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It’s just about summer, and what I’m hearing from some of my clients is that it’s a little hard to stay focused on their goals (aka what they “said they wanted to do”) because it’s so beautiful out. I really can resonate with that.

I remember, especially at the beginning of my business, 14 years ago, I would find it difficult to really stay focused on my work, and business. I realized that it wasn’t so much for me that it was summer, but that I wasn’t as dedicated to it as I needed to be for it to be successful – and I probably had some limiting beliefs around whether I could be successful or what I should be doing instead.  

To that end, I am going to bring you through a process. You will identify what you said you wanted, (or perhaps you haven’t even said what you wanted, but you’re getting distracted) and maybe the distraction right now is how beautiful it is out.

Read on or watch the video

As I’m recording the video which goes with this blog, there are beautiful flowers behind me and the birds are singing.  It’s a beautiful day out today here in New Hampshire, and that would warrant anybody to want to play hooky, right? When you have your own business, you really can, and so that’s hard sometimes. 

The process starts with the Unscatter Your Life guide, which is available on the front page of my website (download it and go to page four). Page 4 is about how this is all going to come down to your decision and how to stay non-distracted, and is called the Wheel of Entrepreneurial Life. The Wheel is a way for you to decide what area of your life you want to focus on to change – because we can’t change everything all at once. We want to, and we try to, and we fail – so the way to make progress is just to pick one area and pick the area that’s really calling to you the most and decide what you want and how badly you want it and where you are right now. I’m not going to go into all those details because that’s all in the guide.

Guess what! I’m going to add a bonus here. The bonus comes from the workshop I did in early May, which was called ‘Spring Into Your Breakthrough’. Once you decide what it is you want and set your goal, you will take an Extra Powerful step from the spring workshop.  Example…you want to be closer to your children – that’s your goal.  You are in the ‘family’ part of the Entrepreneurial Life Wheel.  Let’s say your children are early-teenagers and they just don’t need you or want you the way they used to (it’s hard, I know as I had two of them. One of them’s gone, and the other one right now is getting to be more of a mid-teenager!). So then you want to ask yourself:

1. ‘What is a challenge for me?’ And you’re going to say something along the lines of, ‘Well, a challenge for me might be my sadness that s/he doesn’t want to play games anymore’. So you write that down. 
2. ‘What else is a challenge for me?’ And you might have another answer such as ‘s/he’s so busy hanging out with her/his friends that there’s hardly any time left for me.’ So you go progressively deeper. 
3. ‘What else is a challenge for me?’ And go a little deeper.  What’s really going on for you? Maybe when you start looking at the inside like that, there are fears there. ‘I fear that s/he might get into drugs and alcohol because I’m not there all the time’. or ‘S/he might start hanging out with the wrong people’. I don’t know. 
4. ‘What is the real challenge?’ This is where I really want you to go very, very deep.  

I did this (asking progressively deeper challenge questions) recently one-on-one with one of my VIP clients, and that client came up with his answers  – to really dial into fear of failure and fear of success.  If your answers are anything that can be connected to fear of failure or failure of success, then you are going deep enough.  In this example, it might be that you fear failure as a mom/dad.  That could be what’s at the root of it. That fear could be saying ‘What will you do with your life?’ Or it could be saying, ‘If you have more time to work / work on your business,  that will mean you need to redefine who your are’. 

Redefinition, even though we say we want it, is really a big deal. It’s no joke to redefine yourself. As long as we’re in the loop of saying ‘I want, I want…’  we get to have that as a crutch. If there’s actually something that we like, we can actually really get it,  our whole bodies are like ‘Whaaat? Alert, alert! I didn’t really want it’.

That reminds me of a little story (I’m going off on a little teeny weeny tangent and then I’ll bring it back)

When I was small, maybe four or five years old,  I wanted an inchworm for Christmas. The inchworm was one of these toys that you rode on, you sat on it and bounced and it moved forward.  That seemed so magical and far away from me. I remember going downstairs on Christmas day and seeing that inchworm in front of the Christmas tree … I couldn’t even speak, I was so dumbfounded that I got the thing I wished for, and my parents were looking at me…they can’t wait. They got the cameras ready and they’re ready to go. I was frozen; paralyzed with fear. I remember saying, “I just wanted to pull it”. And that’s all I could do. I could just pull it because the manifestation of the thing that in my head was unretrievable – I couldn’t manifest it to get it. It had shocked my system. 

