I was watching a video this morning by John Assaraf in which he talks about his recent goal to drop 25 lbs.  In this video he uses the term “excusitis” – in other words, making excuses for not achieving a goal we want.  John said that besides getting rid of all excuses he also set a clear goal and visualized achieving that goal.

John’s comments led me to ask myself if I too have excusitis because there are some goals I haven’t achieved.  As someone who works with women to assist them to release what’s holding them back from the happy life and happy family they want, I can smell an excuse a mile away!  And I don’t allow clients to get away with excuses and I encourage them to take actions every day towards what they want. 

I realized that what’s been standing in my own way of some of my goals is that I haven’t visualized them clearly enough.  Not only that, I haven’t written them all down. 

Some goals, the ones that are well within my own control to achieve, I can easily visualize and take action on.  Like the renovation of our new Fresh Perspective Family office.  I set the goal, saw it completed, and it’s done!

The bigger goals though, those are the ones I can’t visualize or write down.  I still take action on them, but it’s not always focused action and so it’s not really possible for me to measure how close I’m getting or not getting to the goal.

So what is it about the big goals and my inability to write them down or visualize them?  Because I’ve tried and I just sabotage myself every time in different ways.  I’ve nailed it down to fear of lack of control for sure.  I’ve also started to catch the language I use when I talk or think about those big goals.  My language really tells me I don’t fully believe I can achieve them…so why bother writing them down or visualizing them.  It’s easier just to take actions that lead me “somewhere in the vicinity of the goal” because then I can at least feel good that I’m doing something. 

If I were my own coach I would have had a big talking to with myself.  And that’s exactly what I’ve done.  I’m watching what my language and my emotions tell me about my beliefs around control, success, big acheivements, and even failure.  I’m excited to observe this process as much as I am excited to take myself through it.  It’s easy for me to take clients through NLP, Hypnosis, and Time Empowerment® and I plan on being a good client. 

I deserve to reach the big, mountainous goals too!  And I’m willing to face that Inner Control Freak once again and break through the barriers to being a more confident me, a more loving mom, a more successful business person, and all the other ways in which I will come closer to who I am in my heart.

I will keep you posted on my progress and successes.

Photos by: melodysheep

Perfection…seems like such a…well…perfect thing to strive for, doesn’t it?  So many of us have gotten caught up in wanting to reach it and have felt inadequate and far away even when we try really hard.

And moms tend to be the best at trying hard – and falling down even harder.  Perfection makes us feel like we’re not good enough and like we will never be as happy as we could be.  Because that green, harmonious, and perfect family life is always on the other side of the perfect fence.

Perfectionism can also cause us to procrastinate.  Truly, how can you ever finish something if you’re waiting for it to be absolutely perfect?  It’s really a no-win situation – especially when we hear our children one day say “I’m not good enough” or “I can’t get it perfect.”

Guess what, perfection is a learned attitude and parents are their kids’ greatest teachers.  So what can parents do to ensure kids don’t learn this self defeating attitude?

One way is to focus on excelllence.  Yes. Simple excellence. 

In fact, how do you feel about settling for excellence instead?  Settling for anything can make you feeli uncomfortable, but excellence is a way better choice to settle for than perfection.  For example, take a look at any survey with a scale of experience…1 being poor and 5 (or 10) being excellent.  It never says perfect. 

When you label yourself as a perfectionist you have a great excuse for not starting a project or not finishing one.  Ask yourself how is this label serving you and supporting what you want to accomplish in your life.  Sell your perfectionism and purchase excellence and you’ll be amazed at how different the world will be.

AND, you can feel good about what you’re teaching your kids too.  You and your children will be a lot happier understanding that perfection is a fleeting state and puts you under a lot of pressure.  Excellence can be easily attained and is just as good.

I finally watched the Oprah finale and I bawled the whole time.  She inspired me and made me believe and this was the first show of hers that I’d ever seen.  We’ve never been a big TV watching family so we haven’t had cable for years.  My personal opinion is that most shows on TV are uninspiring to say the least, but I do wish I had been able to watch Oprah. 

