You have to make time to take care of your most valuable asset, because without it, you genuinely have nothing. There are some illnesses that you cannot control, but there are a lot of things that you can do to prevent the illnesses that are within your control.

1. Determine your current state of health. Check your weight, blood pressure, vision, dental health and full body. It’s important to know where you are and where you should be.

2. Set achievable goals based on where you should be. If your doctor tells you that you are 30lbs over weight, the goal is fairly clear, lose 30 lbs. Break it down into smaller goals that you can track and achieve. Write all your goals down and be as specific as possible.

3. Write down specific actions you need to do to achieve your goal e.g. If your goal is to exercise 3 times per week. Write down which 3 days you will dedicate to working out, what time you will work out on those days, how long the workouts will be and exactly what you plan on doing during that time. You can prepare this weekly or monthly but make sure you have it.

4. Now use your calendar to make appointments for your future check-ups, weigh-ins etc and stick to these appointments. For instance, every year the month of my birthday, I do a full body physical. My birthday serves as an excellent reminder.

You owe it to your future to get this part of your life on track. Enjoy it.

1.       Call your family often

2.       Each day give something good to others

3.       Forgive everyone for everything

4.       Spend time with people over the age of 70 and under the age of 6

5.       Try to make at least 3 people smile each day

6.       What other people think of you, is none of your business’

7.       Your job won’t take care of you when you are sick – your friends will, stay in touch.

8.       Do the right thing, all the time

9.       Get rid of anything that isn’t useful, beautiful or joyful

10.   However good or bad a situation is, it will change

11.   No matter how you feel, get up, dress up and show up

12.   The best is yet to come

I absolutely love this list.  Imagine living your life everyday believing that you have hardly tapped your potential and all the good things in your life can and will be surpassed.  They say you should always dream when you are awake, I say our lives are what we make them and when we go about the business of creating who we want to be, we become the real masters of our own destiny. 

I even get excited about it, you can’t just come to my place and leave things hanging around, you will find them trashed, and donated, recycled….something will happen to them [I will try to give them back first – promise].  

I recently moved out of my place and I was pleased to find that I did not have a pile of things that I needed to get rid of because this is a process I do often.  Don’t get me wrong, I never used to be like this, I used to hold on to everything!  If I got a magazine, I would keep it for months because I always thought one day it would come in handy, I kept every single book I ever bought, old clothes, things I did not use because I just could not bring myself to throw things out or give them away.  Then I read a book about purging, getting rid of the old to allow the new into your life.  And that did it.  I let go of the notion that I had to keep gifts from friends which I knew I would never use, or sentimentally hold on to old clothes, Christmas cards,  books I had already read.  Something in me just clicked – if I wanted to invite change in my life and allow improvement and new things to find a way to me – I had to become comfortable with letting things go.  I am of the belief that somehow my life will always be for the better and everything I embrace or lose is for the greater good.

So how do you start?  Just pick one area, for example, you can start with your closet or bathroom cabinets, or a cabinet in the kitchen or your computer desk area – it doesn’t really matter where you start, just start.  Try to do this during a time when you have the least number of interruptions, when everyone else is sleeping or out of the house.  Now grab 4 boxes and a trash-bag, each box should be labeled, Keep, Donate, Put Away, Recycle or any label that works for your purpose.  The follow these steps:

1.       Empty the entire space.  Take every single thing out as if you were moving.  This will allow you to clean the area anyway.

2.       Sort items based on usage frequency.  If you have never used it, then it probably needs to be donated or given to someone who will use it.  If it’s something you use often, you need to keep it.  Is it a beauty product that you have had for years? Then it may not be good for your skin anymore.  It its completely worn out and you have been meaning to replace it, throw it out.  This step involves being 100% honest with yourself and envisioning the future that you want rather than holding on to the past.  Put everything in the box that you think it belongs in.  Don’t think about it too long, just do what you initial gut instinct tells you.

3.       Get rid of anything that you decided you would donate or trash or give away immediately.  This is the only way to prevent yourself from heading back in the pile and changing your mind. 

Now that you have done some purging, you can go about the business of organizing the things you plan on keeping, labeling them if need be and putting things exactly where they belong.  You will feel a lot better about yourself; you will be far less cluttered and you have just created room in your life for change.  Enjoy.

