Ten Years From Now

Ten years from now…

Ten years from now, I will be about sixty years old. Ten years from now, my first granddaughter will be old enough to start driving. Ten years from now, my car will be long paid off and likely ready to fall apart. Ten years from now, there will be a lot of changes that take place in my life.

But I choose to think about the types of changes that I can affect taking place in my life. Where I want to be ten years from now, and the things I would like to accomplish ten years from now. I have always believed in and maintained a five-year plan, and now, I am giving consideration to my ten-year plan.

Ten years from now, I would like to be an accomplished author. I would ideally like to have written forty books by then. At the very least, I would like to have at least half that much. Twenty books written and published would be adequate for me ten years from now. As long as the books are of good quality and will sell. I could be ambitious and set a goal of writing one hundred books within the next ten years, but if every one of those books are rushed and of low quality, every single one of them would be a waste of my time. I would prefer to have only written two books of high-quality work that people will want to read because they feel as though they have something to gain from them. However, for the sake of my ten-year plan, I will simply say that I would like to have written and published forty books ten years from now.

In addition to writing and selling books, ten years from now, I would like to have generated other streams of income. I would like to become a life coach and help other people set their sails on the right direction for the stormy seas they face. Ideally, I would like to become a successful life coach only after creating my own successful life free of the self-doubt, anxiety, insecurity, and lack of self-confidence that I currently have. I would like to create a bonafide system for overcoming the mental and physical obstacles that prevent me from living a truly happy and free life, in which I have defined the ability to shed mental and physical clutter that prevent the clarity and freedom of living life fully. Ten years from now, I would like to share my own life success story with the world. I would also like to host a successful podcast in which I share my own life story, a memoir of such, and give others the courage to face and overcome their own demons and battles.

Ten years from now, I would like to have my ideal body and achieve optimal health. I have a significant amount of weight to lose currently and have been battling depression and high blood pressure for years. I would like to see myself overcoming both of those hurdles. My blood pressure can easily be managed by reducing my body weight and maintaining a healthy diet. Reducing my body weight can be quite a challenge, due to the fact that it will require a great deal of work on my part. The work will not be easy, nor will it always be fun. However, I owe it to myself and to my family to do the work necessary to gain better health and have a healthier and more active lifestyle for years to come. There is evidence of a direct correlation between depression and obesity. However, it is a vicious cycle and a catch 22 of sorts. Depression tends to lead to overeating “comfort foods” or binge eating and being overweight tends to lead to depression. They go hand in hand and one can create the other. Therefore, ten years from now, I would like to have gotten a handle on my weight and reversed the damaging effects of high blood pressure and lowering my risk of heart disease. As well, I would like to have overcome depression by living an active life that includes hiking and participation in many family events.

Ten years from now, I would like to have achieved obtaining my master’s degree in psychology. I would like to take the things that I learn and understand about the human psyche and human behavior and apply them to my writing as well as the topics discussed in my podcast. I have always had a great fascination with what makes people do the things that they do. I would love to develop a great understanding of that and develop the ability to put it in ways that can help others understand human behaviors as well.

Ten years from now, I would mostly love to have the ability to live my life as a reflection of the success and achievement of accomplishing all of the things that I have set forth in my ten-year plan. I would love to own a quaint little farmhouse in north Georgia, the place I call home. I would like to have small parcel of land to accompany the home, in which I would have space for gardening. I would love to have a large rocking chair front porch with a white porch swing. I would love to be able to spend morning sitting in the swing with my morning coffee and watching the world come to life with the morning sunrise. I would love to have family over and enjoy holidays and meals with the people I love most. In addition, I would love to own a nice little codo in the Gulf of Mexico, the place I call the home of my heart. Going back to the multiple streams of income, I would love to have the ability to use the condo for a rental place when we are not there. I would love to spend time sitting on the balcony overlooking the teal blue water and watching some of the most incredible sunsets my eyes have ever had the pleasure to behold. I would love to have the ability to walk down to the beach and just sit watching the waves and birds, while contemplating what an incredible life I have and gaining inspiration and insight for new writing material.

