While blog surfing I came upon an interesting blog called eMoms At Home, founded by Wendy Piersall. A mother of three, she quit her job at Socrates.com to start her business and create eMoms At Home as a side project to help parents everywhere start their own home businesses.
Even though I am no parent, I’m much too young, I have found many of her articles helpful when it comes to running Internet businesses. Not expecting to learn life lessons, I found an article seriesthat really hit close to home and has helped me to ditch my dis-empowering beliefs and install beliefs that would allow me to live to the fullest of my potential.
It is a four installment piece with worthwhile topic focuses for each post: 1) Success vs. Failure, 2) Sneaky Tools to Win, 3) Overcoming Obstacles vs. Untapped Potential and 4) Embrace Your Success.
Success vs. Failure:
This post is a very good introduction to the idea of the concept, “you are your worst enemy.” Essentially you are and you have great control over what beliefs you hold. They may not be your own beliefs-they could be popular ideals or passed down from influential figures-but you can choose to scratch them and install beliefs that give you control over yourself and allow you to live your dream life.
I also love her one rule:
“WE WILL ALWAYS DO MORE TO AVOID PAIN
THAN WE WILL TO ATTAIN PLEASURE.”
You are even given homework; write down the top 6 feeling you love to feel and your top 6 feelings you hate to feel. Simple enough right? Well not for long….
Sneaky Tools to Win:
Before getting into the nitty gritty work of changing your values and beliefs, this post gives you some breathing air before opening the skeletons in your closet. While reading this installment, you don’t realize intense this series gets but luckily you don’t go in completely unprepared.
What is nice is you really begin to understand her motives behind this whole series by providing you with her goals of the next two posts. It’s helpful to understand the “whys” because they allow you to get the most out of your reading.
Motives:
- Motivation when you’re feeling frustrated
- Action when you feel like procrastinating
- Belief in yourself when you doubt that your business is going to make it
- Trust in your inner wisdom when you have to make tough business decisions
- Strength and determination when you must get outside of your comfort zone in order to make a difficult step to take your business to the next level.
- Courage to take your biggest business mistakes and turn them into opportunities for growth
- Faithin your abilities when faced with the massive uncertainty of when your next paycheck will arrive
- Balance when you are working too many late nights and your family really wants you
Overcoming Obstacles vs. Untapped Potential:
Now for the hard part. She asks you to pick one of the feelings from your Top Hated and answer the following questions accordingly.
- What does “x” mean to me specifically?
- What has to happen to me in order to feel “x”?
- What benefits am I getting out of “x”?
- By indulging in “x”, what is it costing me?
- What do I have to forget in order to feel “x”?
- Why be free of “x” now?
- What are my new rules for “x”?
Before you answer these questions, you have to go to your quiet place. If you don’t have one, make one because the more you can focus on answering these questions as honestly as possible, you will benefit more from this exercise. Keep in mind the whole point is to open the wounds to uncover and help you understands these limiting beliefs so you can go on to the next post.
Embrace Your Success:
After you have, as she calls it, breaking down your “brick wall,” she has you do exercises that puts your flag on your conquered and demolished wall. It’s not just about deconstruction, it’s also about installment of your flag so you won’t go back to your old and limiting beliefs and values. What’s nice is she also helps you organize and really understand human nature by providing what she says are the five basic needs:
- Certainty
- Variety
- Bonding
- Love
- Importance
Based on these needs, you are asked to answer a few more questions, but these are the reconstruction questions that allow you to really see what’s going on.
- Choose one of the above mentioned five needs - the one that you were meeting the most by feeling yesterday’s avoidance value. What does “X” mean to you specifically?
- Visualize yourself on your death bed and look back at your life where you lived to your fullest potential. Take 10 to 20 minutes right now to write a page or so about this life that you just experienced. Write it as if it has already happened, in past tense.
- ‘When I am at my absolute best, what has to happen in order for me to feel “X”?’
- If I were living up to my full potential, what would be some ways that I could feel (importance, certainty, etc.) that I haven’t thought of before? How can I create this feeling from within me, based solely on my own thoughts or actions?
- Lastly, and most importantly, schedule time every day over the next 30 days to read what you just wrote every morning before you start your day. It may sound ironic and funny, but feeling great emotions actually takes practice.
Reading this series and doing all the exercises she outlines has helped me in an incredible way. She has helped me move past a “rut” I’ve been in for the past week or so. I have now opened myself up to more in my life and has allowed me to get closer to my true potential.
I highly suggest reading this series. You will not regret. The time you put into it is the value you will receive times 10! She provides much more information than I do in this post so give her series a go. There are links throughout this post to each installment of the series so just click the links and you’ll be one step closer to taking control over your life.
Just remember, pass it on.
-YoYo
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You get a very good feel for this book when you read what’s written on its cover: “A guide to mastering the body-mind-spirit connection for ultimate training and racing.” I don’t think putting this book in the running section does it enough justice. It was such a spiritual, self-help book that I was taken aback that I didn’t find it in the psychology section of Borders.