It’s quite like that for us. When we say we want something and we’ve been wanting it and wanting it, we get addicted to wanting it. And in fact, if you really dial down and dig deep underneath all of this stuff, you’ll realize that that’s what’s there: the Wanting Addiction. Through the process of asking the Challenge Questions, you are empowered to decide, is this really and truly what you want? And what do you need to overcome? What kind of fears do you need to work through and get over to truly achieve it, or- perhaps the process has allowed you to determine that you don’t want it at all. 

So that’s why I love the guide, because if you download it and you really do it, it can be in and of itself transformational. And then of course there’s an option to talk to me- send me a little message saying ‘Hey, I want to talk to you about this’ – there is a free session waiting for you because it’s important – and especially at the beginning of the summer I want you to be able to enjoy your summer, and I want you to be able to do the transformation your way in a way that is so meaningful for you. 

So download the guide, ask yourself the challenge questions, set up your follow up call and, and tell me – what do you really want? Has it changed since the beginning of the year or maybe since the beginning of the quarter? What area of life does it relate to? 

I can’t wait to see you on the other side.

Today’s topic: breaking up with your nice to-do tasks. Sounds great, but why would you want to do that, anyhow?

Well, often when we are trying to get ahead of our to-dos, we put our head down and to go through the list, and doing that results in a feeling of being depleted. Or, perhaps there are feelings of working a lot and not getting anywhere. It’s very demotivational. These things are un-fun – and as a result, we procrastinate and we get distracted. All of the things that we believe are the problem (being distracted, not focused and so on) are actually because we are not engaged in what we’re doing. 

We believe we have to/ should be doing them – and they feel really, really ridiculously heavy. Let’s focus on releasing some of this weight, so that we feel happy, we feel strong, we feel light, & we feel expansive. If you go to the Productivity Success Cake, a lot of that (feeling of strong/light/expansive) is baked into the health layer and into the environment layer. However, what I’m going to focus on today is the productivity layer. 

In the productivity layer we have a piece called ‘Time and Tasks. In this is “breaking up with your nice to-do tasks”. Those tasks can be significant and we all have them!  For example, periodically I go through and I empty out bins of pages of ‘someday I’ll get to this,’ you know, beautiful ideas. Maybe you’ve got ideas from programs that you attended that ‘someday I’ll do this and the truth is that all of that physical clutter or clutter on your computer, it’s adding to your mental angst and you’re not getting to it anyway. So you just want to release it and break up with it. Not easy though, is it? So I’m going to tell you a little story about how a client of mine and I – we did just that.

Read on or watch the video.

I have a client and the tasks were on this person’s computer.  They were all nice and neat and assigned to this person, with a deadline.  We started by talking about deleting those tasks which were over a certain age – for example, they were 6 months overdue – but that didn’t seem right. So we considered deleting anything over a year (because if you have not done them in a year and nobody’s died, you can get rid of them), and most of them were able to be deleted. I was really curious why we could not just get rid of the rest. We discovered there were some deeply held beliefs around responsibility, and perhaps some worthiness. Also, the lack of global deleting had to do with how this person’s company was set up. The tasks that were assigned to this person should have been assigned to somebody else – but the ‘somebody else’ was not holding up their end of the bargain, and therefore, it didn’t get actioned.

So it’s kind of two- or three-pronged. It’s all about considering how much you take on, how much really is YOUR job and how much the needle moves.  

There were other tasks that were more ‘nice to-dos.’ For example – the head chatter may say, “Well, I should really do research for that client because if I did, it would make that client’s experience better in my line of work”. And that’s not untrue. However, it’s a little bit like my bins of ideas of things that I’d like to do someday in my practice (because most people I know that are creative geniuses like myself we’re always going to take a new personality exam etc…we want to learn more).  The truth of the matter is that there’s only so much time in the day and there’s only so much of us. So we must make choices. Concentrate on the things that you are not only just able to do, but that will really move the needle. 

