Chloe has a children’s book titled Milton’s Secret: An Adventure of Discovery through Then, When, and the Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle and Robert S. Friedman, which really simplifies the concept of living in the present moment, and how the practice of that will, for the boy in the story, eliminate fear and worry.

I wanted to explore that as it pertains to your business, with a slightly different slant. I wonder if you, like so many of my clients, and myself as well from time to time, are so hooked into the future that we’re missing the NOW and not fully enjoying the journey?

So how do we unhook from it to allow what we truly want to come to pass without always feeling like we’re striving for it? Here are 5 ideas:

1. Let go of the goals that take you away from the present.

Let me say first that you can have everything you want – and there’s no judgement here on what those things are.

That being said, do you want a mansion, to be the #1 speaker in your market, to be the one with the biggest email list in your market, to be a New York Times bestselling author, to make a million dollars? There’s nothing wrong with any of those lofty (and completely attainable) goals.

And, what happens is when we’re so focused on the sexy dream we tend to get ourselves so riled up about getting there that we miss all the amazing stuff happening NOW.

What I’ve noticed is that people get impatient, sad, frustrated, and even angry when they’re so focused on the future goal that the present seems uninteresting at best, despairing at worst. The antidote? See #2.

2. Polish the present

I want to encourage you to stop striving so hard and thrive in your present. What I mean is that if you make what you already have better, and polish what’s already good and working, you uplevel your life without expending that energy on something that doesn’t exist yet.

Yes, it’s about appreciating what’s already good and right in your world and in your business AND it’s about how you can make what’s already there fulfill you even more. It’s true that if you make the most of what you already have, you’ll get more and better of it with a lot less effort on your part.

3. Don’t plan so much

I’m all about having the big picture plan down to the day-to-day details, and yet I know that most of the time, the plan changes.

One of the reasons we – as business owners – plan so much is because it gives us a sense of control and it helps to alleviate the fears and doubts we have about knowing what we’re doing.

So have the plan and be willing to be flexible with it. Let it be a guide but not the only way. If you get wrapped up in THE PLAN you’ll actually hold yourself and your business back from being able to adapt quickly when things change – and they always do.

Assess if you spend more time planning than doing – and if you do, stop right now. And if you tend to fly by the seat of your pants more often than not, you might want a lightly-built framework around you to give you some sense of stability.

4. Get out of the striver’s club

Stop trying to acquire a better future with others who are striving. It’s just too exhausting. I’m not saying to surround yourself with lazy folks, but to get out of the overdrive club if you want to relax into a currently compelling present instead of an exhausting still ‘out there somewhere’ future.

5. Get off the ‘if/when’ rollercoaster

I admit this is a pet peeve of mine. Not from people who are decisive, but from people who use it as an excuse to not be happy now. When you make ‘if/when’ statements, you’re living in the future. Dreaming and visioning is one thing; otherwise it’s a holding pattern for you but even worse, you’re not enjoying where you’re at right now!

I’d love to know your thoughts on how to unhook from the future so you can enjoy the present – please leave your comments below.

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I’ve been spending a lot of time lately getting ready for 2012 – planning, organizing, strategizing, visioning, and more. There are many transitions and transformations on the horizon for me and my business, and much to do to prepare for them, so I’m making space and opening the flow.

Here are some of the ways I’m doing this in my business that you can do too:

1. Clean Up Your Business Time

Time is your only non-renewable resource. If you’ve ever experienced days when you don’t know where the time has gone, but you do know you haven’t accomplished much, then you need to take a serious look at just what is eating up those precious minutes. My coach’s request of you is to track your time for the next two weeks. Like a food diary makes you intensely aware of what you’re eating, a time log will allow you to quickly and easily identify where you’re frittering time away.

Most likely culprits?… Email and TV (yes, I know some of you are ‘watching’ TV while you’re online, and no, that’s not multi-tasking, that’s just pure distraction).

Once you are aware of where your time is going, make a conscious effort to redirect it to more productive – or even more restful – activities. Turn the TV off (or TIVO/DVR whatever it is you must watch and give it your full attention later). And don’t leave your email open all day long! Allot specific time to read and respond to it instead.

You’ll be amazed at how just doing this simple exercise will free up the time you want for more important (and fun!) things. (Be sure to read Part 2 of this article next week where I’ll share more specific and effective tips for handling email overload.)

