Resolution Solution--Set GOALS

Year after year I "resolve" to do x,y,z, which means I resolve to lose weight, save money, be a better Mom..pretty vague hence how do I even know if I've succeeded? I don't, so even if I've made progress I mentally wrestle with the feeling that it wasn't enough, all because I resolved (which sounds icky and like someone is ripping something precious away from you finally just give up and let them have it) rather than laying out a PLAN.

 I love the fresh start of a brand stinking NEW Year all laid out ahead of me like a chose your own adventure game board- the Year is my Oyster right now- delicious! So THIS year I resolved to toss the resolutions and set some GOALS- even though I have no idea what awesomeness this year holds, by mapping out where I'd like to GROW I will have a better basis for making choices in harmony with my heart!

Happy Goal Setting in 2014!

Courtesy of AdvoArmy

Healthy New Year 24 Day Challenge Virtual Coach

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The Prayer Circle, A Poem

Healthy Family Meals Made Easy; 2hrs-7 Crockpot Meals

In brainstorming things I could improve to reduce stress in my day it became apparent to me though I have really great intentions of having healthy food in the house for dinner- I fail when it comes to anything resembling an action plan. Like packing for a trip, I like to have many options available even through I may not actually use some of the choices this actual week. I figure if I have a big enough variety eventually everything gets used. The problem is though I am great at freezing things, it doesn't become handy at 6pm to cooked with a rock solid protein, and I have a HUGE habit of not using all my produce before it goes bad and that makes me a little nuts...

- enter crockpot frozen meals-

I've been intending to do these for a while, so after scoring a bunch of discounted meats at the local store last night I decided to make a different choice and actually freeze the meals, not just the meat and see if that helps me stay sane this week.

A couple of them were my own recipes, just prepped and tossed in a freezer bag, and the others were Pinterest finds- if you are eating Advo-friendly and on Pinterest then you will definitively want to follow my Sparkedmom Challenge Friendly AdvoCare Recipes board. Here are the recipes I pulled from there:

Super Easy Crockpot Spaghetti Squash and Meatballs
12 Paleo Crockpot Meals


Pot Roast Beef:
Roast
Rub Seasoning (1T salt, 1/4T garlic powder 1/4T pepper)
Vegi's; cut up onion, potatoes, baby carrots, celery, garlic (or other vegi's) to liking
~ rubbed down the roast with seasoning, and tossed all vegi's into the bag- wrote on it to add 1C broth

I particularly liked this idea because by the time I get around to actually making a roast I froze at some point the vegi's have gone south or I'm missing some on hand and it's so irritating!

So that's it- one Spark, 2 hours (including shopping) and I was done cooking for a week- I call that a win! Fingers crossed that it becomes my saving grace! Happy Monday =D

Perfection Is A Myth

It's a myth so big sometimes it actually paralyzes people from taking any action at all. I've lived many a day myself failing to move in any direction until I have it all figured out, till I know exactly how to proceed, until I have convinced myself I must surely be able to guarantee success- and if you've followed along this journey at all it's pretty self explanatory where that led...a long, hard, disappointing circle right back to where I started.

In this second half of my journey through life I have COMMITTED to success, and my first lesson was to make different choices. By making the same choices I had always made I kept ending up in the same  situations I was desperately trying to get out of. If you want different in life you have to DO different. Different choices, actions, attitudes, mindsets- and depending on your particular situation and goals it may mean different EVERYTHING, that's just the way it is. You can cry about, fight it, ignore it, deny it, and STAY THE SAME, or can accept it or better yet EMBRACE it- and move onto greener pastures..it's your choice.

CHOICES = CHANGE

So if you are preparing to make a different choice than you have in the past, it is reasonably expected that this may throw you into unfamiliar territory- GREAT! That means you are headed in a NEW direction so get EXCITED and stay in motion. Don't get freaked out that you don't know where the "end" is, that you don't have every step of the path marked out in advance, don't spend time imagining everything that could go wrong and all your contingency plans for these imaginary roadblocks- JUST TAKE ONE STEP AT A TIME. Your mind will throw a million and one "what if's" at you everyday regardless...the only one you should allow to reside is-

"WHAT IF I SUCCEED?"

-will it be because your journey was perfect?
-will it be because you had every contingency plan carefully planned out years in advance?
-will it be because you spent hours-days-months studying, researching, and quantifying information?
-will it be because every single person in your circle of influence supported your every decision, every single day with love and words of encouragement so you just KNEW you couldn't fail?
-will it be because you never made any mistakes, never took a wrong turn, listened to bad advice, or just plain got lost at some point?

- or will it be because none of the above happened, but you were focused on your goals, committed to your purpose, and you made the CHOICE every single day to JUST.KEEP.MOVING

Committing to Change

I think the hardest part of committing to change is that it's continual...you never really "arrive". I'm never going to wake up one morning, check my change barometer and realize- I'M DONE, YAY! That creates a challenge for me. A BIG challenge, like Mount Everest size. This whole not knowing thing has tripped me up for many years- as I look back over things I have started, attempted, was passionate about, attacked, tried, failed, tried again, failed again, they all ended the same...I eventually QUIT. Game over-thanks for playing.

