by | November 9, 2012 · 9:26 am

Freebie Friday from Debbi Dachinger!

This week’s guest blogger, Deborah Dachinger, is kind enough to share a freebie with us today. Click this gift to receive an MP3 teaching how to make dreams into reality/goals attained.

www.deborahdachinger.com/freegift

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by | November 6, 2012 · 9:20 am

The 3-2-1 Method. Easy for Accomplishing Your To-Do List

By Debbi Dachinger (Goal Achievement Expert)

 

3-2-1 Method:  A technique to assist in accomplishing your to-do list. Can be used for getting through a holiday season or building your business and anything in-between that you intend to create.  The method is to write a list consisting of 3 items, 2 items and 1 item:

3- Tweaks…write 3 small tweaks to engage in that will move you toward your goal

2– Celebrations..write down which 2 things you will celebrate and be grateful for today

1-    Thing You’ll Stop today…Pick one thing to stop doing that contradicts your goal

The 3-2-1 Tracker keeps you on track and it’s simple to do – each week or once a week.

Decide – what you want

Figure– out how to get it

Identify – the people, places and things you need to accomplish your goal.

Go – about doing it

In creating life skills, we build new muscles that support us to move ahead.

===================================================
Today while speaking with a talented and high-level Web Developer / Computer Technician, we were discussing moving ahead together on a project.  He said something that really perked my ears up regarding the numbers that result in a call to action.  When you generate a call to action with people, i.e. – a radio show asking listeners to do something, or a business asking potential clients to do something, or buy a book, or sell a product – did you know what the statistics are for things like that?  I was really surprised.  When you get 1-3% people to take an action you are doing very well. Those are the numbers. So that means that about 99% of people will never do anything.  Wow.  The technician said that 97-99% of people will never do anything no matter what you tell them or offer them they’ll just sit there doing the same thing… no result. The other 1-3% of folks are hungry – they’re hungry to change, to grow, to do something better for their life. They will bite, they’ll buy; they’ll take action. And they’ll get the result – whatever they’re doing or being will improve greatly because of the action they took!!  Where do you fall in those numbers?  In what percent have you been living your life? And do you want to make a new choice about that?

If you’re in the 1-3% like me and want to improve your life, your work, finances, health, relationships, and spirituality – stay with me here. (And bless you for your willingness to take action, to do the work – to want to live La Vida Plena or la increíble vida, or la vida mágica …. meaning The Full Life, The Amazing Life or The Magical Life.)

Regarding Fear – I watched a TV show where a trainer works with people who are extremely overweight to lose weight and get healthy. He made a pushing his clients to face their fears. The trainer said the longer we avoid something we fear the more it grows and he suggests we face them, take them on– get through them. And just like in life or pursuing dreams and goals and intentions often we must face down a fear in order to get to the dream come true. Facing your fear, not avoiding, but walking through the experience, in spite of fear (which is what courage really means) has inherent life lessons in them.

So create your dreams come true:  Be, think, act, and receive. Fill it with joy and love so the quantum field of energy matches the vibrational match of what you’re feeling and envisioning.  In other words, what you create and attract to you will match the energy you’re imbuing your goal with and bring it to you.

Tell yourself: “I am consistently in the right vibration to attract wealth.”  Finish the sentence with whatever it is you are ready to attract to yourself and your life right now.

Napoleon Hill, 1883-1970, Author, wrote:

“The moment you commit and quit holding back, all sorts of unforeseen incidents, meetings and material assistance, will rise up to help you. The simple act of commitment is a powerful magnet for help.”

Debbi Dachinger is an expert in goal achievement.  She is a radio and TV personality; a three-time bestselling author, keynote speaker, and coach (for goal attainment and in coaching people how to be exquisite talent while being interviewed on  radio).  Her work with people in the media, workshops and through coaching has been achieved through decades of research, education and her gifts as a clairsentient and intuitive.

Debbi’s “Dare to Dream” radio show is a syndicated, multi-award winning program with 2+ million listeners offering inspiring information and methods on how to achieve goals and dreams. Deborah is a top-notch radio personality, was an award-winning actress and singer, a successful motivational speaker, a professional voice over artist, and was a popular jewelry designer.

