Are You Learning From Your Mistakes?

Written by Bonnie Marcus on 9 January 2014. Posted in Health, Fitness & Wellness, Issues, Relationships, Dating & Sex

In the business world it’s easy to be blindsided when you’ve got your nose to the grindstone.

The problem is that the only person you have to blame is yourself.

When it comes to your career, you are the one responsible for your progress.

So when you don’t get that promotion, or don’t receive the accolades that you were expecting, there’s no need to point the finger anywhere but back at yourself. Instead of assuming that everyone else is wrong, it’s time we tried learning from these failures.

If you’re worried about a mistake you’ve made, or think you might make, you are not alone. We all make mistakes every day; some are big mistakes and some are minor ones. It’s part of life. If you Google “learning from failure,” you will get about 129 million results. So you are not alone. We can’t avoid our missteps, but we can learn from them.

One of the biggest mistakes I made in my career was believing that my track record and performance alone would get me promoted. I failed to understand the workplace politics, and I lacked strong relationships across the organization with key stakeholders and decision makers. As a result I was passed over for a promotion I thought I deserved. The lessons I learned from this experience now help me to coach other professional women. It allows me to help them avoid the landmines and successfully navigate the reality of the workplace. But I didn’t learn this lesson overnight.

A huge first step for recovering and learning from my mistake was accepting the fact that I could have changed my behaviour and mindset to influence the decision-making process.

It took some time to detach from the situation and understand that the assumption I had made, that my talent and hard work would be sufficient enough for the promotion, was incorrect. After all, there is no such thing as a meritocracy. The reality is that people are not promoted solely based on their performance. It takes a lot more than just the minimum for you to be noticed and considered for a chance to move up the ladder. It’s a requirement, and expectation, that you perform well to maintain your title and status, but good performance alone doesn’t land you a promotion.

One of the key aspects that set you apart and designate you as someone with leadership potential are the relationships you have with key stakeholders and influencers. Your great track record needs to be shown alongside your ability to work the politics in a positive way and build critical relationships. You need to be on everyone’s radar and create visibility and credibility for yourself and your team. Unfortunately, I had my head down focused on my work and not on building these relationships.

Next, I needed to get over my anger and frustration before I could learn from the experience.

After clearing my head to reflect on the situation, I realized that I had avoided connecting with key people in the organization. I had no understanding of how the decision for this position would be made. I didn’t even have a solid relationship with my boss, who was new to the organization!

Once I reached this awareness, it was much easier to evaluate the situation and look at it objectively.

What did I do right? Well, I did ask for the job once the position was available. I did lobby for the position and 18 of my direct reports at the time recommended me for the job.

So where did I go wrong? I had no idea how the decision to fill this position would be made. I had no idea who the decision makers were and who would influence the decision. I didn’t have any relationships with anyone who had an influence on the position.

In other words, since my boss was new to the organization, who did he ask for input? I didn’t know. I neglected to build allies and champions across the organization; I knew no one in the office who could confirm my qualifications and leadership potential.

I was truly blindsided when I did not receive this promotion. This experience is now the subject of a popular keynote, “The Anatomy of A Blindside,” that I present across the country. The lessons learned from this experience are now used to help other women avoid this mistake.

Here are the 5 critical steps to help you learn from your mistakes:

1. Accept: Accept that you made a mistake and don’t cast your blame on others.

2. Detach: Detach yourself from the emotions surrounding the situation and adopt an objective perspective.

3. Reflect: Once you have taken the time to detach, replay the situation step by step to get a better idea of how you could have avoided your misstep. At what point did things begin to go wrong?

4. Evaluate: What went right? What went wrong? What factors contributed to the failure of the situation? What could you have done differently?

5. Learn: Once you can objectively look at the situation and assessed what went wrong, think about how you could have approached this differently. What will you change going forward?

Today’s work requires a new leadership paradigm. Vulnerability is now considered a core competency for leadership. A real human being is vulnerable and has the potential to do something wrong. We all make mistakes. No one can possibly know everything. Admitting we don’t have all the answers and that we make mistakes is now considered a strength for today’s leadership. Admitting our own vulnerability inspires others, especially when we share our mistakes and the lessons we have learned from them.

It’s easy to blame others for our mistakes. It’s easy to become paralyzed by our emotions of anger, frustration or disappointment. We can expend a lot of energy beating ourselves up for making a mistake. That’s just wasted energy.

No matter what you do or what industry you’re in, there’s a window for failure. But there’s also a window for success. For every mistake you make, your window for success gets bigger. So you can take the risk and accept that things can go wrong, or you can stay behind and wonder what could have been. It’s your call. It’s your choice to use your mistakes and errors as a learning experience. It’s your choice to grow from it professionally, as well as personally, and keep moving forward.

Teaching our Children to Fail in Life

Written by Thomas C Corley on 2 January 2014. Posted in Business, Career & Entrepreneurship, How To, Issues

What are the chances that your son or daughter might strike it big one day and start raking in the millions? I think if they did, for every parent it would be like our biggest goal being brought to fruition – if you can’t be the millionaire in the family, your child being one is the next best thing – and you’d probably love knowing that you did everything to help them get there.

What if you found out that you not only didn’t help them, but you actually hindered them from being rich?

Not just you, but your child’s teachers, the school’s curriculum and its values… Kind of wrecks the daydream, doesn’t it?

When I travel the country speaking to high school and college students about exactly what they need to do to become financially successful in life I always begin my presentation by asking three questions:

“How many want to be financially successful in life?” “How many think they will be financially successful in life?”

Almost every time I ask these two questions every hand rises in the air. Then I ask the magic third question:

“How many have taken a course in school on how to be financially successful in life?”

Not one hand rises in the air, ever.
This happens every time I have asked this third question. Clearly every student wants to be successful and thinks they will be successful, but none have been taught by their parents or their school system how to be financially successful in life. Not only are there no courses on basic financial-success principles, but there are no structured courses on basic financial literacy.

Children are being raised to be financially illiterate, to be poor and to fail in life.