I did a Facebook live in UnscatterMe, my online Facebook community (which I recommend that you consider joining!) and what I talked about in that community earlier today was how to prioritize. Breaking up with your ‘nice to dos’ is one way of prioritizing. Head over to the group and watch the video to see what that looks like. 

When you look at your to-dos in that piece of the cake, that time and task to-dos, if there is anything that’s a to-do of more than six months, really seriously ask yourself, is it that important? If it is, think about how you will shift your priorities to get it done. If it’s not that important, put it in a to-do list for next year, next quarter, next month, so that it’s not in your face, holding you down, weighing you down, not allowing you to be productive, not allowing you to live in your greatness, not allowing you to feel unscattered so that you can live your best, most confident, happy, entrepreneurial life that you deserve, so that you can actually do the work that you came into this world to do.

Hey everybody. Carol, back here with the second video lesson, I’m very excited to see you all. 

In this lesson I wanted to give you a real live example, and the example I want to really highlight today is somebody that-  I’ll be honest with you –  I never thought would would come into my world and be so blessed by me, and whilst he’s no longer a client, he was really a special person. Let me tell you what happened.

Read on or watch the video.

His name is Husain, right? He’s the PhD who could not find order. I mean, this man is ridiculously smart, but yet order was just not something that he could find. And so I know last time I really shared with you my pretty vulnerable truth. But this is not just my experience, I have this really powerful story to tell about my client Husain. He was in the situation where he just desperately wanted to follow the rules, but for the life of him, it wouldn’t work. He tried to be orderly.  I mean, many people say that ‘oh my gosh, I’ve tried to be organized’ and ‘I used to be organized’. We hear that a lot. But yet something is different now because you’re in a different situation. In his case, he had just started his business a couple of years previous and I thought, my God, I have no idea how I’m going to help this man because I don’t know anything about his business. But in truth, I didn’t need to know anything about his business. He felt as orderly as a ‘cotton ball on fire’ – those were his words – and as a result, his business was tanking. His marriage was teetering on divorce, and I have got to say his self-hate level was pretty high. 

Now, after working through my five steps to become confident and focused, life really doesn’t get in the way for him. He has implemented just enough structure in his life so that he is now able to access that energy flow so that he does not shut down and he’s prioritizing his own needs. He wasn’t doing that before, even with six very young children. That’s pretty amazing. And he is an engaged, actively engaged spouse.  

Think about the iceberg again.

The five steps are right above the line where the ‘decide’ is. We talked about the ‘financial’ and ’financial stability’ already but there’s also other ones – self-love and deep healing. Luckily Husian had the financial stability all set so that he could really hang on to this work and really go deep. But that deep healing and that self-love we really worked on that. So what he thought he needed was to get more organized, right? And that ‘more organized’ is in my Discover Program. What he learned by starting here is that he had to dive down into this piece so that it would then support that piece. And now his life is kind of amazing because he gets in these flow states where things are profitable and easy. So if you like flow state, if you like profitable and easy pay attention, download the free guide on the five steps because it’ll really get the ball rolling.

The other thing that I wanted to say was that Husain’s energy, and that of many of the people II work with, is kind of up and down. And what happens is when our energy is up and down, is that our villains, our gremlins, our voices in the back of our head, start talking to us about how we’ll never make it and we’re not worthy and so on and so forth. So through this process he was able to get that energy back. He was able to make his work, work with his own energy up. So, if you are not a bright and early riser, no worries!  Don’t do things bright and early! There can be beliefs in the background saying ‘I must get up now because the rest of the world is up’, or ‘the rest of the world starts work at eight o’clock in the morning’. Well, you don’t have to! I have a current client right now (who isn’t Husain), who has decided on purpose, her work hours are 11am to 8pm. That happens with a lot of my people because a lot of my people are neurodiverse and they tend to work better later at night. And that is okay.  

The other thing that can get in the way of being organized and and having a successful business and a life that you love is the lack of vision and the lack of putting that vision in front of you. Through our work together, Husain and countless others got off track – they procrastinated and got shiny object syndrome, (which we all do in my community at least!) but  we came back and we would repeatedly go through from ‘decide’ place because this is an iterative process from the ‘decide’ place.  What do you want to be focused on for your vision? 