Awards or Accolades to mention:

  • Editor’s Pick: Featured Intriguing Creator;
  • Broadcasting Industry Lifetime Achievement Award;
  • Featured in Yahoo News, Earth Times, and Singapore Star News and multiple news sources;
  • Inducted into the Who’s Who Hall of Fame for entertainment,
  • Opened the stage for don Miguel Ruiz,
  • Will be featured soon in Social Media Magazines,
  • Soon-to-be on the cover of SPIRIT Magazine,
  • Seen in the documentary film “Girl’s Rule,” about Self-Esteem and Confidence,
  • Author of the bestselling book: “DARE TO DREAM: THIS LIFE COUNTS!” (At Amazon and all bookstores)
  • A regular video contributor at: YouTube.com (debontheradio)

Debbi’s abundant career is in using her voice to live out loud, to teach and inspire others to Dare to Dream and make their dreams a reality.

Debbi Dachinger

Goal Achievement Expert

Syndicated, Award-Winning Host of “Dare to Dream” Radio

Bestselling author of “DARE TO DREAM: This Life Counts!”

Amazon 3x bestseller: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1467930814

https://www.deborahdachinger.com

https://www.YouTube.com/debontheradio

https://www.Twitter.com/debontheradio

https://www.DebOnTheRadio@blogspot.com

Facebook.com Fan Page ~ Dare-to-Dream-radio & tv

https://www.linkedin.com/in/debbidachinger

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by | November 2, 2012 · 9:31 am

FREEBIE FRIDAY: How to DOUBLE YOUR BUSINESS in The Next 90 Days!

Our guest blogger this week, Terri Levine, is kind enough to share the attached report:  How to DOUBLE YOUR BUSINESS in The Next 90 Days!

Click here to download.

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by | October 30, 2012 · 9:29 am

Answers To The Business Growth Questions You’ve Been Asking

By Terri Levine

Every day I get asked questions on my blog, when speaking with clients, on webinars and teleseminars and at speaking events. For the past few months I’ve collected the top questions and today I am going to reveal the answers to those questions.

Question: How do I get people to buy my products/services?

Answer: You can have great products and services and even have a great market but if not enough people are buying you are in trouble. You must have a sales message that communicates a strong reason with a lot of benefits so that buyers persuade themselves to purchase from you.

This means you need to capture the interest of potential buyers and keep their interest long enough so that they can see the benefits of what you are offering. Your product or services needs to make their life or business better and when you tie a guarantee to your product/service as well as an incentive for investing right then, that is how a sale is made.

You can use this process with direct mail as well as the internet or by combining both methods, which is the method I personally prefer. Partnering with the best peo providers can help manage your workforce efficiently.

Question: Should I use a printed brochure?

Answer: You need to use your website as your online brochure yet I also like printed brochures because they do convey information about your business for people who like to hold something in their hands. Brochures are inexpensive to print and can be handed out and also mailed. Ads can be placed asking encouraging people to ask for more information and brochures can then be sent as follow up pieces.

Be sure brochures fit into business envelopes and don’t make them expensive. No need to spend a lot of money on color. They are inexpensive direct response pieces. If you have a facility or sales people be sure they get handed out.

Most important a brochure needs to have a tear off reply card or a toll free number to call with a very specific discounted offer right in the brochure. It is a sales tool so use it that way.

My favorite form of brochure is a DVD. If you have a facility this should be playing on a continuous loop in your waiting area. If you don’t have a location use it at trade shows or mail them to pre qualified customers then follow up with a phone call.

Question: How do I get free publicity?

Answer: You want to create relationships with local press in your field. If you are a business find the editors and writers of business publications for example. Connect with owners of newspapers, radio stations and magazines.

Every month send out a press release solving a problem that is being talked about in the news. Then call the publication and pitch your story in 30 seconds.

When you get something published in a paper or appear on radio or TV, let your current and former customers know.

Be sure to pitch the right department. If you are an career expert don’t pitch the sports department. Pitch the editor in the right department. Always have a headline that catches attention, too.

