Adventurous Mom

Archive for the ‘personal development’ Category

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

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

I would be lying if I said that being a mom was what I wanted to be when I grew up. In fact it was the last thing on my mind. Our old­est son came into our life a total sur­prise when I was 24. At 18 years old, I walked out of church ser­mon when the pas­tor was insist­ing that a woman’s place was at home with her kids. No way, no how.…hell no!

It was 15 years later that I would even think about step­ping foot into a church again. Why? For my kids. Curi­ous isn’t it?

It is such an inter­est­ing evo­lu­tion that one’s life takes from being totally solo, to now fly­ing with lit­tle wing­men. I’m the mamma plane and they fol­low my every move. For the last 7 years, I have to admit, I was some­what annoyed that I couldn’t fly on my own, they were in my flight formation.

I really fought being a mother, every last ounce in me. It wasn’t that I didn’t love them, I loved them so much. What I hated is what I thought being a mom meant. I thought it meant I had to bake cook­ies, I had to be extra car­ing, I had to be atten­tive, I had to be “soft.” That wasn’t who I thought I was.

The fun­ni­est thing is that, when I decided to quit fight­ing moth­er­hood, I learned an inter­est­ing fact about myself: I don’t think I’m a typ­i­cal mom, and that’s okay–it’s really okay. And then, I found out that I really really like these lit­tle wing­men! In fact, I find that I learn more from them per­haps than they do from me for instance:

Life is Sim­ple and Not Complicated

Chil­dren do not see a rea­son to com­pli­cate life. They wake up…no…they bounce out of bed, hop-hop-hop down the hall to the kitchen table. They’re just happy to see the sun shin­ing and be awake! They don’t carry the bag­gage from yesterday’s events with them, they’re excited to see what today brings!
Rarely do they scour their closet for the per­fect out­fit, won­der­ing who they may need to impress today. Nope. They get dressed in what­ever clothes fit, and carry on about cre­at­ing fun!

Ques­tion Even the Basic Assumptions

My older son asked me one day: “Mom, why do peo­ple con­fuse their Left and Right, but they don’t con­fuse their Up and Down?” *Silence* Um…ummmm…hmmm… That’s a really good ques­tion son, I am not quite sure how to answer that. Up, down, left, right, all direc­tional, but maybe if our head was mounted in a dif­fer­ent direc­tion, we wouldn’t be so con­fused about the left and right? I have no idea.

For­give­ness is Natural

Yes, we get frus­trated with our kids, and some­times irra­tionally so. We get tired, we get cranky, and then they have to screech at the top of their lungs the most annoy­ing sound in the world! Then here comes the evil mommy scream and yell.… Only to feel guilty about doing that 10 min­utes later. We go to apol­o­gize, and they eas­ily and read­ily accept the apol­ogy, it is nat­ural for them to for­give. Car­ry­ing grudges, hat­ing peo­ple and dis­dain is very for­eign to them.

There is Fun Around Every Corner

As I am writ­ing this post, my 5 year old has found my kitchen rolling pin, sit­ting on the office chair and play­ing “make the pizza” with his older brother. (Although hon­estly, I am wait­ing for one to hit the other over the head with the makeshift weapon!) Every wak­ing moment is fun and excit­ing. No won­der they love to pop out of bed! Where did we lose this fun and excite­ment as adults? Per­haps we don’t see the won­der and fun in everyday…everyday becomes a chore for us.

Since I became the Adven­tur­ous Mom, I have real­ized that I appre­ci­ate my chil­dren more than they could know. I strive to become more like them, more curi­ous, more for­giv­ing, liv­ing sim­pler, ques­tion­ing assump­tions, for­giv­ing quickly and hav­ing fun…every day!

What have your beau­ti­ful chil­dren taught you?

When other peo­ples opin­ions are toxic…turn your ears off.

Even the most con­fi­dent peo­ple have bad days, and let other people’s opin­ions influ­ence their confidence.