Last but not least, I want to bring up another concern that some folks have, and I know Husian had – ‘will I make enough money? You know, sure I have some money saved up, but will I make enough money to really be able to support my family, be able to do this thing?’ And that’s a real consideration. Going through the steps will allow you all those foundational pieces, and then once you do get up to that ‘discover’ step, where we really dive into the productivity success cake.  Husain did that process at least twice – because we bake lots of different cakes and they’re all fun and all different, and we learn something more and better about ourselves every single time.  You don’t have to do this more than once but no matter how many cakes you bake, whether it’s one or whether it’s two or three, it’s amazing what happens. All of that foundational work you do at the beginning now supports time management, project management, getting more confident in your decisions over and over and over again – and you get to practice and celebrate. 

All of the steps are covered in in the guide, and the guide is also all about getting the ball rolling – because that’s the hardest part and is why  it’s in red. It’s in red for a reason because too many of us are ‘well I’d like to do that, but maybe I want to do this’. But what about it? I just want to keep this open. Like I was doing that, remember? I was running around thing to thing, throwing spaghetti at the wall. Husian was running around like a cotton ball on fire. If you are feeling ‘I better do whatever I can do for the economy’, then please download the guide and stay tuned because I have a special workshop coming up on Monday, where I really want you to do these steps and have that breakthrough for yourself. It’s going to be your opportunity to go through it yourself and have that breakthrough, and I can’t wait to see you on the other side when I’m congratulating you for your breakthrough and you really are clear about what’s going to happen in light of the recession and not be a victim anymore. 

I can’t wait for that for you.

Thank you.

Today I’m addressing some big stuff. We are on the absolute brink -and some people may say we already are- in an economic crisis and doom and gloom and recession. And I’m here to state it and not to get caught up in it. And…with every problem there’s an opportunity and there’s a key point to learn. The key is to be prepared.

Read on or watch the video

I’m going to tell you a little story, and this story has to do with me, back in 2009 when we were having another economic crisis. I was first trying to get my life together after I had made the decision to separate from my crazy ex, which came a little bit after 2009 – I didn’t know what to do.  I really hated feeling like I was running in circles, just trying to survive. I was in an economic crisis. The great recession still had that hold on us. It was actually a couple years after 2009 but I still had that FEELING.

It reminds me of today. Sure, we’re not in covid, but many of us are still in that survival mode. So – still in an economic crisis back then, I was faced with a big decision. What do I do about living with that abusive alcoholic?  I was quite emotionally unstable and to say I was scattered would be an understatement. What I discovered in those first few years of my business and in that economic crisis, the crisis that I was in inside and out, was that counterintuitively I really needed to slow down. I had been running FAST for a long time.

The process of slowing down was unexpected. It worked really well, and that actually opened the door to me being able to think again and say ‘yes’ to my own needs. Imagine that, right? So, I found an amazing mentor, and she helped me build my coaching practice step by step. Slowing down allowed me to see what God had put right in front of me. So I ask you this, imagine if you were able to believe in yourself with ease, without getting constantly pulled in other directions by your family creating or amplifying that feeling of being scattered by that direction pulling.  It’s so common among entrepreneurs who have the shiny object syndrome. If you dare to allow yourself to imagine this, do yourself a solid (like my teenager would say) and keep reading. I’m going to give you three tips.

The first tip to remember  is to get your confidence back.  If you are making a change…for example, -you’ve been away from your business for a little while, or if 

-you are going to the next level in your business, if 

-you’ve had a change in any way, you may have moved, 

-you may have gotten divorced,

or any number of changes- that impacts our confidence. We don’t feel “in the mode.” Getting that confidence back, it’s really important to slow down and to really start working on what makes you feel good. What light do you have to shine on the world? Even if you feel a little rusty since you have not done what you used to do, and even if you feel scattered, I invite you to consider  a time in your past where you were really on your game. When you place your mind there, you will walk out in the world with that confidence. It is a number one thing people are really looking for when they begin anew and being in an economic crisis and recession and all the doom and gloom and inflation – that can knock our confidence back and we can think ‘oh my gosh, I’d better run and hide’. I don’t want you to run and hide. Running and hiding will not get you there, I promise you that. 

