Spring 2006 "A La Carte"

ur newsletter will promote principles of personal success for women. These ideas will illustrate success in the working world, in interpersonal relationships, and in developing self esteem and confidence. Each member will bring special knowledge about attaining personal goals and adding a sense of discovery and excitement to women's lives.

	"I am not sure if I stumbled upon my life's purpose by accident. I know I didn't have a real 'career plan.' However, I have come to realize that I have lived my life's purpose - unconsciously or not - by pursuing activities that allowed me to 'marry' my values to my abilities and interests."
	"If you believe in a causal force in the Universe-some greater power that created this world for a reason-then you probably do believe that you personally were created for a purpose. What that purpose is may depend upon your religious upbringing, your world view, or your life experience. I will state right now that I have an underlying belief, a presumption, if you will, that your 'job' on this planet is to discover your life purpose and then go about living it fully."
	"Sometimes we deliberately move away from our purpose because we think living it exacts too great a price from us. How can we be truly in integrity when we do this? For me, Life Purpose is a framework that is held together by our core values. This is the part of us that comes shining through to others even when we try to ignore it, hide it, or say that it is something else all together."
	"As of this moment, my rule is: accept that some things won't get done when I said they would get done. Figure out which things are slipping through the cracks as they are slipping, and contact the people who will be affected by that before the deadline passes, to renegotiate when I will have the thing done for them."

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Discovering and Living Your Life Purpose

f I take the time to sit back and ponder, it is curiously wonderful that in my early sixties -a time when a lot of people think about slowing down - I am in the throes of managing the explosive growth of my public relations firm, Desert Sky Communications.

     I originally founded Desert Sky in 1989 for the "wrong" reason: I was in a prolonged period of unemployment and wanted something on my resume so that the unemployment gap would not look so large.

     It took six years of going back and forth between the business and various communications jobs that eventually petered out before I realized that keeping Desert Sky open was really the only way I could both control my own destiny and deploy my talents and skills to do meaningful work. I have never regretted making that decision.

     It's ironic that I ended up running a PR firm because during the 1970s, when I was in graduate school working on a potential second Master's Degree, I became very friendly with a classmate who told me that he was thinking of going into the public relations field. "Why would you want to do that?" I asked. "Public relations people are liars!"

     However as time went on, and my life continued to unfold, I discovered that "it ain't necessarily so."

     This is how it happened:

     Beginning in the mid-1960s, I followed a career path in what is now called public radio. In the 1970s - in addition to going to graduate school - I worked as a reporter and as a talk show host, and both positions gave me opportunities to tell stories (or help others tell stories) about important issues of which the public needed to be aware. These activities jibed with my innate and deep curiosity about the world around me.

     My initial forays into public relations were consistent with the storytelling idea: I worked on a volunteer basis with non-profits whose values I shared, helping them communicate with the public about their programs and policies. The same held true when I found paying PR positions. I truly believed in the missions of the organizations for which I was working; and because they were operating in a way that was consistent with their values, it was very easy to tell their stories in a credible manner; there was no reason to lie or "spin."

     From the day that Desert Sky Communications opened its doors, the clients I have attracted have enabled me to continue on this path. A history of consistently sending the news media interesting material has increased my credibility with the "fourth estate"; and they seem to be more willing to respond affirmatively and relatively quickly when they receive a request to consider a story, guest article or interview idea. Our placement rate hovers around 90%, and virtually all of our business comes in by referral.

     I am not sure if I stumbled upon my life's purpose by accident. I know I didn't have a real "career plan." However, I have come to realize that I have lived my life's purpose - unconsciously or not - by pursuing activities that allowed me to "marry" my values to my abilities and interests. That's really the key.

     I suspect that the cause of much frustration and misery for many people in the world is the fact that they are not living their life's purpose - or a purposeful life. Maybe the things they are doing are not consistent with their basic values… perhaps their talents haven't had the opportunity to shine. The deceptively simple solution would be to make a change.

     Of course, change is very scary; and there are times when circumstances beyond our control make change difficult if not impossible. But for those who have some control over their lives, I would say that a process of discovery and analysis of values, talents and skills (Carol Akright discusses this in her article) could be very helpful and lead to something meaningful.

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Carol Akright, Certified Financial Planner and Certified Kinesionics Practitioner, is an investment manager, financial strategist, and pioneer in applying kinesiology to help people identify and fund their life dreams. A financial advisor for twenty years, she is author of FUNDING YOUR DREAMS GENERATION TO GENERATION (Advisor Press, 2004) and of numerous financial articles. Creator of the national PBS series, FUNDING YOUR DREAMS, she is a frequent guest on radio and TV. Ms. Akright is the founder of TOTAL FINANCIAL HEALTH, a wholistic program in dreamfunding and wealth creation. She can be reached at Associated Securities Corp., (505) 897-1970.

