Happiness & Doing it Right

Change Often Means Shifting Our View Point
According to a wealth advisor in Chicago "It's not fashionable to be positive right now."   Well, Richard Wiseman author of "Luck Factor", "Quirkology" and "59 Seconds", believes that change happens when we take small steps toward our goals and happiness is a huge factor in change. I can almost hear my mom when I read his three methods to "get" happy.

• Smile;
• Sit up;
• Act Happy - and Wiseman's research supports these simple actions. 

During this great recession, there have been lots of reasons to wipe that smile off your face - unemployment, credit crunch, housing market, etc. Looking at your business and life "What is NOT wrong right now?" Ask yourself these question:

• What have I gained in the last year?
• What have I learned about my customers that I didn't know before?
• What new skills have I learned?
• What brings me joy today that wasn't in my life a year ago?

I could have asked you to list all the things that were broken and not working, but that would have sent you to the dark side. What is working is key to making changes and keeping your journey on YOUR path.

Wiseman also gives a test for doubters. Take a pencil and grip it between your teeth for 60 seconds. How do you feel? Most people will feel happier than before.

If you now need to feel grumpy, hold the eraser end of the pencil between your lips (no teeth) for 60 seconds and concentrate at holding it straight out.

These two activities elicit happiness and unhappiness because they actively make the muscles of your face reflect the physical expression of those moods!

So, this week when you are feeling crabby, imagine Lee Lucas, my Mom, whispering in your ear "Sit Up, Smile, Act Happy". Have a great week.

Copyright 2010 Linda Fayerweather
Changing Lanes LLC
419-897-0528
http://www.changinglanes.biz/

PS - Do me a favor and forward this on to someone who might need a reason to smile!

  

Slow Down and Focus
My grandfather drilled into my head the need do good work early on. His favorite one-liner was, "If you don't have the time to do it right the first time how are you ever going to have the time to do it over?". (And believe me, if he thought it wasn't right you DID do it over.) My grand-dad was a wise man.

He also taught me to shake hands the proper way, to remember names, and always say "thank you". He never read an email and probably wouldn't have made it as long as he did if somebody had sent him a TXT message. If he were alive today I'm sure he'd be labelled a renaissance man.

But today we are multi-tasking our way through trying to cram 60+ hours into a (some say) reasonable 40 hour work week. And then balance that with family, eating right and getting enough rest. If this is you then I have a question; How's that working for you?

So how do we manage? We slow down.

We do everything we do with 100% of our focused energy.

And we complete it - correctly. (Do you remember that feeling called accomplishment?)

The bottom line is if we are not committed to doing something with everything we've got then why even start it. Eliminate it. And that frees up the time necessary to other things well.

Do it for 30 days. Your business, personal, and spiritual life will reward you in ways that you can only dream about today. Let's both do it. And then we'll talk in a month and share how our lives changed.

Thank you for taking the time read this. I appreciate you!

Copyright 2010 Todd Pillars; an Appreciation Marketer with Send Out Cards. Please contact him today at 419-855-2273 or tpillars@gmail.com  to SUPERCharge your Referrals! Surf on over to www.sendoutcards.com/tpillars  to send someone an Awesome Day!

Change & Referrals

How Do YOU Change?

"How do YOU Change?
"What do you do to make change stick?"
"How do you embrace change?"
"When did change work for you?"

These are the questions that I have been asking at meetings of peers and friends the last few weeks. I have pages of ideas on what has worked for others. The one word that came up several times is "shift" instead of change. One definition of "shift" is to move very slightly, transfer. . . baby steps!

Change is often seen as hard and many will say near impossible. But every now and then we see the person that has made a huge change - lost weight, controlled an addiction, or changed careers. Learning from these people and talking with others I see a multi-step process.

1. Set a desired outcome and post it where you will see it at least 2 times a day
2. Know the reason for the change. Does it bring you energy and is it aligned with your core values?
3. Build a written plan that is time sensitive and realistic.
4. At the end of the day, identify the Strategic Next Action you will do tomorrow - Ah - this is the SHIFT!

Whether you are changing your business or your own personal issues, simple shifts with a clear vision of the desired outcome are going to make a difference.

Now, the last thing I heard repeatedly was the activity needs to be done anywhere from 21 to 30 days before it becomes a habit! That may seem hard, but how many days have already gone by waiting for a shift?