There are no guarantees in live, and by no means are there any guarantee that I can achieve any of the things in which I have set forth in my ten-year plan. However, nothing that I have chosen is such a massive dream that it cannot be accomplished. The reality is that nothing I want for my ten-year plan is unrealistic to me. I simply have to be willing to do the work and make the effort to take the chances on myself. Ten years from now, I would love to look around at the incredible things and people surrounding me and think back fondly on this blog post and remember when it was all just a dream. It is often said that a goal without a plan is just a dream. Dreams are good and dreams are important. However, dreaming about my ten-year plan, will never make it come to fruition. Each of these accomplishments, require a solid plan. A plan that will include hard work and possibly many late nights or early mornings. But the reality is that each of these things are worth it to me to put in that work.

February 5, 2020

The Best (Not So Average) Back to School Blog Posts.

Back to school- it’s that time of year again. A time full of hustle and bustle, and schedules. And, let’s face it, it is the second most stressful time of the year. The time of year when we want to pull all our hair out and finish off the last remaining drops of wine from every bottle. But, it doesn’t have to be.

1- 14 Tips for a Successful School Year– In the article, 14 Tips for a Successful School Year, author Joanne Foster provides 14 tried and true tips for strengthening the resilience, creativity, and productivity of children to prepare for a more successful school year. The tips range from fostering creativity through challenges and opportunities to providing abundant resources to promote growth and reflection. The tips also include providing comfort zones that offer encouragement and reinforcement, as well as establishing consistency and routines. Being aware and expressing pride in the accomplishments of the child are also conducive to a successful school year. Joanne also expresses the need for nurturing the children’s need for autonomy and developing the habits of gratitude. I have rounded up four back-to-school blogs that will provide you with enough ammunition to tackle those early mornings and sleepy routines with pride and vigor!

2- The Success Myth– In her article on Psychology Today, The Success Myth, Heidi Grant Halvorson approaches the idea of success. As parents, we naturally want our children to excel in any endeavor they set out to achieve. However, as Heidi explains, not every endeavor will come naturally to every child. We want our children to have the best teachers and the best school curriculum, and we place them in various after-school activities or sports programs so that they can have the best opportunity to go far in life. They say practice makes perfect. And, to some degree is does. For instance, many high profile athletes were not originally very good in their field, but they kept practicing and pushing themselves to achieve their goals. Therefore, as parents, we should always encourage our children to keep practicing. You child may wish to play football or gymnastics, but may not be naturally very athletic. Encouraging them to continue practicing and not give up when things seem hard will not only instill in them the drive to keep going when things get tough in other areas of their lives as they age, but the payoff will be when they make the team that the so eagerly hoped for. The opposite side of this spectrum is when parents push their child to excel at something because it is the parent’s wish for them to be great at it, or the parent uses the loophole of, “I paid for this, now you are going to play.” As parents, we should be encouraging and supportive to help them foster the dreams and goals they envision for their future. Parent involvement is important to a child’s success, both in school academics as well as any after-school activities like sports or music lessons. However, realizing that not every child can catch a fly-ball, or steal home base, or win a championship spelling bee, let them know that is okay too. They will find their niche in the world. They are young. They still have time to try many things to find that niche.

3- How to Help Kids With Social Anxiety– In her article, How to Help Kids With Social Anxiety. While many back to school articles will provide you with a plethora tips on how to pick out the best back pack or what lunch box will get you the most bang for your buck, Kate Hurley, LCSW, tackles an under talked about, yet equally important topic- social anxiety. Back to school can be a trying a scary time for kids and teenagers, alike. The stress of back to school can be significantly increased if the child is attending a new school, advancing up from elementary school to middle school or middle school to high school, or even just the thought of getting adjusted to a new teacher or new classmates. Kate breaks down social anxiety to help parents gain a better understanding of why kids can experience it, as well as signs of social anxiety to look for in your child. Kate goes on to provide valuable coping skills and strategies to help your child better manage their social anxiety.