Discovering and Living Your Life Purpose

've always said that there are only three things to do in life:

1. Enjoy loving relationships
    

2. Explore the (inner and outer) world,  and--
    

3. Take your God-given talent, skills, interests and educational learning to find a life's work that fulfills you and contributes to others.

     Anything else I can think of falls into these three categories, and the third category is what life's purpose is all about.

     Let's explore the talent that Dan Sullivan of the Strategic Coach calls your "Unique Ability." This IS what you know you are great at, what others tell you is your gift - and it's what you would do even if you were not getting paid to do it. My Unique Ability, for instance, is inspiring others to fund and live the life of their dreams. I am passionate about this -I am really good at it, and it calls me to be the best I can be in delivering this work to others. You absolutely have a UNIQUE ABILITY of your own. Do you know what it is? Are you using this talent day to day in the work that you do for a living? Are you giving it away all the time because you love to do so? If you have not yet discovered this talent, then in all likelihood you are not living your life purpose.

     Skills are what you've learned to do that flesh out, amplify, and help you express your Unique Ability. Again, by example, my skills are writing, speaking before audiences, and engaging others in meaningful conversations that touch their hearts and souls about who they are and what value they already provide others and could do more of, if they focused on using THEIR OWN skills. Then I apply my financial, management and investment skills to help each person fund their life purpose.

     Interests are what you care about, what you love to explore, investigate, discover, and spend time involved in. Maybe you love the arts, playing a sport, visiting a particular culture that intrigues you, or creating something with your hands. For me, I love people -all kinds of people -they and their potential fascinate me. I want them to have (and to fund) the life of their dreams. Additionally, I have spent years traveling to many cultures to discover both the sameness of humanity everywhere, and the diversity of language, costume, arts, music, and customs that make each group of people distinct. I find that lecturing on money topics to cruise ship passengers lets me do this global exploration.

     I also love photography, because so often it captures the snapshots of people's lives that hold meaning and their very purpose. I'm sure you can take a quick inventory of those activities or discoveries that have captivated you over the years. And sometimes interests evolve over time, or come and go. Recently, I rediscovered a love of playing the piano. I had studied it for ten years in my youth, then abandoned playing for thirty years, only to sit down at the keyboard in a piano store last summer to remember how much pleasure it gives me to play. That day I bought the piano I was playing on! And am I having fun now!

     Educational learning is all the training you've been through over the years. Whether it was the focus of your college degree, or some vocational or technical training you've acquired, or what you've taught yourself through reading and exploration, you've picked up an enormous amount of knowledge. You can take what you've learned and apply it to living the life you want. Most of us certainly need to find work that provides income, and we steer our education to provide us this source of earning power. However, in my work as a life planner, as well as a financial planner, I find too many individuals who are not working at something they love to do, only something that provides them a "living." And I often ask, what kind of living is that?

     Which brings me to life purpose. If you believe in a causal force in the Universe - some greater power that created this world for a reason - then you probably do believe that you personally were created for a purpose. What that purpose is may depend upon your religious upbringing, your world view, or your life experience. I will state right now that I have an underlying belief, a presumption, if you will, that your "job" on this planet is to discover your life purpose and then go about living it fully.

     I also presume that you want your life to have meaning and fulfillment - that you do not want to see yourself as a pawn in the fates and vagaries of existence, without the free will and volition to create a life that you see as valuable, worthwhile, and one of intent. I guess I've just seen too many people do amazing things, living incredible lives, "against all odds" to believe otherwise. When you look human progress, the great contributions of many individuals to better the planet, our standard of living, our opportunities for enjoyment and personal happiness, it gives one hope that I - and you, too - can take a chance and risk a lot to live the life of our dreams.

     Perhaps you have designed a career around creating something that has never before been developed, or perfecting a process that needs improvement, or distributing something you feel will benefit others, or providing an experience that brings others pleasure or a life changing challenge. I cannot accept the idea that your presence on the planet is some act of chaos theory - perhaps this is where spirituality comes in. And, yet, it is really up to you to figure out what your purpose is and live it.

     If you're at a loss about what you should be doing for a life purpose, there is a series of tests I found most helpful when I was in college. The Johnson O'Connor Research Foundation has developed and offers a battery of tests to uncover and correlate your talents/skills with your interests. Then it relates the answers to potential careers. Interestingly enough, it came out that I was a "many-aptituded" woman who might best be satisfied as a journalist, stockbroker or teacher. As it turns out, I have had all three careers - first a TV broadcast journalist, then a stockbroker/financial planner, and now an educator/inspirational public speaker about how to fund your dreams and use your money to create a life of joy.

