Adventurous Mom

Archive for the ‘success’ Category

What an excit­ing week it has been for me! So many great things going on.  I recently did an inter­view with a great entre­pre­neur: Josh Roa, The 80 Day Millionaire!

Stop By to Read My Interview

I know what you’re think­ing 80 Days?  Well, I have to tell you that it’s been done before, and this young man’s per­se­ver­ance is absolutely inspir­ing, he is doc­u­ment­ing his every step in his Blog! I have no doubt that 2010 will be an amaz­ing year for him!

So my ques­tion for you in 2010 is: Are you cre­at­ing worth­while goals? Are you aspir­ing to be your great­est like Josh, or are you just cre­at­ing goals so that you won’t fail?

Stop by his blog and lis­ten to my inter­view.  I divulge a lot of infor­ma­tion about me and my businesses!

Josh Roa — The 80 Day Millionaire

In a pre­vi­ous post, I dis­cussed my fer­vent pas­sion about pro­tect­ing my time after I real­ized that our time here is so lim­ited.  And as we go into the New Year, I plan to fur­ther empha­size how impor­tant I really feel like this idea is.

I first wanted to share a life les­son that I encoun­tered early.  I know that most peo­ple have expe­ri­enced friends or fam­ily mem­bers that have passed away at some point in their life and I have too.  But one per­son that affected me greatly, was a per­son that I didn’t even know.

A Hard Les­son at 21

I was 21, and it was Thanksgiving-eve.  It was another shift on my para­medic intern­ship, and I was respond­ing to a call for a “man down”.  We got these calls occa­sion­ally, and usu­ally it was a tran­sient passed out on the cor­ner.  This call was about 11:30 in the evening and it was rain­ing and cold out­side.  The call was for a man down in the street.  We drove around in cir­cles for close to 15 min­utes at the loca­tion of the described area.  We couldn’t find him.  Then we saw a bystander wav­ing us down.

In the mid­dle of the street there was a young man, face down, he appeared have been skate­board­ing and fell.  He didn’t appear injured except that he was not respond­ing and his breath­ing was very irreg­u­lar, he also was lay­ing in a pool of vomit.  We had to put a breath­ing tube into this throat to help him breathe bet­ter, bystanders said he had a dog with him and was walk­ing his dog.

We did what we could med­ically to help him and trans­ported him to the near­est trauma room.  He died later of a mas­sive brain injury.  He was 25.  My fiance (soon to be hus­band) at the time was 25 too…they looked the same. That really both­ered me.  I don’t even remem­ber the man’s name.

You don’t expect at first to be asked to try save some­one your age when you are that young (and fail).  For me, still in my early for­ma­tive years, it was a hard and fast les­son:  LIFE IS SHORT.

Up to then, I had only seen old faces pass away. Since then, I have seen faces of all ages leave.

Read the rest of this entry »

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!

I really loathe New Year’s Res­o­lu­tions, not because I think that they are bad, they’re just poorly writ­ten!  It’s like say­ing: “I resolve to NEVER eat choco­late and diet coke again!”  Ha! Ha! Yeah right.

I love that there is a big push to cre­ate New Year’s Goals instead of Res­o­lu­tions.  It’s like say­ing “I intend on achiev­ing _____ by doing X, Y, and Z”  instead of say­ing “I am mirac­u­lously going to change my behav­ior just because it’s the start of a new decade!”

I have a hard time clos­ing the refrig­er­a­tor door, much less chang­ing my behav­ior entirely.  (One of the many things that dri­ves my hus­band nuts!) And don’t even ask me about laundry!

As human beings, we almost have to trick our­selves into learn­ing new habits.  It can’t really seem like a chore or a task.  If we make it fun, or if we have a good time work­ing toward the goals, then we are more likely going to achieve them.

Weight loss is a hefty goal for most Res­o­lu­tion­ers.…  I used to fall into that trap.  I con­sider myself to be fit, but could always lose about 12–15 pounds.  As a child I was much more rotund than both of my sis­ters, they were rails.  So I have always been some­what sen­si­tive about my weight.

I decided about a year ago to forgo the weight strug­gle and to just try to stay healthy.  SWEET! No scale!  Instead of the stress of the scale, I found new ways to work­out, to have fun, to chal­lenge myself to eat healthier.

