Need More Time? Get Clear On What You Are Doing.

December 12, 2018 By

Clarity, the quality of being clear.

Sounds pretty easy right? All you need to do is get clear on what it is you are doing. Then you can go and do it.

We say we want to do something, I want to get organized. But what exactly does that mean? And then how do we go about doing it.

Get organized sounds pretty clear, yet, get organized is an end result. Which in and of itself is great but how do you get there?

Using clarity to help you get to where you want to go.

Now that you know your end result, it’s time to work backward. You ask yourself “what is the very first thing I need to do, the second thing, third and so on”. Those become your next action steps. The clearer you are and the more specific you are, the better.

I like to recommend to my clients that they put a ballpark time of how long it will take to do it as an added benefit. This way they get super clear on the time it will take them to do that one actionable step.

There is a lot of information out there on getting organized, being organized and staying organized. And they are all great, yet until you start to write down your next specific actions on your to do list, you are just writing down your end results.

We need to transform all the “stuff” we’re trying to organize into actionable stuff we need to do. – David Allen

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How to use time for your success.

When you have clarity of what you are going to do next and know the amount of time it may take, you can easily begin to slot those actions into the time you have available.

If you only have 10 minutes, what can you do in 10 minutes and get it done? You will know that you won’t be doing the thing that will take an hour. I read David Allen’s book Getting Things Done and while it is super helpful, I found it overwhelming at first. So I adapted it to my style as I often help my clients adapt things to their style so that they are successful.

David Allen is famous for (and others have said this too), if it is going to take you 2 minutes or less to do it, just do it. I’m all for that – but truthfully, things often take more than 2 minutes. So what I do with that is I use 10 minute blocks to do my 2 minute of less tasks – that way if something takes longer than 2 minutes, I’m still successful.

The key to more time is to get clear on what it is you are doing, how long it may take you and then to schedule it in to be done.

Your turn, where can you start? What one thing would you like to accomplish? Write it down, then list out the specific steps you will do to get it done.

Need help?

Not sure this is something you can do on your own? That’s ok, I have already solved this problem for myself and loads of my clients. I’m happy to be your solution.  Set up a free 30 minute session with me and we’ll take one of your goals and create your next thing actions list so you can get it done. Click here to be on your way. I promise you, once you learn the process and see the results, you’ll say I should have done this sooner!

Filed Under: Business Planning, Empowerment, Personal Development, Planning, Reaching Goals Tagged With: , , , ,

A funny thing happened on the way to the beach

November 21, 2018 By

Ripples in the sand.

When we first got Bruin, our puppy Bernese Mountain Dog, he loved to play. We’d take him to the beach to play in the sand.

One day I had my camera and was taking photos of him playing. By the way, there is nothing more fun than to watch a puppy play.

As I was taking photos I looked down and saw these beautiful ripples in the sand. Yes, the photo above is one that I took that day.

The ripples made me pause. They were beautiful, they created a pattern of sorts and they were oh so different.

Ripples in your life.

Just like the ripples in the sand, we have ripples in our lives. Things can often get messy, out of sorts and even fall apart.

We tend to view our life ripples as something to get over or to put behind us. In my last blog post I used a quote from Henry Ward Beecher “One’s best success comes after their greatest disappointments.” You can read the blog here. And the quote holds true for today’s message. Ripples in our lives are really us living our lives. We can’t have good without knowing bad. We can’t have happy without knowing unhappy. How else would we know if we were happy?

Debbie Ford wrote a book about this. I highly recommend it to you. It will give you some amazing perspective to see how all of our emotions are valuable, yes even the negative and icky ones.

Ripples in your business.

I’m part of an amazing mastermind group. During our meeting this month we talked about confidence. Confidence specifically as it pertained to being a business owner and what to do when we weren’t feeling all that confident.

One of my colleagues said we don’t just get confidence or we aren’t confident one day and that’s it. It’s something that comes and goes. Well, kind of like the ripples in the sand. I know first hand that there are days when there are no ripples in the sand at the beach and the sand is smooth as glass. So while all days aren’t going to be rosy in our businesses, knowing they aren’t permanent helps us to be able to take steps every day toward where we want to go.