Is it any wonder that most of us in North America live paycheck to paycheck? That most of us accumulate more debt than assets? That many people are losing their homes? Is it any wonder that most Americans cannot afford college for their children and that student loan debt is now the largest type of consumer debt?

According to The Institute for College Access & Success’ Project on Student Debt, the average student loan debt is $25,250. This debt forces college graduates to postpone buying a home and starting a family.

The second worst thing about this problem is what children are being taught by their parents and the school system. They are being taught that rich people are bad.

You think I’m wrong? Just ask your child if they have ever read Robin Hood in school. Most likely the answer will be yes. Then ask them if Robin Hood is a good guy or a bad guy. Most likely your child will say “good guy”. In fact, they very likely consider him a hero. The fact that Robin Hood was a thief who stole from others is irrelevant. He took from the rich and gave to the poor. That, children are taught, is okay because poor people are good, rich people are bad, and poor people are thus “entitled” to that rich person’s money and wealth. Our schools are teaching children that striving to become wealthy in North America is bad.In other words, the American Dream is a bad thing.You see manifestations of this “financial success is bad, the 1% are bad and the 99% are good” mindset in things like the Occupy Wall Street movement and the Buffet Rule. You cannot pick up a paper these days without seeing some article on the wealth gap. Clearly this wealth gap needs to be addressed. But current measures to address the disparity between the rich and the poor are poorly thought out and simply will not solve the problem of poverty. The real solution is to equip our children through education at home and in school with tools that enable them to become financially successful in life.

1) Set limitations: Limit T.V., social media and cell phone use to no more than one hour a day. And limit junk food to no more than 300 calories a day. Punish children when they lose their tempers so they understand the importance of controlling this very costly emotion.

2) Teach children the importance of relationship building: Have them phone friends, family, teachers, coaches etc. on their birthdays and send thank you cards for gifts or help they received from anyone. And parents and children need to set aside at least thirty to sixty minutes a day to talk to each other. By talk I do not mean through Facebook, or on the cell phone, but face-to-face, real talking. The only real quality time is quantity time.

3) Teach children to manage money: They need to learn this. Require your children to save at least 25% of their earnings or gifts they receive. Open up a checking account or savings account for them and force them to use their savings to buy the things they want. They need to learn that they are not entitled to things like cell phones, computers, fashionable clothes, flat screen T.V.s, etc.

4) Teach children that education is not limited to school: Require your children to read one to two educational books a month, outside of school-mandated reading. Have them participate in at least two non-sports-related extracurricular activities at school or outside of school.

5) Teach children how to manage their time: They should be required to create daily “to-do” lists and these lists need to be monitored by parents. The goal should be to accomplish at least 70% of their tasks on their daily “to do” list.

And through formal education at school, the curriculum should be made to include:

1) Goal-setting and goal-reaching: Require that children set monthly, annual and long-term goals. Reassure them that mistakes made in reaching (or not reaching) these goals are good, not bad. Children need to understand that the very foundation of success in life is built on learning from our mistakes.

2) Work ethic: Work ethic is critical to success in life. Require working-age children to work or volunteer at least ten hours a week.

3) Exercise: Have the students exercise aerobically 20 – 30 minutes a day. This improves their health, burns calories and delivers desperately needed oxygen to the brain and vital organs.

4) The value of financial success: Teach students that seeking financial success in life is good and a worthwhile goal. Children need to learn what the American Dream is (unlimited opportunity for financial success) and taught that it is a great thing.

Financial success is not a secret. Wealthy people do certain things every single day that sets them apart from everyone else in life. Wealthy people have good daily-success habits that they learned from their parents. These daily habits are the real reason for the wealth gap in our country and the real reason why the rich get richer. Unless we teach our children good daily-success habits, and level the playing field, the rich will continue to get richer and the poor will continue to get poorer.

Yet we frequently don’t teach them these “rich” habits. Fact is, the values in place in our society, the ones currently taught in our schools’ curriculum and backed by parental guidance, make it more of a lucky gamble than anything that children will be financially successful in life. If they’re lucky, they’ll learn these critical skills on their own, outside of their regulated education, and they’ll appreciate the value of said skills when they’re still young enough for these habits to take hold in their behaviour and become permanently ingrained. Only if they’re lucky… and that shouldn’t be the case!

Ten Deadly Business Mistakes

Written by MaryEllen Tribby on 26 December 2013. Posted in Business, Career & Entrepreneurship, Issues

One mistake- that’s all it takes to crash your life down around you.

One dumb move… that’s all it takes.

And I absolutely hate it when I see smart people do dumb things!

You can spend your entire life building up your business and working your butt off just to see one dumb mistake cost you everything and leave your career derailed from its tracks. Or overlook one little thing and it could cost you your business, and it can be almost impossible for businesses to recover from failure. Your reputation is on the line, and not only is it vital to your success, but it can be easy to blow with just one screw up.

Unfortunately, it happens all the time in business. For example, you see smart marketers who never leave enough time for a proper launch. I’ve seen content providers who continually blow all their money by building out a product without any research or testing only to find out it is NOT a sellable product. This one is my personal favorite – entrepreneurs who think they know it all and can do it alone. And, to me, this is one of the saddest scenarios. Why? Because so often their ideas are great! And they work hard, but they just don’t know what they don’t know. So instead of being widely successful, their businesses fail. I have seen this a countless number of times over my 25 years of working with and watching hundreds of entrepreneurs. I thought about how I could help you prevent these stupid mistakes, so I put together a list of…

Ten Deadly Mistakes that Entrepreneurs Make That Destroy Their Profits, Morale and Reputation:

1) You Do Not Have Clarity of Vision: If you do not understand why your business exists, then how can your customers, your team, vendor and joint venture partners? You need to create a mission statement. Your mission says why you do what you do. Your statement needs to pass the t-shirt test (when people would proudly wear it on a t-shirt). And never subordinate your mission in order to get money!

2) You Do Not Create Core Values for Your Company and Employees: Your core values dictate how you do business everyday. Remember to never subordinate your core values in order to get money. You need to keep your morale in check and never stray from it.