2. Clean Up Your Business Space

Now is a great time to go through your files – computer and physical – and delete or organize them for moving forward to 2012. I spent several hours going through my physical files recently, shredding lots of documents (I love to purge!), and setting up new files for my new Platinum clients as well as empty files for the ones yet to come. During this process both online and off, I also found a lot of gems I’d forgotten about – pieces of content, systems and processes, tools, resources, audios, and more.

And now that I have a recent visual in my mind of what’s in my files, it’s literally at my fingertips as I move forward in building my business. As for my computer, I actually went so far as to purchase a brand new laptop, and I’m being very discerning about what gets transferred over from my old PC to the new. Energetically and electronically, I can feel how much more open the flow is by doing this.

3. Clean up Your Business Circle

This one can be a bit difficult, but it’s necessary to prune the people you surround yourself with from time to time. It doesn’t mean you have to completely disconnect from them (unless they’re just weighing you down energetically), but do make a conscious choice to spend more time in the company of those who lift you up.

Let me give you a simple example. If you’re on someone’s ezine list just because everyone else is or you feel like you should be, but you either a) don’t read it or b) don’t feel good when you do read it, just unsubscribe and allow the space for something that resonates with you to take its place.

Or maybe you’re part of a mastermind group that you feel you’ve outgrown. Now is the time to graciously bow out. Once you do, you open the space for a new group to form around you that better supports where you are now.

How are you making space and opening the flow for the new year? Please share below…

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Chloe has a children’s book titled Milton’s Secret: An Adventure of Discovery through Then, When, and the Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle and Robert S. Friedman, which really simplifies the concept of living in the present moment, and how the practice of that will, for the boy in the story, eliminate fear and worry.

I wanted to explore that as it pertains to your business, with a slightly different slant. I wonder if you, like so many of my clients, and myself as well from time to time, are so hooked into the future that we’re missing the NOW and not fully enjoying the journey?

So how do we unhook from it to allow what we truly want to come to pass without always feeling like we’re striving for it? Here are 5 ideas:

1. Let go of the goals that take you away from the present.

Let me say first that you can have everything you want – and there’s no judgement here on what those things are.

That being said, do you want a mansion, to be the #1 speaker in your market, to be the one with the biggest email list in your market, to be a New York Times bestselling author, to make a million dollars? There’s nothing wrong with any of those lofty (and completely attainable) goals.

And, what happens is when we’re so focused on the sexy dream we tend to get ourselves so riled up about getting there that we miss all the amazing stuff happening NOW.

What I’ve noticed is that people get impatient, sad, frustrated, and even angry when they’re so focused on the future goal that the present seems uninteresting at best, despairing at worst. The antidote? See #2.

2. Polish the present

I want to encourage you to stop striving so hard and thrive in your present. What I mean is that if you make what you already have better, and polish what’s already good and working, you uplevel your life without expending that energy on something that doesn’t exist yet.

Yes, it’s about appreciating what’s already good and right in your world and in your business AND it’s about how you can make what’s already there fulfill you even more. It’s true that if you make the most of what you already have, you’ll get more and better of it with a lot less effort on your part.

3. Don’t plan so much

I’m all about having the big picture plan down to the day-to-day details, and yet I know that most of the time, the plan changes.

One of the reasons we – as business owners – plan so much is because it gives us a sense of control and it helps to alleviate the fears and doubts we have about knowing what we’re doing.

So have the plan and be willing to be flexible with it. Let it be a guide but not the only way. If you get wrapped up in THE PLAN you’ll actually hold yourself and your business back from being able to adapt quickly when things change – and they always do.

Assess if you spend more time planning than doing – and if you do, stop right now. And if you tend to fly by the seat of your pants more often than not, you might want a lightly-built framework around you to give you some sense of stability.

4. Get out of the striver’s club

Stop trying to acquire a better future with others who are striving. It’s just too exhausting. I’m not saying to surround yourself with lazy folks, but to get out of the overdrive club if you want to relax into a currently compelling present instead of an exhausting still ‘out there somewhere’ future.

5. Get off the ‘if/when’ rollercoaster

I admit this is a pet peeve of mine. Not from people who are decisive, but from people who use it as an excuse to not be happy now. When you make ‘if/when’ statements, you’re living in the future. Dreaming and visioning is one thing; otherwise it’s a holding pattern for you but even worse, you’re not enjoying where you’re at right now!

Now take and implement these five ideas to unhook from the future so you can enjoy the present.

I’d love to hear which of these resonates with you the most – feel free to share with me below

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I have a successful business because I know what to do and I do it. I make a good income, I work with clients I enjoy, I get to be creative and I get to do all of that in a way that serves my family and my life.