Here’s a tip:  Try eat­ing locally grown foods (within 100 miles), you will be forced to eat less processed food, and have to cook!  It’s both fun and nutritious!

Our fam­ily started incor­po­rat­ing locally grown foods into our diet, it has been quite an adven­ture!!  At the same time, I didn’t try to keep junk food away, just ate less.

Work­ing out became fun because I was doing Krav Maga (an Israeli Mar­tial Art).  It actu­ally served two pur­poses:  1. fit­ness and 2. stress relief.  I can’t tell you the joy I felt when I would get to pur­pose­fully punch some­one.  Well…they did get to punch me back, so I learned how to be swift!

Other friends are suc­cess­ful in reach­ing their goals if they join a com­pe­ti­tion.  This year, my new adven­ture and my new GOAL is going to be attempt­ing a TRIATHALON!!  Check out my new post about my triathalon:  The Next Adventure

I have already found sev­eral peo­ple to help me out and cheer me on.  We don’t have to do this alone –  You don’t have to do it alone!!  And trust me, when you tell oth­ers, they hold you to your goals.…so what are you wait­ing for?

What are you gonna do this YEAR???

Are you still try­ing to decide what to be when you grow up? Regard­less of what you con­sider grown up: Are you doing what you want to right now? How did you get here?

When I blasted out to my Face­book friends ask­ing them about “What did you want to be when you grow up?” I got var­ied responses and some said they are still try­ing to fig­ure it out. But one good friend sticks out in my mind when she said: “I cer­tainly didn’t want to be a Dish Washer when I grew up.”

Your story is dif­fer­ent from my story but what might be the com­mon thread is that you may be in a life that you feel trapped or it is in con­flict with your val­ues. What I mean by this is not that your boss may be ask­ing you to steal….but per­haps you have a strong value for cre­ativ­ity, and you are audit­ing spread­sheets every day!! Ugh!

Are you really hear­ing that voice inside of you that is dis­sat­is­fied? Is your value free­dom? Free­dom from feel­ing trapped by a job? Or is your value secu­rity? Do you like hav­ing a secure job? None of these val­ues are wrong, they are yours and you should own them.

YOUR PERSONAL MISSION STATEMENT

Some are strug­gling with clar­ity about what is their true call­ing in life. I still don’t know what I want to be when I grow up!!! And let me tell you that this is okay too because no one needs to decide right now. But when you find that call­ing, you will know it because you will stay awake all night and be excited all day to bring into fruition your new found occupation.

Per­haps also, we should view this from another angle: Instead of decid­ing what you want to DO every day to cre­ate money (which is what so many peo­ple fall prey to) What do you want to BE???

One tool that I use to deter­mine what I want to be is a per­sonal mis­sion state­ment. It is sim­ple to write a per­sonal mis­sion state­ment here is mine.

My per­sonal mis­sion state­ment defines what I want to be:

• I want to be a cre­ative entre­pre­neur that makes pas­sive income allow­ing me time and money to spend with my fam­ily, to also have adven­ture, and help oth­ers lead suc­cess­ful lives.

No where does this say what indus­try I will work in, nowhere does this exclude me from cer­tain things. This is impor­tant because your mis­sion state­ment should be flex­i­ble to allow for a change of mind, yet be struc­tured enough to give you a roadmap. This mis­sion state­ment out­lines your per­sonal val­ues, what you want to BE and what you WILL achieve by being this per­son. My per­sonal val­ues are tightly linked to free­dom, time and help­ing oth­ers. What are your val­ues? Hon­esty? Power? Fam­ily? Love? Adven­ture? Etc…

What val­ues do you think are impor­tant to you? What do you like doing and as a result, what might you like to be?

I found great sat­is­fac­tion in work­ing as a Para­medic because I was able to both have adven­ture and help oth­ers. Yet, it ended up not being totally ful­fill­ing because it did not allow me the time with my fam­ily that I needed.

Exper­i­ment with your per­sonal mis­sion state­ment. I would love to hear it! What’s hold­ing you back from Liv­ing your Dream?