3) You Do Not Understand the Need for an Org Chart: An organizational chart not only adds structure and efficiencies to your business, but it clarifies who and where an employee should go to solve a problem or present an idea. You’re wasting your time and everyone else’s if no one knows this. I know so many entrepreneurs that have an entire office full of employees, yet the chart below still represents their hands on work responsibilities.

4) You Do Not Create Job Descriptions: Entrepreneurs tell me all the time that they need help. Yet when I ask them what the person would do, they look at me like a deer caught in headlights. You cannot possibly hire the right person if you do not know what you want them to do.

So before you can initiate your search, you have to come up with, and write, a job description for the person you want to hire. If you have never done this before, start by writing down everything you think you want your new employee to do. List their responsibilities. And next to each responsibility, write down the necessary skill. Be specific.

Once you know the characteristics of your ideal employee and can define the job and the skills that employee needs… you start looking.

5) You Confuse a Passionate Idea for a Sellable Idea: When people ask me for advice on what their business should be, I tell them two things:

Something you have experience in
Something you are passionate about

Once you have narrowed that down, you must confirm that your idea is sellable. Just because you love it does not automatically qualify it as a good idea. Your idea must be sellable – meaning, do people want what you are selling? To answer this, just do some simple keyword research. If you have at least 10,000 look-ups a month, then go for it.

6) You Do Not Pay Yourself: Most entrepreneurs do not factor their own income into their financials and business plans. They live with the attitude that they will take whatever’s left at the end of each month. Don’t develop that attitude and make sure you’re giving yourself an income.

7) You Do Not Know Your “Keep The Doors Open Number”: Most entrepreneurs have no idea of the “real” cost to run their business. This is a big problem because it leads to never understanding the health of your business. Are you growing? Is your business succeeding the way you want it to? Sit down right now and write out EVERY fixed cost you have, including paying yourself. Once you have done this divide that number by 365. And there you have it – the amount of money you need to bring in each day to keep your doors open.

8) You Suffer from Shinny Penny Syndrome: If you have a tendency to bounce from one “cool” project to another, you are not alone. However, this will break your business faster than anything else. You see, when you have several projects 50% done, that yields you zero revenue. However, one project 100% done brings money in the door. So wait until a project is fully done before moving on to the next one.

9) You Don’t Understand the Value of Giving Away “Ownership” of the Company: Now this does not mean for every person. It means for someone (or a couple) that will take the business to the next level. Think about it- you can’t get past that 2 million dollar level. If someone could come in and take you to 5 million the first year, it would be completely logical to give up 50%. It’s a numbers game, my friend! Just remember 100% of nothing is still nothing. Don’t let your ego prevent you from having a real business.

10) You Avoid Confrontation: Too many entrepreneurs are way too concerned about being liked and have a hard time being proactive when it comes to uncomfortable situations in their business. If there is a problem you need to confront it. Better yet, if there is a potential problem, jump on it before it comes a problem. Letting problems fester tends to lead to:

Bad Deals
Bad Employees
Bad Company Morale

Remember, it is business and there are always ways to handle even the most uncomfortable situations with tact and respect.

If any of these situations sounds familiar to you you need to get yourself out of there as soon as possible. If that means bringing someone in to help you, then take advantage of the options you have available to you. Once you stop making these mistakes, all of which are completely fixable if you catch them in time, you’ll see an increase in your business success. People will want to work with you, your company’s morale will get a huge boost, and your profits will increase.

What Your Body is Trying to Tell You

Written by Amy Kisaka on 19 December 2013. Posted in Health, Fitness & Wellness, Issues

Fiona Fine Interview with Luanne Pennesi

It’s such a basic first step, and yet it’s the one we forget to take every day. “Take good care of yourself,” advises Luanne Pennesi, RN, MS and founder of the Metropolitan Wellness Centre in New York City. “We’ve got to take good care of our minds, of our bodies, we have to process emotions in a healthy way; we have to manage us first.”

That is the first thing you need to do in order to take charge of your health, and by extension your life. Pennesi had to learn this herself, the hard way. Currently a leading name in the field of natural health medicine, she has built her career on the melding of new-age, alternative and holistic Eastern health therapies with the conventional, diagnostic science of Western medical practice. But she was working as a nurse administrator in the oncology unit of a large hospital when she first hit her tipping point.

“I was working all the time. I had chronic fatigue syndrome,” she explains. “I used to drink thirteen cups of coffee a day!” This was common among her fellow co-workers, but after sixteen years, the stress of her lifestyle took a devastating toll. She started developing thyroid imbalances and breast lesions due to all the tension and caffeine. And the conventional pharmaceutical treatments she was being given by her doctors were just barely suppressing her symptoms. As an alternative, she started taking classes in holistic medicine, a field in which treatments are focused on the “whole person,” rather than just the illness itself. She was able to reverse every one of her issues through those classes when she realized: “I [still] wasn’t living my true potential as a woman.”

“What happens so often is that people will jump into a cause, and they’ll lose their whole identity to the cause,” she says. “I lost my whole identity to my work as a nurse administrator. It was who I was, and I was terrified to think, ‘If I left there, who am I?’”

This is the Achilles’ heel of many, many career-driven women.

It’s never a bad thing to be focused on your career or your personal causes, but it’s easy to give ourselves over to them so completely that we forget about ourselves in the pursuit of the goal – which is ultimately self-defeating, for our health and even in terms of said goal. It’s hard to succeed when you’re sick.

Avoid the Trap to Begin With

“Women have grown up to be ‘The Nurturer,’” says Pennesi. “We have it in us. It’s what we do, we nurture. And sometimes, well, there’s a thin line between nurturing and martyrdom. Many times, depending on our religion, or our peers, or the profession we go into, we might get pushed into doing-doing-doing – and then we come last. And when you have that kind of mindset, where you constantly feel like you have to be doing [stuff] for other people in order to feel worthy, and to get their acknowledgment – that, combined with an unhealthy diet is the perfect storm for cancer.”