     These tests helped me identify at age 22 what I'd most enjoy pursuing for my life purpose. It's been an evolutionary process - first, developing my communication skills through journalism, then developing an expertise in the money world, and now, putting it all together by taking my Unique Ability to inspire others through educational lectures, articles and books.

     You've likely gone through a similar evolution no matter what career path you have taken. It behooves you to look back over the landscape of your working life and revisit what you've most loved doing, where your talent and skills have shone, and what has most fulfilled you.

     Life purpose goes beyond being a "success," or making lots of money, or achieving recognized accomplishments or financial security. Life purpose is elemental to your sense of satisfaction with your life, to a feeling of completion at your life's end, and a deep-seated, soul-level happiness and contentment. If you don't discover and live your life purpose, you will not have lived the life you dreamed of when you were young.

     No one but you can give yourself permission to live your life purpose. And no one can convince you to fulfill your purpose once you discover it. Nothing can do more to increase your self-confidence and self-trust and self-love than doing what you know you are meant to do.

     So, go forward and live your purpose every day. Only then will you love your life, and yourself, to the fullest.

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Shelby Smith-Sanclare, Ph.D. is a Business and Personal Coach who works with individuals and organizations to break preconceived patterns and create new and innovative ways to blaze ahead in their strategic thinking, decision making, and action taking. She brings experience and training in the fields of research, training, strategic planning, environmental design, organizational management, and business consulting. Shelby is a CoachU graduate and a member of the International Coach Federation. She has lived abroad working with both locals and expatriates in making business and personal life choices. Contact her at (505) 237-2005, or email her at .

Discovering and Living Your Life Purpose

story told with many variations goes something like this: I die and go to meet my Maker. The only question that I am asked is not, "Why were you not a better Sandra Day O'Connor, Georgia O'Keeffe, or J. K. Rowling?" but instead, "Why were you not 100% Shelby?" Denying our unique and special selves and not living our Life Purpose seems to be a theme that many of us not only ask once or twice in our lives, but seem to revisit regularly-usually when we seem to have lost our way or wonder, "What am I really all about anyway?"

     When we give up trying to be something we're not and begin enjoying what and who we truly are, a heavy burden lifts from our shoulders. After all, our Life Purpose is a unique and defining statement about each of us. I like to think it is a realization of an ease and grace within ourselves that makes us sigh and say, "at last, I'm home," and it can act like a homing beacon to bring us safely back to harbor when we are floundering or feel lost.

     I'd also like to think that once we find it, it is ours forever and life will be so much easier from that point on, but that isn't quite how Life or Life Purpose ends up playing out in our day-to-day lives. Yes, that part of our spirit-our inner core of purpose-is uniquely ours throughout our lives; however, it changes emphasis and character as we experience life and live the stages in our lives. We may focus that purpose in different arenas of our lives, or - not realizing that the purpose is always there, supporting us in every aspect of our lives - think that we've lost it somehow.

     Sometimes we deliberately move away from our purpose because we think living it exacts too great a price from us. How can we be truly in integrity when we do this? For me, Life Purpose is a framework that is held together by our core values. This is the part of us that comes shining through to others even when we try to ignore it, hide it, or say that it is something else all together.

     There are as many ways to discover or "re-remember" one's Life Purpose, as there are people who are seeking it, and people who are assisting in the search. No two approaches will be exactly alike. I'd like to share a few that seem useful for most of the people I've worked with over the years:

Before beginning, please recognize this as valuable, special work, and honor yourself with the time and energy to see it through no matter how difficult it may seem at times during the process. Give yourself the gift of uninterrupted time and space. If you can't achieve that in your normal surroundings, go to the library, the park, or some other quiet place without phones and distractions. Bring plenty of writing materials with you so you don't run out of paper or ink. Remember to breathe. If you feel distracted or want to leave the exercise you've chosen (and you most likely will), close your eyes, breathe deeply for several breaths, remind yourself that this is the special work of coming home to yourself, and ask again the question[s] you have chosen to answer.

     Approach One: How do I want to be remembered? Review your life, achievements, failures and abandoned dreams. Is the life you are living today the life that you want people to remember you by? Is this the legacy you want to leave? If so, write about it. If not, write your life the way you want it to be remembered. Review your answers and see where your heart sticks in your throat or you feel an instant "knowing" and hear the "YES!" in your body.