Rec­om­mended Reading:

The Monk and the Rid­dle by Randy Komisar

Crush It! Gary Vaynerchuk

Refuse to Choose by Bar­bara Sher

At the age of 4 I remem­ber wak­ing up in a hos­pi­tal room barely able to talk in an oxy­gen tent, and tap­ping on the tent to my mom.  I was scared, I didn’t under­stand what was going on, and I couldn’t talk.  It wasn’t until years later that I found out I had epigloti­tis, a rare but fatal child­hood viral con­di­tion that causes the flap that cov­ers your air­way to swell up until it occludes the airway. 

I only sur­vived because my mom heard the stri­dorous breath­ing in my bed­room and took me to the ER imme­di­ately. Per­haps this expe­ri­ence has shaped my life of need for con­stant adven­ture….  Per­haps it is the DNA that is ingrained in me. 

Let me back up a lit­tle bit more…This blog is about moms, let me intro­duce you to my mom. My mother was born poor in a small town in Mis­sis­sippi, a white girl on the wrong side of the tracks.  My mother’s father was a train oper­a­tor and engi­neer, a hard life of work, but that was just his day job, his pas­sion was with motor­cy­cles, fly­ing acro­batic air­craft and boot-legging alco­hol into the dry state of Mis­sis­sippi.  Nor­ton was known to do such dan­ger­ous motor­cy­cle tricks as head­stands on the seat while the motor­cy­cle was in motion.  He lived life on the edge, and raised my mother to do the same. 

At 14, he gave her a birth­day gift…her first motor­cy­cle.  She was arrested by the Merid­ian police because at 14, she didn’t know what a driver’s license WAS, much less pos­sess one.

So at the ten­der age of 18, my mother met a hand­some Navy man, mar­ried and fled the small town in Mis­sis­sippi, never to look back.  Kids were not in her sights, she wanted to live her adven­ture, out of the con­fines of the rigid south­ern tra­di­tions.  In fact, mar­ring a man like my dad was some­what taboo since he was  “Span­ish” and dark skinned.  (She con­fessed to me later in life that she knew he was Mexican/Filipino, but had to tell her dad he was Spanish).

A move to Cal­i­for­nia and over 7 years of mar­riage, my mom decided to try her hand at moth­er­ing.  She had never held a baby before my older sis­ter was born.  But why not go all the way?  Three daugh­ters under 5 years old, all within 18 months apart! My mom is the def­i­n­i­tion of adven­ture. My mom sur­vived the tor­tur­ous baby crazi­ness, and things got bet­ter for her when we were able to walk and talk. 

Adven­tures with my mom were com­mon­place.  I often tell sto­ries of my mom cre­at­ing cir­cuses in our back­yard, com­plete with uni­cy­cles, tightropes, and tram­po­lines.  We would blast music from the record player into the back­yard to prac­tice our cir­cus rou­tines.  Then there was the “urban farm” that wasn’t really a farm, but rather the crow­ing rooster.  I don’t know what obsessed her to get a rooster in our neigh­bor­hood, but need­less to say the neigh­bors weren’t pleased!

My mom wanted to raise us to be inde­pen­dent, strong, pur­pose­ful women.  She even says she  gave us strong “mas­cu­line” names: Casey, Maken­zie and Abbey (okay, well, Abbey skirted the mas­cu­line name, although her mid­dle name is Michael, after my dad since Abbey was really his last attempt for a boy.  Abbey hated it for years, but now I think she’s at peace with it.)

Even the sim­ple bike ride wasn’t nor­mal in our house.  Before we could ride bikes, my mom fig­ured out a way to load us all on her bicy­cle.  Abbey was strapped to her back in a back­pack, I was on the rear child bicy­cle seat, and Casey sat on a home-made seat across the mid­dle bar. (Note that in this pic­ture, Casey grad­u­ated to a reg­u­lar bicy­cle, so it was just me and Abbey on the bike.)  Imag­ine the looks my mom got!  Child bicy­cle trail­ers were not invented then, so she wasn’t let­ting hav­ing kids stop her from going on a bike ride!! 

As I learned how to ride, we fre­quently did 10 and 12 mile rides at the age of 9 down the muddy rocky shores of the San Fran­cisco Bay, with her scream­ing at us the whole way. We didn’t have a choice to quit, she wasn’t car­ry­ing us home! Not only did my mom instill the legacy of adven­ture into us, but she taught us that ANYTHING IS POSSIBLE!  She was unwill­ing to take no for an answer, and she didn’t stop her life because of kids…we were just extra par­tic­i­pants along for the adven­tur­ous ride!