This post  is for you and for me. For those who are tire­lessly dri­ven to achieve, those that have decided to Design their Life to their desires, those striv­ing for finan­cial free­dom, those who see them­selves as pros­per­ous before they actu­ally have the money in their hand. Writ­ten for those that travel the world instead of climb­ing the cor­po­rate lad­der, those that chose to teach their chil­dren at home instead of in a more tra­di­tional method, and every­one else who pur­pose­fully walks to the beat of a dif­fer­ent drum, I intend this for you.

When I first decided to retire, I was very fear­ful of telling my clos­est friends  because I was sure they would not under­stand (so instead I cre­ated a blog and posted it to the rest of the world — anonymity is eas­ier.) Five years ago, these same friends were rolling their eyes when I told them that we were start­ing an ambu­lance com­pany, “How do you even DO that? You can OWN ambu­lances? I mean don’t HOSPITALS own ambu­lances?” and on, and on.

We were ridiculed by some and told that we were lucky if it lasted a year.  Well, we decided that lis­ten­ing to this so-called advice wouldn’t get us to where we wanted to be.  We would have to forge our own path, and we did.  We watch sev­eral other com­pa­nies crum­ble around us, but we set our eyes on the goal, and maintained.

We worked so hard for that com­pany, and those same peo­ple were now singing our praises.  Isn’t is funny how demen­tia devel­ops so eas­ily in Naysay­ers? So, I was fear­ful of telling those peo­ple that I have decided to retire, take a step back, and let go of the salary. But when I did  some rolled their eyes and shook their head, they couldn’t under­stand. But also I found many were amaz­ingly sup­port­ive.  I stand here know­ing I made the right deci­sion, and the naysay­ers opin­ions haven’t killed me, and they haven’t made me decide to change my decision.

Selec­tive Hearing

Tak­ing a page out of my mother’s book, I decided that the best thing to do in this case, when lis­ten­ing to the pes­simists, was to develop selec­tive hear­ing. I may or may not choose to lis­ten to what they have to say, but even if I do, I don’t have to heed their advice.  Or Like Ash­ley Ambirge says from The Mid­dle Fin­ger Project, “No one’s opin­ion mat­ters unless you let it matter. ”

I have found that it helps to think about what  their moti­va­tion is for telling me that I may not suc­ceed.  When you’re aware of their per­spec­tive, you may not be so angry, you may feel sorry for them.

1. They have not been around suc­cess­ful peo­ple and can­not fathom that any­one could be successful.
2. They are fear­ful of your suc­cess because it will reflect poorly on their per­ceived abil­ity that they aren’t successful.
3. They have had dif­fi­cult expe­ri­ences (whether they are suc­cess­ful now or not) and are try­ing to “pro­tect” you from dif­fi­cult experiences.
4. Change is dif­fi­cult for them, so they assume it must be dif­fi­cult for you too.

Your Life is Not Their Story

Your life is YOUR story, and while you some­times care and want approval from those around you, if you have pas­sion toward achiev­ing great­ness and suc­cess, or want to change your life, you MUST write your OWN story! Might you fail? You might. Might you make wrong deci­sions? You likely will.  But since this is your story, you have to gather the expe­ri­ences, cre­ate your road map and try.

So Stand UP! Push your shoul­ders back, take a deep breath and for­get about what they say.  Besides, your best offense is to prove them wrong, so get to it!

Many Adven­tures to You~

Maken­zie

It started the Thurs­day before New Years, a last minute trip to take the kids to the snow.  We promised them we would do a snow trip dur­ing Win­ter break, and so I found a cheap Hotel (not cheap as in dive…but cheap as in $49!) in Reno, and we set sail to the biggest lit­tle city in the world.  Luck­ily, there is a Cir­cus Cir­cus there for the kids to immerse them­selves in what I call “gam­bling for kids” or the arcade.  To be hon­est, it was my hus­band that was the big roller here.  You should have seen the streams of tick­ets that guy won!