     Approach Two: Review your past accomplishments. Review your life back as far as you can recall and list three times in your life when you accomplished something about which you are proud and passionate. These are the experiences that made you feel very much alive, and they must be ones about which you can firmly state, "I did this; I felt great about doing it; and I felt great about myself in doing it." Write them quickly and don't encumber them with too much detail. Even though the three examples may not seem to have much in common, you may find a consistency in how you felt inside as you wrote them (not what was actually happening externally to you). Let this sit for a while, then journal about what made you totally involved physically, psychologically, and spiritually in each of the experiences. From this exercise the statement of your Life Purpose can come.

     Approach Three: Ask yourself the four questions Patrick Harbula asks in his book, The Magic of the Soul:

1. What do you love to do that makes the world a better place, or in some way contributes to the lives of others?
    

2. What is the most profound experience you would like someone to have as a result of working with you, or through having any interactions with you?
    

3. What is the most important quality or guidance that you did not receive enough of as a child?
    

4. How do you feel when you've created something, or shared that quality or guidance, with someone else?

     Approach Four: At the top of a piece of paper, write, "What is my true purpose in life?" Write whatever answer pops into your head. A short phrase or a complete sentence is fine. Keep asking and answering that question again and again until you write the answer that makes you cry. Yes, cry. This is your purpose. To some this will seem perfectly stupid or silly, and to others it will make perfect sense. It may take you 20-25 minutes or it may take you an hour or more.

     Your first statements may reflect social conditioning, memories, and expectations of others - or what you think your purpose is - but I encourage you to persist. After 100 or more answers, maybe even 700 or more answers, you will write something that brings a rush of emotion, one that stops you dead in your tracks. That is your purpose. When you review all your answers, you may find kernels of your purpose among them - maybe some that even made you pause with a bit of emotion - but you'll find that they were not fully defined enough to be your full purpose. Persist. This is not a process that will work if you quit before you have truly finished and there is a sense of congruence in every part of yourself.

     Cautionary Note #1: Sometimes we think we haven't found our purpose while bogged down in day-to-day needs of daily life: we're reacting to endless crises and feeling overwhelmed. Taking the time to find our Life Purpose helps us open up more to opportunities, find more time, energy and space, and be more focused on what is important. It helps to eliminate many of the endless to-dos on our lists, and brings us solidly back to the true essence of who we are. When you're in endless cycles of frustration, take the time to restate your purpose and look at what you are doing and the choices you are making through that lens.

     Cautionary Note #2, Errors We Make Searching and Finding Life Purpose: Listed below are some of the ways we can be misled and drift away from our purpose:

1. Believing that finding our purpose equals finding financial success.

2. Believing that attending to our purpose should be easy all the time.

3. Believing we should be happy all the time when attending to our purpose.

4. Expecting others to be pleased with us as we live our purpose.

5. Believing that self-sacrifice is necessary to living our purpose.

6. Believing that once we find our purpose we will feel fulfilled and complete all the time.

7. Confusing our life's purpose with what others think we are good at or we "should" do.

8. Thinking that because the life purpose is simple or easily stated, anyone could do it or live it, and therefore it isn't truly our purpose.

9. Thinking that once we are on track with our life purpose we should feel better, when in fact we may feel worse - at least for a time - while we and others around us make adjustments.

10. Believing that we can continue to do all that we have been doing and merely add our meaning and purpose to that - rather than truly finding our purpose.

11. Believing that we can continue to do all that we have been doing and just merely add some things that express our purpose.

     The easy part is finding our Life Purpose. The harder part is to remain true to ourselves when there are so many choices and voices coaxing us to move away from what we KNOW to be true for us. To live our purpose means to recall it and state it and align our lives to live it, finding the support among family and friends to remember with us and to hold the light for us when we seem to have lost our way.

     We must honor all of who we are, not just a small portion of ourselves. The more we live out our purpose, the more it begins to resonate as that unique definition of who we are. Soon, our purpose can become automatic, unconscious, and integrated into the fabric of our lives.

     So, what is your Life Purpose and what is the next first step you will make to set your foot on the pathway to living it?

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Lenann McGookey Gardner is a Harvard M.B.A. and independent management consultant specializing in improving companies' sales and marketing results. She works with smaller businesses, as well as large companies, worldwide, and she also coaches individuals to higher levels of professional accomplishment and satisfaction.  Call Lenann at 505.828.1788 when you want to grow your sales by closing the most desirable, highest profit business. Lenann is a winner of the American Marketing Association/New Mexico's Professional Services "Marketer of the Year" award, and is profiled in the 2006 edition of Who's Who in America. Visit her on the Web at www.YouCanSell.com.

Setting Priorities for Maximum Sanity!

s your world like mine?