4- 15 Back-to-School Hacks to Get Your Year Off to a Running Start- Finally, in the Good Housekeeping article, 15 Back-to-School Hacks to Get Your Year Off to a Good Start, we find Marisa Lascala providing 15 do it yourself ideas to help back to school with ease. The tips and hacks she provides can be done relatively easy and will help reduce the amount of stress for both parents and children as you adjust and trek through another school year. She starts her back-to-school hacks list with setting routines. I am a huge fan of routines, and use them myself in my daily life. It is important to keep children on a routine, as much as possible, during school seasons. When they know what is expected of them it helps to avoid, or at least reduce, unnecessary rebellion. Also, given that it takes at least a good two months to form new habits, by by repeating their routine daily, they will have a better chance for adopting this new routine and reduce the amount of time you will have to spend reminding them of their schedules. Routines vary for every family or individual. There are many variables that come in to play when developing a school routine for your children. Marisa also discusses the idea of setting up a command center. The size and layout of your command center can depend greatly on the space and location you have available for one. We live busy lives, coming and going. Some families have two parents who work outside of the home, others have only one. But regardless of parents’ work schedules, setting up a command center is an invaluable back-to-school idea. At any given time, any member of the family can easily access and look over the command center and see upcoming events or the schedule for the day. You can search on Pinterest for ideas and suggests for setting up a functional command center. It can be as simple or as extravagant as you would like for it to be.

Setting routines and fostering an encouraging and supportive environment are key components of any successful school year. Getting back into the school swing, doesn’t have to be an exhaustive and stressful time. I hope these related articles will help provide you with some insight and encouragement as you set out on the new school year. Happy schooling!

August 16, 2019 0

My Must-Have Office Supplies

Planner – The most essential part of of my office arsenal is my planner . It is literally the heartbeat of my day. Even though I work from home, I try to maintain a very detailed cleaning schedule for my home, and am a full time online college student, as well as trying to schedule in time for my personal development practices, on top of having a full time job. My life would be hectic and stressful, as well as messy from having post-it notes strewn all over my house if it was not for having my one personal planner to organize and maintain all of my tasks that I need to complete. Having a functional planner is essential to planning out the monthly, weekly, and daily tasks of my life to keep me balanced and organized. I have tried a wide variety of different styles and brands of planners. I have some that worked for me in terms of functionality, and I have found some that just did not really vibe well with me. Finding the perfect planner set up is like finding the perfect pair of jeans. It needs to be comfortable to write in and yet stylish enough to encourage you to look at it every day.

Pens and Highlighters– Aside from the traditional black and blue inked pens for daily writing purposes, I also make a point to keep some colorful and pretty writing utensils on hand for decorating my journal and planner. Both the Paper Mate Flair Medium and the Click Inc are my top choices for use in my planner and journals. Along with an assortment of color highlighters to use, I try a variety of all things writing from packs I pick up at the local Dollar Tree to a pretty and fancy pen spotted while running into Staples to grab a pack of printer paper and ink. It pretty much goes without saying, that no office could be remotely functional without things to write with.

Accessories– You know, those little treasured trinkets that every self-respecting office contains- paper clips, binder clips, index cards, and such. In addition to those types of accessories, I also keep a collection of thumb drives on hand in my office. Between blogging, and taking my college courses, I tend to do a lot of writing assignments, and I have found from past experience, the hard way, that it a great value to save those writing assignments to an external memory drive in the event that my laptop takes an unfortunate tumble into the floor and all things on it are forever lost. Understandably, a memory drive is now considered a must have for my office so that in the event of a recurrence of such tragedy, at least I will still have access to all of my hard work. Finally, an understated office supply that I must have on hand is something to jot down quick notes, phone numbers, websites, or names to reference. I try to keep a small stash of memo pads and a few blocks of post-it notes on hand for such. That way when I am online researching something, and I just need to quickly write a name or address, or even a website to look up later, I can jot it down quickly on the post-it note, and not have to worry about having a bunch of random names taking up space on a full notebook page that I have to look at later and try to remember what it is for. The sticky notes are perfect to stick in my planner on future dates, in my notebook for future reference on pages where I am currently writing ideas on that particular subject, or to the top of my laptop when I need to return to a specific website when I get logged back online.