Visit me at: http://www.organizedleader.com/change-leadership.html

Right this second, grab a piece of paper and right down everything….big or small, personal or work related, urgent or not, every single thing that you have ever thought you need to do.  Do it in an excel spreadsheet or on a numbered piece of paper, your list will look something like this:

1.       Take old clothes to Salvation Army

2.       Clean out trunk

3.       Take PowerPoint lessons

4.       Lose 10lbs

5.       Lower credit card interest

6.       Look into marketing project

7.       Get puppy

8.       Submit living will

9.       Call Aunt Eunice

10.   Talk to Juan about that thing he does that annoys me

Can you imagine the amount of bandwidth you are able to clear from your head once everything is written down?   Whenever you are trying to focus on a given task and your mind starts to wonder, have you ever evaluated where your mind wonders to? It likely focuses on things that are incomplete and need to be attended to.  This then leads to worry and then stress.  Once you have EVERYTHING written down, start tackling the list one at a time, and determine what action item needs to be done to get the task complete.

I received an e-mail from a friend that I thought was a good place to start, it had some ideas on the rules we can live by to improve our personalities in 2010, enjoy:

1.       Don’t compare your life to others. You have no idea what their journey is all about. 

2.       Don’t have negative thoughts or things you cannot control. Instead invest your energy in the positive present moment. [People with road rage can understand how it feels to get completely worked up over something they have absolutely no control over…it is worth it?]

3.       Don’t overdo. Keep your limits. [I am guilty as charged!!!!! I tend to overdo everything, food, workouts, sacrificing, emotion…everything.  I will make this a personal goal for this year]

4.       Don’t take yourself so seriously. No one else does. 

5.       Dream more while you are awake.

6.       Envy is a waste of time. You already have all you need.

7.       Forget issues of the past. Don’t remind your partner with His/her mistakes of the past. That will ruin your present happiness. 

8.       Life is too short to waste time hating anyone. Don’t hate others

9.       Make peace with your past so it won’t spoil the present. 

10.   No one is in charge of your happiness except you.

11.   Realize that life is a school and you are here to learn.  Problems are simply part of the curriculum that appear and fade away like algebra class but the lessons you learn will last a lifetime. 

12.   Smile and laugh more. 

This year my personality resolutions are simple: to practice discipline in every aspect of my life, to keep my limits and not overdo things, to continue to use laughter as the driving force of my joy and to live my life in such a way that in my old age, it will be a memory I like to recall and a story I am not ashamed to tell.

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Have fun.

1.       Staying current:  It has been reported that women earn the majority of college degrees and hold middle management positions but few are able to reach senior management level.  One of the challenges women face is the time to stay current or find avenues for continued professional growth once they have children.  It becomes more difficult to travel for work leaving behind your family and any professional development courses that can be taken at night pose the same problem. I often see very capable women who have the opportunity to be involved in a remote project that will have a huge impact on their career development, but are unable to make the commitment due to family commitments - very few men in the same situation would decline. 

Solution: Do online courses that you can do at night and seek work-related projects that can be completed during business hours in your city that will have a huge impact on your career.

2.       Maintaining your professional image during a sour economy and a time in history when image is a primary focus.  As shallow as it may sound, how we look as women actually matters in gaining clients or making sound business deals.  Weight problems or poor attire decisions can have a very negative impact on our development.  Everywhere we look, women are getting younger, fitter, and more dressed up – it automatically gives them a competitive advantage that is difficult to maintain when you have a busy lifestyle and are cutting back in order to focus on more important financial goals.

Solution: Work on your posture and your confidence – you will immediately appear more ‘attractive’.  Then start focusing on a healthy eating lifestyle and working out at least 3 times a week, it will change the way people look at you.

3.       Being Organized: With the advancement in technology, there has been a huge growth in the number of devices available to your disposal – your cell phone, iPod, PC etc are all pieces of technology that must be synchronized to create organized workflow and as demands continue to grow, it becomes more difficult to manage a constant influx of e-mails, memo’s, reports etc.  We like to be seen as having the ability to do it all and consequently may not delegate enough to stay organized and get the job done.

Solution: Get organized.  Need I say more? Make a consented decision to filing things away, responding to correspondence and making one decision or the other for anything that comes on your desk.

4.       Allowing emotional considerations to impact professional decisions.  This is likely the biggest problem! At times helping an employee in a bind is not necessarily the best decision for the companies bottom-line, but as women, we tend to be more sensitive to employee needs without actually considering how it will affect the company in the long run or if the decision is the best use of the companies resources and time as opposed to the best way to help an employee.

Solution: Try to find a balance between helping employees and meeting the companies bottom-line.  If you can achieve both without too much compromise it will instantly make you a better decision maker.