She gives the Eastern alternative explanation for what happens. “When you’re that kind of person … cancer, on an energetic level, is always about some kind of imbalance in the liver. And the liver area, in Chinese medicine, is where we hold on to anger, frustration, and resentment.

“The breasts are the organs of nurturing, of feeding, of giving. If women develop breast cancer – these are the women who are always taking care of everyone else, and put themselves last. People with cancer in the lungs – the lungs are where we hold onto sadness, grief, and resistance to change. But fibroids, ovarian, and cervical cancer – these are about anger, frustration, and resentment because you’re living someone else’s agenda. You never get to give your own life meaning. We just adapt to other people’s expectations of us.”

Don’t rely on pharmaceutical therapies; they treat the symptoms, not the problem

For Pennesi, it took a journey of self-discovery and growing disillusionment with the Western medical industry to find the real key to restored health and longevity.

“Hospitals, and the whole corporation of medicine, are like a business,” she claims. “There’s no incentive to keep people healthy. It’s an illness-based system – [they] need to keep that business going in healthcare. [They] depend on people to eat bad food and get stressed out. The more people get cancer, the more money they make on pharmaceuticals and surgery and radiation. I have witnessed people who have reversed dozens of conditions that conventional medicine has failed miserably at reversing, in spite of the millions of dollars of research that go into studies controlled by the very pharmaceutical companies that are selling the drugs to suppress the symptoms that our bodies manifest in order to beg our attention.”

And Pennesi numbers herself among this statistic: “I had hepatitis B, I had chronic fatigue syndrome, I had cytomegalovirus, I had acne, breast lesions, ovarian cysts, I suffered from mycoplasma pneumoniae – and with perseverance, knowledge and with determination I reversed every single one of these issues.”

She started bringing this up at the leadership meetings at the hospital where she worked. “When I would speak up about the hypocrisy of what we were doing, and looking at other things we could do, [the hospital] wanted to suppress me.”

Her boss told her she was dispensable, and she retorted that they could just dispense of her, then.

“So I got myself fired,” she laughs, “and I went out and got my Master’s degree in Natural Health, and shortly after that I went on to get a four-year degree in Chinese Medicine. I became a certified AMMA therapist: it’s a specialized tendon and muscle massage [therapy] that you do with the hands, where you connect all of the acupuncture pressure points. It was kind of funky for a nurse coming from administration and oncology to go into something like this, yet I was very excited because, for the first time in my career, I saw people actually improving, actually getting well.

“The next and crucial step for me was: how can I recreate my life so I can be more to people, to help them be the best they can be? The first step was me being the best me I could be!”

Live for Yourself

“In the Healing Arts literature, there’s a specific order that we have to invest our energies in ourselves,” Pennesi explains. “Take good care of you. Once you’ve got that down, then and only then are you going to be able to draw in healthy, like-minded people for healthy romantic relationships, friendships, acquaintances, and so on. Now you have your inner and outer circle of good friendships to support you on your journey while you’re taking good care of you, [that’s when] you’re ready to go out and start doing things on a broad, community level.

“This is some pretty heavy stuff for some people to take,” she warns. “When you say ‘what do I need to do to deconstruct my life?’ – what’s going to happen is you may not get acknowledgment. We strive, not just women but people in general, we want to be acknowledged, loved, and recognized. And when we stop doing the things that get you that recognition, you have to be okay with disappointing people, with people saying ‘I don’t like you in this [new] way’.”

Are You Addicted to Being Average?

Written by Lesley Cornelius on 12 December 2013. Posted in Business, Career & Entrepreneurship, Issues

So you’re stuck.

Settled in to a career where you know you could be doing better, but you stay where you are because it’s comfortable. You put in so much time, but you don’t get rewarded for your efforts. In fact, your efforts are almost unseen. You feel bored at work because you settled for a job that didn’t challenge you enough. You ran into some troubled times and didn’t want to risk going through that again, so you stuck with a job you feel safer with. You made some sacrifices, but it was worth it because you’re getting by and managing with what you have. And that’s enough for you…

You are addicted to being average. When you get into the habit of your addiction, it’s hard to get out of it. You become comfortable and you remain settled in your average job while you let your hopes and ambitions become merely a dream. This ends here. Make those dreams your goals and complete them. It’s time for a challenge. Rise above your average life and start living to your fullest potential. Take that leap you’ve never had the guts to take. Break your addiction today and become exceptional.

Deborah Dubree is an expert at breaking away from average. She went from being a receptionist with just a high school diploma, to being CEO and owner of a successful construction company. Excelling in climbing the corporate ladder, she’s even written a book called AVERAGE IS AN ADDICTION, From Mediocre to Millions! aimed to help people get out of the lives they settled for. Deborah Dubree spoke with Women Who Run It’s editor-in-chief, Fiona Fine, and shared her secrets and advice. Steal her top five pieces of advice and break away from your own average!

1. Be Courageous and Gutsy Dubree managed to work her way up to own a construction company, and now she runs a coaching business, as well as a regular talk show on Kwammie Lassider Sports Talk. How did she do that? As she puts it, “I bet on me.” Dubree credits her ability to ask, “Why not me?” instead of, “Why me?” The difference between these questions will give you the mindset for pushing yourself up the ladder. Believe in what you offer someone, instead of doubting why they would want to choose you. Stop worrying about what other people are thinking or saying about you and do things for yourself. Don’t doubt yourself. Just do it. “I said, ‘I’m doing this for me,’ and I went after it,” says Dubree.

2. It’s Not all About Qualifications Dubree says she sees people all around her who are intelligent and talented who remain stuck at their average jobs in their average lives. They reach excellence, briefly doing something great and worth the recognition, but then they come back down from it. She notices that they all take a familiar pattern, which always ends with them settling for the position they are currently in. They choose comfort instead of risk. Dubree didn’t have a degree or any technical training before she entered the construction business. But she had confidence, and she took the risk. While education is always a benefit, it’s not going to secure you anything. You could be smarter than a rocket scientist, and as educated as one, but if you never take a risk you’ll be addicted to average forever.

