWaves:

Do you notice that when you have a bad day, and you are stressed, the moment you walk in the house, all of a sud­den the kids are fight­ing and argu­ing, the dog is bark­ing, there is chaos spread­ing like wild­fire? Believe it or not, our energy lev­els have cer­tain vibra­tional fre­quen­cies.  Chil­dren are very sen­si­tive to these fre­quen­cies and react in strange and curi­ous ways, and usu­ally ways that tend to sound like nails screech­ing across the chalk boards.  Notice when you walk into your house calm, cen­tered and peace­ful?  The house can sense your “cen­tered­ness”, and mim­ics this energy level.  Its one of those mys­te­ri­ous uni­ver­sal prin­ci­ples.

4.Use your tran­si­tional Times and Take Men­tal Health Minutes:

When time is a pre­cious com­mod­ity for you at this time in your life, it is imper­a­tive that you use small por­tions of time to re-center, recharge and reju­ve­nate.  You prob­a­bly know this, but don’t mind­fully prac­tice this.  So, now I chal­lenge you to mind­fully prac­tice this.  When you are dri­ving home from work, put in peace­ful calm­ing music (I like to call it yoga music, eas­ily down­load­able from i-Tunes).  When you take a bath­room break, take 5 min­utes, close your eyes and do some deep breath­ing exer­cises and pos­i­tive think­ing.

5. Design Your Day:

This was a new con­cept recently intro­duced to me.   At the begin­ning of the day, spend 2 min­utes, grab your jour­nal and decide con­sciously HOW you want the day to go, and HOW you want to feel.  For exam­ple, “I choose to hap­pily drive to work, I will use the free time in the car to relax.  I choose to have joy­ous inter­ac­tions with my cowork­ers.  My meet­ings will go eas­ily and I will have easy res­o­lu­tions to my chal­lenges today. When I leave work, I will hap­pily use that time to tran­si­tion and be pre­pared and cen­tered for my fam­ily.  I con­sciously choose to be present with my fam­ily in the evening, turn­ing off my email and my phones.”  This only takes a cou­ple of min­utes, but you can see the impact that this has on your con­scious and sub­con­scious mind.  One of the beau­ties of this exer­cise is that you will not script your day to say “I wish work is dif­fi­cult, I wish the kids will be bad, and I want to be angry and stressed!”  It just doesn’t work like that!

Do not expect that you will imme­di­ately prac­tice all five steps right away.  Take one step a day and prac­tice.  A mommy’s job is so impor­tant and vital to the health of the fam­ily.  So mind your thoughts, mind your health and have fun!

Stay tuned to Part 2 Tips for Stress Man­age­ment – Mov­ing into Action to Reduce Your Stress

“How do you do it all Maken­zie?  You must be so busy!!”

I hear this all the time when I encounter peo­ple.  Work­ing on two busi­nesses from home, tak­ing care of my hus­band (whom I might add is recov­er­ing quite nicely and doing a great job at this point of tak­ing care of him­self!), and shut­tling the kids to and from school.  Home­work, base­ball, play dates, lunches, din­ner etc…!

It doesn’t really seem that over­whelm­ing when I am going through my day–well most days.

A LifeHacker’s Views on Time Management

It all starts with my morn­ing, I am not a morn­ing per­son typ­i­cally, so I “roll” out of bed around 0730, pray­ing that my hus­band has been able to make his way to the kitchen before me to put on my morn­ing “heaven” (aka cof­fee.)  Morn­ing really sets the tone for the rest of the day for me.  This is the part of the day that I have to really be present, to focus my ener­gies, to align with the stars, to regain my Chi.…and ALL of it!  Because if I ALLOW my morn­ing to go bad, then quite fre­quently I have a hard time get­ting in front of my day.