So when I attended a small intensive led by Laura West, my intention was not to get more strategies or techniques, but to truly shift the way I envision my business as I reinvent it in these shifting current entrepreneurial waters. And that’s exactly what I got – here are just four of those shifts:

1. Money comes from working within your creative power centers

Laura’s created this powerful body of work around the ‘creative power centers’ that crystallized where I needed to spend my time and energy on to evolve my business in the way that honors my life and my own strong boundaries around that life.

For me that means really listening and following my intuition more, taking care of my personal energy more, increasing a team member’s responsibilities, and adding a whole lot more ‘Alicia flavor’ to the mix.

2. Always come back to what I want

When the thoughts get muddled and the confusion sets in with all the choices of what to do in my business (and my life), I will keep coming back to this single question:

What do I want?

And I’ll keep asking it until what I want is crystal clear. Then I’ll know exactly what to do.

3. Systems and structure equals more freedom

I’m great with systems – we have one for pretty much everything in my business – but structure is lacking a bit, and that’s because I can operate well on the fly. However, just thinking about how a little bit more structure would benefit me and my team and how that would lead to more freedom for me got me excited about actually putting that structure in place right away.

4. My non-negotiables are my success

I’ve been looking more closely at this and with the focused time at the intensive, I realized that a big attraction piece for my audience are my non-negotiables (family first, summers off, etc.). From that place, I was able to draft the new design of my business and I couldn’t be more excited about what’s to come.

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Chloe has a children’s book titled Milton’s Secret: An Adventure of Discovery through Then, When, and the Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle and Robert S. Friedman, which really simplifies the concept of living in the present moment, and how the practice of that will, for the boy in the story, eliminate fear and worry.

I wanted to explore that as it pertains to your business, with a slightly different slant. I wonder if you, like so many of my clients, and myself as well from time to time, are so hooked into the future that we’re missing the NOW and not fully enjoying the journey?

So how do we unhook from it to allow what we truly want to come to pass without always feeling like we’re striving for it? Here are 5 ideas:

1. Let go of the goals that take you away from the present.

Let me say first that you can have everything you want – and there’s no judgement here on what those things are.

That being said, do you want a mansion, to be the #1 speaker in your market, to be the one with the biggest email list in your market, to be a New York Times bestselling author, to make a million dollars? There’s nothing wrong with any of those lofty (and completely attainable) goals.

And, what happens is when we’re so focused on the sexy dream we tend to get ourselves so riled up about getting there that we miss all the amazing stuff happening NOW.

What I’ve noticed is that people get impatient, sad, frustrated, and even angry when they’re so focused on the future goal that the present seems uninteresting at best, despairing at worst. The antidote? See #2.

2. Polish the present

I want to encourage you to stop striving so hard and thrive in your present. What I mean is that if you make what you already have better, and polish what’s already good and working, you uplevel your life without expending that energy on something that doesn’t exist yet.

Yes, it’s about appreciating what’s already good and right in your world and in your business AND it’s about how you can make what’s already there fulfill you even more. It’s true that if you make the most of what you already have, you’ll get more and better of it with a lot less effort on your part.

3. Don’t plan so much

I’m all about having the big picture plan down to the day-to-day details, and yet I know that most of the time, the plan changes.

One of the reasons we – as businessowners – plan so much is because it gives us a sense of control and it helps to alleviate the fears and doubts we have about knowing what we’re doing.

So have the plan and be willing to be flexible with it. Let it be a guide but not the only way. If you get wrapped up in THE PLAN you’ll actually hold yourself and your business back from being able to adapt quickly when things change – and they always do.

Assess if you spend more time planning than doing – and if you do, stop right now. And if you tend to fly by the seat of your pants more often than not, you might want a lightly-built framework around you to give you some sense of stability.

4. Get out of the striver’s club

Stop trying to aquire a better future with others who are striving. It’s just too exhausting. I’m not saying to surround yourself with lazy folks, but to get out of the overdrive club if you want to relax into a currently compelling present instead of an exhausting still ‘out there somewhere’ future.

5. Get off the ‘if/when’ rollercoaster

I admit this is a pet peeve of mine. Not from people who are decisive, but from people who use it as an excuse to not be happy now. When you make ‘if/when’ statements, you’re living in the future. Dreaming and visioning is one thing; otherwise it’s a holding pattern for you but even worse, you’re not enjoying where you’re at right now!

I’d love to know your thoughts on how to unhook from the future so you can enjoy the present – please leave your comments below.