3. Find Your Self-Identity Moving up the ladder is not entirely about your intelligence or talent. You need an edge. Dubree says, “We all have an edge, and the edge is really who we are. The problem being is that most people have forgotten who they are.” When you’re stuck at average, you lose track of who you are. Figure out what your edge is. Your edge is your leverage to get ahead in the world. Look at what areas in your life you can leverage and which areas need to be improved on to include leverage. Within your self-identity, you have an edge that will put you ahead of the others. Find it. Dubree named her coaching company “Clear Edge” because of this. She says it was the edge that moved her forward.

4. The Six A’s The six A’s are Dubree’s steps to take for the process of moving your life up the ladder. If it’s time for a change, follow these steps first. This is where she says you need to make a decision about where you are and where you want to be. If those two don’t match up, you need to break away from average.

The first A is admitting what areas you’re average in.
The second A is asking what you need to do to start breaking away from the average and how you need to be behaving, thinking, and feeling to achieve this. Changing your behaviour and your way of thinking is one of the most effective things you can do.
The third A is to access your imagination. Open up your mind and see what you want to see. Create the end result you want in your imagination before you start, so you can visualize what you want it to look like.
Then act in the real world to make it match up. This is the fourth A: action. Take action and start the steps to success. Take any action that has held you back in the past and act on it.
The fifth A is assess. Take a look at what you’ve done so far and figure out what worked and what didn’t. You need to be doing more of what went well. The things that didn’t go so well need to be looked at and you need to figure out what you should be doing differently.
The sixth and final A is to appreciate. Dubree says you need to step back and appreciate everything, even what didn’t work. If it went right, appreciate that it did. If it went wrong, appreciate that you had the opportunity to do so and you have the opportunity to make a difference.

5. Emotions as Signals Emotions are always labeled as good or bad. But Dubree says, “emotions are not good or bad. Emotions are just signals.” And you can use emotions in a beneficial way when you’re moving up. “If you’re having a negative type of emotion,” says Dubree, “it’s a signal that you need to make a change.” Analyze what caused your emotion, whether it was negative or positive. You need to change what makes you feel bad. It sounds like a simple concept, but it’s important. Then, manipulate your brain into generating a positive emotion. This can be done through first deciding what state, mentally and physically, you would like to be in. Dubree says next you need to ask your mind a question, because your mind needs something to focus on so it doesn’t wander off into negative thought territory. Think, “What would it take for me to be at my best right now?” The answer your mind will come up with will encourage you. Dubree’s advice for this is, “the mind will give you negative responses if you ask it negatively.” So feed your mind positivity and you’ll power through all those stressful situations.

Don’t let your life fall through the cracks. Take control of your life and keep moving up. If you’re sick of being in an average life, rise above it and get to the place you want to be. Dubree did it, so you can too!

How Do I Stop Overreacting?

Written by Lisa Haisha on 5 December 2013. Posted in Health, Fitness & Wellness, How To, Issues

What if you found out that you not only didn’t help them, but you actually hindered them from being rich?

Not just you, but your child’s teachers, the school’s curriculum and its values… Kind of wrecks the daydream, doesn’t it?

“How many want to be financially successful in life?”

“How many think they will be financially successful in life?”

Almost every time I ask these two questions every hand rises in the air. Then I ask the magic third question:

“How many have taken a course in school on how to be financially successful in life?”

Not one hand rises in the air, ever.

This happens every time I have asked this third question. Clearly every student wants to be successful and thinks they will be successful, but none have been taught by their parents or their school system how to be financially successful in life. Not only are there no courses on basic financial-success principles, but there are no structured courses on basic financial literacy.

Children are being raised to be financially illiterate, to be poor and to fail in life.

Is it any wonder that most of us in North America live paycheck to paycheck? That most of us accumulate more debt than assets? That many people are losing their homes? Is it any wonder that most Americans cannot afford college for their children and that student loan debt is now the largest type of consumer debt?

According to The Institute for College Access & Success’ Project on Student Debt, the average student loan debt is $25,250. This debt forces college graduates to postpone buying a home and starting a family.

The second worst thing about this problem is what children are being taught by their parents and the school system. They are being taught that rich people are bad.

You think I’m wrong? Just ask your child if they have ever read Robin Hood in school. Most likely the answer will be yes. Then ask them if Robin Hood is a good guy or a bad guy. Most likely your child will say “good guy”. In fact, they very likely consider him a hero. The fact that Robin Hood was a thief who stole from others is irrelevant. He took from the rich and gave to the poor. That, children are taught, is okay because poor people are good, rich people are bad, and poor people are thus “entitled” to that rich person’s money and wealth. Our schools are teaching children that striving to become wealthy in North America is bad.

In other words, the American Dream is a bad thing.

You see manifestations of this “financial success is bad, the 1% are bad and the 99% are good” mindset in things like the Occupy Wall Street movement and the Buffet Rule. You cannot pick up a paper these days without seeing some article on the wealth gap. Clearly this wealth gap needs to be addressed. But current measures to address the disparity between the rich and the poor are poorly thought out and simply will not solve the problem of poverty. The real solution is to equip our children through education at home and in school with tools that enable them to become financially successful in life.

So how do we do this? Parents and our schools need to work together to re-educate our children, both through formal education in the schools and informal education at home. In the home, parents could teach their children in the following ways: 1) Set limitations: Limit T.V., social media and cell phone use to no more than one hour a day. And limit junk food to no more than 300 calories a day. Punish children when they lose their tempers so they understand the importance of controlling this very costly emotion.

And through formal education at school, the curriculum should be made to include: 1) Goal-setting and goal-reaching: Require that children set monthly, annual and long-term goals. Reassure them that mistakes made in reaching (or not reaching) these goals are good, not bad. Children need to understand that the very foundation of success in life is built on learning from our mistakes.

2) Work ethic: Work ethic is critical to success in life. Require working-age children to work or volunteer at least ten hours a week

3) Exercise: Have the students exercise aerobically 20 – 30 minutes a day. This improves their health, burns calories and delivers desperately needed oxygen to the brain and vital organs.