"If you take a shift, you'll feel better" - Tracy Swartz

Copyright 2010 Linda Fayerweather
Changing Lanes LLC
419-897-0528
http://www.changinglanes.biz/


Building Your Referral Dream Team
A valuable lesson that I learned long ago is that a top notch referral marketing education does NOT guarantee success. However, applying a top notch referral marketing education to top notch referral partners can produce desirable results. Sarah Owen, Master Franchisee with Referral Institute in the UK, took me through an exercise to help me begin to identify my Referral Dream Team.

Here is a similar exercise with a few personal touches:

1. Write down the names of all the people that have either attempted or successfully referred you in the last 12 weeks.

2. Ask yourself the following questions:
Are they INSPIRED to help you?
Do they have the TIME to invest in you?
Are they coachable and TRAINABLE as referral partners?
Do they have the RESOURCES to connect you to your target market?
Is it the "right" time in your RELATIONSHIP?
Are they REFERRABLE?

3. Isolate the people that meet all of the criteria and ask yourself a few more important questions:
Are you in a position to reciprocate?
From their point of view, do YOU meet all of the above criteria?
Save the best for last...Do you like them?

Developing profitable referral relationships is about doing the right things with the right people at the right time in the relationship. This exercise should help you focus on the people in your network that are already trying to refer you and further identify those that are prime candidates for your Referral Dream Team.

Now what??? You must properly educate and empower them with your carefully crafted word-of-mouth message. Stay tuned...

Copyright 2010 by Paula Frazier who is a referral marketing expert for Referral Institute and has helped thousands of business people create millions of dollars in qualified referrals for nearly 10 years! She is part of an exclusive team of international Master Trainers and collaborates with the leaders in her industry to continually develop cutting edge referral marketing concepts for the organization. As a published author she's also acknowledged in the New York Times best seller, Truth or Delusion - Busting Networking's Biggest Myths. Check out #33, Delusion with a twist! Paula can be contacted at paula@referralinstitute-va.com

To-Do & Oil Slicks

Making a To-Do-List that MIGHT work for you.
Many people each Monday morning make a To-Do-List that will follow them around during the week like a whiney kid you want to ignore. Often the problem with a list is it mixes goals, projects and tasks. So, here are my definitions to start with - feel free to tweak to meet your needs.

Goal: Time sensitive, realistic, graph able, and usually a big picture item - i.e. achieve 10% increase in new business during 2010.

Project: This will support a goal (don't do it please, if it doesn't help you get to your goals). A project usually will have a shorter time-line than a goal and will have a clearly defined deadline. i.e. Get a $15,000 line of credit (LOC) needed to do the marketing campaign to get the 10% increase in new business.

Tasks: Tasks are always very specific. The should be actionable and simple. Also, each task should be the next strategic action to support a goal or project. If it goes on the list, it should start with a verb and be a one step action. i.e. Call Sam at Bank of Lotsamoney about LOC.

With that said, the only thing that is added to a To-Do-List are TASKS! That alone should save you huge amounts of time.

Keeping track - some people love a physical paper list they can cross off with flourish, others; computer tracking. Whatever you chose, it needs to be managed daily. If something stays on your active list for more than two weeks, it either needs to be re-dated; removed; re-evaluated or maybe deleted. Things left on a list too long become part of the background noise and in my world lead to the ignoring of the list altogether because we have allowed to the list to become the whiny child!

Digital ideas:
http://www.rememberthemilk.com/ free for simple version
ZenBe Lists - http://itunes.apple.com/  store $2.99
Outlook - Microsoft software $109.00 http://office.microsoft.com/en-gb/outlook
Google Calendar - free www.google.com/calendar

Copyright 2010 Linda Fayerweather
Changing Lanes LLC
419-897-0528
http://www.changinglanes.biz/

Oil Slicks and Business

Open any newspaper or turn on any television news program and you'll see how the oil from a blown well in the Gulf of Mexico is drifting towards beaches and marshlands. Gulf residents feel helpless in the face of the growing slick. Federal authorities have spread miles of booms to contain it, dropped "surfactants" to break it up, and even lit portions on fire to disperse it in the atmosphere. But beaches and fisheries have already closed, and some economists estimate the disaster's cost will total billions.

Tax increases can be like oil slicks too. Why? Because you can see them drifting towards you from miles away!