Success is not final; failure is not fatal: It is the courage to continue that counts. Winston S. Churchill

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In time this too shall pass.

When my cousin had her first child, he had to stay in the hospital for about six weeks after he was born. I remember her saying (and we even say this to this day), “In time this too shall pass.”

It’s the same thing with your life and your business. Tomorrow you won’t be where you are today. You just can’t. Things change. Your mindset changes, something you have been wanting shows up, something unexpected but great shows up. An opportunity knocks. You make decisions, you take action and your roll with the punches.

It’s all about the ripples of life that make our lives what they are.

And you know what, you have the power to either get caught in the ripples or accept that ripples will happen. And by looking at your ripples in a way that is positive and enlightening you free yourself to go where it is you want to go.

Bruin 9 weeks old

And if you are like a Bernese Mountain Dog puppy, there is nothing holding you back!

Where in your life can you go with the flow rather than forcing the ripples smooth?

Sometimes it’s helpful to talk things over. If there is an area of your life or your business that you feel frustrated by, I would love to be that person to help you move forward.  Set up a free 30 minute session with me and we’ll smooth the ripples or we’ll talk about how to go with the flow better so that you can move on with your achievements faster, easier and better than before! Click here to be on your way. And if you need a little Berner love, Bruin will be happy to send some!

Filed Under: Empowerment, Personal Development, Reaching Goals, Self Worth Tagged With: , , , ,

How To Get Over Disappointment

November 7, 2018 By

Disappointment sucks.

Yes, it’s true. Who likes feeling disappointed.

We spend so much time making plans, take action to make those plans come true and waiting for them to happen that when they don’t boy are we disappointed.

So yes, disappointment sucks. It doesn’t feel good. It doesn’t make us happy. I doesn’t make us want to continue on in some cases.

Getting over disappointment.

If we were sitting in a coffee shop, we could probably talk for hours over the disappointments that we have each experienced, endured or suffered. There are no shortage of disappointments in this world.

Yet, what if we could get over them and get over them easily? Would you say tell me how! There is a way and it’s not at all hard.

Though so many people will tell me, “I just can’t” and there in lies the problem. See for some reasons our brains like to go on and on about the negative things. And we often fail to focus on the positive ones.

In order for you to get over your disappointment: 1) acknowledge you were disappointed and 2) move on. Thinking that it couldn’t be that easy? Let’s take a look.

How to acknowledge disappointment.

First know that there are many ranges of disappointment. There are really big ones and really small ones. For our purposes today, I am going to share a personal example of what I look at as a small disappointment.

Second, know that how you view disappointment or whatever happens to you for that matter is in the eye of the beholder. It is all relevant to each individual person and how they feel about it.

I am in the middle of a move, my husband and I decided relatively quickly to put our house on the market and move. I told myself I could do both, manage the move and run my business exactly as I had been doing so. Well, much to my disappointment, I wasn’t able to do both as I had planned. And because I was focused on what I had planned to do and felt I could do when it didn’t happen, I felt disappointed.

One’s best success comes after their greatest disappointments. –Henry Ward Beecher

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Moving On.

At first I was beating myself up over all that I didn’t do. I didn’t blog, create any fresh content, or look at email regularly. Nor did I look for new business. There were all these “didn’ts” in my head. Then I realized wait, there were lots of things that I did do. My clients got the attention they need, bills got paid on time and  the marketing was taken care of as I do a lot of that ahead of time. So what if I didn’t do some of what I like to do regularly. It is what I DID do that I started to focus on.

When I took a step back and acknowledged that I was disappointed in what didn’t happen. I was able to acknowledge what did happen and I was able to let go of my disappointment.

Letting go of your disappointment leads to growth.

By letting go that freed up my mind and my feelings to feel better about where I was. It allowed me to think ahead. Something that we never can do when we are in a state of disappointment. It gave me freedom and peace of mind to be where I am. In transition and excited about what is next. Will I have other disappointments? Yes, and probably on the bigger scale, and that’s ok. Being disappointed is not a bad thing, it is actually a really good thing. If you never experience disappointment, how then, can you experience the thrill of accomplishment.

