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The Meaning of Life – Or What’s Important

July 13, 2009 | No comments

Had a really interesting year this month. (At least it feels like it was a year). I learned a lot of things about myself and about life choices in general.

I got a call three weeks ago from my only daughter who lives in Portland, Oregon. She was ill and needed me. That in itself sent me down to her side. She didn’t think it was important to tell me HOW ill she was and within minutes of my arriving at her apartment, we were en route to the Emergency Room.

Four days later, she was released from the hospital, very weak and unable to take care of herself so we drove home where I could watch over her for two weeks while she began to get her strength back.

In the middle of all of this chaos, I was trying to run my solopreneur business, make connections I had scheduled and, in general, just keep my business going. I learned a very big lesson, too.

When my focus shifted away from the business, it slowed to a crawl. It wasn’t that things went wrong, it just had been DeBorah-powered and ran out of gas when my attention turned to my beloved daughter instead of it. This was not a good thing. Through my other site, I teach solopreneurs to automate repetitive tasks, outsource administrative and marketing duties unless they’re REALLY good at it and I hadn’t been doing it myself. So, I recognized an opportunity for myself and others.

By the way, my daughter is doing well and is continuing to recover. It will be quite a while, but she’s a little stronger every day.

So, what I’ve come up with is a deeper understanding of what needs to be done as far as passive processes, automated processes and a slightly different focus in what I’m doing and offering to the marketplace.

So, here goes: (By the way – this is the first time I’m sharing this and I wanted to share it with all of you!)

It’s time to automate some of the repetitive tasks the way I coach folks to do on DEBORAHBEATTY.COM. I don’t know why, but it just didn’t occur to me to do it on the Created Life side.

If I’m going to have the kind of lifestyle where I can leave everything to do something that’s important, I cannot risk that things will roll to a stop. I can no longer afford any hesitations or speedbumps if I’m going to realize my goals.

I’m creating a vision board to keep me focused, too.

I’ll keep all of you posted on my progress. Truly, I’m just one of you with triumphs and setbacks and daily frustrations. As I’ve said previously, living a created life is not easy, it takes guts, determination and stubborness. But if you want that life to be full of power, passion and possibility, you need to be committed to the end result so you can blow through all the “stuff” that comes up.

Living A Created Life Isn’t Easy, Folks

April 7, 2009 | 1 comment

In all honesty, I’ve been dealing with a few things. I’m on the same journey you are – to live a life of my own creation.  In my Joys of Failure workshop, I talk about making setbacks into speedbumps instead of mountains.  To do this takes constant attention to intention.

I consider myself fairly adept at overcoming setbacks, at staying focused and living my created life. I’m here to tell you sometimes it stinks! The upside of living your life you have created is that when things go great, you can take credit, celebrate and know you’re responsible. The downside is that when things go badly, you can take credit, celebrate and know you’re responsible.

Rediscover your rainbow

Rediscover your rainbow

Gone is someone or something else outside yourself to blame for the glitch. You have nothing but yourself there as the responsible party. This can make for a tough day, people. But all is not blackness or hopeless.  Because you created the bump, you control how soon you step over it.

A wise teacher I had back in the 80’s used to say to me:

“When you’re having a bad day, it usually because there’s a lesson there and you haven’t paid attention to something until it slaps you on the side of your head.”

She went on to tell me, and this is the most important part (Thank you, Ruth),

“You can’t go around it, you can’t go over it, sidestep it or ignore it – that just makes it worse.  You need to face it head on, go through it, experiencing all of it, the pain and the gain, until you figure out what you were supposed to learn from it.  Then it will settle down.”

My intention is to create a product (at this point, it’s my Oughta-Pilot(TM) program) that will change the way people live their lives so that they are happy, fulfilled and passionate. I choose to be happy, I choose to be financially stable, I choose passion. This week – not so much. So what’s the process for recovering the glow?

  1. Breathe
  2. Be with whatever is there to experience – whether it’s frustration, sadness, depression or whatever. There is something there for you to “get” and use to shore up the foundation for your power. The more you try to avoid the problem, the more insistent it becomes for you to acknowledge it.
  3. Journal/blog/talk about it to get at the burr that’s the irritation.  You may not be able to identify the issue until you say something to a trusted friend or write it down and there it is. But NO WHINING ALLOWED! Ask for support, get lots of hugs  and finally,
  4. Understand that this is only temporary and that, just like a cold or a virus, it will run its course and then be  over.

So, I will continue to work forward, recoup, regroup and recover very soon.  Once you know the process, it  takes a shorter and shorter time time to do it and the tendrils from the experience lose their hold much faster and just go away.

Unplug Your Meaning Maker – Starting Over Part III

March 20, 2009 | 1 comment

Human beings are meaning making machines. We’re just hard wired that way. When something happens to us or with us, we just HAVE to make it mean something and the meaning we give to occurrences is not only extremely personal, but here’s a concept, it may not be true!
humanmachine Find a time when you felt unhappy, unfulfilled, even trapped in a job or in a relationship. I know personally I can remember a lot of these while I was working j.o.b.s over the years. (You all know the definition of a j.o.b.? It’s a position that keeps you “just over broke”.) Focus onto this situation. It shouldn’t be difficult to remember. These negative memories tend to come to the surface a lot faster than the positive ones do.
Now take a good look at the event, see if you can discover the kernel that lies at the heart of the situation.  What happened? Just the facts, only the What, Who, Where  and When. Write that down.  Now, next ask yourself the Why, and the How?  What did you just observe? What did you make the original event mean? What are you making it mean now?

