Hi Peeps!
I’ve been out of blogging-commission for a while, but I’m back!  Hi!

I’ve actually been agonizing over the fact that I’m a total novice when it comes to the blog and social networking world and I’ve been doing the thing that I normally do which is to try to take more classes, talk to more people, do more “things” in order to try to learn how to blog.  I’ve been doing everything EXCEPT actually blogging.  Go figure, eh?  Sometimes the most obvious solution is right in front of your face, huh? 

Isn’t that funny how sometimes we try to do sooooo much in other areas to get “better” at something when really alls we need to do is practice the thing that we want to get better at?  Like the example a bunch of self-help gurus give all the time which is driving a car.  At first we sucked at it.  We had to think about every move, but now we can drive, talk on our cell phone, chat with our neighboring passenger and eat all at the same time.

So, I’m going to be taking my own advice that I give others and I’ll be actively working on two of my goals (amongst the many that I have) which are:

(1) Be Fearless.  Take some kind of action towards whatever it is that is fearful for me or is holding me back.

and

(2) Populate GoalGetterGirls.com with valuable and helpful content.  Begin doing whatever it takes to start infusing GoalGetterGirls.com with cool tips, tools, tricks and trainings to help you transform your life to get the results that you want.

Am I going to be helpful and brilliant all the time?  I’d like to think so, but, hellz, I’m a realist!  I know that sometimes I may not hit the mark for you.  But, what I do know and this is my commitment to you, is that I will share with you the best of what I have. 

I freakin’ love learning so much and I will share with you what I’m learning about, what distinctions I’ve made and what skills I’ve developed so that you can share in what I’ve learned to date.  I’ll share with you what goals I’m working on and what’s worked for me and not in the various Areas of Attention while traveling my own life’s journey.

Hopefully you can glean even a small helpful distinction heres and theres that helps you on your own life path.  That would be awesome!

Okay!  Until I blog again, which should be soon!  Laterz my pals!

I’ve been up all night because I get insomnia from time to time.  Sometimes it’s annoying as heck because I just want to sleep and I’m lying awake staring at the ceiling, BUT, last night was my favorite kind of insomnia.  Those are the nights I get SO MUCH done.  Yahhhhoooo!

My recent obsession has been to come up with a Goals Management system that works for me.  I’m currently frankensteining together a system that uses concepts from Franklin Covey, Tony Robbins’ Time of Your Life program, and David Allen’s Getting Things Done system (also known as GTD).

For eons I’ve been struggling with coming up with a system that works for me and I’m finally getting closer.

My main challenge has been that I have so MANY goals that I want to accomplish that I get overwhelmed by the sheer volume of things I need to get done and I work on a little bit of this and a little bit of that but I don’t really feel like I’m moving any one of them forward with absolute momentum and certainty.

Zoraida and I call our HUGE goals that feel overwhelming “elephants” because of that old saying that goes, “How do you eat an elephant?” And the answer is, “One bite at a time.”

Well, I was telling Zoraida that it felt like I was taking a nibble out of the elephant’s tail and a bite out of its ear and a lick off of its body.  Hellz, my elephant had no worries that I was going to eat him.

Until now.  (Watch out elephant!!)

I won’t go into detail of what my system is right now because I’m still refining it, but here are a couple of takeaways that I’ve learned in regards to Goal Management.

All of the systems that I’m frankensteining together have a lot of common concepts.  Two concepts (among the many) that I found to be absolutely critical are the following:

1.  Know WHAT you WANT.  Be specific. You need to have a super clear vision of what it is you want and you need to know specifically what needs to be occurring when you have what you want.

A great question I’m practicing asking myself every time I state what I want is:  “What am I doing when I have that?” (Example:  I want Financial Freedom.  “What am I doing when I have that?” I’m lying on a white sand beach on a tropical island.  The sun is just setting, the air is warm, but not muggy.  My Dude and I are drinking cocktails enjoying the sun set.)

Notice that I can get even more specific with that image.  I could identify WHAT tropical island and WHICH sand beach.  The important part, however, is to simply begin imagining what it really, really looks like when you have that thing you are envisioning.

2.  Know WHY you want it.  Write it down. The purpose of why you’re going after what you want is actually extremely critical.  I kept thinking to myself all of these years, “Hellz, I don’t need to write down why I want that.  It’s obvious, isn’t it?”

Well, after doing some documenting about why I want some of the goals I stated, I realized that the reason I thought was so important wasn’t compelling to me at all.  No wonder I wasn’t making progress towards my goals!  (Example:  I said that I wanted to weigh 108 pounds and my reason was:  “Because I want to look good.”

Nooooo, duh!  I realized that I needed to have WAY MORE reasons about why it’s important for me to want to look good so I have a reason to haul my butt out to get some exercise and a reason to say “no” to that fifth slice of pizza with the delicious extra cheese and extra sauce.  (Hmmm…I definitely have more work to do in coming up with compelling reasons to weigh 108!)

By mastering the art of creating a vision and systematically breaking that vision down into manageable, bite-sized pieces, anyone can accomplish anything, I truly believe that.

The challenge is to be able to manage all of those bite-sized pieces so they don’t get lost in the shuffle. 