Notebooks– My home office would not be complete without a vast array of notebooks. I have everything from hard notebook binders, to basic dollar store composition books, to journal style notebooks, to a small collection of Happy Planner notebooks created from packs of Happy Planner brand filler paper sheets. I use them for a variety of purposes. I have some that I use specifically for journals, in which I jot down my daily affirmations, log my list of daily things I am grateful for, or just purge as my thoughts ramble on about life and all its mysteries. I have notebooks that I use specifically for work to jot down things to follow up on for the next day or to track my productivity from time to time to give myself a reality check about how much time I wander off from my actual work related work. I have several that I use for school, as I am currently enrolled in an online college to complete my bachelor degree, I keep a few notebooks to work out homework problems and jot assignment details for reference. And, I keep a few notebooks on hand for my personal development in which I jot down blog ideas, social media challenges that I wish to participate in, or note from any personal development online course I take or self-help audio books I listen to.

Desktop Calendar– I know it sounds crazy in a world where cell phones have taken the place of our calendars, our calculators, and even our alarm clocks. And, given that I keep a personal planner that I refer to on a daily basis morning and night. But, I work from home and there are times when I am working at my desktop computer and I need a quick reference to the date, either the current date or a future date, and it is just so convenient to not have to stop what I am doing in my work to pick up my phone and open the calendar app or go fetch my planner to flip through, but to just glance up to my handy, ever-waiting desk calendar. I do not write anything on the desktop calendar, but I do circle the weekend dates that I am scheduled to work, and that provides a quick and easy reference at a glance for days that I cannot plan anything, at least until that evening, for that day.

Laptop– My personal laptop is an older one that I purchased roughly about five years ago. I know, with the rate in which technology advances, I am sure it is darn near obsolete at this point. However, it still works perfectly and does anything I need it to do in order to complete my writing tasks or perform any homework assignment that I currently have to complete for school. Therefore, I see no need to update at this time. My laptop is a crucial part of my everyday life, however, and it is generally turned over every morning by 7:00 am at the latest. Ironically, I do not use my laptop to surf the internet or look at social media. I save that for my smartphone and look at Pinterest on my Ipad. I really only use the internet on the laptop to do research for a writing project or to access a website in which I will need to download or print something, such as when I purchased my annual parking pass for the beach. Laptops nowadays come in a variety of price ranges and can be very expensive to very affordable, depending on the purpose in which you intend to use the laptop. So, I know that when the unfortunate time comes in which I will need to put my current laptop down, I will have no choice but to replace it, as it is now a vital part of my daily existence.

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August 2, 2019 0

School’s In! Tips for Getting Organized for the New School Year.

It is with a degree of difficulty that we think about giving up that last little slice of the summer pie we have been afforded year after year. But, alas, as summer draws to a close and fall is upon the horizon, it is time to prepare for that ever daunting task of getting back to school The time doesn’t have to be stressful, however. And, I have created some tips to help get you organized and all set for the new school year with a degree of optimism and enthusiasm like never before.

Morning Routine– No matter if you are a busy mom with children heading back off to school, you are a college student, or you are a more non-traditional adult with no small children, but have a full time job and are working on college courses, either online or in a brick and mortar university, having a solid morning routine can substantially set you up for a more successful school year. Morning routines are as varied as the individual that is executing them. Perhaps, you are a stay at home mom who only needs to be mindful of the time in which the children need to be ready for the school bus or time to leave for the school drop off line; or maybe you work outside the home and have a specific time that you have to have everyone ready to leave the house in order to arrive to work on time. It is simply a matter of taking into account any times that have to be allotted for non-negotiable things, such as school times, work times, and commute times. My current morning routine consists of two components- house chores and self care. My morning house routine is to being my day with unloading the dishwasher, swish and swipe the bathrooms, make the bed, and begin a load of laundry. Likewise, my morning self care routine is brushing my teeth, applying my morning power serum, day cream with sunscreen, make up and hair. I’m both cursed and lucky in the regard that my hair is short and thin, so I do not have to allow for extra time for hair straighteners or curlers. My whole morning routine takes me less than thirty minutes to complete. I currently work from home, so I do not have to stick to a rigid time frame for completing my morning routine. However, that was not always the case. I used to work outside of the home and I knew what time I needed to leave to arrive to work on time, taking into account that I was in the heart of the rush hour commute in Atlanta traffic. I made allowances by getting up thirty to forty minutes earlier to provide the time needed to complete my morning chores and maintain my morning routine.