     Competing priorities - all seemingly important - and uppermost on my mind, even when I'd like to be sleeping!

     At the same time, I have managed to accomplish most of what I wanted in my life and career. I enjoy a happy marriage and a well-adjusted child, I started and continue to operate - 13 years later - a business that is successful and thriving, I do work that I'm good at doing, and it takes me all over the world at my clients' expense, staying at some of the most beautiful hotels and resorts (recently I returned from the Black Sea - wow!). I have friends I love, fun and relaxing hobbies, and I make what I think is a meaningful contribution to my community by volunteering as a childcare worker for homeless infants and as a Stephen Minister.

     So perhaps I've set a few priorities and managed to stick with them, after all, though the day-to-day keeping up may be a challenge to me.

     Here's what I've learned:

1. We have to have priorities. Without them, life becomes a sea of "do this, do that, run, run, run" with no underlying structure. Which is more important - that dental appointment, taking the dog to be groomed, completing the client's project, making a trip to the gym, calling to check in with a prospective client who hasn't decided whether or not to work with us yet, or preparing an agenda for tomorrow's meeting of a committee I'm chairing for the charity on whose Board I serve?
    

2. We have to stick with the priorities, or we might as well not bother to set them! The point of the priority setting is to keep some semblance of structure and "do-ability" in my life; if I am distracted by every possible activity that vies for my attention, well, I'll be distracted all day long!
    

3. We have to make enough time to SET the priorities, and it's best to do that when looking at the landscape of possible activities - which for me means when I'm in my office and looking at my "To Do" pile, desk, or conference table, ideally the day before I have to do them.
    

4. While we have to understand that some plans will be changed by the events of the day, we have to have enough self-discipline to return to the priorities once the "crisis" has been handled! (I think of this in the same way that I and many other people think about our diets: we know that, if we've eaten something with a lot of calories, the key is to get back on our eating plan - but how often is the fact that we ate the high-calorie thing in the first place the reason that we allow ourselves to keep eating, saying: "Well, I already ruined my diet anyway?")

     When we base setting priorities on our values, then the question I posed in Point #1 above is an easy exercise! Here are the priorities I'd structure from the list:

     First: Get to the gym. If I'm not strong and energized, everything else suffers. But do I have to go to the gym? Or will a run on the treadmill in my home be enough for this busy day? I've learned that 30 minutes at an elevated heart rate not only gives me benefits for my heart and lungs, but also relieves stress and energizes me.

     Second: Call the prospect. This is the one that will get lost if I'm not careful - because the prospect isn't calling ME. On the other hand, although prospecting is never "in my face" - pushing me for action - I know that if I ignore prospecting, our business will dry up!

     Third: Complete the client project. If time is short and the project is large, I avoid the tendency to delay the work on the grounds that "I don't have enough time to really make a dent in it." That approach has an inherent flaw: I NEVER seem to have big enough blocks of time to work on huge projects. Instead I use the "Swiss cheese" approach and try to find a small segment of the project that I can work on each day, thus taking a hole out of the big mountain of the project every day. Eventually, of course, there is no mountain, only holes!

     Fourth: Set the committee's meeting agenda. Can I delegate that? I try to keep a support person in the loop on what I'm doing with the charity; we even officially "share" the seat on the Board, so that when I'm busy, she can act in my stead.

     Fifth: Keep the dental appointment. I will just show up at the appointed time, no question, because I know that if I don't, the appointment will just have to be rescheduled to another busy day. I don't question dental appointments; I just make them happen.

     Sixth: See to my poor dirty puppy. Won't it be fun on Saturday to try to get her into the bathtub? That saves me $45, avoids a distraction on a busy weekday, and gives us bonding time.

     The priorities are easy. The question is, am I satisfied? Do I feel on top of my life, or as if I'm struggling to keep up?

     And the straight answer to that is, some of both. I do take on too much, and need to learn to say no more often. At the same time, I'm mostly doing things I like, and that I find meaningful, and, most importantly, when I look back on my days, weeks, months and years, I can honestly say that I feel I've made a positive difference.

     My biggest challenges are reminding myself to look at the big picture and experiencing the satisfaction that it has all worked out so well. Giving myself some credit for that, rather than just the blame for the things that (inevitably) slip through the cracks. I'm working on that! As of this moment, my rule is: accept that some things won't get done when I said they would get done. Figure out which things are slipping through the cracks as they are slipping, and contact the people who will be affected by that before the deadline passes, to renegotiate when I will have the thing done for them.

     The underlying structure for this is simply to do what I said I was going to do, when I said I was going to do it - no excuses. Renegotiate any commitments I made that I can't fulfill before the deadline passes and then - stick with it!

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