Every night before I fall asleep I ask for clarity on issues or topics that I can’t resolve on my own.  Usually it’s Angels (yes, we all talk to Angels in our house) or my Spirit Guides who give me direction, last night, it was Oprah.  And here is what she said:

“You have to do one thing at a time because you’re scattered.  Find the meaningful and work on it until it’s completed.  You can work on the meaningful in many ways, just make sure it’s one thing at a time.”

This dream was so vivid that it almost didn’t seem like a dream.   I’m so grateful because those words helped me out a lot.  So I’ve made a list of all the projects that I will finish that I have on the go.  And even though for some reason I’ve resisted it, I will block off chunks of time to do my work until things are finished – no distractions.  I have my egg timer all ready to count time for me and I’ll keep you posted on how it’s going.  I’m excited to finish a bunch of stuff because lots of new projects are coming down the pipe.

Kasia Rachfall helps parents stop letting their past to determine their future and their now.  Did the above resonate with you? Do you disagree? Do you have a new insight to add?  Please share your thoughts.

My kids are both in karate and one of the things they practice is board breaking.  There are several different colors of boards – from white to black – each indicating a higher level of difficulty.  White being the easiest to break and black the hardest.  The kids have to kick the board to break it in half.   Each board is made of plastic and hinged in a way to simulate a wooden board 12″ square board.

Kasia breaking a board at NLP training.

The kids all line up and one by one they attempt to break the boards.  They key is in how they set up their approach and where they focus their energy – strength has actually very little to do with what color of board you can break.

Our kids used to just run up and give the board a random kick, usually without successfully breaking it.  They’ve now learned to take their time and set up their stance, focus, and energy before they kick to make sure their foot lands where it is supposed to.  They also have to envision their foot going through the board – not just stop on the board.  More often than not, they succeed in breaking consistently more difficult boards. 

I’ve broken a wooden board at trainings before and the same principles hold true – focus, energy, follow through.

There is a lot we can learn from this simple board breaking exercise – as kids and as parents.  Breaking a board can be like accomplishing any number of things in our life.  Sometimes we can get caught up in just wanting to get stuff done and we hurry through it without much thought.  The task or goal may get accomplished or it may turn out completely differently than we want.

When we take the time to figure out exactly what we want our outcome to be and focus our energy, the resources and guidance tend to show up and we succeed.  Our subconscious mind gets on board and helps us notice all the ways in which we are achieving our goal.  This is called activating the Reticular Activating System.  If we rush through things without knowing what we want then we will miss the mark or end up with results we didn’t want.

Slowing down and focusing to gain clarity about what we want allows us to achieve faster.  This is a life skill that we can apply everywhere.

Successful people make decisions quickly even if they don’t have all the information.  Unsuccessful people tend to want to research more and know everything before they make a decision.  My coach Fabienne Fredrickson, underlines this every time we speak.  The reason successful people are able to make decisions so quickly is because they know what they want. They have clearly defined their vision and goals and are able to, in an instant, ascertain if a given decision will bring them closer or further away from that vision.

Imagine you have two weeks to have fun and relax on holidays.   You decided to get in your car and drive somewhere.  Without knowing where you are going on holidays you will spend the two weeks driving around, wasting energy and gas, and getting very frustrated. 

The unfortunate phenomenon is that some parents go through life like this – and create frustration for themselves and their family.  The kids learn this and end up repeating the same cycles in their own lives.

I’m not saying you need to write down goals for absolutely everything in your family life.  I do think that it’s good for parents to be on the same page and to know what types of life skills, values, and beliefs they want children to learn from them.  There are many important things to learn that are not necessarily taught in school. 

This is simple to do – have a conversation with your partner or with whoever is an influencer in your children’s lives and talk about what type of family dynamic you want to create.  What type of relationship do you want to have with your children?  How do you want to communicate with them? How do you want to help them have the best shot at success in life?