Make a Plan– I cannot stress enough the value of a functional planner. I put emphasis on the word functional, because it is all too common and all too easy to start preparing for a new school year by purchasing a crisp, clean, and gorgeous new planner to keep track of all of your important dates and reminders, yet after a few weeks or so, the planner seems to fall by the way side and gets written in less and less as you find yourself forgetting more important things. The planner system that I currently use is the Happy Planner brand. I chose it for its functionality as well as customization. I have played around with a variety of planners from the generic Walmart planners to Franklin Covey and I have a set up ready for 2020 from the Agenda 52 line to go back to a binder style planner. Regardless of what brand or style of planner you choose, it should be one that is functional for all of your needs and user friendly enough to inspire you to refer to it and write in it daily. The idea is that keeping a planner is essential to tracking appointments and assignment due dates.

Prep for the Evenings– As important as a morning routine is, having an evening routine can be just as vital. Evening routines include tasks such as dinner, cleaning the kitchen, baths, and laying out clothes for the next day. A good way to prepare for the evenings, and alleviate a lot of undue stress is menu planning. By planning out your menus in advance, you can adjust day by day, according to any after work or after school appointments or errands and prep easy to fix meals on the days that you have commitments that would otherwise take away time needed to prepare a complicated recipe dish. For instance, ball practice after school? Toss an easy roast in the crock pot, set on low, and when you arrive home dinner will be ready with only a quick side dish or two. Side note, steam vegetables make a wonderful quick side dish on those busy nights! In an effort to try and have an easy and stress free evening, try to implement planning for the evening and night routines as much as you can early on in the day or on a Sunday evening, to alleviate a lot of the juggling and panic to try and decide on a dinner choice or locate the baseball mitt on the fly.

Delegate- As mothers, we tend to want to do everything for everyone. It is, in essence, in our nature to be nurturers. But, being a nurturer and being a martyr are two completely different things. While we love our families and love taking care of them, we do not have to do it all. It is possible, and essential to delegate our work to the other members of our family. Even small children can benefit from being assigned to pick up their own toys or put their clothes in the hamper for washing. Taking on everything can be stressful and limiting in the amount of quality time we spend with our families. So, take a few items off your to-do list, and graciously gift them to family members who can handle those tasks. The work will get completed much quicker, and you can enjoy a few moments of blissful silence relaxing in the bubble bath with a glass of chilled wine at the end of the evening. Oh yeah, and enjoy time spend with the family as well. Now, the important, and I do me the most important thing to remember when delegating tasks to the other members of your family is – do not expect perfection! Perfection is an illusion best saved for fools. Be grateful to them for the help they provide you. Do not go behind your children and re-make their beds or re-fold their clothes in the drawer. Just enjoy that you had the time freed up and enjoy sitting with them on the couch enjoying a movie before bed time.

