Monday Motivation

I adore this quote. Brilliant and so very true. So many people have spoken on this topic, far more eloquently than I could, and so I am only going to go there just a little bit (I can't help myself).

People, you don't HAVE to think grand to make a difference. You don't need to be Gandhi. You don't need to be wealthy. You don't even need to have a whole lot of spare time. There are things you can do, right now, to make someone's day brighter.

Several times a year, I make up a monthly challenge calendar for my Thirty-One team, where there are different challenges daily that they are supposed to go do and then post to the group that they've done them. I change these up a ton every time I do it, but I always, ALWAYS have a pay-it-forward Friday on there, where they are challenged to pay for the car behind them in the drive-through for coffee or breakfast or whatever. It's simple, it's typically quite inexpensive, and how much brighter did it make YOUR day if someone has ever done that for you?! Best. Feeling. Ever. To be on the giving or receiving end of it. Simple things like that are exactly the kind of things you can do to make the world a better place, your own little corner of the world, anyway.

So pick something and do it. I dare you.

Monday Motivation

I'm not "hand-picking" these quotes...I just change them based on whatever comes out of the box. Consequently there are some I might love less than others. Some that might speak to me less than others. When that happens, I try to think about the quote for a few minutes, and figure out what I might learn from it. Call it a meditation, almost. This was one of those quotes for me. I think initially I couldn't figure out what difficulties I might have mastered, or how those might have, in fact, turned into opportunities. Maybe I was just not as smart as Winston Churchill and didn't totally understand it. Very possible.

In any case, I'm still pondering on this one. Maybe it'll speak to one of you in a more profound way than it did me. If not, well, we can't all be Churchill I guess.

Monday Motivation

I am ALL ABOUT motivational quotes. I buy them constantly. I hang them on my walls, put them out on my Facebook. I hoard them. I adore them. I found this great little cube thing at Target that had little quotes that kind of look like coasters, and you can change them out whenever to show a new quote in the window of the box. So I'll be posting those on a regular basis, when they strike me.

I particularly love this one today because things are very hectic...getting ready for travel this week, tons to get done, etc. and I am really attempting to approach the entire thing as something other than an obligation. I am BLESSED to be going on this trip. I am BLESSED to have a family I need to take care of in order to get everything set to go. I am BLESSED that I can financially afford to make all this happen. Looking at it that way is way more inspiring than looking at it as I have too much to do and I'm freakin stressed. Life isn't perfect. Life isn't even always great, but it's LIFE, it's mine, and I CHOOSE to see it how I want to see it.

Dear Blog,

You've been so neglected. I'm sorry. I'll be back super soon, pinky promise. xoxo

Our Latest Addition

Those that know me, or that have been following my blog for awhile now, know that I’m something of an animal fanatic. We have a few, or as my husband might tell you, a few too many. I can’t help it, I seem to have an irresistible urge to take in cute things. I might actually need professional help. But anyway, yesterday, as I was out back with the dogs, I noticed something in the pool. We’ve had frogs, lizards, birds, even snakes in there before (they all come in through the dog door – a delightful side effect of having the world’s largest dogs is that you need the world’s largest dog door) but this was different. This was a TURTLE!

I should note that I adore turtles. I think they are just the cutest things ever. We have two red eared sliders already, that we’ve had for about 10 years. They’re huge now, but when we got them, they were about the size of this little guy:

who was happily floating around on the hose of the pool vacuum. Isn’t he adorable? Anyway, I decided I *had* to leave him there, at least until the kids got home from school so they could see how cute he was. In the meantime, I googled him and found out he was a Florida Softshell Turtle. Native to Florida, not endangered, but that most little hatchlings like this don’t survive because they’re just so tiny and they have SO many predators that would love to have them for a tasty treat (aside from my dogs, who I am sure would have loved to snatch him up, too, if they weren’t too afraid of the pool to get in there and gobble him).

So, naturally, I decided we needed to keep him. At least for now. For his own safety. So off I went to the pet store to get him a tank and other assorted hatchling necessities. My daughter has claimed him, and he’ll live in her room. She also named him, Spot. I know, it’s odd, but the other turtles are Sock and Shoe (named by my son when he was like 18 months old) so she decided it was HER turn to name something. Better to let her name a turtle than a dog or cat next time we take one of them in, I guess.

So, an undisclosed amount of money later (undisclosed, of course, just in case my husband happens to read this later), we have yet another pet. If y’all see me on that Animal Hoarders show on Animal Planet some day, don’t be too surprised.

Adobe, Oh How I Love You

So I decided to bite the bullet and subscribe to the new Adobe Creative Cloud. This is basically the new replacement for shelling out $500+ all at one time to get Adobe Creative Suite. As I was still on CS3, it was BEYOND time for an upgrade. I haven’t downloaded every program yet (there are over 20 different apps built in) but so far I’m loving what I have downloaded. Photoshop, one of the ones I tend to use most often, for creating flyers and such for my Thirty-One team, flows really nicely. Though it will take some time to get used to the black background now. All in all, well worth the $29.95 monthly fee.

Empowerment

So I was at this conference over the weekend, Steve Wiltshire’s Life Line Coaches Million Dollar Protégé Leadership Retreat. It was an amazing experience. The conference is for leaders in direct sales, across many many companies, all brought together because they coach with Steve and his team. Being in direct sales, you get very used to hearing from “your” company, your home office. It’s interesting to get the perspective from leaders with other companies. In my case, it really did make me appreciate even more my company and all that our home office does for us.

What set this conference apart from many others is that it was us, the leaders who coach with Steve and the Life Line team, who were doing many of the presentations throughout the weekend. Of the roughly 200 people who attended, there were 21 of us speaking. My talk was on “Building Your Culture Through Empowering Leaders”.

Speaking in front of that many people, on a stage with an actual podium and microphone, would have been something that would have made me VERY nervous a few years ago. And I admit I was a little nervous before I stepped on stage. But once I was up there, all that melted away, and I was just IN the moment. It was a fabulous experience. And truly very empowering for me, because I DID it. And afterwards, to have so many women, both those I knew and those I had never met, coming up to me and telling me that I was a natural speaker, or how much my talk resonated with them, or that I was the best presenter they’d heard all weekend…well, that was absolutely an indescribable feeling. So ironically, my speech on empowering leaders actually empowered me. And that’s a beautiful thing.