The con­cept of Time is a funny one to me, because some days just seem to go by so quickly and some are a mean­ing­less mess and drag out for­ever!  Yet, Time always Feels in my favor, when I have a chance to get my energy AHEAD of TIME.  Makes sense or no?  If I can be present in the NOW, slow down my “reac­tion speeds” and work on my “proac­tion” speed, then it seems like Time is on my side.  ProAc­tiv­ity vs. ReActivity

Of course part of this proac­tion speed is defin­ing my day! I define my day on sev­eral levels.

1. How do I want to FEEL today? What do I want my energy to be like?  Do I want to be a pissed off, angry mom?  Or do I want to be a happy, joy­ful, peace­ful, fun mom?  (I choose the lat­ter because it is more fun!)
2. What do I want to DO today? And for some this seems like a ridicu­lous ques­tion because you HAVE to do so many things.  So let me point you back to the idea of Proac­tion…  When you choose to do some­thing, you allow your­self to feel proac­tive, it’s your choice, it’s your deci­sion! Yay!  When you feel that you HAVE to do some­thing, you’re react­ing to out­side influence…and well 99.999% of the time you’re the only one that can make the choice for YOU!!  So are you being respon­si­ble for your choice, or are you giv­ing up your power of choice?  Think on this for a lit­tle while.…
3. What do I want to BE? This can be such a broad state­ment, but often I chose to be inspired, to be fun, to be happy!!  I also chose to BE a MOM, to be an Entre­pre­neur, to be a Run­ner.…  I get to choose these things every­day!  What do you choose?

A few sim­ple steps to align your Mind with Clar­ity and good energy will allow you to get ahead of TIME!

(PS — I also do this trick, that was rec­om­mended by Zig Ziglar that on days when I roll out of bed and feel just cruddy, I jump up and down 10 times, laugh and say “This is the best day of my life!” “This is the best day of my life!”.…then I look in the mir­ror and say “I’m talk­ing to you–turn that frown upside down!”  It is so ridicu­lous, but it’s a fan­tas­tic pat­tern inter­rupt!  Works!!)

I don’t know if you rec­og­nize that a lot of my posts are about get­ting your MIND and your ENERGY in the right spot.  Lit­tle of it has to do with how much time or effort I put into cer­tain tasks.  I used to be that very task focused-driven person.…but it didn’t work for me, I was a mis­er­able mess!  So I had to try some­thing dif­fer­ent.  Focus­ing on my thoughts before focus­ing on my actions was the BIGGEST dif­fer­ence.  IT works…no bull­shit here!

Two more “No Bull­shit” Life­Hacker Tips:

The best Wheat Bread on this Side of the Mississippi:

This is the EASIEST bread recipe I have found.  You have to do it 2 or 3 times until you find the rou­tine, and you will be ask­ing why you spend so much on bread at the store!!

1. 1 cup warm water
2. 1 Table­spoon Milk
3. 2 Table­spoons oil
4. 3 Table­spoons Honey (I usu­ally add more!)
5. 2 Table­spoons Brown Sugar ( I some­times sub­sti­tute Molasses)
6. 1 tea­spoon Salt
7. 1–1/2 cups all-purpose flour
8. 1–1/2 cups whole wheat flour
9. 2 tea­spoons instant active dry yeast.

1. Com­bine Ingre­di­ents #1-#6 in a large mix­ing bowl, stir.

2. Add flours and yeast, and knead (turn on the kitchenaid mixer) for 10–15 min­utes.  Dough should be smooth and elas­tic.  Place dough in a greased bowl, turn­ing once to grease top.  Cover with plas­tic wrap, let rise in warm area (usu­ally above the refridger­a­tor or oven works well.)

3. Punch down dough; knead for a few min­utes until smooth then form into a loaf.  Place in a greased loaf pan and cover.  Let rise again until dou­bled, about 30 min.

4. Bake at 350 for 30–25 min­utes.  Remove when done and allow to rest in pan just for a few min­utes (any longer and it starts to sweat!)  Easy peasy!  Enjoy!