August 1, 2019 0

5 Books You Should Read to Have a More Productive Day!

First on the list is Girl, Wash Your Face by Rachel Hollis. While Girl, Wash Your Face is not specifically a productivity book, per say, I felt it deserved to make the top of the list. Rachel Hollis explains in this book we can tend to allow the lies and limitations thrust upon us by society to prevent us from having the courage to pursue our own dreams, ambitions, and goals. And, that is counterproductive. Rachel is so charming, and adorable. She is so raw and authentic in telling her own story as she progresses through the book, that she immediately becomes your friend. In fact, she is the one friend you want there when you suffer a bad break up or you do not get into nursing school. She will comfort you, much like a half-melted pint of Ben and Jerry’s Cherry Garcia and she will cry tears with you, real tears. Then she will wipe your messy misty hair away from your face and bring you back into the reality that those people and those things do not get to define who you are. It is impossible to be productive in the pursuit of your dreams and ambitions and the achievement of your goals, let alone just getting through your daily to-do lists when you are weighted down with the ideology that you are not good enough, or pretty enough, or smart enough, or even, lucky enough to accomplish them. Let Rachel hold your hand through the journey of peeling off the layers of self-doubt, insecurity, and blaming and shaming yourself, so that you can have a clean slate to being the foundation of gaining confidence to productively build the life you want- the life you deserve.

Second on the list is Get Your Sh*t Together by Sarah Knight . Sarah is witty and funny in her straight-forward approach to becoming more productive. She uses the concept of mental decluttering. Whereby, you will purge from your mind all the unnecessary things that take up too much of your time and energy and hinder you from getting the real important stuff done. Unlike “Girl, Wash Your Face,” which focuses on a form of mental decluttering the negative thoughts that pervade our beliefs and our faith in ourselves, this book is more about a mental decluttering of the things that can rob us of our productivity by sucking up so much of our time. Things like constantly checking emails, or stopping whatever you are doing far too many times throughout the day to scroll on social media, or with a nervous half-smile reluctantly agreeing to volunteer to help with the company bake sale this Saturday, even though you know you have a paper to write for school or you had planned to go THIS Saturday to get those tires changed that are wearing thin. The focus of this book emphasizes the need to learn how to prioritize. By taking an accurate inventory of everything you have on your plate, aka schedule, and weeding out the things that are not a high priority and concentrating on the ones that have the highest priority, you set yourself up to be more productive throughout the day and week. Her principle is based on the notion that if you have something come up that you feel obligated to do, but you have to give up something that you really wanted to do or something you really need to do, then this new thing is a low priority and you should not feel obligated. Just because you are asked by a dear friend, coworker, or family member, does not mean that yes should always be the answer.

Next, we find The 5 Second Rule written by Mel Robbins. Mel uses wit and logic to delve into the story of how the 5 Second Rule came to be. It started out as a tool to help “launch” her out of bed in the mornings and stop hitting the snooze button until she had wasted the better part of every morning avoiding getting up and facing her life. The principle of this book is how we can reset our thoughts and actions by triggering our prefrontal cortex simply by counting down from 5. The key to the rule is that you have to count down from 5, 5. 4. 3. 2. 1. Liftoff! Mel uses the science backed idea that if you count forward from 1, your brain will, by nature keep counting with no stopping point. The 5 Second Rule is based on the idea that within as little as five seconds, we can allow fear and doubt to take over our thoughts and prevent us from taking action to do the things we very much want to do. Some of the examples used in the book include a man sitting at a bar and wanting to speak to a woman he sees across the room or a woman who decides to take her sister’s children to raise following her untimely death, or anyone sitting in a work meeting with a great idea but afraid to speak up for fear of no one else in the meeting agreeing that it is a good idea. Within as little as five crucial seconds, either of them could have made the decision to act on their choices, or have allowed fear and doubt hinder their judgement and cause them to miss out on some pretty incredible opportunities. Opportunities can be lost forever, in as little as five seconds. This book is about switching those negative thoughts of fear and doubt before they have a chance to take a hold and change the outcome from what you initially intended. This book is about restructuring the way you think in a way to give you more confidence and courage to act on the things you want to. To become fearless and believe in yourself. The book also has an accompanying journal and workbook, although neither are necessary to read the book or gain an invaluable plan from it, they are, in essence, additional tools to help reinforce the concept of the 5 Second Rule.