The problem is I was looking for a finish line, and when you are on a journey that you've never been on before how do you know where that is or what it looks like. To be honest my finish line was pretty much the same in each endeavor and as equally vague: "Successful". As you can imagine that line is a mirage- what the heck does that even mean? It could mean a million different things to a million different people and even as I sit here typing I find it difficult to describe what "Successful" even means TO ME- so how in the world was I going to know if I ever got there? Great plan, eh?

In my quest for knowledge I am learning to do away with traditional ways of going about things and chunk it down to simplicity. I've learned that I overcomplicate 99% of life and doing so is a huge expenditure of wasted energy. I've learned there is no finish line, there is only TODAY and CHOICE. That's all any of us are guaranteed, so the most I can do today is to make better choices than I did yesterday and that's called GROWTH. People who chose to stop growing have made another choice by default; the slow, unfulfilled, purposeless journey toward death- I definitely CHOSE growth- with aggression!

So how do you go "All In" on this journey if you never really know where it is that you are going, or when you will get there? You commit to CHANGE. You commit be being GREATER- greater today than you were yesterday. Don't worry about tomorrow, have a vision of where you want to go but FOCUS on making better choices today that will head you in that direction. Ask yourself- "Does this take me closer to my goals?" in everything you do and more importantly things you chose NOT to do. Big decisions are not the ones that are going to determine your journey, it's the small seemingly insignificant things we do or chose NOT to do over time that lead us off course.

How will you KNOW when change is happening...you won't...but then again you will. You will notice subtle things that used to bother you that don't anymore, and other things that you tolerated before in your life that now grab your attention to address. Your habits will become different, you will spend your time differently throughout the day, other people will begin to notice "something" different about you. You will start to feel an inner peace, joy, energy, and the ability to laser focus like never before. I believe THIS is the state we were meant to take on the world and be difference makers, but it starts with committing, and begins with action.

Will you Commit to Change?

How to Communicate with Zombies

Rented World War Z last night and realized two things

1) the only thing I actually knew prior to renting this movie was that it starred Brad Pitt and things blowing up
2) my 14 year old is the one person you want with you during a Zombie Apocalypse- he literally knows everything...seriously-EVERYTHING...
TIP: head for the ocean, they can't swim
 
Besides freaking me out a bit the movie did get me thinking about going through life in a functioning vegetative state; see the Zombies were only active when stimulated- with no stimulation they wandered around aimlessly, moaned, laid around, walked in patterns, no direction, no focus....and it got me thinking about the sad fact that there are way too many people living that way right now. I'm not saying these people are going to up and start eating each other by any means, but I also wouldn't be handing out bath salts at Christmas...just sayin!

So if we live in a world where we have the ability to communicate with virtually anyone, anytime, anywhere- why are people feeling lost and alone more than ever? I feel that what we are missing right now isn't communication, it's CONNECTION. The ability to connect with another human being on a level that supersedes reading. We have eyes, ears, touch, speech, smell and even hearts to feel emotion and our relationships are becoming flat, empty words, carefully chosen by how we feel  "the world" will perceive them. Sounds super special right?

 

A short year ago I was actually one of these very same people- going through life on auto-pilot. Checking off my adult to-do list; college- check, marriage-check-check-ch..(okay, still working on getting that one right-no judging here), kids-check, dog-check, house-check, job-check- my list is getting you all fired up to take on the world and make a difference right? I think my biggest "dream" a year ago was to hopefully have money someday to be able to invest...(someday...like before I die)- THIS is what creates Zombies- LAME LISTS!

 

My list was awesome when I was a kid- I was going to write books, publish poetry, write songs, be on Broadway, and in movies, and invent some crazy contraption that would change the world- I was SUPPOSED to BE Taylor Swift- WHAT THE CRAP happened to THAT list? ...side note- I was also supposed to marry Tom Cruise (BEFORE Nicole Kidman), so I probably dodged a bullet on that one...cause seriously, that got weird...

 

Love life aside I really do think we have the greatest idea of what we are naturally good at back when we didn't know any better. We were all designed for a specific purpose while here- we all have a special gift or talent that world needs and I think the reason we have so many people going through life as Zombies, or worse- filling that emptiness with addictions is directly due to the fact they are living a life void of purpose. So we disconnect, wander aimlessly, and finally put our heads in the sand coming up only for primetime and cheezy poofs.

 

So how do we fix it?

 

Step 1) Locate the person nearest to you, achieve eye contact and smile

Step 2) Turn off your mobile device, put it away and state the following...

 

"When I was a kid I was going to  ______________________, what about you?"

 

 

Stimulation-check!

 

 

 



The Fear Trap

They say a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step...the part they don't mention is that first step is generally on the other side of something resembling this...



...so the tragic part is most people (myself included for many years) are immobilized by the enormous wall of FEAR that we must pass through to even take that first step.


Let me put you at ease right now....

FEAR IS FAKE.

 

The FEELING of being fearful is very REAL, but the voices in your head telling you a million reasons why doing what your heart is leading to you do is wrong- THOSE voices are FAKE.