1. Unlucky peo­ple often fail to fol­low their intu­ition when mak­ing a choice, whereas lucky peo­ple tend to respect hunches. Lucky peo­ple are inter­ested in how they both think and feel about the var­i­ous options, rather than sim­ply look­ing at the ratio­nal side of the sit­u­a­tion. I think this helps them because gut feel­ings act as an alarm bell — a rea­son to con­sider a deci­sion carefully.
2. Unlucky peo­ple tend to be crea­tures of rou­tine. They tend to take the same route to and from work and talk to the same types of peo­ple at par­ties. In con­trast, many lucky peo­ple try to intro­duce vari­ety into their lives. For exam­ple, one per­son described how he thought of a colour before arriv­ing at a party and then intro­duced him­self to peo­ple wear­ing that colour. This kind of behav­iour boosts the like­li­hood of chance oppor­tu­ni­ties by intro­duc­ing variety.
3. Lucky peo­ple tend to see the pos­i­tive side of their ill for­tune. They imag­ine how things could have been worse. In one inter­view, a lucky vol­un­teer arrived with his leg in a plas­ter cast and described how he had fallen down a flight of stairs. I asked him whether he still felt lucky and he cheer­fully explained that he felt luck­ier than before. As he pointed out, he could have bro­ken his neck.

Dr. Wayne Dyer says that peo­ple that argue for their lim­i­ta­tions get only that, lim­i­ta­tions. Imag­ine if one argued for suc­cesses, or goals or dreams….. It is a known fact that you get what you man­i­fest or cre­ate what you focus on. The same con­cept were to be true if you were rid­ing your bike and you see a huge crack in the side­walk, you don’t want to hit the crack for fear you might fall off the bike, but you can­not help but to look at the crack, stare at it, focus on it—and then Wham! you hit it and fall off your bike. You tell your­self “see I KNEW I would hit the crack and fall off-I stink at rid­ing a bike!” You focused on what you didn’t want, and then pro­ceeded to argue for your limitations.

Women are espe­cially guilty of this lim­it­ing talk:

“I’m too shy”

“I’m too fat”

“I’m not good at computers”

“I could never make money, I’m not smart enough”

“I’m just not good at that”

“I can’t because I’m a Capri­corn, Tau­rus, Virgo….”

If you con­tinue to argue for the things you don’t want, your focus will zoom in on those things. Your inten­tion, or the energy that cre­ates the things you desire will focus on those lim­i­ta­tions and those lim­i­ta­tions will become real­ity. There is a PURPOSEFUL way to do exactly oppo­site of this, or to focus on what you WANT. It is very simple:

Reverse your idea of what you don’t want, into some­thing that you DO want:

Instead of “I’m too fat” changes to “I am healthy and fit!” (Notice I didn’t say skinny here… I per­son­ally believe it is bet­ter to strive for healthy and fit than skinny. Our soci­ety has too much of a dis­torted view of skinny, and ide­al­iz­ing skinny can mean becom­ing unhealthy.)

–or–

“I could never make money, I’m not smart enough” changes to “I gain wealth eas­ily because I am intel­li­gent and wise”

Now repro­gram­ming your mind takes a lit­tle bit of time, but it hap­pens. Imag­ine this: At one point you used to believe you couldn’t swim, or ride a bike, but after prac­tice, your body didn’t change, but your belief changed. The dif­fer­ence between being a swim­mer and a non-swimmer is merely a belief!! That is great news!!! So is the dif­fer­ence between believ­ing you can have, do or be some­thing or not….that is just a belief.

A good rec­om­men­da­tion for repro­gram­ming your mind is to write down what you want to HAVE, DO, or BE on 3 x 5 cards. Post them on your bath­room mir­ror and every time you pass by them, you look at them, focus on them, and place your inten­tions on those things. Dur­ing the day, at least twice, focus on those things. Keep your eyes open to the pos­si­bil­i­ties around you pop­ping up, and trust me they will. Be pre­pared to act….do not dis­miss the oppor­tu­ni­ties to act!! Those are small mir­a­cles hap­pen­ing right in front of your face!