Once we break the habit of hitting our snooze button, we then find The Miracle Morning by Hal Elrod. The importance of a good morning routine is paramount to having a productive day. You can pick up any of one dozen or more books about productivity or success and they will all tell you that the most productive and successful people all practice the ritual of a regular morning routine. The size of the Miracle Morning community is phenomenal; all you have to do is search miracle morning on YouTube and you will find hundreds of videos by people who have adopted this morning ritual and swear by the positive impact that is has had on their lives. The Miracle Morning is about building an enriching morning routine around what Hal has termed the Life S.A.V.E.R.S. Each of the letters of the savers acronym represents a specific area for self growth and life enrichment. S- represents silence. Whether it is meditation, prayer, reflection, or just simply sitting in silence, Hal stresses the importance of beginning your morning ritual by clearing out the lingering thoughts. To get your head clear and focused to tackle the day without a myriad of things running around through your mind all day. A- represents affirmations. Hal points out that chanting in the mirror, “I am pretty.” “I am smart.” will not really have any lasting benefit if you are just mindlessly repeating words for the sake of repeating words. He emphasizes getting real and personal with the affirmations. Speaking to yourself positively about something personal and important to you will stand a greater chance of having lasting effects. V- represents visualization. Creating a vision board is the top suggestion. By placing the things you want to achieve onto something tangible that you can physically look at will help you gain the needed momentum for working toward those goals. Hal suggest sitting and actually visioning yourself not only once achieving the goal, but also, to visualize yourself working toward that goal, such as driving yourself to the gym every morning. E- represents exercise. It is no guarded secret of the benefits exercise has on us, both physically and mentally. One would be hard pressed to be productive throughout their day if they are suffering from ailments or just generally in physical pain from simply moving. Whether it is ten minutes or an hour, exercise is one part of morning routine that is bound to have the most immediate effects on how you feel. R- represents reading. Hal encourages daily reading, but puts more emphasis on reading for personal development. There are countless online options for courses or classes in personal growth and development. S- represents scribing. Journaling is suggested as one of the best means for your daily scribe. After meditating to purge all those thoughts out of your head and then reading for personal development, journaling would be a great way to write down how you feel about the things your learned that morning. Also, taking notes and writing out a plan for the things that your read about in your personal development reading would be a great means for daily scribing. Hal encourages his reader to begin with a 30-day challenge for trying the Miracle Morning, and then decide for yourself if you see a noticeable difference or not.

And, finally, last but certainly not least on the list is How To Make Sh*t Happen written by Sean Whalen. Sean takes a no-nonsense in-your-face approach to keeping yourself on track with the things that are most important in life. This book is not for the faint of heart. However, the reality is often times we need a gentle nudge and sometimes we need a swift kick in the rear to snap us back in line. Sean delivers on that swift kick of justice for us when we need it. He uses his principle of the “Core 4” to guide a plan for structuring every day around doing one thing, purposefully, to work on the four core areas of our lives that should be regarded in the highest. The core four areas are: Passion (relationships), Power (body), Purpose (mind), and Production (business). The idea is that every day you set one timed task to work on each of these four areas, and that by working on each of these each and every day, it will move you closer toward your end goal of relationship, health, financial and personal development success. The action steps planned are to be daily, they are better executed when they are timed and scheduled, and they are non-negotiable. Being that almost everyone nowadays has a smart phone within arms reach at any given moment, he stresses that the phone is the perfect planner to set about planning your Core 4 tasks. Some examples he gives is setting a timer on your phone to text a flirty message to your significant other, or find a trainer or workout partner to keep you accountable in your fitness goals. He also stresses the importance of having a morning routine. All too often, we tend to pick up self-help or personal development books and get all fired up over them because they are saturated with great ideas, and resources, and in our hearts, we know they are filled up with truth. Yet, somehow, when we finish reading the book, we put it down and move on to another book without ever looking back. Sean knows this, and he is continually giving commands throughout the book to “do this now.” As he is going through each of the four principles, he asks you to put the book down and take purposeful and deliberate action to work on the things that are important enough to work on every. Single. Day.

April 19, 2019 1