Numbers Never Lie

Feelings and emotions might be fuzzy, but numbers are cut and dry. We often let our feelings and emotions lead us. We react to life even when times are great. But what if we took a moment to measure our true well-being by the numbers in our lives? 

Last week, I took my own advice and practiced self-care by slowing down and making space. While there, I finally had the room, time and clarity to make a shocking discovery. My weight was at an all-time high and my credit score was at an all-time low. Based on that data, I realized that it was due time to get back to ME. 

What do your numbers look like? For you, it might not be weight or credit score, but it might be your blood pressure, cholesterol level, blood sugar, hours reading, hours watching television, hours of work versus hours of play, hours of sleep, or time spent with family and your loved ones that matter to you most. One thing that I’ve learned in the business world is that when in doubt, check the numbers, because numbers never lie. Now I’ve come to learn that numbers also matter in your personal life as well, particularly when it comes to health, personal finances and even your relationships. 

This week I challenge you to identify which numbers in your life are out of balance. Once you do that, make the necessary adjustments to get back on track and back to you. Here are a few of the things that I did to give you some ideas… 

• Joined Curves for Women (again) with my Mom as my workout buddy for fitness and quality family time. 

• Today I’m going to buy a bicycle so I can go riding regularly with my best friend.

• I unsubscribed from several of the email lists that were filling up my inbox that I never had time to read. 

• I paid off some small debts that I had no other reason not to pay off other than just being too darn busy to sit down and do it. 

• I went on a grocery shopping spree and purchased enough fresh and healthy items to last me all week.

• I could go on and on, but those are just a few ideas to get you started. 

What will you do? 

Even when you are lying to yourself about the quality of your life, your numbers will tell you the truth.

If it Matters Make it Work - Monday Morning Motivation

Life is Like a Football Game - Monday Morning Motivation on the Monica Marie Jones Show

Can't Is A Curse Word

I used to teach a dance class for kindergarten through fourth grade students and I noticed that when I introduced a new move, exercise or skill that there would be a few students that would say, “I can’t do it,” before they even gave it a try. From that point on I established a new rule. I told them that “Can’t” and “Don’t”, as in “I don’t know how,” were curse words that were banned from our classroom and punishable by 5 push-ups.

I’m not sure how effective the push-up part of the punishment was, but the youth really bought into the idea that “can’t” and “don’t” were indeed curse words that hindered our progress in our class.

If one of the students accidentally uttered the one of those words they would immediately catch themselves then reluctantly drop down and give me five push-ups. If a student did not catch themselves, the other students would quickly jump in and say, “Oooooooohhh, she cursed!” Each time this happened I asked the student’s, “How do you know that you can’t, or that you don’t know how, if you’ve never even given it a try?”

The rest of us hinder ourselves in the same way. We may not always actually utter the words, but there are several things that we don’t believe that we could ever do, even if we’ve never given it a good try. We paralyze ourselves with fear and self-doubt. It didn’t take long for the kids to catch on to the danger of using such self-defeating words and thoughts, so what is your hold up?

This week I challenge you to begin weaning the word “Can’t” out of your vocabulary, especially when it comes to things that you’d actually love to be able to do, but you are too afraid to give it a try.

“Can’t” is a curse word. How do you know you can’t if you haven’t even tried? Watch your mouth...and your mind!

You Woke Up!

A few years ago I met a dynamic young lady who was hit by a mack truck while riding her bike. She was in a coma for a while, but she survived and if you met her today, you’d never know that she’d been in such a tragic accident. The doctors were surprised that she lived.

She shared that after that experience and the extended coma that she was so grateful to be alive. She said that she wakes up elated every morning and excitedly proclaims, “I woke up!” Something as simple as waking up is major for her because she could have died, and for many days while she was in the coma, she could not wake up.

Waking up is something that we take for granted. We wake up, and instantly begin to worry about everything that needs to be done or everything that is wrong in our lives, but how often do we get up and celebrate the fact that we woke up?

Being grateful for the simple things has a positive effect on our lives. Trust me, I’ve been practicing this since the beginning of the year. I make sure to pay attention to my blessings, no matter how big or small, by keeping a gratitude journal. I write down every single thing that people give me or every kind act that they do for me as well as positive things that happen in my life every day.

This week I encourage you to celebrate something as simple as waking up. You have been given the gift of being here for another day.  What will you do with this day? Will you dwell on the woes and the worries of yesterday or tomorrow? OR will you bask in the glow of this beautiful moment, this fresh new chance that you’ve been given to get it right this time?

Take a deep restorative breath and whisper if you are in the office, or shout if you are alone...”I woke up!!!!”

