Happy new year 2018!

At this time of year, some people have set their 2018 goals and are beginning to take steps toward them, while others may have already lapsed in staying focused on a new mindset, habit, or behavior.

Which brings me to the mindset of making things happen. 2017 was amazing for me, my business, my meditation journey, and my relationships with friends and with clients.

How did I make this happen? I ditched the goals and resolutions. Instead, I picked one word/phrase to guide me, and it changed the way I looked at everything. And that brought some real opportunities into my world.

Some of the things I did in 2017 from this new mindset:

• Serving incredible clients and working only with people and businesses who inspire me and are doing amazing work in this world.

• Having amazing conversations with fun, interesting people.

• Worked Super Smart: Fewer hours, bigger impact, and better work & play balance.

• Went to visit creative friends in other parts of the U.S.

• Took better care of my mind, body, spirit such as developing new meditation habits that have had enormous benefits.

• Read tons of books including fiction, inspiring business books and amazing spiritual books such as The Obstacle is the Way, by Ryan Holiday, Ask by Ryan Levesque,  Wherever You Go, There You Are by Jon Kabat-Zinn and more.

• Grew my dedication to daily meditation and mindfulness practice with 30-45 minute a day practices, 5-6 days a week and teaching new clients how to start their own meditation practice.

• Contributed and grew as part of two in-person, female mastermind groups.

• Went to the Women’s Convention in Detroit and grew my perspectives.

• Focused on my own personal mindset growth with the help of my private coach.

• Raised my own self-awareness and focused on being more present with the people in my life.

• AND began the outline of a book (stay tuned!).

The mindset I used

How did I accomplish the above and more? With the mindset of “say yes” to the opportunities presenting themselves, even if I felt scared, and a focus on feelings of joy. How did I make this mindset manifest?

• By doing a LOT less of what used to waste my time and energy.

• By doing an authentic reconciliation of what knowledge and skills I truly have, and then setting my fees to match the value of my work, which means understanding that value and speaking to it by:

• having a mindset of serving and not selling.

• doing things that scare me and staying outside my comfort zone.

• allowing myself to feel vulnerable or down without attacking myself.

• raising my awareness and preventing self-sabotaging patterns before they took hold.

• learning that even though my focus was on “say yes” it also meant saying no to loads of “opportunities” so I could say YES to the real ones.

• trusting myself and my choices even when they were not popular or “logical”.

• speaking up more with truth and authenticity to clients, colleagues, and friends.

• doing LESS and getting MORE done.

• making more time for self-care.

Empowering mindset

None of these had anything to do with goals and resolutions which fall short when you are envisaging an incredible year for yourself, your career, or your organization. It is not enough to ‘set goals’ or ‘make resolutions’. You need a mindset of empowerment and a perspective of possibilities for yourself that then feeds all your decisions and actions. You need to see your situation differently before you can rise above it.  This is true within your organization which lives and dies on internal culture and colleagues who believe “we can change the world”.  It’s true of your sense of where you are in your career and how your work contributes to a better world, and it changes your personal life since you are the central ingredient on making it joyful.

Inner work

This is incredible and important inner work, which then impacts your outer reality. It’s the mindset you must have to successfully manifest an amazing year. It’s proven to help my clients see the biggest shift in their path, which for them, turns into new clients, new streams of income, and new joys in their business and their lives. And this is where I urge you to look for your greatest opportunities and satisfying possibilities in 2018.

If you want to change your outer reality, below are some ways to engage with me:

Sign up for this month’s free daily email campaign: Power of Thought: Manifest a Better Reality 

 

Or contact me for your own exploration session for one of the following items:

Ready Exit Blueprint: How would you feel if you could wake up every day to work on your own dream business instead of being stuck in a day job? Discover how to build your strategy to do what you love, quit your job & make a big impact on the world.

Acceleration Career Path: Do you want to feel valued at your job, get rewarded for all your hard work and get promoted to the next level? It starts with a creating a map of your career management success, one that will lead to raising your salary and loving your career.

Private Coaching with Sara Jane: If you want to accelerate your results and progress in your business, relationships, sales, fundraising, or revenue, and do it in a way that aligns with your core life values and brings you joy, then let’s have a conversation to see if we are a good fit for my private coaching program.

Make 2018 your best year ever!

Overwhelmed and Overcommitted?

Feeling overwhelmed is daily life in the nonprofit world. Too much work and too few people.  To me, nonprofits are suffering as much as the people they are serving.  There are no simple answers on how to manage your time daily to achieve more impact when resources are tight and demand is great.

Yet, unified in our desire to impact the world for the better, we seek ways to take back control of our daily schedule so that at the end of the day, we know we are traveling lighter and faster in our quest to help others. And, we feel human again… we feel alive… and we feel connected to our mission.

Click here to sign up to receive a daily email for a month that takes 6 minutes to read and gain focus and get productive, and take back your work day.

Here are some tips that will help you change the way you live your days so that your days aren’t controlling you.

Overwhelmed

1. Start each day with listing what 3 goals you are working toward, not with looking at your to-do list. Then start a new to-do list based on those goals.
2. Take a fresh look at what’s on your previous to-do list, and what shouldn’t be there, to begin with. You need a way to sort out those projects, tasks, and meetings that should never be on your to-do list and begin to look at whether they align to accomplishing the big goal or goals you have set for yourself.
3. As you look at your schedule and your to-do list, start asking yourself whether the task you are doing is really the task to be focused on to achieve the results you want.

Overcommitted

I’d like to challenge you on taking a look at whether you’ve overcommitted yourself.  First of all, recognize that you have done this to yourself, but you’re not alone. We all do it. But you have to start taking responsibility for creating the situation. Changing your patterns of choice can be hard or easy.

1. Say no. Ok, so you hate to disappoint someone, or you’re afraid of getting fired if you say no to the board chair (rather than negotiating). Or you’re afraid of missing out on an opportunity. The question is whether the time is right for you, not for them.
2. Look again at your calendar – can you reschedule? I bet there are some you can. Can you Skype rather than traveling? Think through what will be accomplished at that meeting or lunch or trip.
3. Learn to delegate. I know, everyone who doesn’t delegate says the same thing: “Nobody can do it as well as I can.” Or this one: “I can’t afford it.” Have you actually done the math on that?  Or, “I am a one-person office.” Get an intern, or better yet, a volunteer that you can train. Seek out competent volunteers that work for you on a regular basis that you can trust. I know a nonprofit that trained a community volunteer to do all their donor data entry, and process thank you letters. At year-end giving, it was over 1,000 gifts. If someone can do it 80% as well as you let them do it.

Control the distractions

I’ve saved the best tip for the last:  Control the distractions. Schedule the time you spend on email, phone calls, and open office hours. Set a limit for yourself to answer emails and voicemails, and interact on social media, to two main times per day. Check once in the morning, and once in the early afternoon, with a short check-in for urgent items at the end of the day.

I’ve got lots more tried and true tips that nonprofit executives and managers use. You can have days where not only more gets done, but what gets done has true impact. Sign up today!