Your turn.

Where in your life are you feeling disappointed? Are you willing to acknowledge it, see it for what it is (which is really just information for you to grow on) and either begin over or pick up where you are?

If you are, I’d love to hear about it. Simply share your comments here or email me privately at kim@kimravida.com.

If help getting over your disappointments or acknowledging them is something you need. I can help you. Set up a free 30 minute session with me and we’ll work together so that you can move on with your achievements faster, easier and better than before! Click here to be on your way.

Filed Under: Empowerment, Personal Development, Reaching Goals, Self Worth Tagged With: , , ,

How to make success happen

September 26, 2018 By

business success

It’s not all about the To-Dos.

One of the biggest surprises for my clients to wrap their heads around is that success isn’t always about the doing.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s a big part of that. How else will you get things done. Right? I mean someone needs to take action on things in order to see results.

Yet it’s also about your thinking. As a business owner, how you think will have a huge impact on your success.

I love to watch the show The Profit. Marcus Lemonis is a master at creating cohesive, successful businesses. His big 3 are People, Process & Product. What’s interesting is the product usually can be improved pretty quickly. It’s the people and the process that often trips business owners up.

“I believe in people, process and product. But sometimes you just can’t change the people.” – Marcus Lemonis

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How business owners trip themselves up.

If you have never watched the show, Marcus comes in and takes a look at all 3 pieces. People. Process. Product. What I have come to see on the show (and working with my own clients) is that these two can often cause the business to stall or come to a complete standstill.

See, it’s usually the business owner’s mindset about the process that gets in the way.

Sometimes they don’t like what Marcus wants them to do, or they feel it’s not going to work, or they have always done something a certain way and they don’t want to change it.

I work with a lot of business owners on process improvement and systems creation and I can speak from experience that it’s not just about doing something differently.

It’s about how the business owner thinks about doing something differently that can make all the difference. You know, in the corporate world, the leaders always look for the buy-in of the employees. If they are on board, then usually a tweak or a change is easily made. If not, well…let’s just say a lot of time and money can be down the drain.

Your way of thinking is perhaps the absolute key to your success in business and in your life.

What have you been doing recently (or forever), that you know isn’t working and that if you changed it you’d begin to see changes in the direction of what you want?

How to change your thought process.

No article or blog is worth anything unless you can implement what you learned. So, below are several ways in which you can right now change your thought process.

Ask yourself:

  • On a scale of 1-10 (1 being no, 10 being yes), how effective am I in my business?
  • If you want to be more successful, ask: How can I be more successful right now?
  • What is one way (or thing) I could do that would bring me better success?
  • If I were to change how I think today, how would that change my tomorrow? (Remember, your thoughts/actions/decisions today, equal your results tomorrow)
  • I I were to improve my processes today, how would that change my business?

We often make things out to be super hard, and truly they are not. Just a few tweaks in your thinking can bring about massive success. Are you up for that? I hope you said YES! I sure am.

Let me know what you think and if you take action (see there’s the action everyone loves), let me know what you did and what your results were.

If you think that you may be the bottleneck to your success, be it your thinking or the ways you do things, I love to help people re-create simple mindset shifts and processes to help them get what they want in their lives and in their businesses. If you’d like some personalized help let me know. Set up a free 30 minute session with me and we’ll work together so that you’ll be able to reach your goals faster, easier and better than before! Click here to be on your way.

Filed Under: Business Mastery, Business Planning, Empowerment, Personal Development, Structure Tagged With: , , ,

How to succeed in business by being flexible

August 29, 2018 By

flexible

Flexibility, do you have it?

Flexibility isn’t just for fitness enthusiasts. It’s good to have flexibility in all areas of your life. It will save you a whole lot of frustration, aggravation and disappointment.

In life and in business, one key element is to be flexible.

Let me ask you, are you someone who can easily go with the flow, change on a dime, shift in the moment? Or are you someone who struggles with change, can’t seem to keep up and often frustrated and disappointed with the results you are getting?