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I’m writing this on my laptop in a Cosi café in Dupont Circle in Washington, D.C. The reason I am here has nothing to do with me or my business, but the reason I can continue to be successful in my work is because I have set myself up to do so. How? By creating supportive environments. In this case, the laptop, the appropriate software, and the ability to connect to the Internet, as well as the support of my husband, all contribute positively to my accomplishment of the task: writing and submitting this piece on deadline and without stress.

Creating supportive environments is imperative to your success as an entrepreneur. It goes without saying that if you have environments that will support you and your passion, it’s going to be much easier and more enjoyable for you to do your work. I’m going to touch upon the environments that I believe are most essential to your success and well being.

There are many environments in your life, and most of them intertwine. Being aware of these environments will ensure that you have a hand in creating them, and not allow them to be created for you by tolerating those people, situations and things that you shouldn’t.

Important areas of your overall environment include your home, office/work space, body, energy, and nature, which all impact your mental, spiritual, and emotional environments.

In your outer environment, your home is one of the most important. Your home should be a sacred place for you, a place where you feel safe, taken care of, and content. Clutter and chaos in the home should be kept at a minimum, but your bedroom and your work space in particular should reflect calm. I know sometimes it just isn’t possible to stay on top of it all, but if you make a consistent effort to divide and conquer – and ask for help! – over time you can make a huge difference in the quality of your home environment. As bonus, you’ll create space for other more appropriate and wonderful things to enter as well!

Exercise 1:

If you have a list of things that are broken, need replacing, or just need to be tossed, then start doing this today. Pick three things that are in your home right at this moment that you can either toss or give away. Then do so, and feel the space clear.

Nothing blocks creativity more than clutter in your office or work space. To be honest, I write that sheepishly thinking of the paper piles on the floor surrounding my desk at home. What I need are several filing cabinets so I’ve ordered the ones I want and just that simple decision is freeing a lot of mental stores.

Exercise 2:

If you have clutter in your work space, you are not allowing yourself to be more productive and creative. Give yourself the gift of a clutter-free space in which to bring your gifts into the world. Take ten minutes at the end of each day and tidy your space. File what needs to be filed, throw away anything that you no longer need and can honestly assess that you really won’t ever need, and make a plan for tomorrow.

Don’t ask yourself to be perfect in this; sometimes you are going to need to fly away from your work space and simply don’t have the time to do so. When that’s the case, then take the ten minutes in the morning to clear your space so you can clear your mind for the work of the day.

Having the right tools to work with will also make your work more enjoyable and much less stressful. My desktop died a slow tortuous death one summer and you can’t imagine my stress level at the time. It got so bad that I literally shut down and spent a week in a cabin in the woods, just working from my laptop, just to get away from it. And I also can’t tell you how happy I was when it finally bit the dust and I bought my new one. The lesson for me, though, was that I should have simply bought the new desktop when I knew that there was no saving my old one, instead of going through the stress of not being able to do my work, and not being as productive as I like and need to be to continue to be successful in my work. It certainly wasn’t worth it – on any level – to suffer through those last weeks.

Exercise 3:

As in your home, are there things in your office or work space that need to be tossed, replaced or upgraded? Are you tolerating things for financial or other reasons that are really counter-productive, like I did with my ailing desktop? Choose one thing that would make your work easier and more enjoyable if you replaced, upgraded or tossed it, and make the decision to do whatever it takes to make that happen as soon as reasonably possible. Stop tolerating what you shouldn’t and get on with bringing your work into the world.

Your body is an environment that you need to take care of as well. Are you getting regular exercise? Are you participating in something physical that you really enjoy, not something that you dread making yourself do simply because you know it’s good for you? Are you eating as nutritiously as possible, without feeling deprived of the foods you love? Do you get haircuts as often as you should and would like? Do you treat yourself to a manicure, pedicure, or some other spa treatment once in awhile? Do you get enough sleep? Do you rest when you need to? Do you run on adrenaline or do you use food and exercise as your means for energy? Our body is one of the environments that can be easy to ignore (until something is wrong), yet when we take good care of ourselves in this way, it is amazing how much more energy, patience, creativity and satisfaction we have.

Exercise 4:

Choose one area of your body environment that you know you can improve right away and make the commitment right now to do it. That could mean you will go to bed a half hour earlier each night, or that you will take a 30-minute walk outside today. You could not have a sugar-laden dessert tonight and instead opt for a lighter version of frozen yogurt with fresh fruit. What action could you take today that you know will make you feel proud of yourself for doing so?

I’d love to know your thoughts on hiring help in your business – please leave your comments below.

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