Reno was fan­tas­tic and the kids had a blast…  here is “Fluffy the snowman”:

we decided to make our snow day a snowman-challenge mak­ing day.  I just hope that the Snow­man doesn’t real­ize the kids were call­ing him Fluffy, I am sure he would have pre­ferred to be called “Ice­Man” or some­thing like that.

On our way home from Reno,  I get the con­fir­ma­tion that we will be need­ing to drive to Los Ange­les the next day.  I was get­ting rid of my Range Rover, and the buyer was in LA.  The Range Rover was a casu­alty of my deci­sion to retire.  Not being active in the busi­ness any­more did not neces­si­tate the need for the  vehi­cle  and the tax issues would get sticky, so it had to go.  Plus, I was unwill­ing to drop $925/mo on a car pay­ment from my per­sonal funds ugh! Cer­tain logic ruled in this instance.

We spent one night in our own beds, and the next morn­ing, on the road again for five hours to LA.  The accom­mo­da­tions were not as nice, the hotel was 2xs the cost and there were no blink­ing lights or danc­ing clowns.  Yet, as always, we man­aged to have fun, and made our way to Her­mosa Beach the next day to bask in the South­ern Cal­i­for­nia sun.  70 degrees, warm sand, surfers in the water, it was a typ­i­cal SoCal win­ter.  Ahhh, I love the sun.

The hand-off of the Range Rover occurred seam­lessly, the new owner, a late 20’s some­thing New Yorker-turned-LAer-turned-High-Roller was now in proud pos­ses­sion of the beau­ti­ful sil­ver SUV.  I showed him the bells and whis­tles, he signed the papers, and that was the last that I saw of my lux­ury vehicle.

We then got on “the” 405 free­way to “the” 710 and were on our way to the Long Beach aquar­ium, when it hit me…the lump in my throat wouldn’t go away.  I tried to cough, no.  I tried to gag, no.  It wouldn’t go away, then I got short of breath. Was this a panic attack?  The tears started to roll down my face, I was dri­ving a car that I was unfa­mil­iar with, on a busy LA freeway…oh no. Snif­fle, cough, gag, sniffle.

I just gave up my prized pos­ses­sion, handed the keys over to a per­fect stranger! I loved that car.…people loved that car.  If I had a dol­lar for every time a man said to me, “My wife so badly wants a car like that…!”

My dar­ling hus­band was speech­less because I had been so “matter-of-fact” about need­ing to get rid of the car for the last two months.  “But my Satel­lite radio, and my seat heaters…I don’t have those in the Explorer!!”, I con­tin­ued to snif­fle and cough and gag.  It just won’t be the same.

I parked the rental car, and dried off my eyes, and heard a deep-down voice say to me:

“No Maken­zie, this is not what you want, that is your Ego talk­ing and not your true self.  Your true self wants to spend those pre­cious moments with your kids.  If you keep that car, you will need to get a job instead of spend­ing time with your kids. Your true self wants to design the life that you want.  Your ego wants things and approval.  Your ego has failed you count­less times.  Now is the time to lis­ten to your true self.”

That car wasn’t who I was, it didn’t mat­ter to my kids what kind of car I drove.  It was not a dif­fi­cult deci­sion to make log­i­cally, or financially…but the ego and emo­tional play was far big­ger than I anticipated.

I think this is what hap­pens often when peo­ple get “stuck” in a sit­u­a­tion.  They fear that dia­logue with their ego…the one that asks them, “What will peo­ple think?” or tells them “You are not smart enough to try some­thing new, you will surely fail…and then…what will peo­ple say?” They are so afraid that their Ego, rather than their True Self, is right, that they stall and say things like, “It’s just not that easy” or “Life is complicated.”

Well, life is not com­pli­cated, as I am here to tell you.  Our fam­ily con­tin­ues to over­come adver­sity with phys­i­cal injuries, career changes, fledg­ling finan­cial mar­kets.  But really, our life is simple:

We Love each other, We spend time together, We enjoy adventure.

That’s it.

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!

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?