HOMEWORK!!

I don’t know about you, but my biggest bat­tle with home­work is try­ing to just get it done!!  How many times have I asked him?  Is it done yet?  Finally I was exas­per­ated by my attempts to fin­ish it the night before it was due (for us, it’s a Wednes­day!) and I thought, well, I will do what many com­pa­nies do when they want the job done ahead of schedule…factor in BONUSES!!

So his home­work sched­ule looks like this:

Home­work comes home on Fri­day due on Thursday.

If it’s com­plete by Mon­day — $3 bonus.…

If it’s com­plete by Tues­day — $2 bonus.…

If it’s com­plete by Wednes­day $0!!!

Why $0 on Wednes­day? The goal was to get him to com­plete his home­work before crunch time, so now he’s self-motivated to com­plete his home­work on Mon­day or Tues­day.  He doesn’t have to do it over the week­end, and he gets to choose when he wants to do it.  Either choice has an impact, but it’s ulti­mately his choice!!

Thanks to all of my read­ers who so gra­ciously fol­low along with my posts!  You inspire me every­day to make great posts!  Feel free to drop me a line and make com­ments!!  Many Adven­tures to You! ~Makenzie

I have recently been observ­ing some folks that are resist­ing change…and isn’t it funny how the thing that we most WANT in life can elude us, until we give up the WANTING altogether?

I am sure many peo­ple have done the same thing.  As soon as they give up the NEED to have some­thing a cer­tain way, then life all of a sud­den gets eas­ier and they get the thing they were look­ing for.  In fact, it usu­ally just falls into their lap with­out hav­ing to try.  It’s the ol’ “A watched pot doesn’t boil!”

You can also say that it’s, HOLDING on TOO TIGHT!  And when I was dis­cussing this exact resis­tance to change over lunch with my hus­band, imme­di­ately my very favorite movie came to mind, Top Gun.  The rea­son why the pro­tag­o­nist, Mav­er­ick ever got the oppor­tu­nity to train as a fighter pilot was because his pre­de­ces­sor, Cougar, resigned as a fighter pilot after an intense exchange with a Russ­ian Mig Fighter.

The res­ig­na­tion went like this, “I’m hold­ing on too tight Mav­er­ick, I’ve lost the Edge!” He turned in his wings and resigned as a pilot.

What really hap­pened to Cougar is that became attached to the out­come.  He wanted to con­trol the out­come, which for him meant, he didn’t want to die in a com­bat exchange (well, most peo­ple wouldn’t, but fighter pilots train to elim­i­nate that fear alto­gether!!)  That very fear and desire to con­trol the out­come changed his abil­ity to be an effec­tive Top Gun pilot. For any effec­tive fighter pilot, you must fly on instinct and be able to TRUST your­self, there is no time for thought or con­trol.  You can­not even fathom the out­come, once you do, you have lost the edge, you no longer fly on split sec­ond instinct and you can’t FEEL your intuition.

The same is true for entre­pre­neurs.  You are skill­ful at what you are doing. You decided to become an entre­pre­neur for some rea­son, and that rea­son is that you are GOOD, no, you are GREAT at what you do.  Becom­ing a skill­ful entre­pre­neur is sim­i­lar to how fighter pilots train.  They train, and make mistakes.…correct their mis­takes, and train more.  And Repeat.

Effec­tive entre­pre­neurs do the same thing! Try, mis­take, cor­rect, repeat!

No fighter pilot on their first run will ever be per­fect, it’s IMPOSSIBLE!  As will being an effec­tive entre­pre­neur, you will not be per­fect your first week, IMPOSSIBLE (or ever for that mat­ter, so stop try­ing!)  Trust me, I fell on my face so many times as a new entre­pre­neur,  its amaz­ing that I didn’t need plas­tic surgery to put my nose back in place!  It takes train­ing, try­ing and mis­tak­ing to refine your skill.