 

"...the voices of fear and doubt, and they are governed by a simple truth: they only get loud when you do work that matters." -Jon Acuff

 

 

As a Believer that can only lead me to think that perhaps THOSE voices are ones the fallen one uses to lead us astray. We were all given a great purpose in life, and far too few tap into their potential for so many reasons but my guess would be the number one reason is FEAR. That voice of fear in our heads is fueled mostly by our own device but also by the value we put on everything from the opinion of others to what we are spoon fed by mainstream media. If I sit and think about times (daily) those voices creep into my thoughts and decisions I cannot recall one time they thought anything was a GOOD idea- even charitable actions, and if I am correct in my assumption it becomes of the upmost importance to question those voices and fight through the wall.

 

Once you really come to the realization what fear is, you realize what it is not. It is NOT an actual wall that you have to bust through in an armored tank- it's actually a HOLOGRAM. A figment of your imagination created by FEAR to immobilize you into an invisible prison.

 

WHY?

So you don't create that thing you've been dreaming about that may change a life...

So you don't write that book that may change a life...

So you don't start that charity that may change lives...

So you don't do that thing that you know will make a difference...

So you don't take that step that changes the direction of your life which in turn inspires others...

ARE YOU CATCHING ONTO A THEME HERE?

 

The God I know would want all of the above to happen; he designed us with great purpose and fire in our hearts to be difference makers- all that remains for us is to decide which one we will allow to govern our direction...

Will you

Chose FEAR or Chose CHANGE?

EMPOWERED

Earlier in the month while at Success School I saw one of the leaders wearing a big white wristband with writing on it. Not even know what it said I made a mental note to find out when I saw her next, as for some reason I was drawn to it in a way that I HAD to have one. Which I didn't even understand at the time as it wasn't pink, didn't have bling, and I had no idea what it even said! Fast forward later in the weekend it was announced that they were part of a giveaway and the bracelet said
EMPOWER..."HAD" just got escalated to a code red...NOW! Needless to say, Melanie got herself a bracelet by the nights end.

EMPOWERED- even saying the word makes you feel like you can take on the world in high heels, with a baby on the hip, in between loads of laundry, all the while looking movie star Fab- yep, I got this! It is my new favorite word, but what does it mean exactly?

The definition that most matches my vision of the word came from The World Bank website which they define EMPOWERMENT as:

"...the process of increasing the capacity of individuals or groups to make choices and to transform those choices into desired actions and outcomes"- The World Bank

So good I have to repeat it...Increasing capacity to transform CHOICES into ACTION and OUTCOMES! Is that not one of the most powerful definitions of a word you've ever read? It's not a "feeling" of being empowered, it's fueled by CHOICE, by living with INTENTION, by getting in action by DOING something purposeful.

Are you living an EMPOWERED life? Do you wake up to the same routine different day or are you going to do something today that scares you just a little but puts you one step closer to your goals? Do you "hope" for things to get better or are you making different choices for today that will ensure things DO get better? Do you have a wish list of things that would be nice "someday" or do you have your dream board front and center with target dates so you stay focused on where you are going?

If you don't like the answers to the questions above than make different choices today- it's that easy and if you DO than get our there and help someone close to you live an empowered life because it's a gift that changes lives- but only if you give it away!

The word of the day is "EMPOWERED", who's brave enough to use it in a sentence

in the comments below?

Wake Up, Get Up, and Don't EVER Give Up!

If you would have told the girl in this picture that someday in the future she would wake up and wonder who the heck she was anymore- she would have laughed in your face. Fast forward 18 years and that day not only came but hit with the weight of two divorces, three kids, and losing her job.

 

 

Hello rock bottom-goodbye rose colored glasses.

 

I couldn’t even tell you when the scenery changed, but day after day life just started taking over until I realized that not only was I living on autopilot- I was lost…and even though every ounce of my worn out body wanted to stay on my comfy path to nowhere, my last thread of sanity was screaming at me that my kids deserved better than that.

 

So with one, brave, committed, decision to become healthier in hopes to gain the energy to deal with the rest- I literally changed the direction of my life. What started as a 24 Day Challenge quickly evolved into believing in myself again. To participating in social events and allowing my picture to be taken again. To meeting new people and making new friends, joining clubs, networking groups, and volunteering time in a community that I’ve lived in for over 8 years. Most importantly it evolved into me becoming the Mommy those three little blessings deserve. The craziest part is that even though I lost 23 lbs, 23 inches, and started making an extra $1000/month in my spare time, it became LESS about me and ALL about whom else I could help step out of quiet desperation and embrace LIFE.

 

I’ve learned a lot over the past 6 months of my journey with AdvoCare, but the one thing that sticks out most was from our VP of Sales Mrs. Debra Fisser at the Seattle Ladies Night Out last month.

“Life’s game has a beginning and an end, stop living like it doesn’t.” 

Our time here is too precious to spend it being anything less than everything we were created to be- sometimes all it takes is someone else believing in you just long enough for you to believe in yourself.

**Article above published in Power Ranch Living Magazine July 2013 Issue by Melanie Morton**