Paleo: The Diet You Were Born to Eat

Written by Amy Kisaka on 21 November 2013. Posted in Health, Fitness & Wellness, Issues

Interview with Nell Stephenson

“Eating good food makes you feel good.”

These are the words that every great diet is founded on. And so spoken by Nell Stephenson, nutritional consultant and author of the book Paleoista: Gain Energy, Get Lean and Feel Fabulous with the Diet You Were Born to Eat, during her exclusive interview with Women Who Run It. Her words are the pathway to healthier eating and living by way of a diet so old it has literally stood the test of time.

“The Paleo diet is what our Paleo[lithic] ancestors ate,” says Stephenson. “It is food we have in today’s culture. You do not need to start hunting and farming your own produce – but you cannot eat anything refined and inflammatory. It is a 60/40 diet; 40% being carbohydrates from primarily vegetables and fruits and 60% being from wild protein and healthy fats.”

The modern world is no stranger to revolutionary dieting in various different forms, so what is it that sets the Paleo diet apart? For Stephenson, it began as a cleanse of her diet at the time: a typically healthy diet that one can assume is implemented by every reasonably health-conscious North American – but one that was nevertheless making her ill.

“The reason I started the Paleo diet is that I was tired of being sick!” she explains. “When I was a child, they thought I had a sensitive stomach. This evolved later into multiple trips to the emergency room, and to seeking specialists. Whenever I went to the ER, no one would ask what I was eating.”

“I always ate healthy and was brought up on a healthy diet, but I was also eating my fair share of peanuts, raw dairy, legumes, and whole wheat bread. All in balance, but [it was] enough to cause a problem. I finally found a doctor who gave me a test for Celiac disease. It came back negative and I was told I had a latent allergy [hypersensitivity] to gluten. I was relieved – but the doctor told me there was no reason to stop eating gluten.”

Stephenson stopped eating gluten anyway. “In only three days I felt better. I had more energy, my sleep improved. I lost extra weight, making me leaner. Cutting out gluten then planted the proverbial seed: if the food I thought was good for me was making me sick, what else was I eating that was making me sick? I began to omit soy products, dairy, etc. And I went from feeling okay to feeling fantastic.”

“This is not magic – it is simple. Eating good food makes you feel good.”

But Really, What Is the Paleo Diet? After all, the cultural standard for a good healthy diet includes eating lots of whole grains, legumes, soy, peanuts, lean meats and chicken, doesn’t it? These are all things we are constantly advised to eat by healthcare professionals, so for many, cutting them out of your diet might seem a bit extreme. Not to mention hard! But when you think about it, this is merely the diet you were born to eat. The Paleo diet is based on years of scientific research and study conducted by Dr. Loren Cordain, and it reflects the fact that in the Paleolithic era, the human diet was built on what could be foraged, scavenged, picked or hunted – just as it was, in its natural state. Grains and legumes grown from the ground were avoided because the fact is, they have always carried anti-nutrient properties; somewhat detrimental to the human digestive system because of those very properties which serve as their protection from pesticides and predators. The Paleo diet merely suggests a return to eating good food: fresh vegetables, fruits, wild fish, grass-fed meats, free-range poultry and healthy processed fats. Avoid processed carbohydrates from grains and legumes, as well as other acid-forming foods (like dairy products).

Tips on Paleo-Dieting Because a diet is a diet – when you’re just starting out, sticking to it is always a tough, trial-and-error process. It was no different for Stephenson, and she has a wealth of advice to offer because of it.

“I was a vegan for two years, partially for ethical reasons and partly to see if it would make me feel better after all of my health issues. After 6 months I started craving fish – so bad I would go to bed and dream about fish. I would wake up feeling guilty for being a vegan and for ethical reasons, but I knew it would continue to be a struggle. I found fish to be the ‘gateway protein’. Gradually over time, I found a balance where I could consume protein and support animal rights simultaneously. I do this by buying my meats only from reputable sources – the best way to do this is to eat locally. I am blessed to live in LA where you can have fresh strawberries and blueberries at any time of the year – but you know they are not coming from natural environments or being shipped over without help. [So] eat locally! Visit farmers’ markets; look for seasonal meats and produce and stick with them. And ask lots of questions – ask if the meat is wild, what they specialize in – get to know the vendors.

“This is a completely individual process,” she advises. “Some people do not start at 100% right away. Some people prefer to start with a week of no dairy, then add a week of no dairy and no legumes. Then finally they can add all three and go completely Paleo. My personal suggestion is [to] try going Paleo 100% for at least 30 days. It takes at least a month to reap the benefits, and this way you can know what it is like and consider undergoing it for good.”

Perks of the Paleoista Life Why not? For Nell Stephenson, who coined the term “Paleoista”, is living proof that a “caveman” diet and the modern-chic, high-energy lifestyle of a fashionista are in no way mutually exclusive. In fact, just on the results yielded by participants of the diet, one could argue the two are symbiotic. Eating real food and feeling healthy and newly invigorated because of it goes hand in hand with style and confidence – you’ll look the part because you feel it.

“I absolutely encourage my clients to implement this diet because it is suitable for everyone,” says Stephenson. “I had an elderly woman in South Africa who could stop taking her medication for high blood pressure. A Paleo diet helps make you healthier and stronger, and this helps some taper off their medications. Of course there are always exceptions, but they are easily modified – you adjust your protein intakes, you factor in allergies – it is all easy.

“My personal philosophy is one of ‘Attitude and Gratitude’. We have so much to be thankful for and a lot of us take life for granted and do not live in the moment. It can be a real energy drain [that] prevents you from being productive. Of course we all get stressed and wind up in bad moods occasionally, but if you wake up every morning and think about what you are grateful for, you carry that with you throughout the day.”

Investing in Your Image is Investing in Your Career

Written by Caroline Dowd - Higgins on 21 November 2013. Posted in Business, Career & Entrepreneurship, Issues

Have you ever convinced yourself to buy something by arguing that “it’s an investment piece?” “Black Louboutin’s will never go out of style… they must be worth the $500!“

We’ve probably argued this with expensive purses, technology and work attire. The truth is that they can definitely be considered investments – in you and your career!