We already know that taxes are rising on January 1, 2011. That's because tax cuts passed during the Bush administration automatically expire unless Washington renews them. Now comes word that last month, the Congressional Budget Committee passed a fiscal 2011 budget resolution calling for elimination of the preferential rate on dividends. Plus, the recently-passed health care reform act adds a new 3.8% Medicare tax on "investment income" for families earning over $250,000 per year.

Fortunately, like federal authorities fighting the oil slick, you have your own tax "booms" and "surfactants" to head off the tax creep. For example, you can hold dividend-paying stocks in tax-sheltered umbrellas like IRAs and qualified plans.

Proactive planning is the key to minimizing damage when oil wells leak. It may be too late for miles of threatened coastland. But proactive planning is the key to minimizing damage from tax changes. It is not "too late" to protect yourself from coming tax hikes. Are you ready for a tax "disaster" plan of your own? Give us a call.

Tim Pinkelman, CPA
Accounting Center & Tax Services, Inc.
419-882-9255 or 734-847-0400
http://www.accounting-centers.com/

FOCUS FOCUS FOCUS

Hocus Pocus Time to Focus

As a kid, I loved the words "hocus pocus" when I would play with my magic wand that never worked like Harry Potter's did. Some quick research on the etymology of the words, reveal they don't go back to Latin and the Catholic Church. Hocus pocus started appearing in the early seventeenth century in several plays and William Vincent titled his 1694 book of conjuring, "Hocus Pocus Junior, The Anatomy of Legerdemain".

Enough with the history, besides, what does this have to do with business? Any business that has multiple jobs for each employee faces this problem of FOCUS. In the Human Resource (HR) world, when a company reaches about 150 full-time-equivalent employees, there is usually a need for a dedicated HR person. Prior to that, the head honcho needs to wave the magic wand and have someone (or an outside contractor) take on the focus of HR.

In my world, grabbing your magic wand and saying "hocus pocus" is a mental queue to getting a plan, delegating that plan if appropriate and then getting back to your own focus. Now, least we forget, as the delegator, we must review and evaluate, but if we have conjured the correct plan, someone else will be "doing" so we can be focusing on our own work.

Now all together: "Hocus Pocus Time to Focus" and check out what Pat has to say below.

Copyright 2010 Linda Fayerweather
Changing Lanes LLC
419-897-0528
http://www.changinglanes.biz/

The More Things Change, the More They Stay the Same
Things are changing so quickly; it seems almost impossible to keep up, especially with new technology. I finally broke down and got a smart phone. I'm looking forward to receiving it this week, with its 3G mobile hotspot...whatever that means!

What's interesting though is that as much as things change, certain beliefs seem to stand the test of time. I recently located an article that was published in the April 1920 issue of Good Housekeeping magazine. Did you know that Good Housekeeping has been around for that long?

The article titled "Stiffening Your Mental Backbone" is by H. Addington Bruce. The byline says: "Can you do what you want to do? How often do you go to the office with plans all made for the day's work so that you can make every minute count, and then some trivial thing upsets the whole schedule and you go home at night with the feeling that the day has been lost?"

Can you relate?

Addington tells the story of a man who goes to a doctor because he can't seem to focus long enough to get necessary tasks done. It turns out the man was not nourishing his body properly and according to Addington, the doctor explained the condition to his patient as follows:

"You are lacking in energy because you do not eat properly. Your organism not being sufficiently nourished, all your faculties, your will included, fatigues quickly. Strength of body and strength of will tend to go hand in hand."

It's interesting that in 1920, the belief that nurturing our physical energy, gives us mental energy was accepted in Good Housekeeping magazine and 90 years later we still haven't learned that lesson. In fact, we probably nourish our bodies less than back in 1920, when more whole foods were consumed.

In his article Addington also mentions these familiar concepts:

"As a man wishes, so he wills."

"Like begets like."

"Form the habit of devoting a few minutes every day to thinking about work in a large, broad, imaginative way."

Take a look at your beliefs and see if they have stood the test of time, just like these beliefs about the mind/body connection. You might also want to try an apple for a mid-morning break, instead of that donut!

Pat Altvater
Transforming Bodies and Minds
http://www.outsmartweight.com/
http://www.ignitethepowerwithinbook.com/
419-344-6613