Author Archives: Amy Beilharz

Meaningfully Busy or Harried Busyness?

Its a new year, with new goals, and so many possibilities. Whether you achieve your dreams will depend on your relationship with being busy.

Most women have so many things on their to do list–running errands, taking kids to activities, attending events in support of others, volunteering on a committee, paying bills, just keeping work and home afloat–that they rarely invest in either themselves or the dreams that matter most to them. Is that you, too? Are your days filled with busyness that prevents you from doing what you really choose?

If so, now at the beginning of the year is a great time to change your relationship with being busy.

Busyness implies you are meeting other people’s needs and helping them fulfill their dreams. Busyness means you are checking off errands on a list at the expense of pursuing your inner calling. Busyness keeps everyone’s life in your world streamlined, clutter-free, and humming.

However, to do something meaningful–something meaningful to YOU–you will have to change from busyness to being busy doing what matters. This is such a critical element of achieving success in any realm that I spend considerable time teaching techniques for achieving it in my Wealth Development Program. People with influence or those making significant contributions all do this, consciously or unconsciously.

Here are a few tips that will help you make the transition from busyness to busy.

  • Start your day with a commitment to work on your most important goal. If you want to write a book, write for a specified amount of time; if you are starting a business, take action solely for your new venture at the beginning of the day; whatever your goal is, do it first.
  • Know the areas that sabotage you and hold off doing things that are time-hogs until late in your day–things like answering emails, paying bills, or returning phone calls. These require less energy and creativity and can easily be done then; while your most important work deserves your best energy.
  • Start saying no to things that you do out of guilt, obligation, or because you have always done them. This is hard for most women; however, once you practice doing it, you will start to realize how valuable your time is and saying no will become easier and easier.
  • Keep fortifying your vision and dream regularly. You can have a mission statement you read to yourself daily or a journal where you continue to develop your idea and how it will look and feel once you have achieved it. Whatever form it takes, visualize your end goal often.

 

 

Annual Ritual to Ensure Failure?

Most of you will create New Years resolutions in the coming days; but, have you reviewed those you made last year? How did you do? Both women and men continue this annual ritual throughout the world; however, very few people do it in a way that help them succeed.

In fact, I will bet the way you create these resolutions may be contributing to your failure!

That may sound harsh, but unrealized dreams is a harsher reality. There are common traits of people who do not achieve their dreams. Are any of these familiar?

  1. Wishing for, instead of believing in, your goals.
  2. Making goals without ever reviewing your progress.
  3. Creating goals that make you feel bad about yourself by focusing on
    1. what you do not have,
    2. what about yourself you dislike, or
    3. how you feel you “should be” which is externally driven instead of coming from deep desire.
  4. Plus, the amount of guilt you carry for all the unkept resolutions adds to the problem and keeps you stuck.

I want you to find ways to succeed so let’s look at a few tips to move your resolutions to real goals that become your reality.

  • Avoid making a laundry list of promises to stop doing x,y, or z.

    (Trying to NOT do something just keeps that something front and center of your mind, making it harder to achieve your goal.)

  • Go beyond the initial goal and find what is driving it.

    Once you delve deeper you’ll create a much better goal and one you will be more inspired to achieve. Here are some examples of how goals can be worded to describe the why, the way you will feel when they are your reality:

    • Change I want to loose 15 pounds to I feel great in my body, clothes fit well, and I enjoy my vitality.
    • Replace I need to be debt free to I feel empowered to make the choices I want because I have financial resources to do so.
    • Modify I found a better job to My work is fulfilling and I am inspired by the people I work with.

  • Limit your resolutions to three things (one or two is even better).

    I like to have one personal goal and one professional goal. Anything more than three becomes a wish list with no meaningful attention kept on any one goal.

  • Write down your resolutions and put them where you can read them daily, even multiple times a day.

    Say them out loud. This may sound silly, but do it anyway. You need to say them until you believe it is so, even if you do not yet have the material results to show for it. When you say your goal aloud visualize how you will feel and what you will be doing when it is reality.

  • Tell somebody else what your goal(s) are for this coming year and then keep them posted regularly on your success.

    I belong to a mastermind, but sharing with your best friend is equally helpful in this step.

Belief in yourself, your goals, your ability to achieve them and your worthiness to have them is the most important step in manifesting your dream. Try to think of one famous musician, olympic athlete, or other successful person who did not believe they would achieve their goal some way, some how.

Become an olympiad of your own life.

Being the Holder of Traditions

Woman are often the ones making holidays special—whether Hanukkah, Ramadan, Christmas, or another tradition—by carrying on customs, making space for rituals, creating gatherings for friends and family, and producing feasts for all to enjoy. This can either be a blessing or a burden.

You may love to entertain and find holidays to be your favorite time of year, or if you dislike entertaining you may enter the season with the goal to endure it. Yet, if you embody fully the role of custodian of traditions you can take the reins and create customs for your family that support your particular likes and dislikes, while honoring your heritage.