The second thing to consider is really taking a look at your time management – and that’s what I didn’t do. What I did is I ran around like crazy. I had great experience in running around like crazy, throwing spaghetti to the wall, smiling, kind of pretending everything was okay. And you know what? As a business owner, some days you want everything to look like Disney, or to feel like Disney – as everything is not Disney. And baking it, you can kind of tell in the background that things aren’t working. So give your time and attention to what really matters. How do you know what really matters? Well, if you’re making money at it, it’s lighting you up and it’s and it’s really aligning with you and your vision then those are the things that you really want to focus on.  

Last but not least there’s a fear that some people have right now and that is that they will have to work full-time in order to support themselves, and that they will have no time to continue building their business the way they want because they just don’t have enough hours in the day.  So for that, what I’ll say is you don’t have to work full-time. What’s so important is that you have enough coming in to cover your bills or you have enough put aside somewhere to cover your bills for the next (at least) three months while you’re undergoing some changes in your life.  Whatever they are, whether it’s working on your confidence, taking care of your trauma, or maybe you’re in a business building program, whatever the case may be that you do have enough coming in or put aside, it’s actually really important.

The bottom of my iceberg graphic is economic and financial security. If you don’t have that it’s virtually impossible to really stay focused on the things that really matter. You’re going to be in constant fear and worry, and we don’t want you in constant fear and worry. 

That’s what I have for today. In summary, you have a beautiful opportunity  to harness the “crap of what’s going on in the world,” to take whatever transition you’re in, and capitalize on opportunities that present themselves. Transitions can be starting a new business, upleveling your existing business, changing your business model, getting divorced, getting married, or moving. Regardless, you must stay focused.  These are wise ways to do it. So stay tuned for the next lesson for those, which will come out on Wednesday.

What transition might you be in? Comment below and let me know!

This strategy will surprise you

How have you been feeling lately? 

Maybe you’ve been trying to get someplace and you just can’t get there. Maybe you’ve been trying to reach a new health goal, you’ve been trying to reach a new business goal, you’ve been trying to just get on, stuck in your life, and it’s spring and you’re feeling like you are ready to pop and want to do these things….but you’re not sure how.

Read on or watch the video

The Surprising Strategy

I’m going to illustrate a surprising way that you can “get there.” This solution is a lot different than you might think. It’s all about vulnerability. I  was inspired about this through a very interesting source. It was in a magazine – there was a guy wearing a kimono which said ‘the art of opening up’ in Japanese. 

The article talks about his experiences traveling, and using vulnerability as a way to experience an opening up to failure, so that he could exceed his limits (as he knew them). For him, it started in high school. He went to France. He lived with a host family. He didn’t know any French, and he was deathly afraid of making a mistake. So he really tried really hard to say the right thing, and at one point he wanted to say how good the meal was and that he was full.  

He used the verb for ‘full’ that he thought was correct, and it meant ‘pregnant’. He was embarrassed. Rather than letting this error stop him, he let himself fail and from that moment forward. Amazingly, he found himself making friends instantly and abundantly.

He later went to Japan, met a woman, and fell in love with her..  They decided to go dancing to a special dance and he knew nothing of the dance. He got the biggest kimono he could get, but it was still about a foot too short, and he was out there dancing, making a complete fool of himself because it was all so new to him, yet, having so much fun. He ended up getting invited to events and homes, and developed a beautiful social network because he wasn’t afraid of messing up, feeling vulnerable, and learning. 

He learned a lot about the culture and he made friends. Last in the story, he went to Cambodia. He stayed with a family and thought, “this is going to be the longest four days of my life”, as he did not know the language at all. It actually went really fast because he decided he was just going to try to communicate however he could without any knowledge of the Cambodian language – and he found that the more he opened up to people and just decided to look stupid, be vulnerable, that he ended up having amazing experiences. With each of these experiences, he grew. 

How does this strategy relate to YOU?

So I ask you, what is holding you back? What vulnerability could you allow to show through? Thinking about the goal that you want, thinking about that breakthrough that you want to have, how might you “stick your neck out and look stupid” so that miracles occur? Now that it’s spring and the ground is starting to thaw, the snow is melting (here, anyway!) what is it that you want to break through with? 