We’ve done this in our family and we can steer through situations and decisions easily because we know what we want.  Even with the things we can’t necessarily control, it’s easier to act or respond because we have a foundation from which we’re working together. 

Teaching your children about creating a vision and goals for your family will give them an incredible gift to do the same in all areas of their life.  Knowing where you’re going will make it easy for you to know when you get there.  I hear parents say all the time “I just want to be happy.” Well, if happiness hit you in the face, would you know it?  Of course, happiness is what we all want for our children and for ourselves – and we need to know what that means to us so that we don’t miss it when we get it.

YOU hold the keys to living an empowered life in YOUR hands. When you take 100% responsibility for your choices, your actions and your inactions, your life will change immediately.  You’ll recognize the excuses and reasons you have for staying in your comfort zone and suffering through your current story, and your story will change!  You are the creator of your reality.  Dr Wayne Dyer says that when you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change. It’s true. You will see immediate results when you use this book because your mindset will shift.

Are you squeazing 36 hours worth of stuff into a 24 hour day?  You’re so busy doing things for your family that I’m willing to bet that YOU come last! At the same time you’re probably saying to yourself, “It’s my responsibility to do these things! I’m the mom!”

Do you get so run down trying to fulfill the roles that you don’t take time for yourself, and then complain about to your girlfriends or husband? 

Deep down, you know if you let go of the guilt about taking care of yourself and you stopped feeling afraid of changing things that aren’t working in your life, you would feel happier, more fulfilled, and less resentful of all those responsibilities you have taken on.

Do you feel you’ve lost yourself somewhere along the way and you’re taking care of everything and everyone else except you?  You tell yourself “someday” you will be able to find the time to enjoy your hobbies and work on your personal growth. For now, you’re going through the motions day after day — and the years slip by. 

Just because this is your life now doesn’t mean it has to be that way forever. In fact, you have the power to change it today.  Right now. You just have to choose to change and give yourself permission. This is very important. You can only change what you are 100% committed to changing. 

Changing your life doesn’t have to be complicated or take a long time. What it does take is commitment from you to put yourself and your needs first, to work on yourself, to be honest and willing to make whatever changes you need to make to achieve the life you want.

You must be willing to let go of excuses.  My own mentor, Fabienne Fredrickson, always tells me: when you’re interested, you do what’s convenient; when you’re committed, you do whatever it takes.  This John Assaraf quote is now a favourite of mine.

There are three requisites to creating change.  First you must focus on what you want.  Then you must clear out the negativity, limitations, and other mental and emotional gunk and sludge that is keeping you stuck.  Third, you must maintain your focus and take action.   You have the keys within yourself to unlock the door to endless possibilities.  

This book is divided into three sections.  Begin by working through the first section on getting clear on what you want.  Choose a key that you feel comfortable with and work on it for a one-week period.  Once you master the key, choose another one. While some of these suggest actions, others are simply concepts that involve making a conscious choice.  Practicing the actions will help you make them automatic. This process will take some time, and it is meant to . . . the purpose is not to overwhelm you.  I recommend first choosing the keys that speak to you the most or the ones that you know you can commit to easily.

Commit to yourself 100% and don’t waiver — no matter what anyone says.  These keys will light your path to your transformation into an empowered and fulfilled woman, a woman who has reclaimed herself and is now better able to not only fulfill her role as mom, wife, and professional, but also as a woman and a citizen of this world. You’ll become a woman who knows that the world is a better place because she is living and walking this earth.

Now available on Amazon here.

Now available for purchase in Electronic Form here.

I took a different approach to this year’s goals.  This new approach was inspired by the book Manifesting Change by Mike Dooley.  In it he talks a lot about how to really get what you want. And although I disagree with some of it and in my opinion, he skirts a few issues that are important, it’s a fantastic read and really gets you thinking about how to get what you want.  I mean really, in layman’s terms and it makes sense what he says.

