The girl scouts are genius. Have you ever considered the perfect timing of when their top fundraising effort-those boxes of delicious cookies. They usually start arriving mid February when your commitment to the goal of healthy eating has waned.

In this blog post, we'll explore how to stay committed to your goals and achieve success. As we approach mid-March, it's a good time to reflect on the goals we set at the beginning of the year and recommit ourselves to achieving them.

Setting the Right Goals

When setting goals, it's important to ensure that they are the right ones for you. In this post, we'll briefly cover how to set the right goals, using the SMARTER method for goal setting. It's important to note that everyone has different systems that work for them, so if the SMARTER system doesn't resonate with you, check out other goal-setting methods.

The SMARTER method stands for Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, Time-bound, Evaluate, and Revise. This framework allows you...

Does your 5 am morning routine boost or kill your productivity?

I am excited to discuss this topic with you today because I am currently reconsidering my stance on it. For a long time, I have been a proponent of having an early morning routine. However, last month, on Friday the 13th, I was involved in two minor car accidents. I believe this was due to my extreme exhaustion. Therefore, this conversation is particularly relevant as we approach daylight savings time, during which we will lose an hour of sleep. I look forward to exploring the advantages and disadvantages of waking up at 5 am.

Science and the Early Morning

Let's begin by examining the science behind an early morning routine, with the caveat that the research generally supports an early morning routine rather than specifically a 5 am routine. The Sleep Foundation describes circadian rhythms as 24-hour cycles that are part of our body's internal clock, which carries out vital functions and processes. One of the most...

“What are your go-to strategies for managing workflow while also maintaining flexibility?” This is a question I hear often when I’m speaking to a group of female creatives.

I would like to answer it for you today. I know how hard it is to juggle everything. As a creative entrepreneur, a mother, a friend, all the roles we must play and pour into ourselves, our businesses, and our personal responsibilities are a lot to manage. In the past week alone, I have: 

• Dance comp for my daughter
• Visiting family 
• Doctors app
• Husband traveling
• Basketball playoffs for my son
• Insomnia issues (yes still)

Today, I want to share with you my simple productivity system that keeps me organized and focused. Having a system in place is crucial to catch all the balls we juggle daily, and to have the confidence to navigate through life. A good productivity system should help keep track of everything that needs to be done, and it's essential to set it up correctly.

There is no...

Your eyes are getting heavy. The struggle to focus is real and your work begins to suffer. Classic symptoms of the afternoon slump. The good news is that there are three effective cures that I have been using, and I hope they can help you overcome this slump in your day.

When our energy levels dip in the late afternoon, our productivity, focus, and creativity can suffer, causing us to fall short of our best selves. So, what can we do to combat the afternoon slump? I have three ideas that may help.

Take Breaks

The first and most common cure is to take a break. Although it may seem counterintuitive to stop working when we're feeling unproductive, sometimes our bodies just need a quick reset. Getting up from your desk, stretching, or taking a few minutes to relax and refresh can help clear your mind and reset your energy levels.

To help myself take regular breaks, I use a diffuser in my office with a mix of doTERRA oils that help to focus my mind. The diffuser also has a one-hour timer...

Want to know the secret to getting ahead? I always cringe a bit when I hear these words “it’s simple but not easy”

The answer is consistency. Our work is extra demanding as female creatives, and we have to put in a lot of effort because it's not just our business we're handling. One thing you can control, however, is your consistency. My topic today is consistency, and why it is important.

Why is Consistency Key?

Consistency builds reliability and trust with your customers, partners, employees, and relationships. Let me share a cool story that I came across while researching for this post. Look up Newsette, a company that built a multimillion-dollar business on an email newsletter. The company founder attributed her success to consistency, simply showing up every day. They send a daily newsletter to ambitious businesswomen, providing them with top news and exclusive interviews. They've built trust by consistently showing up in someone's email box, and...

Nobody showed up! Last week I hosted a Masterclass and not a single person dialed into the zoom call.  Did I feel like a failure, yep, but I feel like that’s a good thing, and let's explore this topic of failure so I can explain why.

William James, a renowned American philosopher, and psychologist was one of the first to identify the impact of self-doubt and negative beliefs on a person's ability to pursue their goals. He believed that these internal barriers can be just as powerful as external obstacles in preventing people from reaching their full potential.

The inspiring story of basketball legend Michael Jordan illustrates this point. Despite being rejected by high school, college, and NBA teams early on, he continued to pick himself up and learn from his failures, eventually becoming a basketball icon.

Impact of running from your fears

Fear of failure leads to a lack of action and missed opportunities. Recently, my son was reluctant to attend a...

Have you ever been so absorbed in your work that you lose track of time and all other distractions just drift away? If so, you may have experienced the state of flow. But what exactly is flow state?

Flow state is defined as a state of concentration so focused that it amounts to absolute absorption and inactivity. The concept was pioneered by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi and has since been researched and widely recognized as a beneficial state to achieve in work or other activities.

Skiing down the face of a mountain gave me that feeling for the first time. It wasn't long before I could translate that into my work. There are times when my fingers fly across the keyboard.

The Benefits of Flow State

Hopefully, you've experienced this before and can relate, but even if not, let's go over a couple of benefits.

• Increases happiness and helps you escape your everyday routine
• Improves focus and concentration
• Ties you into intrinsic motivation and provides clarity on what you're doing

Flow...

We are in the thick of winter, so the mornings here are dark. For my morning run last week, I had to dig out my headlamp because the storms in CA have left a ton of debris on my path, and the street light is not enough to avoid the branches.

The headlamp was dead because I hadn't used it in so long. I looked at the charging port and it looked different. Later that weekend I took about 20 minutes to go through a box of charging cables and finally turned to hubby when I continued to come up empty-handed. It took him less than 30 seconds to get it plugged in and charging.

Two completely different approaches. His way more effective but isn’t this how life goes? There’s more than one approach to everything.

This got me to thinking, I’ve talked a lot about my roadmap for life but there’s more than one approach. Let's get into some different ways to look at this. 

Let Life Happen

The first approach to life is to let it happen and go...

A new planner can be a special treat, whether you pick it up at Target or open your front door and discover a package waiting for you. In case you're not with me, this video may not be for you. 

Today, I'm sharing with you my process for setting up my planner for 2023. 

The planner that I use, and I'm going to share with you today, is the full Focus planner by Michael Hyatt. I've tried a bunch of different styles and I keep coming back to this one again and again and again. You're going to see why as we go through this video. 

There are different in the cover design. They even now have a spiral-bound version.  I start by going back to Q1 of 2022 and looking at my annual goals. I do feel the one thing that this planner is missing is the annual review.  There's a place to do a quarterly preview because it's broken down into a quarterly system. So at the end of December, I was just looking at where I was for my Q4 goals. I created a process...

“Life can only be understood backwards; but It must be lived forwards.” Soren Kierkegaard

Ironic and a bit tragic, but you can learn a lot from your past if you take the time to pause and reflect.  Move forward into tomorrow a better version of yourself. Trust in a better tomorrow earned by the mistakes of yesterday.

A time like the end of the year lends itself to this kind of reflection. We don't need the calendar to flip to inspire this kind of reflection, but since we're here, let's do it.

Set a Vibe

Let's start by setting a vibe, because it's so much more fun. Get comfy and here are a few things to think about:

• Music
• Smell
• Lighting

Buckets

Don’t just look at one very narrow pocket of life. I want you to think about all of the buckets in your life. Revisit this post for a refresher. So yes, your business, your work, your relationships, your health. Lots of us think about our health at this time of the year. Think about your hobbies....