It's Not About Me

“It’s not about you.”  That statement is the first sentence in one of my favorite books, “The Purpose Driven Life” by Rick Warren. It is a simple statement yet it is packed with so much power. If we took a moment to realize how many of the things that bother us have nothing to do with us at all, we would be much happier.

Taking things personally is often what upsets us the most. Imagine if we removed ourselves from the equation. Doing so would also subtract quite a bit of stress from our lives. Let’s take a look at some real life examples.

When it comes to relationships if our significant other cheats on us or is unfair in some way, we automatically assume that it was something that we did wrong to make them cheat and that the cheating was something that they did to hurt us. If we flip the way we look at it and say, “They didn’t do that TO me, they did that FOR them.” It gives a whole new spin to a hurtful situation.

Last week I had a professional situation where technical difficulties caused me to start an important webinar extremely late. I could have beaten myself up and held on to heavy feelings of guilt and failure all day. Instead I chose to let it go. I found comfort in the fact that I did my best and that much of what happened was beyond my control. It wasn’t about me.

Those are just two quick examples, but think about any situation in your life that troubles you and say to yourself.  “It’s not about me.”  Relinquish yourself from the blame and responsibility and give yourself a break.  Even if people want to put things off on you, that doesn’t mean that you have to reach out and take it. Throw your hands up or put them behind your back and don’t allow people to force you to carry their heavy baggage.

This week I challenge you to shift your energy and thoughts to positive things and stop taking everything so personally. Give yourself a break. You deserve it.

Weekend Wisdom

Last week was a rough one for me emotionally so I decided that my weekend would be one of healing and being intentional about finding my joy.  As a result several things came to me through meetings, appointments, conversations with friends and watching television that gave me all of the answers that I needed.

Twelve nuggets of wisdom came out of this weekend for me and I want to share them with you in hopes that one or more will speak to something that you are going through and help to keep you inspired throughout this week.  I’ll simply list them and you can interpret or use them as you wish...

Weekend Wisdom

1. I MUST be intentional about strongly centering myself EVERYday so that no one or nothing can knock me off balance.
2. I must see things and people for what and who they are.
3. I need to walk away from things and people that pollute my life.
4. I must learn to control my emotions so they won’t control me.
5. I can conquer any fears through constant gratitude and acts of courage.
6. I must not be afraid to ask for what I want.
7. My life is shaped by the story that I tell myself about myself.
8. I must first clearly identify what it is that I want, then I must create a plan to attain that thing, and I must execute that plan PERSISTENTLY.
9. When you let go of things that aren’t working for you, you make room for better things to come into your life…but as long as you hold on…there is no room.
10. Everyone holds a particular place and serves a particular purpose in your life. When you give people more weight or energy than they are meant to have in your life, it will stress you out…so stop.
11. Problems are the world’s biggest addiction. They give us an excuse to be fearful. Try to figure out what TRULY makes you happy without connecting it to a wound or a negative experience.
12. It’s up to ME to do what I need to do to make ME happy. I can’t depend on anyone else for that or blame them for my lack of happiness.

I must give credit to those who inspired the break through that I had this weekend: Tony Robbins, Oprah Winfrey, Chris Lee, Joel Osteen, Joyce Meyer, Monike Welch, Napoleon Hill, Shamyle Nesfield, and Robert Powell… Thank you all!

Increase Your Peace

My Mother and I had a really good conversation the other day. We discussed how as you get older, your life should become more peaceful, and you should have far more grace when it comes to the way in which you handle situations. It may seem that the opposite is the case with the way reality TV glorifies grown folks fighting, but it still rings true that as your age increases, so should your peace and grace.

This year I’ve made an intentional effort to improve the quality of my life. Just last week I was sitting in my loft and I thought to myself, “My life is really peaceful. I am happy.”  There was a time in the past where I wouldn’t have been honestly able to say that.

There were certain things in my life that I had to change, replace, add or take away on my personal journey to peace and grace.  The first step was being brutally honest…with myself.

I know that I do well under pressure, which is fine every now and then, but overall I had to replace procrastination with planning.   My lack of advanced planning often led me to be reactive to situations, so I had to replace that with being proactive.   Being reactive often came with a lot of emotion. I had to replace the emotion with logic. Emotion usually leads to drama, so once I got rid of that, the drama decreased and I became ready to increase my peace. Increased peace leads to grace. When you are peaceful and happy, you handle situations far more gracefully.

I was reading one of my favorite authors, Robert T. Kyosaki, the other day and he said that in order for him to make meaningful and lasting change, certain parts of him had to die. For example, in order for him to be rich…the poor man in him had to die. In order for him to be healthy, the fat and lazy man in him had to die…

What part of us needs to die, so that the new and improved version can be born?

This week I challenge you to think about the habits and behaviors in your life that you can replace, change or eliminate in order to increase your peace and grace. Take it one day at a time…and take it from me, the end result is well worth the work.