So my goals for this year are still related to my business and my family life, but this year I’m focused more on internal stuff.  By that I mean on the way I feel and what type of experience I want to creat in my life as opposed to just having a goal for goal’s sake and because it’s what I should have as a business owner. 

My main focus this year is prosperity – that’s my one word theme for 2011.  All my results that I want to achieve center around this theme.  And it’s not just about money because money has only a little bit to do with prosperity. 

This year I want to creat meaning in every moment that I have with my family.  I want to continue to connect in meaningful ways with friends and new business people.  I want to feel that every action I take or don’t take really has a purpose in bringing me closer to my end result.  I want to greedily FEEL more good emotions than negative ones.  I want to do whatever I can do help others become what they are meant to be. I also want to take very good care of me – emotionally, physically, and spiritually. 

I’m going to

1. Be Grateful for everything I am and have in my life right now.

2. Focus on my end results.

3. Take action every day.

All these things bring prosperity in material and non-material ways.  So as much as I have financial goals and fitness goals with numbers in them, the numbers are not necessarily the main focus for me.  The experience is the main focus.  And that’s different from what I’ve done in the past.  I’m really excited about my year and my new approach!

Have New Years Resolutions become cliches? For some people Resolutions represent a goal that is set but never achieved. Some people set a Resolution because it’s tradition, even if they don’t end up achieving it. And some people don’t make any Resolutions because they just assume they won’t reach them anyway. Some people, however, do set Resolutions and achieve them – what is their secret?

A Resolution is a different label for a goal or an end result. Successful people set goals and then take action to achieving those goals. And achieving goals has nothing to do with having the whole route figured out and planned in detail. In fact, that’s where a lot of people go wrong and end up giving up on their goals.

Why are goals important? Because they help you figure out that you’ve arrived at the place where you wanted to be. Below are some secrets that I’ve learned about getting what you want in life. If you’ve heard these secrets before and are tempted to discount them because they haven’t worked in the past, consider this: have these strategies not worked because this is all rubbish? Or have these strategies not worked because you haven’t implemented them?

Secret 1: A good goal has a well defined end result. If you don’t know what you really want to achieve then how will you know when you have achieved it? If you don’t know, you will end up meandering and wandering around, creating more of the same in your life. Without knowing what specific results you want to have, you will just get vague results.

Secret 2: The goal must be meaningful to you and ecological for you, your family, your community, and the planet. This means that you set goals because you want to and not because someone else wants you to. When we try to do something to make someone else happy, we invariably fail. This doesn’t mean you don’t take others into account when setting your end result. It’s imperative to consider others and how they will be affected by your achievement of a certain goal.

Secret 3: Taking action. If you sit on your sofa and visualize all day how wonderful it will be when you achieve your goal, you will not achieve it. We live in a physical world and we must put in energy to get something in return. We must take action in order to manifest our end results. This doesn’t mean having everything figured out in detail. It simply means that we take action based on the steps we feel are the best steps to take towards our goal and then we tweak as we go.

Secret 4: Celebrating obstacles. Yes, celebrating them, not bemoaning them. If you did sit on your sofa and just visualize all day you would never reach an obstacle. Consider obstacles to be like mile markers telling you that you are getting closer to your end result. Obstacles are also opportunities for you to course correct and evaluate your progress.

How do you set goals properly? The good news is, there is no proper way. The even better news is that there are some easy guidelines you can follow:

1. Know your end result and be specific.

2. State your end result in positive language and as if you’ve already achieved it: “I have meaningful, clear, and respectful communication with my family” instead of “I don’t want to fight with my family”

3. Let go of whatever is standing in your way of achieving your desired end result.

4. Take action in the general direction of your goal, tweak or readjust your course as needed, and do something every day to move you closer to your goal.

5. Celebrate your obstacles and also your achievements.

No matter what you want to call it: a New Years Resolution, a Goal, or an End Result, it makes sense to define what you want to achieve. This way you will know you have succeeded in your life the way you want to instead of just meandering, hoping for the best.

