Adventurous Mom

Archive for the ‘intentions’ Category

“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 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

Okay, so I am giv­ing away my age with this post, but that’s okay.  I already told every­one I was about 12 pounds over­weight in the prior post!

I really wanted to share with every­one how excep­tion­ally excited I am to have Retired!  I guess I like to use the term Retire because it really epit­o­mizes the mind­set that I have taken regard­ing my new life transition.

Some define retire as:

To with­draw from one’s occu­pa­tion, busi­ness, or office

To fall back or retreat, as from battle

To move back or away; recede.

I have def­i­nitely withdrawn.…

I moved back or almost like the tide, I’ve receded.    Yet, I really enjoy the sec­ond def­i­n­i­tion, as I’ve fallen back or retreated as from bat­tle! Wow!  I def­i­nitely felt like I was in a los­ing TIME bat­tle, and with the deci­sion to fall back, I have regained my Life! Decid­ing not to con­tinue to fight the bat­tle doesn’t always mean you lose.  Some­times you find out that you’re only bat­tling your­self, you are your worst enemy in some situations.

Retir­ing young DOES NOT mean:

Well what the heck do I mean then?

This type of retire­ment stinks

How DID I retire at 33?

Part II of “I don’t know what I want to be when I grow up!” we explore find­ing your niche…or what really inspires you.

[I write this for one of my very tal­ented friends that could do almost any­thing but she is strug­gling with find­ing that “niche”. ]

Inevitably I was fooled by think­ing that when one grad­u­ates col­lege, or even high school, that the fairy-career-mother strikes you over the head with what you are des­tined to be for the rest of your life.  This has never hap­pened to me, and from my dis­cus­sions with all of my 20–50 year old  peers, this is not the case for them either.

Don’t Always Fol­low the Leaders

My dad has worked at AT&T for his entire career.  He is the excep­tion not the rule.  My mom on the other hand has worked in quite pos­si­bly every indus­try there is: Amway, Real Estate, UPS, Finance Bro­ker­age, even Taco Bell.  There may not be just ONE right career or busi­ness for your, but maybe several.

Minds change, soci­eties change and so do economies.  Think­ing that you will be in one career or busi­ness for the rest of your life may lead to per­pet­ual dis­ap­point­ment.  Your career or your busi­ness might some­day be extinct is another possibility.

In the early 1900’s, the type­writer man­u­fac­tur­ers and busi­nesses were liv­ing high on their prof­its.  Lit­tle did they know that just a few decades later, the basic word proces­sors would become extrav­a­gantly pop­u­lar.  Oh but that’s just a fad! Or so they thought.

The need for telegrams – extinct as the tele­phones and faxes became more preva­lent.  Med­ical tran­scrip­tion­ists? Maybe soon to be extinct as voice tran­scrip­tion tech­nol­ogy is improving.

Don’t get stuck on one idea as the end-all-be-all.  Be as flex­i­ble as the kelp in the ocean, flow­ing with the tide…and ready to break free and catch the wave to the shore.

I want to stress that, it is impor­tant to be adapt­able, and adjust to the cur­rent mar­ket.   It doesn’t mean you won’t be doing what you love; just keep your eyes open for the oppor­tu­ni­ties instead of stuck on ONE idea.

Be Like  a Blackberry

As Wal­lace D. Wat­tles explains in his book “The Sci­ence of Get­ting Rich” ,  you must pro­vide more in use value than you receive in Cash value.  Is the niche that you are look­ing at get­ting into going to pro­vide more to your employer or your cus­tomers than maybe you receive in cash?

At first I thought his think­ing was back­ward, “Um hello?  I need to get paid too!”  But it is a very sim­ple philosophy.

I like to take for exam­ple my Black­berry.  I paid $100 for my black­berry plus a monthly fee.  I could argue that my black­berry is worth many times that amount because the use value that I receive is far greater than the actual value.  I can’t count how many times I have been able to close a deal, or keep big dis­as­ters from occur­ring because I had my lit­tle infor­ma­tion por­tal attached to my hip.  So my thought is that the black­berry is worth far more than the $100 and the monthly fee that I pay for the service.

Ask your­self, what skills or knowl­edge do I have that is worth value?  Is my employer or my cus­tomer in need of the value that I can pro­vide them?  What am I really good at doing?

Phone a Friend

Every­one knows the old adage about opinions….everyone has one?  Yet, lis­ten intently on what your friends, cowork­ers, or fam­i­lies are say­ing about your tal­ents.  Are you great at bak­ing?  Are you great at strate­giz­ing? Can you sell ice to Eskimos?

The les­son here is that, although YOU may think you know what you are good at; it is dif­fi­cult to stand and view your own tal­ents from third person.

If you are truly try­ing to find your niche, maybe this is a good time to get oth­ers involved and seek feed­back regard­ing your tal­ents.  It could be as easy as send­ing out a sim­ple sur­vey ask­ing oth­ers to answer what they think are your tal­ents.  Don’t for­get to offer to buy them cof­fee for com­plet­ing it!

Find­ing your niche is a process that con­sid­ers the exter­nal envi­ron­ment and your inter­nal tal­ents.  With the right effort and some help from oth­ers, you may be on the right path to com­ing up with your Dream Life!