Category Archives: Uncategorized

The right mindset equals success

This post contains affiliate links. See my full disclosure policy for details.

Working parents of school-aged children: this post is for you.

Stress levels elevated? Sleepless nights? Worried about how you’ll survive this pandemic with all the pressures of work, remote learning, and regular home-life responsibilities? Check, check, and check! Then you might be — like me — a working parent of school-aged children.

This pandemic has not been easy on any of us, and it’s about to grow even more complex.

In the next few weeks, children across the country will be returning to school, but not the way they’ve typically done, and for some, not physically. Many will engage in remote learning – either 100% or greater than 50% if using a blended approach of both remote and in-person learning. While not ideal, and certainly not something any of us wished for, there is something we can do as parents that will set our kids up for success. We can have the right mindset.

While everyone’s situation is unique and different, for our household, it looks like this:

  • My husband is an essential employee who works outside the home
  • I’m working from home full time, and
  • I’m faced with creating a homeschooling environment to support remote learning for my school-aged children (like many of you).

It’s daunting. I’ve spent countless hours playing out different scenarios in my mind trying to figure out how we’ll make it all work. Inevitably, my blood pressure and stress levels would rise or my sleep would suffer before I chose to think about something else.

Then I realized I wasn’t looking at this situation correctly. I needed to shift my mindset.

Continue reading The right mindset equals success

The Gap Between Real & Ideal

If you close your eyes and picture your ideal self, what do you see? This was a question I asked myself after completing development training that recommended we close the gap between our real and ideal selves.

Naturally, I pondered the question, and here’s what I took away. Whatever you see in your mind’s eye as your ideal, you can start working to achieve. As you do, you’ll begin closing the gap between who you are today — your real self — and who you want to be tomorrow — your ideal self.

What do you see? 

So how about you? What do you see? Are you 20 lbs lighter? Are you more patient and loving with others? Do you see yourself further along in your career — either at a higher level or making more money? Are you married — happily? Do you see yourself enjoying financial freedom? 

Maybe you’ve already come a long way towards a more ideal state. Praise yourself if you have! Hopefully all of us are striving each day to do better and be better. But there’s a lot that can steal our attention and distract us. That’s why you have to be intentional about it. 

Continue reading The Gap Between Real & Ideal

Why You MUST Expand Your Horizons

The Future Requires It

Do you think your 4-year degree was enough education? Do you think having a Masters or Doctorate under your belt means your education is complete? Think again! Heather McGowan and other forward thinkers are telling us differently. In addition, there are macro trends making it absolutely imperative that we expand our horizons to continue learning and become innovative.

Let me back up and explain

Have you noticed how Artificial Intelligence (AI) and machine learning is already impacting your life? Both are hot topics in the organization where I work (and likely yours, too) as leaders try to determine how AI and machine learning will transform the workplace and the workforce. But it’s not just something that’s coming; some aspects of AI and machine learning are already here and impacting our world more than we may realize.

For example, you’re probably familiar with the fact that Facebook, Instagram and other social media/online platforms gather data about you and your interests — basically learning you — based upon what you click. Then through complex algorithms, they show you more of what you seem to like and want.

social media icons
social media icons

How great is that personalization? We love it, right? In fact, that’s probably why we’re so addicted to our phones. Not only can we find just about anything we want, but we hardly have to work for it. Searches aren’t even really necessary because once you’ve clicked on something, more, similar content will be pushed right to you.

Want an example?

When I was interested in starting a blog, I saw one ad in my Facebook feed for an online blogging course. I clicked to read more about it, and the next few days my newsfeed was inundated with entrepreneurs who had hit it big through blogging, or writing, who now wanted to offer me their online courses as well. It was practically unavoidable!

The more links I clicked, the more content was tailored and pushed right to me. Pretty soon, I found other people, like me, who were in the process of starting a blog or who had gone before and now had lessons learned they were willing to share with newbies.

This is nice, right? I had all the info I could ever want about starting a blog right at my fingertips, and I had like-minded people with similar goals to guide me along the way. It was super helpful, and it took some of the leg work and guess work out of the equation. Who would complain about that?

I’m not complaining per se, but I do want to draw attention to one potential problem: As I became more micro-focused on only the things that interested me, I was losing sight of the macro world around me.

I do want to draw attention to one potential problem: As I became more micro-focused on only the things that interested me, I was losing sight of the macro world around me.

Continue reading Why You MUST Expand Your Horizons

Creating the Life You Want – On Purpose