Free publicity might not bring you cash but it does give you name recognition and credibility. It works in conjunction with your paid advertising.

Question: Should I send out an Ezine?

Answer: It is so fast and easy to send out an ezine and also inexpensive that not taking advantage of this strategy is a big mistake. Publishing your own ezine (on line newsletter) is a great way to educate and inform prospects and customers and to also make special offers to them.

An ezine can be one to two pages and can be sent monthly. It’s a way of keeping in touch and sharing your expertise with prospects and customers as well as a way to have prospects sign up and become part of your database to receive your ezine.

Ezines are a great way to make you and your company an authority and nowadays can be done with desktop publishing and look great. Just be sure you use your newsletter to teach and educate first and foremost.

Question: What is your top tool for getting more clients?

Answer: By far my favorite marketing tool is information seminars. Whether you do these live or through teleclasses and webinars this is the best way to share your company’s expertise with potential clients. I recommend inviting current customers and their friends as well.

The agenda for the event is always the same. Start with information about the topic. Give a lot of information so that people clearly see you as the expert. Then offer specific advice sessions to those who are interested. The event has to be about your audience and how you can benefit them. Don’t sell outright at the event. Instead sort, sift and separate and have the people who are seriously interested set up private sessions to demo what you are selling.

There you go, the answers to the top questions I get! I hope you got benefit from hearing the questions that are raised and how I have answered them.

 

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by | October 23, 2012 · 9:22 am

A Bird in Hand

By Valerie Sheppard

As I engage in spiritual transformation discussions with my clients, workshop participants, and members of my Heartful Awakening Circle online community (www.HeartfulAwakenings.com) who are making choices to have more of what they want in their lives, I am noticing a trend.  It’s one that feels prudent and wise on the surface, but detrimental when you get to the ‘deepest intent’ that underlies that.

The troublesome aspects of life today are forcing many into total upheaval.  Relationships, jobs, finances and lifestyles are all in a state of flux, and many weighing options to take their experiences to new levels of fulfillment and security.  As they do so, an ages-old proverb appears to be coming into play, and it might be hurting all of us.

A bird in the hand is worth (better than) two in the bush

Sources like Wise Geek.com and Phrases.org agree this proverb is saying that you’re likely to be better off by sticking with something you already have, rather than pursuing something you may never get.  The warning is that if you pass up a sure-thing (the thing you already have/know) to go for something that might be better, you may end up without both.

There are several accounts as to the origin of the proverb, some dating back to the 13th century, including that it comes from medieval falconry where the bird in your hand was the means to getting the two in the bush.  In this case, without the larger and skilled predator skills of the falcon, one wouldn’t be able to eat the smaller birds in the bush for dinner.  Perhaps you gained this wisdom when you read Aesop’s Fable of The Hawk and the Nightingale, in which a Hawk tells its nightingale prey as the latter begs to be released,  ”I’d be crazy to release a bird I’ve already caught in favor of birds I don’t even yet see.” There is even a Biblical reference from 1382:  Ecclesiastes IX – A living dog is better than a dead lion.

Regardless the proverb sounds like a lesson in the wise use of resources.  However, it’s putting a nice “useful” cover on a base emotion of fear, and on scarcity, lack, and limitation beliefs that prevent us from trusting ourselves and taking greater risks to experience our higher good. 

I’m recalling a particular apparatus on a ropes course at California’s renowned Challenge U, one of my favorite experiential learning facilities.   On this apparatus, you’re walking a tight-rope some 40-feet in the sky.  As you traverse the rope with your feet, you are using your arms to balance yourself on individual ropes hanging above your head.  These upper ropes are spaced just far enough apart, that you have to let go of one to grab the next one!  So each step along the way, you have to dangle out there in mid-air for a millisecond holding onto nothing before you can reach the next rope. [You are wearing top-notch safety gear of course, including helmet, safety harness, and gloves, and you’re being guided by one of Challenge U’s expert coaches.]  While there are other apparatus in the ropes part of Challenge U’s tools, this particular experience helps one feel what it’s like to be in the void while going toward a goal. The idea is to help people learn to feel the fear, and keep going anyway.