I love to cook and entertain; yet, I never felt happy when I was working before, during and after a family festivity while everyone else enjoyed himself or herself. My family tradition has evolved to everyone cooking large family feasts on holidays. Because I made cooking a festive joint endeavor over the years, the meal planning, grocery shopping and cooking have all become shared tasks for holidays and I never feel placed in the role of worker while everyone else is relaxing and socializing. It has become something we all look forward to and everyone adds his or her own flair to the mix.

With a little creativity, you can turn every holiday into rich traditions that serve and honor your soul. What do you love to do and how might you incorporate it into your holiday routine?

Instilling new traditions takes a little time; and there is no time but today to start one!

 

 

Be Your Own Holiday Hero

As you enter into the holiday season it is easy to get swept away with all the activities and loose focus on what matters most to YOU! In fact, most people live like that all year—swept away by the momentum of external events with little internal direction to meet their own needs.

With a small amount of attention, you will enjoy the holidays more and wake up in the New Year with a clearer sense of purpose and direction, ready to create new goals and more importantly prepared to achieve them.

I have a fun exercise to help you achieve this. Take time in December to reflect on the year almost at a close. Make note of what goals you accomplished, which have changed, and what remains unrealized; but focus on what has gone well. Start to build a list or journal of everything that you have done, all you overcame, and things you accomplished this past year.

By putting energy into remembering your successes before the year ends you are:

  • Preventing a feeling of overwhelm as holiday distractions have a tendency to make you feel like you are not getting enough done.

  • Reminding yourself of what you consider important which will help you make choices about how you spend your time this month.

  • Reinforcing what you do well and your self-confidence.

  • Remembering what things you enjoy doing and do well.

  • Creating a strong platform from which design goals that inspire you, not ones you feel you “should” do, at the beginning of next year.

Make sure you include personal and professional successes. You can start by taking a half-day retreat, or just an hour one morning to get started. Then read and add to this list (or journal) at least once a day. You will find your holiday season more fulfilling and you will be ready to embark into next year full of positive energy.

Note: It does not hurt that this exercise also expand your holiday party conversations beyond the weather!

 

 

 

Words of Wisdom For Instant Happiness

Today, I received an email from a friend and colleague who I admire, Natalie Ledwell, quoting one of the women I admire most, Marianne Williamson. The quotes are pointers to how I choose to live. I think you will enjoy them so I have reprinted Natalie’s email below.

If you don’t know about Natalie’s work with Mind Movies, you will want to look into them. Mind Movies allow you to program your mind to the things you want, overriding all the programming you take in unintentionally–and you actually get to create your personalized version!

One of the reasons I love Natalie’s work is that she and I both are passionate to help people learn how to succeed, without the struggle and heartache most people stay stuck in. Both Natalie and I have been in the trenches and are teaching what worked for us, not some theory about what we heard works, but real life-tested ideas.

My success in various businesses would be fleeting and meaningless if it were not for teachers along the way that helped me create fulfillment not just bank balances, and purpose not report cards and titles. Marianne Williamson was one of those teachers.  I first stumbled on to her work over 20 years ago and have been enjoying her wisdom and turning to her guidance ever  since.

In Natalie’s words:

If you haven’t come into contact with this woman’s extraordinary work, you’re really missing out!

I’m talking about Marianne Williamson who, besides being a NY Times best-selling author and lecturer, has been a spiritual friend and counselor to Oprah! YES – Oprah!

If you’d like to be enlightened by her wisdom, read below for seven of her best lessons for instant happiness:

1- Forgiveness is not always easy. At times, it feels more painful than the wound we suffered, to forgive the one that inflicted it. And yet, there is no peace without forgiveness.

2- Miracles occur naturally as expressions of love. The real miracle is the love that inspires them. In this sense everything that comes from love is a miracle.

3- We ask ourselves, ‘Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?’ Actually, who are you not to be?

4- Love is what we were born with. Fear is what we learned here.

5- The new midlife is where you realize that even your failures make you more beautiful and are turned spiritually into success if you became a better person because of them. You became a more humble person. You became a more merciful and compassionate person.

6- The key to abundance is meeting limited circumstances with unlimited thoughts.

7- Joy is what happens to us when we allow ourselves to recognize how good things really are.

Enjoy!
Natalie ~ Mind Movies

Graceful Transitions of Seasons and Self

As winter storms start appearing in the Northern Hemisphere, springtime is beginning to bloom in the south. Cycles of life that we expect, often look forward to, and plan on.

Yet, so many other cycles of life–like children growing up, parents dying, and other passages–while still predictable are not always welcomed or easy.

Your ability to feel your feelings in these circumstances, while not getting pulled into a complete downward spiral, is the key to healthy transitions. I am in the midst of these transitions as my youngest child leaves home, I move out of our family home where I raised my children these past 18 years, and I move across country, embark on a new business venture, and start a new chapter of my life.

A passage in James Allen’s As a Man Thinketh has held me during this time and might help keep you from allowing challenging life passages to send you into realms of emotions that are hard to break:

“Yes, humanity surges with uncontrolled passion, is tumultuous with ungoverned grief, is blown away by anxiety and doubt. Only the wise woman, only she whose thoughts are controlled and purified, makes the winds and the storms of the soul obey her.”