What are you willing to do differently next year to make sure you’re in the place you want to be in December 2011?

Do you sometimes have days when you feel like you got nothing done? It seems like you time spend zipping from one errand to the next, take the kids from here to there, do this, do that…and at the end of it all your to do list remains undone. Been there done that! It’s the fastest way to frustration!

What if you were to stop and actually take inventory of what you did accomplish during such a day? That list would be long, I’m sure. Just because you didn’t do everything on your proverbial to do list, doesn’t mean you got nothing done.

Writing down all the big and small tasks that you do accomplish each day goes a long way to make you feel really good about yourself. It’s like having a backwards to do list. Instead of writing the list and crossing off things as you do them, you just write the things you’ve done! To me the best part of a list is the crossing off part – I’ve even writted in tasks I’ve accomplished that weren’t on there just so I can cross them off!

Feeling good about yourself and being grateful for what you do accomplish is important to keep your energy and motivation high. This is why taking an inventory of what you’ve accomplished this past year is a great idea to set the momentum for the new year.

It’s easy to slip into that same mentality of “I got nothing done last year that I wanted to do!” Chances are that’s not true at all. Take a moment and write out a list of all your accomplishments since the beginning of the year and revel in it!

And if there were some things that you wanted to do but didn’t – well, you can choose to focus on doing them now. Ask yourself:

What changes will you make that will help you accomplish those goals next year?

What resources do you already have in place to accomplish them?

What resources do you need?

Then just take action. And remember to pat yourself on the back for everything you do get done. Focusing your energy on what you don’t do or have or on what’s wrong in your life brings you more of the same.

What are you willing to do differently next year to make sure you’re in the place you want to be in December 2011?

What You Don’t Want

You’ve probably heard it said that what you think about expands. What does this mean exactly? It means that wherever you put your focus and attention, you get more of that. Think about it this way: in the area of your life where you have everything you want and it’s working like a finely oiled machine, your focus is very likely not on all the things that make it not work. It’s on those wonderful things that make it such a great part of your life! If you’re a healthy and fit individual that is in great physical state then you don’t go around worrying that you’re going to lose that. Just like if you have a meaningful, close and loving relationship with your spouse you don’t spend your days thinking about how to avoid the next fight or argument. You don’t have to worry about such things because they are not part of your life. Because you don’t think about them or focus on them, they don’t come into your awareness. You focus on being healthy and on loving and respecting your spouse. And that’s what you get more of!

Now, in the area where you don’t have everything you want you probably spend a lot of your day worrying and thinking about how bad things are. If you don’t like your current job you focus on all the ways in which you don’t like it. Or if you’re battling your weight you focus on all the ways in which your body doesn’t behave or look like what you want it to. And you get more of the same! Even when you try to change something you are stopped by all sorts of fears that come up for you.

We can look at this from the scientific perspective too. Your unconscious mind doesn’t process negatives. Your unconscious mind is also the goal getter, it’s where your values, motivation, behaviours, beliefs, and attitudes are encoded. (This is why this System focuses so much on working with your unconscious mind – because that’s where the change must occur for it to last.)

When you think about what you want in your amazing relationship your unconscious mind helps you get more of that because you’re thinking about it in positive ways. For example, I want respect and love and closeness.

When you think about not wanting to be heavy or not wanting that job you hate, you think about it in the negative. For example, “I don’t want to be heavy and unhealthy” or “I wish I wasn’t so tired all the time” or “I don’t like this job.” Your unconscious mind can’t process “do not want” or “do not like” and what it hears you saying and thinking is “I do want” or “I do like.” And that’s what it helps you get.

“You can’t not think about something without first thinking about it; think about that.” ~Dr Matthew James.

The good news is that you already know what you don’t want. Once you clear all that out you can begin to focus on what you do want so that you get more of it in your life. Worksheet #2 will get you started listing all the things you don’t want.  Sometimes you need to empty yourself of all the negatives in order to be able to focus on the positives.