If you said yes to the latter, you need to bring flexibility into your world. And the sooner you can do that, the better. Trust me, having flexibility in your life and in your business will make things go so much smoother for you. And who doesn’t want things to go smooth?

If you can’t be flexible in life, you become irritable with life – Rubyanne

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The beauty of being flexible.

Who wants to go through life being irritable?  I know I don’t. And I’m going to say that neither do you.

One of the best things about being flexible is that you get unexpected results, fun surprises and fascinating outcomes. And usually more than what you initial wanted. I’m all for that, aren’t you?

I recently did a Facebook Live on exactly this subject, you can watch it here. It’s short, under 15 minutes. It will give you some great examples to maybe use for your own. Are you cracking up over the still photo of me?! I am.

https://www.facebook.com/KimRavidaCoaching/videos/2212770752085976/

How to have more flexibility in your life and in your business.

Let me be clear, when I say flexible, I don’t mean lie down and roll over so that everyone can walk all over you. I mean you are able to shift gears quickly and easily. You are able to think and act on your feet in the moment and get results (and often ones you don’t even anticipate) and that you are not stuck on the outcome.

Here are a few ways for you to be more flexible:

  1. Think Ahead. If you want a specific outcome, brainstorm several different ways of reaching it. Kind of like a Plan A, B & C. This will ensure that you won’t get stuck on just one outcome.
  2. Look at the Big Picture. A lot of the time we can get stuck and inflexible because we are looking at the small picture. Look a the big picture, and ask: in the long run, what is the best outcome and what is the best action I can take right now. Another great question to ask is “will this matter to me in x hours/days/months/years?” It helps you get out of your closed-minded thinking.
  3. Be Present. Stay in the present and ask yourself, “what is the best decision I can make right now that will serve me well and I’ll feel good about?”

Of course, you may have some tricks that you use. If so, I’d love to hear them. You can either comment below or send me a private email at kim@kimravida.com.

One of the things that I love to help people do is to create simple processes to help them get what they want in their lives and in their businesses. If you’d like some personalized help let me know. Set up a free 30 minute session with me and we’ll work together so that you’ll be able to reach your goals faster, easier and better than before! Click here to be on your way.

Filed Under: Business Mastery, Business Planning, Empowerment, Personal Development, Structure Tagged With: , , ,

Do You Like Puzzles?

May 1, 2014 By

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERALife is like a jigsaw puzzle.  There are lots of pieces that show up – often as problems – and you must try to solve them one after the other, and often it feels as if there are too many pieces and too many puzzles.

Yet as Erma Bombeck said, “If life is like a bowl of cherries, what am I doing in the pits?”  Often we feel like we are in the pits and everything around us sucks.  But it’s just that old ‘poor me’ feeling that shows up and makes us all feel less than.  In reality, we are really more than we need, and we always have everything we need when we need it.

I’m talking about resiliency.  Being flexible in life makes all the difference in the world!  When you are rigid, not only do you shut yourself off from experiences but you also shut yourself off from the world… from evolution.  Adaptability makes putting the pieces of your puzzle together ever so much easier.  It allows you to see a solution where otherwise you might not have seen one.  You will perceive opportunities often before they appear.  You will be freer and happier and more joyful.  While the rest of the world is tied up in a pretzel, you will make great strides in your life.

We often think that we have no choices, when in fact there is always a choice – and by being flexible it makes it much easier to appreciate that.  Granted, not all choices will be great ones, but do not mistake the fact that while you might not like the choice, you always do have one.

True, everyone’s puzzle is unique.  We are all distinctive and special in our own right.  What is right for me is not right for someone else and vice versa.  We must each know how we want our lives to be in order to fit the pieces of our puzzle together.

Often we try to fit a piece into our puzzle then we realize that it just doesn’t fit.  And no matter what we have tried to get it to fit, forcing it just doesn’t work.  Therefore, it is perfectly acceptable and okay to say ‘no’ once you have said ‘yes’… and even the reverse is okay!  This is how we make our puzzle less challenging to solve.

So how do you complete your puzzle?  By knowing exactly what pieces fit your puzzle exactly right.

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