Interesting, isn’t it?

You get the chance to relive and reprogram those things that have run your life for years. Wouldn’t it be nicer to have something you have told yourself that has held you back from success actually propel you towards it?

Give it a try!

The Joys of Failure – Starting Over Part II

March 19, 2009 | No comments

Ever wish you could have a “do over”? Think you’ll never amount to much considering what your life has been so far?

Today, you will learn just what true failure is, how to release guilt over perceived imperfections and not only accept your failures, but celebrate them and look forward to more! (Yes, you read correctly. You can and will celebrate your failures.)

I realize that I am now and continue to be an amazing failure!

  • I am a failure at being what other people think I should be.
    • Not being what other people think I should be has given me the freedom to explore my life and
      my opportunities in different, innovative ways.
  • I am a failure at thinking the way other people think I should think.
    • Not thinking the way other people think I should think has given me the freedom to explore
      self-education, alternative education and to have my education actually serve my needs.
  • I am a failure at looking the way other people think I should look.
    • Not looking the way other people think I should look as given me permission to be a unique
      individual with my own style and my own likes and dislikes.

And I couldn’t be happier.

Most of the dictionaries and 99% of society think of failure as a bad thing. I don’t happen to share their opinion. How could you possibly succeed if you don’t know how to fail? How would you recognize success, then? Albert Einstein did not speak until he was 4-years-old and did not read until he was 7. His parents thought he was sub-normal,” and one of his teachers described him as “mentally slow, unsociable, and adrift forever in foolish dreams.” He was expelled from school and was refused admittance to the Zurich Polytechnic School. He did eventually learn to speak and read. Even to do a little math.

Oprah Winfrey says she doesn’t believe in failure. She says, “It’s not failure if you enjoyed the process.”

Go try something you’ve never done before. Give yourself permission to fail. That way, you get a lot more joy when you succeed! After all, if you’ve never done it before, you have nothing to compare it to and you decide whether you’ve failed at all! Failure is all in YOUR mind. How many people do you know that blow off compliments saying that they could have done better and then list excuses? Especially when they’ve done something you are aching to just achieve a 10th of? It’s all relative and it’s all so very personal.
I give you permission (as if you need it) to go try something new this next week. Something you’ve never done before and know nothing about. Go ahead, have fun.
Here are some quick things to think about:

  • “Flops are a part of life’s menu and I’ve never been a girl to miss out on any of the courses.” ~Rosalind Russell
  • Thomas Edison’s teachers said he was “too stupid to learn anything.” He was fired from his first two jobs for being “non-productive.” As an inventor, Edison made 1,000 unsuccessful attempts at inventing the light bulb. When a reporter asked, “How did it feel to fail 1,000 times?” Edison replied, “Ididn’t fail 1,000 times. The light bulb was an invention with 1,000 steps.”
  • Winston Churchill failed sixth grade. He was subsequently defeated in every election for publicoffice until he became Prime Minister at the age of 62. He later wrote, “Never give in, never give in,never, never, never, never – in nothing, great or small, large or petty – never give in except to convictions of honor and good sense. Never, Never, Never, Never give up.” (his capitals, mind you)

When you can learn to take a failure as only a bump in the road, not as a wall to stop you, then you can begin to celebrate them. If you wind up falling on your rear, pick yourself up, dust yourself off and start again. Keeping your focus on your dream, your vision, living it, tasting it, immersing yourself in it 1000%, draws that dream to you.

In my copious spare time…

March 18, 2009 | No comments

While getting ready to present my program last Tuesday, I was asked out of the blue to speak to a group of high school students.  Not just high school students, by the way; but alternative high school students.  I found the whole experience a real lesson for myself.  Since I taped the session, I listened very carefully to the replay.  Here is what I learned:

1. For some people, the concept of living a life where you have a choice in what you do is truly beyond realization.

2. Some memories of basic childhood events, when traumatic and relatively recent, are buried so deeply they are completely unavailable.

3.  Within the late teen bracket, the world is finite and very small, regardless of what else you know is out there like the internet, books, experiences, etc. Outside your own community, all is nothingness.

and

4. Negativity and distrust, apparent rudeness and an attitude of pessimism are actually shields of a defense mechanism covering up an incredible hunger to socialize.

clock_screen01I think the fourth item was the biggest realization. So many of the “kids” (who were bigger than I am) showed me a crusty, tough-guy attitude, feigned indifference and unbelievable negativity. But once I got their attention and made eye contact, impressed me with their hunger to learn, to improve themselves regardless of how useless, how stupid or how incompetent they’d been told they were — such a shining behind darkened, shielded eyes.

I’ve been given a gift this life of being able to see into people’s souls; to see past who they say they are, who they represent themselves to be. I’ve never been wrong about someone and it occurs as just a certainty, as if I’d known them for years. With one of the young women and two of the young men, there was a real opening I felt, a crack in their armor.

This is what I’m here for – I’ve always said I’m dangerous.  I seriously threaten status quo for those stuck in their own morass of little “r” reality.  Being dangerous is a good thing. :)

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