Under Book and Over Look

Lately I’ve been exploring meditation in an attempt to quiet my ever racing mind.  I’ve also heard that prayer is you talking to God and meditation is you sitting back quietly to listen for His response.  So now, instead of rambling on my long prayers and going about my day immediately after, I’ve tacked on some meditation time at the end of each prayer to listen to what God has to say back to me.

One day last week I set aside some very intentional quiet time to really get deep into the prayer and meditation.  In so many words, the response that I got during my meditation was, “You’re doing too much.”  This made so much sense because I’ve come to realize that I tend to over book myself.  This doesn’t mean that I’m scheduling things at the same time, but I’m not really giving myself time to thoroughly breath, reflect, and rest in between appointments and engagements.

I’ve come to learn that just because a block of time is not filled on your calendar or in your day planner, it doesn’t mean that it’s really available.  I’ve had days where I schedule appointments, book signings, meetings and calls back to back to back just because the space is free on my calendar. What I don’t account for is transitions, down time, travel time and the fact that I am not a robot and that I might just get tired somewhere along the way like humans often do.

When I was given the message that I was doing too much, an example was also revealed to me.  Now that my business travel is beginning to slow up a bit, I’d decided that I was going to commit to thirty days of focus to tie up a lot of loose ends in my life.  God was like, “Why does it have to be thirty days? Why can’t you just start by committing to like two days and see how it goes?” Again, this made so much sense for me because I definitely have a tendency to make grand plans, then I find myself either overwhelmed by them or disappointed with myself because I’ve abandoned them.

Another area where I tend to “do too much” is within my thoughts. I have formed a nasty little habit of sweating the small stuff, instead of focusing on the big picture.  Sometimes we all stress ourselves out by thinking about, paying attention to and entertaining some of the most trivial things.  Let’s use a dating situation as a common example of this…

 A man and a woman are dating.  The woman spends a lot of time and energy paying attention to all of the other young ladies that are attracted to or interested in her man.  She overlooks the fact that she gets all of his time, attention and affection, and focuses on all of these women that are making comments on his Facebook page or following him on Twitter.  Instead of focusing on the positive big picture, she is zeroed in on the insignificant small picture.  My advice to here would be,” If you are the quarterback, why in the world are you worried about who’s on the bench?”

Do you see where I’m going with this?

This week I challenge you to UNDER Book yourself for a change and OVER Look the small stuff that doesn’t even matter in the larger scheme of things. As your personal guinea pig for positive change I can assure you that your life will begin to improve instantly.

A New Day

Recently I was talking to a friend and fellow motivator who shared how at his job Monday morning is the absolute worst time of the week due to the fact that everyone is upset and depressed because they don’t want to be there.  As positive as he is, one can’t help but be affected by such negative energy as it is contagious.  Finally he told me that when my Monday Morning Motivation message pops up in his inbox, it ends up turning his whole day around.

When I decided to do these messages I never could have imagined the impact that they would make. More than one person has told me how research shows that suicide occurs more often on Mondays than any other day of the week because of that sense of dread and depression that is often referred to as the “Monday Morning Blues.”

I look at Monday in an entirely different way.  I truly believe that our health, wealth and how we feel about our self depends heavily upon how we perceive things. For example, when I hear the term, Monday Morning Blues, I think of how beautiful a blue sky is or that blue is my favorite color as opposed to the negative connotation that the word blue usually holds.  Instead of looking at Monday in a dreadful way, I look at it as a new day and an opportunity for a new beginning that is a gift which we are given each week.

I remember when I was a child, I wanted to ask my mother for something, I can’t recall what it was, but I prefaced it with, “Mom, when it’s 1984 again can I….”  She laughed and let me know that years don’t come back around like months and days do.

Every day is a new day and an opportunity to start all over again, but I feel that Monday is the most powerful because it is the beginning.

How often do we think or say that we wish we had the opportunity to do something all over again? Monday gives us that.  Today I challenge you to think about ways to make the most of Mondays.  I’ll start you off with a few, but the rest is up to you…

• Re-commit to a life-style change. - Notice that I didn’t say diet.  Focus on fitness in a way that is manageable and realistic enough for you to maintain for life.
• Do something differently than you did last week. - Use the weekend as a time of reflection on issues that came up throughout the week then use Monday as a day to learn from your mistakes by leaving them behind and moving forward with new goals and action steps.
• Begin the journey of letting something go that is not good for you.- Perhaps you want to quit smoking or give up sweets. Monday is a great day to begin and even if you slip up during the week, that’s OK because another Monday is on the way for you to give it another try.

So let’s make this Monday a new day and if you find yourself getting off track as the week progresses just remember…another Monday is only 7 days away.