I’m looking forward to taking my Goals Management Frankenstein-system out on the town.  I’ll let ya know how it goes!

As soon as I walk through my front door, there is my little doggy wagging his tail in excitement. I’m so exhausted, but that little bugger gives me his big doe eyes and looks at me like “When are you walking me mama?”

Since Lucky doesn’t understand (nor does he care), let me give you an idea of my typical work day.

• I’m up at 4:30am and out of the house by 5am.
• I’m in the gym from 5:15-6am.
• I get ready in that stinky gym bathroom and then I’m off to work.
• I’m at my job from 7am – 4:30pm.
• I don’t get home until 5:30 in the evening due to carpooling and picking up my daughter from daycare.

During our pre-dog days, I would just go home, cook dinner, and settle into bed. I would have absolutely no energy to do anything afterwards.

Ideally, a nice relaxing walk in the evening would help me not only settle down, but burn off a few extra calories. But I always had the legitimate excuse that I was too tired.

I’ve read the advice given to “find an exercise partner.” I thought my husband would be my walking partner. Well, he’s full of excuses too. Then I had my daughter and I thought “She’ll go on a walk with me.” Well, like father like daughter.

And then I got lucky. Literally.

My dog’s name is Lucky. There are no excuses with him. In fact, he’s the one pushing me out the door. He’s the one I have to answer to and he’s just so darn cute, I can’t say “No.” Well, it does help that I don’t want him to go pee or #2 in the house.

So now I have a nice relaxing walk every night and I’m able to burn off some extra calories too. I realized that even though I was looking for a human exercise partner, I found one in a canine. We need to look at the variety of options that are available to us to help us reach our goals. It may not be what we planned, but we still can achieve the same goals through other means. 

One of the best pieces of advice I’ve gotten came from a good friend and informal mentor of mine, Noreen.  I met Noreen during my early years as an Aviation Maintenance Technician (the less technical and more familiar term would be grease monkey).  Noreen had already been in aviation for many years, so she knew a lot of people and had a lot of connections.  Whenever I had insecurities about something, I always went to Noreen for advice.  You have to understand, the aviation industry can be a brutal environment for a woman.  I’ve always been open to any recommendations; however, I paid especially close attention to Noreen.

Anyway, on one particular occasion, I came to her about a job offer.  I told her that I wasn’t sure I was experienced enough for the job, I didn’t feel like I would live up to their expectations and frankly, it seemed like too much work for me to learn something new…She cut me off before I could rattle off more reasons why I probably should not take the job and said it was all BS.  She told me that she knew for a fact that I would be successful at ANYTHING I set myself to do.  Then she wrote on a small piece of paper and handed it to me (I still have that little piece of paper in a file somewhere).  In capital letters, she wrote, “TRUST THE PROCESS”.  Hell.  What process?  How in crimany am I to find it?  Where are the steps to follow?  No answers.  (Pshh).  I’m better off staying where I’m at than trying to figure out some secret process.  (Pshh).

Needless to say, I took the job and all the while, told myself to ‘trust the process’- whatever that meant.  Well, I’ve found the process is this:  It starts with going in to the unknown, not knowing whether or not you will be successful.  You are following the process when you keep moving forward even as you realize that you still won’t know everything about everything.  It continues as you learn to quickly regurgitate information for a customer or reiterate instructions stated in an emergency meeting.  Until it comes to you: you have finally experienced and learned enough about your job.  And when you come across the stuff about your job that you don’t know, well you just TRUST THE PROCESS until you do.

Many years later, I still tell myself to ‘trust the process’.  So when I am hosting a conference call with presidents of several companies around the globe involved in the type approval of a product I am entirely unfamiliar with, instead of telling myself, “I have no idea what the product is!”, or “How am I going to facilitate the call?”, I simply take the lead by first regurgitating the little bit of information they gave me and then asking for volunteers to chime in, all the while trusting the process and knowing it will soon work itself out.

So my advice to you today is when you feel you don’t have enough know-how to move forward, try trusting the process and see how things pan out for you.  Trust me, you’ll be presently surprised at how much you can accomplish.

I just got back from a family party weekend to celebrate my oldest brother’s retirement.  One of the parts about his retirement that I admire him a bunch for is that he’s only 50 years young and he and his wife planned for this great day just ten years ago.

I asked my bro what his process was and here’s what he told me:

After reading Your Money or Your Life: Transforming Your Relationship with Money and Achieving Financial Independence by Joe Dominguez and Vicki Robin, his wife and he worked through all the exercises in that book and changed their lifestyle in order to achieve the early retirement and financial independence they wanted.

They hooked on to the concept that what they spent their money on was what they valued the most.  In other words, what they spent their money on was a reflection of what they truly valued because that’s what they were spending their hard earned dollars on so that’s where their life energy was going.

After, mulling that concept over, they decided to choose where they wanted their life energy to go.  After they chose where they wanted to spend their money, then they put a plan together to make it happen and stuck to it.

Now after just a short ten years, they achieved the result that they desired and they are ecstatic for it and I’m ecstatic for them!

Using them as a role model, I wonder for myself (and I invite you to wonder this for yourself too), “Am I spending my money on what I truly value?  If not, what do I need to do differently in order to get my spending in alignment with what I truly want?”