This is the heart of Courage, Faith and Trust. 

There are times when the bird in hand is practically killing us, and still we won’t put it down until something better is right at hand.  We probably all know at least one person who hates their job, but stays anyway, just for the money; a couple who stays married long after the relationship is over solely “for the kids” or the financial security; people who won’t risk going for something they dream about because they’re not sure they can make it.

I certainly have been there.  Before I left my last corporate job in 2006, I was “grinning and bearing it” long after I knew I was unhappy.  When I stepped into my radical sabbatical, I felt fear of loss, lack and limitation at a deep level.  It wasn’t easy leaving my corporate salary and business comfort zones.  This proverb came up many times. But in the end, I chose to step out anyway.

We’re in a time of massive shifts in the Universe.  The New Age of Enlightenment is upon us, and the energies it’s bringing are about destruction of the old, outdated, no-longer-serving-us aspects of our consciousness to make way for Truth.  Now, perhaps more than ever before, each of us is being supported to step into the void in order to claim higher ground.  But instead of stepping out in Faith, many are locked in fear and “hanging in there” with energetic vibrations that are holding them back.

I believe the struggles we’re seeing around the world are about coming out of this stasis.  More of us have to be willing to step into and learn to thrive in the void if we are to truly shift the vibration of social consciousness.  We must learn to be listen to the signs along the way screaming NO!, it’s time to leave, exit, release, drop, or whatever form of not-doing- it-anymore fits.

We must have the Courage, Faith and Trust to answer the call to leave before
the something better comes along if we truly want to live our most vibrant lives.

Perhaps our various forecasts of the future have numbed and misguided us.  Humankind’s ability to “predict” weather patterns, revenue, stock performance, life expectancies, prices, unemployment, purchasing, political races, etc. may be teaching us to look too long before we leap.   When we wait for the exact right moment to make change happen in our lives we miss the greater gift that comes from the willingness to dance with the questions and experience the fear as we choose to move forward anyway.

We must make peace with the unknown, and see our ‘Bird in Hand’ dilemmas as calls from the Soul to step into the void and feel safe! 

We’re always in some form of the unknown.  We can only know so much about how things are going to play out, and even in the midst of our sophisticated systems for projecting and predicting, we still get it wrong.  It feels more important to be at peace without knowing.

In the NOT knowing, we’re actually at our most flexible point.
In the NOT knowing, we’re open to more possibilities and in the possibilities,
there are more opportunities for triumph.  

Here’s your call to action:  Look at where you are “hanging in there,” or “grinning and bearing it” through what is not serving you, believing it’s your proverbial Bird in Hand.  Go into the fear that is keeping you from acting in your own best interest and make peace with whatever is causing it.  As the fear subsides, instead of waiting to see what will happen if you let go, perhaps it’s time to let go first, and then keep your heart open for the possibilities that you’ve just created!

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by | October 16, 2012 · 9:20 am

Is Laughter the Best Medicine?

By Valerie Sheppard

Today I enjoyed a wonderful You-Tube video with a group of people staging a ‘laugh-in’ on the subway. It is a wonderful illustration of how laughter is contagious!  To watch it, click HERE.

One of the joys of participating in and teaching Laughter Yoga is that I’ve experienced first hand that laughter, whether purposefully generated or in response to something we see or experience that’s funny, has the same wonderful and generative benefits:  we relax, endorphins go racing through the body, and we receive a big injection of HAPPINESS!  Whoever first coined the adage that laughter is the best medicine was right!

The Benefits of Laughter
Physical Health Benefits:

  • Boosts immunity
  • Lowers stress hormones
  • Decreases pain
  • Relaxes your muscles
  • Prevents heart disease
 Mental Health Benefits:

  • Adds joy and zest to life
  • Eases anxiety and fear
  • Relieves stress
  • Improves mood
  • Enhances resilience
 Social Benefits:

  • Strengthens relationships
  • Attracts others to us
  • Enhances teamwork
  • Helps diffuse conflict
  • Promotes group bonding

You’ve probably already heard me say that happiness leads to success and not the other way around.  It stands to reason then that if laughter gives you happy moments, it can contribute to your success.