Your image is an important part of how seriously you are taken in the business world but do we make sure our image is in tip-top shape everywhere? Sometimes we forget about another professional space where we may get even more attention, the internet. Even worse, our image is all we have on the web! If we aren’t projecting a good one then we’re probably being overlooked.

Be honest; does your LinkedIn profile have a photograph? Or are you one of those people who chooses (or can’t be bothered) to not to upload an image? If you opt out of including a headshot, the message you are sending to the professional world is not a good one. It is not a beauty contest, but more of a way for you to be identified, as well as for others to check out your professional persona.

We’ve all heard the phrase “a picture is worth a thousand words,” but some of us don’t consider it when choosing a photograph. For example, it should not be a photo from your best friend’s wedding that visibly shows your hand being cropped out of a champagne toast shot. Another thing I see often are photographs of couples. This is a major faux pas if you are looking to get hired or advance your career. Keep the couple shots on the wall in your home. Employers are only interested in you, not your significant other.

A lot of people panic when contemplating getting their photos taken. It’s important to find a photographer with whom you feel comfortable and can relax with during the shoot. While you don’t need to spend an arm and a leg, investing in a professional photographer will give you visibly better results than having a friend photograph you with their iPhone.

Your professional shot will come in handy for LinkedIn and other social media sites and can also be used on your organization’s website if applicable. You will find countless ways to use your professional photo, so consider this as an investment in your career.

Here are some tips for your professional photos regarding clothing, makeup, and jewelry. Keep in mind your attire should match your industry.

What to Wear

Wear clothes that are comfortable and well-fitting that make you look and feel great.
Turtlenecks are almost always a bad idea since they crowd the face.
Clothes should be neatly pressed or fresh looking.
Avoid busy patterns and large lines/stripes.
Choose colors you wear well that accentuate your eye color and skin tone.
Different necklines will change the shape of your face. Bring a variety of different shirts/blouses to see what works best.

Make-up/Hair for Women

Even if you prefer a more natural look – you need some makeup to allow your face to pop in the photo.
EYES:  Well-groomed eyebrows are a must. Enhance eyelashes with black mascara. Dark brown eyeliner is a natural alternative to heavy black eyeliner and compliments all eye shadows.
CHEEKS:  Don’t be afraid to add a little color on the apples of the cheekbones. It will really brighten up the appearance of the face.
FACE:  Use both SPF-free moisturizer and foundation to prevent reflection and to enhance skin’s natural glow. Use a translucent powder to set.
LIPS:  Lips are best in reds, berries, and browns. No frosty pink. Glosses in any berry color work well. Even if you never wear lipstick, a little color will really make your smile stand out. Your lips are an essential tool for effective communication.
If getting a haircut or new hair style, make your appointment at least 2 weeks prior to your portrait session so you feel comfortable with your hair.

Jewelry

Keep jewelry simple – small is better, even with the new bold styles.
Avoid jewelry that would distract from your face or that looks dated.
The picture is about your face not your jewelry.
Be prepared to remove facial piercings or multiple ear piercings unless this acceptable in your industry.

Do your research to find the best fit for you since photography is an investment in your professional future. Ask for examples of their work and call references to learn about what to expect on the shoot. Since digital images are the norm, ask to see some of the shots during the shoot so you can adjust your smile or pose before the session is over.

Practice your smile and poses in the mirror in the privacy of your own home before the shoot so you become comfortable and relaxed. You want your photos to really look like the authentic you so enjoy the process and smile!

If you’ve ever convinced yourself to buy expensive clothing or technology, all in the name of your career, then a professional photograph should be a no-brainer. Be a model for a day and let your professional demeanor and hard work show through the great image you can send out. The web’s a big place, don’t let yourself get overlooked!

Why You’re Acting Like Such a Monster

Written by Christine Arylo on 14 November 2013. Posted in Issues, Relationships, Dating & Sex

If you have been feeling crabby, cranky, controlling, overwhelmed, or “witchy” you are in good company!

No – it isn’t the Halloween season rearing its namesake. These symptoms can be an indication that potentially your soul is just starving and trying to get your attention. I remember the first day that I realized my soul was starving. I was living my passion, doing great work in the world, meeting a lot of my goals, and making enough money to get by. But I found myself at the tail end of a three-week “busy binge” with little room for pleasure and play, leaving me, in one word, CRABBY. So I held an honesty hearing with myself. My first question was simply, “Christine, what is going on with you?” and instantly I realized that I was unhappy, really unhappy, and had been for weeks. My reply was, “What? I am one of the happiest people I know. How could this be?” My Inner Wisdom shot back: “Because your soul is starving. You have been so busy giving, so busy working, so consumed with being a joy for others, that you’ve forgotten to experience joy for yourself.”

In that moment it was as if I could feel a hole inside me. I was empty, starving for nourishment — but not the green drink kind. I needed soul food. And the food of the soul is joy.

The problem was that I couldn’t even remember what actually brought me joy. And that was when I knew I needed a radical intervention… a self-love intervention. I am guessing I am not alone in my experience in getting crabby and cranky because I wasn’t getting what I needed. Maybe you can relate. Are you so busy doing, giving and trying to keep it all together or achieving your dreams that you are pursuing happiness instead of experiencing it?

I’m getting the sense that a lot of us have work-play equations that get out of balance. This happens when you don’t spend time and energy on activities that deliver only pleasure instead of profit or productivity. As a result, your joy quotient plummets and your crabbiness increases. So you joy-binge in unhealthy ways for a quick fix, but your soul never feels full.

So how joy-full or joy-starved are you?

Take this self-love pulse check. It measures the joy levels of the self-pleasure branch of your self-love tree. Your self-love tree has 10 branches, and self-pleasure is the one that makes sure your SOUL is nourished. Answer yes or no to these questions:

1. Do you feel unhappy and you don’t know why?

2. Do you play or give yourself pleasurable things only after you have worked hard or finished your to do list? Do you have to feel like you’ve earned playing and doing pleasurable things?

