Live Your Best Life!

Have you ever heard the phrase, “I’ll believe it when I see it”? If you use this phrase it means you are skeptical of something. You are not sure it will happen so you sit back and wait for evidence to appear that will help you believe it. While this may be a good way of thinking if someone has made empty promises to you in the past so that you don’t get your hopes up, in general, this is not a good way of thinking when you are talking about your goals or what you want in your future. When thinking about these things, you should flip this phrase upside down and tell yourself, “I’ll see it when I believe it”.

Visualization, also known as mental imagery, can be a powerful tool for achieving success in all areas of your life. Whether you have personal, professional, or academic goals, creating a mental image of achieving your desired outcome and imagining yourself performing the steps that will get you there will help pull you forward...

If you are like most people, you are interested in a lot of different things, but that does not necessarily mean you are committed to them. Maybe you want to consider a new career, starting a business, starting a new hobby, finding romance, improving your finances, organizing our home, or taking your health and fitness to the next level. When you are interested in something, you spend time thinking about it. This may generate feelings of excitement, curiosity, and maybe even a little fear or overwhelm.

Dreaming is one of my favorite things to do. For me, it creates feelings of excitement and energizes me. I can dream all day long, however, dreaming alone won’t get me anywhere. This is where commitment comes in. While being interested in something or dreaming about something requires thinking, commitment requires action. If you are truly committed to something, you will continue to pursue it, even when it gets hard, boring, frustrating, or inconvenient. If you are...

If you are reading this, you are likely someone with goals who wants to improve their life in some way. One thing I’ve noticed with goals is that many people spend a lot of time thinking about them, dreaming about them, and mapping them out…and then never achieve them. Believe me, I have been there many times my friend. Why is this a common experience for so many of us?

It is because dreaming and doing are two very different experiences. Thinking about your goals and what you want in your future is exciting, energizing, and can bring about a lot of hope surrounding what is possible. These are all feelings you want to experience, and therefore thinking about your goals is reinforced by the positive feelings you experience when you do this. On the other hand, doing what it takes to achieve your goals, especially if they will stretch you or challenge you, can be uncomfortable and create feelings of uncertainty. While pushing yourself to achieve your goals, you may...

Why is it that some people keep going and keep working towards their goal, even when things are challenging, and others give up? Many people attribute this to motivation which does play a role, however, as a motivation expert, I can tell you that motivation alone won’t cut it. Motivation is defined as, “the general desire or willingness of someone to do something”. Being really clear about “why” you want to achieve something is tied to motivation, however, when you are working towards a goal and things get challenging, it can be very easy for motivation to decrease. Your desire to keep going is challenged when things get uncomfortable because it is human nature to want to stay in your comfort zone. 

Drive, on the other hand, is easier to sustain and can help you power through when things get hard. The definition of drive is, “an innate, biologically determined urge to attain a goal or satisfy a need”. While motivation taps into your...

Do you have a “not to do” list? If you don’t, you should consider it! A “not to do" list is a list of things you are trying not to do at all, or not to do at certain times of your day / week, so that you are freed up to focus on other things. We all live in a world where there is a finite amount of time yet it seems like some people are higher achievers, get more done, or seem to have more time for fun and relaxation. Why is that when we all have the same twenty-four hours in our day?

I don’t believe that everyone who seems to be getting the results they want in their life is grinding it out each day, not sleeping, or that they have superhuman powers. I believe the reason is that they have clarity and prioritize what they want to get out of each day, week, month, and year. They are saying “yes” to the things they want more of in their lives and saying “no” to the things that don’t move them towards what they truly want. If...

Do you ever find that you keep moving things on your “to do” list from one day to the next? From one week to the next? From one month to the next? How about from one year to the next? I can relate to this. I like lists and I like crossing things off lists, however, I recently realized that I was carrying over more things from one list to the next instead of crossing them off. When I looked into this further, I realized that two things were happening. First, the items on the list that were just for me, and did not involve others, were the items getting bumped. Second, I realized that of the items just for me that were getting bumped, they were the hard things, the boring things, or the things I not confident would turn out exactly as I wanted them to.

The tasks that involved me getting something done for someone else, showing up for someone else, or involved someone else in any way were getting done. It was the things that were just for me, about me, or that did...

Did you start the new year excited about what was possible for you? Did you start the new year with a plan for what you wanted to achieve? Maybe it was a health goal, a financial goal, a relationship goal, or a career goal. Maybe it was that you wanted to start a new hobby, learn a new language, sign up for a class, or get your house organized. Whatever it was, weren’t you excited when thinking about it? Are you still as excited? Have you made progress towards it?

If the answer is “no” to either you are no longer as excited, or that you have not made progress towards it, you are 100% normal and this is for you. Keep reading so that you understand why this happened and learn how to get some forward momentum. I absolutely love to dream and to think about all the things I want to do and learn. I can make lists for days. I can schedule my projects and plans out with color codes and be really organized about how and when I am going to work on my goal(s). Can you...

I am someone who likes to have a clear plan. I like to map goals out, break things down into tasks, know exactly what needs to happen, and assign a timeline to them. Can you relate to this process? This process works for many things such as cooking and following a recipe, having a list of chores that need to get done, having a list of tasks that need to get done at work, and mapping out a plan for a vacation. What this does not work well for is when you are setting big goals for yourself,  and trying to do something you have never done before.

When you are pushing yourself out of your comfort zone, doing something you have never done before, maybe doing something that both scares and excites you, you won’t have everything figured out when you start. Because of this, many people never take any action to make their dream or goal a reality. They get so stuck on the “how” part of the dream, that they decide it is not for them when they cannot figure out...

This is a good question for you to ask yourself and chances are that when things get hard, sometimes you give up, and sometimes you get up. There is no judgement either way, however, having a process that helps you get really clear about whether you want to give up or get back up, can be helpful.

Typically, when we stop working on something or have thoughts of wanting to quit it is because things are not going according to plan and/or things get uncomfortable. It is human nature to avoid pain and discomfort, so this makes perfect sense from a human evolution perspective. Our brains are wired to alert us when something is making us uncomfortable and will try to tell us to stop because its job is to keep us “safe” and comfortable. This is really helpful when we are in physical danger, however, that is not the experience of most of us today. Instead of highlighting physical danger, it highlights anything that causes us to feel difficult emotions, that challenges us...

One of the most effective strategies for making real and lasting changes in your life, is to get really honest about where you are today. While it is important to have a roadmap for where you are going, if you are not honest about where things are now, and how they got to be the way they are, it will be harder to get to your destination.

To start this process, ask yourself what is one thing that you would like to change. It may be tempting to want to make a list of 3, or 5, or even 10 things, however, start with one thing and you can add others as you go. Once you identify the one thing you want to start with, ask yourself the following questions and then answer them, being as specific as possible. If you want my guide to help you though this process step-by-step, click HERE.

• Why is it important for me to make a change in this area?

• What do I want this change to look like? How do I want things to look and feel when I have made the change?

• How...