Let me repeat…you must make mis­takes! Every nor­mal and effec­tive entre­pre­neur does!  (Phew, so glad I am normal!)

And when it comes to the hold­ing on too tight, we see that a lot with entre­pre­neurs and their fear around money.  They now all of a sud­den dis­con­nect from their intu­ition and instinct and start want­ing to con­trol the out­come!  They must not be try­ing hard enough, they must do more, they must be failing…and on and on… Such a com­mon story!!

And like a fighter pilot, you, as an entre­pre­neur have cer­tain intrin­sic abil­i­ties to go with the flow.  When you set your inten­tions, fol­low your intu­ition, and TRUST that your actions will be guided with­out too much thought, there is the magic flow.   It is the same flow that the pilots feel when they are at the top of their game.  Lit­tle con­trol is needed, it feels almost effortless.

Mal­com Glad­well wrote a whole book on this sub­ject of trust­ing your intu­ition called “Blink”.  He writes, “…I hope that by the end of this book, you will believe it as well — that the task of mak­ing sense of our­selves and our behav­ior requires that we acknowl­edge there can be as much value in the blink of an eye as in months of ratio­nal analysis.”

So, my ques­tion to you, whether you’re an entre­pre­neur, a  “non-preneur”, or a fighter pilot:  What are you hold­ing on to so tightly that causes you to lose your edge?

I’d love to hear!  And if you’re curi­ous at all about how I help peo­ple find and KEEP their EDGE, visit my page about Suc­cess Coach­ing Or just visit me any­way just to say hi!!  I love company!

Many Adven­tures to You!!

Maken­zie

I guess grow­ing up, we are often taught to be hum­ble.   As chil­dren, say please and thank you.  If you are given an award, it is fine to dis­cuss it but not to brag about it.  The bible teaches us that humil­ity is a noble qual­ity.  Yet every­one has great­ness hid­den deep inside of them­selves.  It is that great­ness that con­tin­u­ally bub­bles up and shows it’s face.  But, who are you to be great?

So we run around in life, think­ing that we are bound by limitations…who are we to be great?

We aim for small goals because fail­ure is the reminder that we are not sup­posed to be great?  Or is it?

So, here is the Maken­zie Kelly take on this:

Every­one should and is sup­posed to pur­sue their GREATNESS!!  And you know what?  Some­times your great­ness is scary, and out-of-the-box, and totally uncon­ven­tional!  Yet, some­thing mag­i­cal hap­pens when you con­nect to your great­ness; sud­denly the stars align, the uni­verse bows, your ene­mies become your friends, and it FEELS Awesome!

And I would argue that you may be lying to your­self if you say “I have no Great­ness!”  Because in the depths of all of us, there is some­thing that you deeply DESIRE to do, or FEEL com­pelled to do, or YEARN to BE!  So many exam­ples of this have occurred in our his­tory.  The Great Babe Ruth (for­give me because I’m a huge base­ball fan!!) was GREAT at base­ball.  He was not dis­cour­aged by his strike-outs.  In fact, he struck out more times than he hit the ball.  So he did not say to him­self “Man I’m a lousy Base­ball player, I should just quit.”  In fact, he con­tin­ued to go to bat, for what­ever rea­son (was it his great­ness that com­pelled him? Was it his arro­gance?  Was it his igno­rance? We may never truly know.)

It will never be per­fect when you are pur­su­ing your great­ness.  While the uni­verse may align in your favor, there will be dra­matic shifts in your per­spec­tive and your growth.  You will be chal­lenged in ways you have never imag­ined.  Yet this chal­leng­ing will help to pro­pel your growth and your desire to be GREAT.  Stick wtih it!  You are meant for Greatness.….!!

And speak­ing of Great­ness, I invite every­one to visit my NEW Web­site and Busi­ness:  Free­dom Ven­ture Project

This is my Great­ness Rear­ing It’s Head…!  See you there! ~Makenzie