5.       Stress.  2010 comes with its burdens that we really cannot allow to impact our professional lives, but at times they do.  It’s important to present a consistent attitude at work, regardless of pressures that we may be dealing with externally, but that is not always easy.  Concerns about finances, weight/health, appearance, family, PMS, relationships, work-load etc can often creep into the workplace and can affect how we deal with employees.  It’s important to find solutions to our problems and actively start working on them in order to avoid possible ‘blow-ups’ at work, that can potentially ruin your reputation for good.  Once we are perceived as being ‘emotional’ – it’s over!

Solution: Do something for you every week. Whether its scheduling in quiet time, getting a massage, doing your nails or simply having a nice cup of tea while you read a great book – whatever it is – just find ways to handle your stress.

Visit me at: OrganizedLeader.com

Below are a few tips you can employ right away to get your closet organized:

1.       Ikea sells a really cool tie and belt hanger which makes it easy for you to see what you want to grab all in one spot.

2.       Use 3-tier see-through bins to house your shoes by color, style and purpose.  This helps to ensure that you never have shoes lying on the floor and you can easily find the shoes you are looking for.

3.       Color code your clothing and sort by type of event where the attire is worn, for instance, all your work stuff should be in one place, all your party clothes in another and casual items in separate place.  It makes it easy to determine where to look depending on where you are going.

Employing these 3 tips alone will help to get your closet organized. 

Visit me at: OrganizedLeader to learn how to dress for success.

1.       Collect – putting together the things that need our attention

2.       Process –understanding them and determining what needs to be done with them

3.       Organize – managing them in a way that makes sense

4.       Review – examining the options of what we want to do with them

5.       Do – putting a plan into action and actually doing something about them

Today, we will focus on collecting!  If you have ever collected a pile of papers with the intention of filing them away and the pile still stares at you for weeks, then you are essentially paralyzed in the collection phase.  Every phase must be followed consistently and separately in order to allow you to get organized. 

Where do you begin?  David Allen recommends starting by looking at anything in your personal or professional life that you believe needs to be different.  It doesn’t matter how big or trivial it may seem, as long as you want to commit yourself to seeing a change in that facet of your life, then it needs to be on your list.  If there is anything pending or that you have intended on doing, this should go on the list as well – anything that you consider incomplete, should be included.  You may already have items that are being collected as you read this, such as voicemail messages, letters, e-mails etc – all these things need to be managed.  Then you have those items that somehow remain incomplete in your head, the things that you have told yourself  you ‘need to’ do at some point – these things are taking up mental real estate and until you complete them, they will be an added stress in your life – put these thoughts or ideas on your list as well.  Anything that is physical that you ‘should’ do needs to be placed in a bin that is clearly labeled e.g. magazines that you ‘should’ have read.  If you find anything that needs to be thrown out at this point, go ahead and do it! 

We will examine phase 2: Process – in our next chat - today’s homework involves piling anything that you see around you which is incomplete and writing down all the pending or ’should do’ items in your life.   

**Recommended read: David Allen – Getting Things Done.

**Quote of the Day: ‘You do well to have visions of a better life than of every day, but it is the life of every day from which the elements of a better life must come’ – Maurice Maeterlinck

Visit me at: http://organizedleader.com

1.       Audit your current situation – is this what you want to be doing? Are you happy? How did you get here? Ask these questions regarding your weight, your finances, your job, your relationships etc– you will be amazed at what you discover.

2.       Determine how you want the foreseeable future to look like.  Write it down.  When you are done with this step, it should be perfectly clear to you and to anyone who happens to come across your written statements in what direction you expect your life to go. This phase should include a time-frame, when you expect this future to be realized.

3.       Write down ‘next steps’, these are the actions you need to take to make your goals achievable.  Make sure each step is actionable and measurable.  For instance, if I audited my situation and determined that I was 20lbs overweight and decided that my goal was to be in a healthy weight range in 4 months.  The steps I have to take are as follows:

-          Workout 3 days a week [an hour a day] at the gym

-          Stop eating chocolate and find healthy substitutes for sweet cravings such as fruit

-          Make sure that I eat 6 times a day to speed up my metabolism, this should consist of 3 main meals and 2 healthy snacks

-          Reduce my portion size by 1/2

-          Substitute all white carbohydrates for whole wheat

-          Drink 6 glasses of water per day

 You will notice that the action steps are things I can actually do and measure. 

Follow the 3 tips above and commit to helping to influence the direction your life will go.

Visit me at: OrganizedLeader.com