3 other ways to get unstuck:

1. Help me help you: I recently sent out a survey on Monday, March 25. It takes 3 minutes to fill out. It helps me serve you better and I’ll use it as I’m developing something new…which starts April 3…and I truly hope it will help you start to “thaw” or get unstuck 🙂
2. Download and print your Unscatter Guide:  It will take you from ‘scattered and stuck’ to ‘focused and confident’ and it’ll walk you through the steps. 
3. Come to Wisdom Warriors on April 10: I’m skipping Wisdom Warriors on Monday April 3rd and having it on Monday April 10th. We’re going to be focusing on the economy, entrepreneurs,and how you could really capitalize on where we are today. 

Until then, be vulnerable, look silly, open yourself up to miracles and keep being fantastic.

Why bother, when you just keep failing, anyhow?

You set a goal. You watch “stuff” get in the way. You don’t hit the goal. You feel defeated.

Rinse, repeat. 

Why bother, right?  The “why bother” response certainly makes logical sense. Have you considered what else might be at play with this response, and what you might do to turn this “failure loop” around?

Today I will review 3 three ways that you can get unstuck more quickly. A lot of these sound really easy, and doing them is NOT “really easy all the time”. Before I share them, let’s review the “why bother” question. When we don’t hit our goals, again and again, the psyche feels defeated. We are not at peace with ourselves. To quickly reconcile this, our mind comes up with a logical summary: this does not work, please stop. Then, since our brain is constantly seeking patterns, we prove this pattern. Again, again, and again.

Continue reading, or watch the video

If our mind did NOT do this, we’d be in cognitive dissonance. That means that what we see for ourselves is not actually what is happening. That’s jarring to the nervous system. So the nervous system course corrects by telling the brain it’s impossible. The brain acts accordingly. 

Wow! Is there any hope? Why, yes. Not just HOPE but STRATEGIES. Onward to the 3 Ways!

1. Notice if you see one of two F’s or both F’s: Frustration and Failure.  A couple of my clients have been  expressing that they’re not achieving their goals – and of course, that’s why they’re working with me…lol.  It’s quite good that they are NOTICING this…now the next step is to detach from the situation, so that we are able to see what is actually happening.

How do we do this? Notice those 2F’s: the Frustration and the Failure. After that, we can move into “acceptance of ‘what is’ right now.”  Wait, what?? What is that? It sounds like this: “ I’m noticing that things are not working so, this is probably an illusion; a workplace productivity illusion. Now it’s my job to figure out what to do; what illusion am I under?” When you detach and ask yourself those curious questions, you will start to break yourself out of that frustration/failure cycle. 

2. Have more fun. I have a longtime client and his current goal is to “10x his fun”. Woohoo! He discovered this during his time with me and what he determined (among many other breakthroughs that he has had) was that he wasn’t having much fun in his life before and he just kept grinding away. That was getting in the way of achieving his goals. Once he allowed himself to have fun, what happened? It allowed those happy hormones to come in. Next, the ‘law of attraction’ starts to take over, where you want to hang out with people that are fun. We’re going to attract more of what we want. In this headspace, we see opportunities that are already there- that we couldn’t see before when we were in our ‘grinding mode’. 

3. Surround yourself with people you like and places where you want to be. For example, when I was feeling very stuck in my marriage in 2012 I decided to say ‘yes’ to a trip without my family and this enabled me to really see things from a different perspective. I was able to relax, I was able to journal, I was able to talk to trusted people about this thing that was really troubling me.  I had been feeling very, very stuck. It’s important that you surround yourself with people and places. It may not be a trip to the Caribbean, but maybe simply getting out for a walk now that it’s spring. 

These 3 strategies: noticing the 2 F’s, having more fun, and surrounding yourself with more of what you desire, will go a long way in getting unstuck. To become unstoppable, and find much more time in your day, be sure to come along to my next Lorman.com webinar. It’s on April 12th and you can save your space, with a 50% discount using this link.  

And that’s not all!  I’m also having something super special I’m doing in April, but I’m not going to tell you what that is yet. So I want you just to kind of keep your eyes and ears peeled and get excited with me.

Let me know what next move you’re going to make based on this blog – I can’t wait to know what resonated with you the most and what action you’re going to take.