Whatever else you do in any given day, take a few minutes to spend some time in laughter.  You can visit my laughter page where you’ll find funny videos, jokes and images, find a laughter club near you (if you’re in Orange County, come join me at the Laguna Beach Laughter Club), check out some improv comedy live performances or videos, or start giggling for absolutely no reason at all!  When you keep it going for more than 20 minutes, the laughter itself is therapeutic and will energize and inspire your day.  If you’d like to bring more laughter into your workplace, invite LaughFit to create a program there.

Wishing you a laughter-filled day, a life overflowing with happiness, and much success in all things.

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by | October 9, 2012 · 9:15 am

Meditation: A Tool For Happiness or An Exercise in Frustration?

By Valerie Sheppard

3 Great Tips to Turn Your Meditation into a Rewarding Experience!

When I first started meditating several years ago, it was anything but fulfilling!  I would make time in my calendar, sit down and “try” to meditate.  I would get uncomfortable trying to hold the same still position, my mind would be full of thoughts and chatter, and I would feel frustrated and unfulfilled when it was over.  Can you relate to that?   Meditation certainly didn’t live up to its reputation of a centering, peaceful, rejuvenating experience.  I was ready to throw in the towel!

Fortunately, I didn’t!  I kept exploring meditation and my relationship with it through workshops, and even multiple-day silent retreats.  Over time, my investment paid off.  I found various tools that have worked for me, and my experience  of meditation has been richly rewarding ever since.  In fact, meditation has become my favorite means of staying centered and feeling that I am in the flow.  It has become the foundation of my daily spiritual practice and something that greatly feeds my soul and state of happiness.  Hallelujah!

I’d like to help you create a similar relationship with and fulfilling practice of meditation.

Tip #1

Let go of pre-conceived notions of what meditation is and isn’t.  If, like me, you have these ideas about how you “do” meditation and what is “supposed” to happen when you meditate, you may be holding yourself back.  Yes, there are “techniques” and some of them have specific postures and durations associated with them.  But it’s not necessary to start with those forms of meditation.  You can simply start by taking a break in a busy day, closing your eyes, and following your breath.  For me, that was a great start.  I let go of the things-to-do list, and for a few lovely moments, was quietly with me.  In “True Meditation,” Zen Master Adyashanti advises that our attitude is key to our meditation experience.  “We need to come to meditation in a way that is fresh and innocent.”  In other words, let go of the list of ideas and expectations you have and start with a totally clean slate.

Tip #2

Give up “trying to meditate.”  If you are trying to do anything while you’re meditating, you’re defeating the purpose of meditating.  The point here is to let go of doing-ness altogether.  The act of meditating is the only act.  You’re not trying to control the body or stop thought.  When you’re doing this manipulating and controlling in meditation, you’re actually resisting what is, and when you’re in resistance, you cannot feel peaceful and you cannot quiet the mind or body.  It’s in allowing that you are able to do that.  You simply sit and allow everything that happens to happen.  Eventually, the body rests and the mind quiet.  The more often you meditate, the more the body and mind get into a rhythm of releasing and quieting.

Tip #3

Commit to creating a practice.  The experience of meditation and the benefits derived from meditating deepen and expand over time.  David Fontana, author of “Learn to Meditate:  A Practical Guide to Self-Discovery and Fulfillment” says “meditation is a path without end.” We engage in the practice without expectation and keep engaging with open heart and mind.  If every day feels daunting to you at first, choose a different frequency.  If 20 or 30 minutes feels out of the question, sit for 10 or 15 minutes instead.  You can also do briefer and longer sits if you feel called to do so.  I meditate for 30-60 minutes daily and also integrate 2-5 minute mini sits whenever I feel the need to decompress.

The key is to get started and keep going!  Once you integrate these 3 tips, any meditation technique you work with will become easier for you.  In fact, I’ll bet that over time, despite current appearances to the contrary, you will soon discover the Master Meditator that is already within you!

If you are interested in pursuing this more deeply, come check out my next Be Still and Mindful Meditation Tele-workshop at www.StillandMindful.com   I promise it will be fun, easy and rewarding!

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