Archive for February, 2011
Back to the fundamentals
Four years ago this month, my Uncle John passed away from cancer. During his eulogy, one of his basketball coaching buddies shared that John always preached fundamentals to his teams. “You’ve got to do the fundamentals. You have to practice the fundamentals and get them down.”
This week I had the opportunity to meet one-on-one with Jason LaChance from the corporate office of NSA, the maker of Juice Plus. During our meeting the Juice Plus business model finally hit home because Jason took the time to walk me through the fundamentals. When I had signed on as a Juice Plus distributor, I spun my wheels and worked inefficiently for six weeks to earn a promotion. Then I went on a three-month hiatus because I couldn’t keep living that wheel-spinning emotion. Now thanks to Jason, I have a plan of attack involving fundamentals. I understand what I need to do, day-in and day-out, as far as my Juice Plus business is concerned. I can finally start DOING and move on from THINKING about the best way to do this, that or the other. And it is so. very. freeing.
Being the thinker that I am, I want to add more to the picture and get the fundamentals down in the other parts of my life as well. And not only that, I want to add in systems, discipline, consistency and balance in order to take ownership of my life. Ah, structure…it’s sounding fabulous!
Fundamentals: basic principles that serve as the groundwork of a system
System: an organized and coordinated method; a procedure
Discipline: training to act in accordance with the fundamentals
Consistency: steadfast adherence to the fundamentals
Balance: a state of equilibrium (in life)
That is what I’ll be working on for this week. Gathering my thoughts on fundamentals, systems, discipline, consistency and balance. For now I know I want to spend 2 hours a day on my Juice Plus business and 30 minutes to an hour building up SaraHefty.com. Studying, reading and doing grad school homework needs to be figured out, as does my workout and tanning routine. Not to mention I need to throw in my part-time work schedule too. Getting back to the fundamentals will take some work, but I can’t wait to have a schedule and a routine again!
Details next week!
Stay true.
Stay true. A command so simple, yet so difficult.
I first encountered stay true while reading an email from Loren Slocum. Stay true is her sign-off. Rather than sincerely or kind regards, she uses stay true to bid readers, team members, friends adieu.
Now I won’t be the first – or the last – person to tell you that Loren Slocum is an amazing person. She’s one of Tony Robbins‘ top people, founder of Lobella (an organization dedicated to changing the world one woman at a time), leader of Team YOLO (You Only Life Once) Juice Plus, wife, mother, author, speaker – an incredible human being. So to read the words stay true on a daily basis (thanks to signing up for Lobella’s daily quotes) from a woman who clearly walks her talk, is a powerful thing. It drips on you. It sinks in. Slowly. But it sinks in. Every day. A little reminder, a little suggestion, a little encouragement, to stay true.
Staying true is liberating. You free yourself from your passion-crushing burdens by staying true to who you are. To stay true to who you are you must, in the words of Socrates, know thyself. And you must – MUST – face your fear and BELIEVE IN YOURSELF. YOU are this incredibly strong person and YOU can do anything YOU put your heart’s desire and your passion into. Believe in yourself. Face your fears. Find your passion. Be bold. Stay true. Become the best version of yourself. You are worth it. YOU. ARE. WORTH. IT. It’s that simple. After all…
Your work is to discover your work and then with all your heart to give yourself to it. -Buddah
With that, I must share with you some big news – I QUIT FREELANCING TODAY. While I was making this decision (something I’ve been thinking about for months!) I was scared that I wouldn’t have enough money to pay my bills every month. But once I made the decision to quit and shared that decision with my clients, I knew it had been the right move for me.
I feel so EMPOWERED AND JOYFUL! To know that I am no longer responsible for allocating my limited creative time and energy to work on tasks that have nothing to do with fulfilling my purpose and changing the world is, in a word, FREEING. To know that I have 100% ownership of my creative time and energy fills me with a happiness, peace, and sense of belief-in-MYSELF that I didn’t know could exist. I’d been using freelancing, and in one case working for someone I no longer respected, as a crutch, an excuse, a safety-net and a thing-to-do so I wouldn’t have make the time for my own projects. One excuse down, one staying true experience had, one motivated woman. (Thank you Loren!)
How will you stay true?
The powerful why: Mother of all motivators
Today, I came across this video on Jess Constable’s blog. Think UPS whiteboard guy meets Demetri Martin and together they explain how humans are motivated. Turns out, we’re not horses.
In fact, when it comes right down to it, we’re most motivated when we have ownership of our purpose and are mastering skills in order to contribute something meaningful to the world.
But how do we own our purpose? First, we must define our purpose. Then we take ownership of it by drilling down and discovering our powerful why. Our powerful why is the core motivator for living out our purpose.
For example, my purpose is to take care of those I love by helping as many people as possible realize their dreams of health and wealth.
Now, to get to my powerful why, we start asking one question over and over and over again: Why? Ask why at least five times to really drill down and discover your powerful why.
Again, using my purpose as an example…
- Why do I want to take care of those I love by helping as many people as possible realize their dreams of health and wealth? Because I want to be able to support all of my family by doing work that changes lives.
- Why do I want to be able to support all of my family by doing work that changes lives? Because then my family will be together and happy and my life will be spent helping others.
- Why do I want my family to be together and happy and spend my life helping others? Because then my family will be close-knit and my life will have made a difference in the world.
- Why do I want my family to be close-knit and my life to have made a difference in the world? Because my family needs to create and share more memories together and I need to honor the hard-work and sacrifices made by my parents and grandparents on my behalf.
- Why does my family need to create and share more memories together and why do I need to honor the hard-work and sacrifices made by my parents and grandparents on my behalf? Because my family needs to enjoy our time together and because my parents and grandparents worked too many long, hard hours away from the ones they loved so that I would have the privilege of a college education and the ability to improve our family’s standard of living by doing the life-changing work of my choosing.
Do you see how with each iteration of “Why?” comes a deeper and deeper revelation? Knowing that my powerful why is “to honor the long, hard hours my parents and grandparents put in away from the ones they loved by having our family enjoy our time together and raising our family’s standard of living by doing the life-changing work of my choosing” is much more emotional than “supporting all of my family by doing work that changes lives”.
Define your purpose and start drilling down by asking why, why, why, why, why! After all, the world is waiting for you to come alive and take ownership of your purpose.