Of course, I modified the passage to meet me as a woman and added emphasis.

I choose to control the storms of my soul, do you? There are definitely times in my life where I have allowed uncontrolled passion to make me lash out at others, unprocessed grief has run havoc on my life, and anxiety and doubt have overwhelmed me. If you are like me, these are not states you choose to experience. So why do we?

It is because we believe our thoughts to be the result of our external life, instead of something we have control over. The key is watching where your thoughts are leading and to be their master instead of them dictating your state. Does that mean you will never experience passion, grief, doubt or anxiety? Absolutely not. But it does mean these will not control you. I am learning to be master of my thoughts, and therefore of my fate. How about you?

 

Three Steps to Greater Happiness

Recently, I heard a brain specialist talk about they have learned how readily our brains can morph and learn new things–even long into adulthood!  That is good news, because years ago they thought once we passed a golden age we no longer could create new neuro-pathways or widen our pathways to carry more information. But today, brain plasticity is considered proven by science.

So how does this relate to your happiness? Well, if you are like many people your life has a certain rhythm to it. Things happen the same way today that they did yesterday.  You eat the same things this month that you ate last month and spend time with the same people. There may be nothing wrong with all this; but there is also not much stimulating about it either.

They are called habits; we all have them and we actually are controlled by them.

What if I told you that by changing some of your habits you would actually be increasing the plasticity of your brain AND would become happier? It’s true!

Here are three steps that help with brain plasticity that you can do anywhere, anytime; so start today!

  1. Select on thing you do every day and change it.

    Don’t start with the most ingrained habit that will be hard to change like smoking, coffee, or such. If you always wake up at 7am, start waking up at 6:45 and find something pleasurable to do with the extra 15 minutes BEFORE you start you regular morning routine.

  2. Focus on one thing at a time for at least 30 minutes each day and increase the amount of time as you can.

    This can be meditation, but it can also be that you are committing 30 minutes each day to a specific project when you turn off your phone, close your door, tell others you are unavailble and resist the urge to check your emails or social media as a distraction. Training your brain to focus is like exercising; it starts hard and often you don’t initially see results and can become discouraged. But, just like physical exercise your mental exercise will pay off in big ways. You will not only get the accomplishment of finishing more things as you learn to focus, but you will also find your ability to solve problems and think will expand, too.

  3. Expose yourself to new experiences.

    This will take some effort and planning in order to be doing new things regularly.  This is why adventurous vacations make us feel more alive; while staying at the same old hotel chain in a new city feels dry. What things have you wanted to do and never have? Take that photography class. Go to the MeetUp group. You don’t have to do things you would not enjoy to go outside your comfort zone; you have probably a plethora of things you have never done that you wish you had!

A little help from my friends

Sometimes staying positive and upbeat gets difficult and there are days it can feel downright impossible. That’s when you turn to inspiration.  You can boost your seratonin, your mood, and your energy by feeding your brain and your environment with things that make you feel good. Maybe for you it is:

  • Talking with good friends
  • A long, bubble bath
  • Going for a hike, or
  • Reading a good book

Three things that are scientifically proven to help our state of being are:

  1. Getting out into nature; especially long walks with your gaze far in the distance.

  2. Hugs and human contact.

  3. Reading or listening to inspiring books or talks.

The latter can be found in your bookstore, on podcasts, or books on tape, as well as recordings of great seminars. Find a few favorites to use over and over again, as well as look for new information. Repition can ingrain the important ideas into your way of thinking that a fast, once-over reading can never do. And let’s face it, all of us have plenty of negative self-talk rattling around in our brain that can use replacing.

This fall the Texas Women’s Conference was again a powerhouse of ideas and inspiration. All the sessions are available by podcast, and there are still some free trainings that some of the speakers are providing.

Have fun listening to these and exploring the things that inspire you.

 

The fringe benefits of failure

In 2008, J.K. Rowling gave the commencement address to the graduating class at Harvard and titled her speech, “The fringe benefits of failure and the importance of imagination.” I wish I could have been there, as both of these ring so true to me today. More importantly, I sure could have used learning that lesson much earlier in life.

As a college student and in my early professional years, the idea of failing was the tiger chasing me from behind–always keeping me running faster. It could have never occured to my younger self that failing might have its benefits. Did you understand this when you were younger? Do you actually believe it, today?

Yet, today I know that I have learned more from my failures than my successes and that many of my successes came from the ashes of my failing.

But the biggest benefit of failure is NOT the lesson you might learn from the fall. The benefit comes from trying at all!

So many people give up–on an idea, a vision, a dream–long before they ever begin because they fear failure. I bet you can think of at least a few times you never tried because you did not want to fail. I can.

The willingness to fail and learn from your mistakes might be the single most important determining factor on whether you will succeed.

If you think failing puts you in the company of loosers, remember then Thomas Edison attempted to create the incadescent light bulb over 10,000 times before succeeding.  When asked how he could continue after failing so many times he replied that he did not fail but came that much closer to the right answer.

So how about it? What could you try? How might you challenge your status quo and go outside your comfort zone?