3. Do you try to get pleasure in quick spurts or by bingeing on it? Do you wait until you are starving for fun and then you overindulge – eat, drink or spend too much?

4. Do you have a hard time remembering what you actually like to do for fun and pleasure because it’s been so long? Do you have a hard time naming more than a few things you like to do just for fun?

5. Do you feel too busy to enjoy the simple pleasures of life? Are you so consumed by your to do list or workload you don’t take time to slow down and notice beauty around you, connect with nature or spend the day in bed reading a book?

If you answered yes to any of these questions, your soul is starving for joy and you need to get some soul food ASAP! Luckily, I have some right here. The first step is remembering what brings you joy. Grab a piece of paper and write the word JOY in the middle of it. Then, go through your life from the time you were little to now and write down all the things that have brought you joy – things that make you smile, are just fun, make you feel warm inside, and fill you up. Keep going until the page is full. This is called a “JOY PORTRAIT.” Then commit to saying YES to one of these per day for the rest of your life – or just start with a month! And for starters, today, state 3 joy-generators: three things that bring you joy. Mine are chanting in the morning, dancing in the kitchen or anywhere with my guy Noah, and deep conversations over food with my best friends. Halloween is a time for scary monsters but you don’t need to be one all year round. Commit yourself to bringing back the joy in your life and leave being a witch to the children.

What YOU Really Need to Know About Breast Cancer

Written by Dr. Angela DeRosa on 7 November 2013. Posted in Health, Fitness & Wellness, Issues

Breast cancer is one of the most publicized and misunderstood diseases today. While it is the leading cause of death in women with cancer, overall it’s heart disease that is the #1 cause of death for women. October is Breast Cancer Awareness month, so it’s the perfect time to address some of the misconceptions about causes, risk factors, and some recent innovations in early cancer detection.

The largest and most harmful misconception is that hormones and HRT actually cause women to develop breast cancer. As a doctor and specialist in Women’s Health and Hormonal Health in particular, I can assure you this is FALSE. The Women’s Health Initiative (WHI) released the results of the largest study ever done on synthetic hormones in early 2002. The ongoing media hype ended up scaring the crap out of women and their doctors. The problem is that the WHI study results were skewed, misreported and misunderstood, resulting in doctors and women avoiding HRT for the next decade.

Most women and even worse – their doctors – base their opinions about hormone replacement therapy (HRT) on this study and the hype surrounding it. What most do not realize is that this was just ONE poorly designed and highly flawed study on TWO bad synthetic drugs – Premarin and Prempro, which were largely no longer used by medical professionals. The women in the study were also older than women who would normally be ideal candidates for HRT.

James H. Clark, the author of one of the papers critiquing the study, wrote: “Most reproductive scientists believe that post-menopausal hormones should be used as preventive, not corrective therapy; therefore, treatment should begin during the menopausal transition.”

In fact, the worst estrogen drug in the WHI study, Premarin (a synthetic drug made from the urine of pregnant mares) actually showed a decrease in risk for breast cancer. Prempro, the other drug studied, showed no statistical increase for breast cancer at all. The media and medical professionals got it all wrong and continue to get it wrong, and women’s health has suffered for it.

It was precisely because of the WHI study that doctors become concerned about liability, as they could potentially be sued if a patient on HRT developed breast cancer. There is a large amount of data that shows that many types of HRT are safe and have positive effects on women’s health and actually reduce the risk of breast cancer. Bio-identical hormone replacement therapy carries no increased risk for breast cancer, and their use in women with hormonal deficiencies or symptoms of menopause also offsets many other serious health risks. The hormone testosterone is also used in palliative breast cancer treatment as it lowers the breast density and, best of all, the recurrence rate.

PREVENTION, RISK FACTORS AND EARLY DETECTION

Understanding the overall risk factors for developing breast cancer and the importance of early detection is key. The survival rate for women with breast cancer is 95% at 5 years – if it is caught and treated early. Regular self-examination of the breasts is recommended for all women, as are annual mammograms after the age of 40.

Risk factors for developing breast cancer include gender – as a woman, you are far more likely to develop breast cancer, but it can also occur in men. Aging is another factor – as you get older and your hormone levels fall, your risk increases. According to the American Cancer Society, 1 of 8 invasive breast cancers occur in women younger than 45, while around 2 of 3 invasive breast cancers occur in women older than 55.

Genetics also play a large role. Between 5-10% of invasive breast cancers are thought to be hereditary due to mutations in BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes. This mutation increases the risk of developing breast cancer at a younger age, as well as ovarian cancer. Awareness of this risk factor was highlighted when actress Angelina Jolie, whose mother died of ovarian cancer, revealed she had opted to undergo a preventive double mastectomy in early 2013, and will most likely opt to have a complete hysterectomy in the future. In the US, these mutations are most commonly found in women of Ashkenazi Jewish descent (Eastern Europe) but they can occur in anyone.

Other risk factors to consider are family history of breast cancer in a close relative, mother, sister or aunt, or a male relative, but overall these account for less than 15% of breast cancers. Race and ethnicity also play a role – Caucasian women are slightly less at risk than those of African descent. African American women are more likely to die from breast cancer, but there are a variety of factors that account for this statistic, including higher rates of poverty and access to preventive care. Lifestyle risk factors include smoking, excess alcohol consumption, being overweight or obese, lack of regular exercise, poor dietary habits, long-term use of oral contraceptives and chemical exposure from the environment through pesticides and hormones.

One of the most exciting developments we’ve seen in the field of early detection for breast cancer is the DtectDx Breast test, designed to be used in conjunction with mammography. The blood test detects markers in the patient’s blood that indicate early stages of breast cancer. Test results allow physicians to decide whether a routine mammogram, more extensive imaging or biopsy is appropriate for the patient. While this test is relatively new, it is particularly useful for women under age 50, as results are not affected by dense breast tissue or scar tissue from previous biopsies. Understanding personal cancer risk factors, the truth about the benefits of HRT and the importance of early detection can all help women make the health choices that are right for them.

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