Adventurous Mom

Posts Tagged ‘inspiration’

“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 con­sider myself and adven­turer, a life adventurer.

There is also the tra­di­tional sense of the word Adven­turer, like when you think of Mag­el­lan, or Colum­bus. There are Adven­tur­ers such as Richard Bran­son or the late Steve Fos­sett who thought mak­ing money was an adven­ture, and also push­ing their pos­si­bil­i­ties to the limit.

Are you any dif­fer­ent than any of these peo­ple?  Are you made of the same chem­i­cal com­po­si­tion as these peo­ple? Seri­ously, when you were born, is it pos­si­ble that you were born just a REGULAR human, and they were born SUPER human?  No.  You were born with the same pos­si­bil­i­ties as they were.

What makes them suc­cess­ful and oth­ers just mediocre?

There are many dif­fer­ent the­o­ries about what makes peo­ple excel into this  Out­lier cat­e­gory.  Some think its envi­ron­ment, some think it’s DNA, oth­ers say it’s just luck.  One com­mon­al­ity I can say for cer­tain is their abil­ity to cre­ate men­tal tough­ness, pos­i­tive self-talk and incred­i­ble self confidence.

You may not aspire to become a Mag­el­lan of the 21st cen­tury, but per­haps, you want to adven­ture into a new career, cre­ate a busi­ness, or have the guts to do what­ever it is that you want?  What is keep­ing you from achiev­ing your goals?  I can almost guar­an­tee that it is not the exter­nal cir­cum­stances sur­round­ing your sit­u­a­tion.  It’s prob­a­bly what you tell your­self when you talk to yourself.

Become Men­tally Tough

What does it really take to become men­tally tough and cre­ate your own self con­fi­dence?  One great exam­ple that I love to use is Mil­i­tary Boot Camp.  (But Maken­zie, seri­ously, boot camp?  I can’t even do a push up!)  Imag­ine the out-of-shape, skinny, or chubby kids that enter boot camp.  They’re scared, they have lit­tle or low self esteem, and are timid when they enter boot camp.  But over the course of sev­eral months, a tran­si­tion occurs in their body AND their mind.  Not only are they strong, but they are con­fi­dent and men­tally tough.

How did this happen?

1. They were sub­ject to “sug­ges­tions” day and night by drill instructors
2. They were immersed in suc­cess talk (learn to do this, oth­er­wise you will be killed!)
3. Their bod­ies were trans­formed by day after day phys­i­cal training
4. Many small suc­cesses led to build­ing confidence
5. Prac­tice, prac­tice, practice

This didn’t occur overnight.

Men­tal tough­ness for you won’t occur overnight, but you can believe that you can become tough, strong willed, and con­fi­dent.  It really begins with the first step of “belief”.  Unless you are will­ing to sub­ject your­self to a boot-camp type immer­sion, you will need to set a reg­i­men for your­self to Prac­tice Self Confidence.

Prac­tice Self Confidence

Much like boot camp, you will need to prac­tice your reg­i­men.  This is what I suggest:

1. Real­ize that you are born with no dif­fer­ent abil­i­ties than peo­ple that are great and achieve success
2. Decide what goals you want to achieve
3. Rec­og­nize when say neg­a­tive things to your­self (this is pos­si­bly the hard­est part because only you will rec­og­nize this, no one can do it for you.…but again, it take PRACTICE!!!)
4. Elim­i­nate the word: CAN’T
5. Replace the neg­a­tive beliefs with pos­i­tive beliefs:  “I CAN” or “I WILL” inter­nal statements
6. Don’t give up, keep try­ing, keep practicing.…you can do it!
7. Prac­tice and repeat

Good luck, and happy adventures!

INSPIRED

I am inspired to cre­ate this blog to share with oth­ers, espe­cially lead­ers, entre­pre­neurs, and other women regard­ing the jour­ney that I have dis­cov­ered. By no means has my jour­ney been solo, nor has it been easy, but it has def­i­nitely been reward­ing. I hope that with this blog I can inspire oth­ers, give some “AHA! Insights” or help to cul­ti­vate lead­ers. I cer­tainly did not get to this place with­out Men­tors, Coaches and Great Lead­ers. I still make mis­takes (a lot of them) but the great­est stu­dent is a teacher, the great­est teacher is a stu­dent.
From the out­side, my life seems to be charmed. Some would con­sider me “for­tu­nate, lucky, in the right place at the right time”, but I will argue against, that. I will say that I have been focused, clear and intent on my deci­sions. I have con­sis­tently made deci­sions, most of them good some of them poor.

WE ARE DESTINED TO MAKE DECISIONS

No one is proud of those poor deci­sions, nor am I, but those deci­sions have served purpose.…meaning that I have taken the lessons from those deci­sions and made pos­i­tive changes. Events in our lives, both good and poor serve us and allow us to learn. It never feels good, it is painful and some­times so painful that we do not repeat those lessons.

PAIN IS SOMETIMES NECESSARY

Imag­ine not being able to feel the pain of a hot flame.…we would con­tinue to touch the flame and burn our­selves. Pain serves a pur­pose, both phys­i­cally and emo­tion­ally. Pain allows us to make a deci­sion to change our per­spec­tive: is your job so painful you can­not stand it? Or is it painful, but the idea of chang­ing jobs is even more painful, so you chose not to? How about going for that pro­mo­tion? My thought on this is to veer away from Pain into more of a Plea­sure con­tin­uum. The idea of start­ing a busi­ness was Painful, scary, fright­ful. The idea of the Plea­sure that we could ben­e­fit from the busi­ness, increased flex­i­bil­ity, cre­at­ing my des­tiny, pos­si­bil­ity of increased wages out­weighed the Pain of start­ing a busi­ness. This is my par­a­digm. Every­one has a dif­fer­ent Pain/Pleasure con­tin­uum. Those who “suf­fered” through a 4 year or 6 year degree under­stand this well. For those who want to read more on the Pain/Pleasure par­a­digm, here is one of my newest read­ers: “Awaken the Giant” Anthony Robbins.