We live in a world where people work hard, strive for the best, and try to create the best possible lives for themselves. We know that if we work hard, we’ll be rewarded. We see people around us all the time coming up with new ideas, being innovative, and figuring out another piece to the puzzle of success.

Sometimes you might get envious and wonder how they do it or why you can’t just have that, too. It’s easy to get caught up in what everyone else is doing, get frustrated, and then just keep going about your daily routine. However, in my opinion, that is the exact point where you need to keep your chin up and keep working towards the next goal in your life.

I’m in a big believer in the fact that there is enough room out there for everyone to be successful at exactly what their dreams are. To me, it doesn’t make sense when people think that because someone else succeeded that now they can’t. It’s simply not true. The world is waiting for anyone who wants it. Your outlook and attitude really determine which path you decide to take.

So if there is something that you want to pursue or a dream you have in the back of your mind, don’t be scared to do it. Have confidence in what you want and shamelessly go for it. And most of all, cheer on those who are succeeding next to you. I think that one of the best ways you can set yourself up for success is by surrounding yourself with people who are successful and who you want to be like. The attributes that they possess are skills you can learn from and use to drive your own success.

The holiday season brings a lot of hustle and bustle with it. I’ll admit it, I jump right in and I’m a part of it. I have an entire list of things I have to do, from shopping to cleaning to wrapping presents, all in time for the big day. However, one thing that I enjoy most about the holiday season is hearing from my friends and family when I receive their Christmas cards in the mail.

I’m one that is excited to check my mail each day when December rolls around. It’s so much fun to see pictures of all the families and read the letters of how everyone is doing. So this year when it came time to putting together my Christmas card list I was feeling a bit, well, generous.

I went back to my wedding list and sent a card to almost everyone on it. Even though it may be a while since I’ve talked to some, I really wanted to reconnect with each of them in a small way to let them know that I think of them and they mean something to me. Life is always so busy and our intentions are far greater than our actions sometimes. This year I was trying to match the two together.

So if you haven’t sent out your Christmas cards yet or maybe you have a few left, consider sending a card to someone you haven’t talked to in a long time. I bet they’d be happy that they were thought of. I know I would be.

Do you remember when you were in school and learning was just part of your everyday? For me, it seems like this was just yesterday… until recently. The last thing that I remember is graduating from college and never looking back. I was career-focused, marriage-focused, and child-focused. I’ve now been blessed with all of those things.

In the midst of adding those things to my life, I didn’t realize how much I put “voluntary” education on the back burner. It simply wasn’t a priority because I was evolving in other areas of my life – all things of which I’m very proud of. Ever since I’ve hired my life coach, I’ve started to re-focus on learning new things and planning new ventures. I must say it feels fantastic. I’m taking classes on personal finance, child discipline, Mac computers, and next semester I’ll be taking a twelve-week course to prepare for an exam that I’m taking to advance my full-time career. I look at that list and it simply amazes me.

I feel like now that I’m ready and willing to learn what I want to learn, it’s more valuable and I’m soaking up new information twice as fast because my desire to learn is that much more. The best part is that I can create my own curriculum and decide what I truly want to learn. So my question to you is, have you invested in your education lately? If not, I highly recommend picking one area of interest and jumping in to educate yourself. It’s so darn refreshing.

For those of you who have children, you probably have them involved in some type of class during the year. It might be swimming lessons, music class, gym class, etc. One activity that we’ve decided to involve our kids in is Kindermusik which is an avenue to develop your child’s cognitive, emotional, social, language, and physical development through music and movement. We’ve seen our kids learn a lot in this class, but even more importantly, we as parents are learning just as much about their development.

Kindermusik in our area just started hosting an additional class for the parents called “Conscious Discipline” which was developed by Dr. Becky Bailey. This class teaches parents/teachers how to effectively manage your children’s behavior.

We have small children who have big emotions. The book and class is providing us with effective tools to on just what to do in that moment of break down of our children and how to communicate and react to them right at that moment.

If you are looking for better ways to handle or react to your children’s behavior, I highly recommend finding someone in your area who hosts this class or I recommend buying the book. I wish I could put this knowledge in the hands of every parent and teacher.

2009 has brought many blessings to my family. I’m thankful for many things that have come my way this year. One of the things that I’m most thankful for is my ambition and excitement to learn new things. I’m excited for all of the things to come. That being said, I’m taking today to be thankful for everything I already have. I think that is an important thing to remember. A lot of times we are focused on what we want or what we don’t have rather than all of the blessings sitting right in front of us. However, it is because of everything I have today that makes me want to be even better tomorrow.

Happy Thanksgiving! I hope you are able to reflect on everything that you are blessed with and thankful for.

Just about every area of my life is getting a makeover these days. Everything from my laundry room to now my budget!

One of the blogs that I read all of the time is Money Saving Mom. Each month she provides an update on her progress for her financial goals. In addition, she has other people following her lead and they are also providing their monthly financial updates. I was intrigued when I started to notice these updates each month and how much success everyone was having from following this program.

One thing lead to another and I found myself in the checkout line at Barnes & Noble buying “The Total Money Makeover” by Dave Ramsey. I started reading it, but my husband got even more excited about the book and read the whole thing in a day.

While reading the book, we also discovered that Dave Ramsey has an interactive guide and online budgeting tool on his website. We signed up for it and starting on December 1st we will begin following his program. It will be a fun process – we will find out what we’re doing right, what we can improve on, and where better financial management can take us in 2010.

Life is busy and each new day comes much faster than I would really like it to. I’m always looking at what I’ll be doing tomorrow, this weekend, or really anytime other than now.

I recently started writing down five things each day that I accomplished during that day. The purpose of doing this is to slow down, recognize what is going on now, and appreciate myself for what I do in a day. This exercise has really reminded me of my purpose, rewarded me for my hard work, and had reminded me how hard I really work to keep everything put together.

Here are five things that I’m happy to have accomplished today:

1) I got together with a friend today and cooked up a storm! I have 8 meals frozen in my freezer to feed my family during the week. That is 8 week nights that I don’t have to cook!

2) I spend time with a friend today. It was fun catching up and investing in a friendship.

3) I successfully got my child to bed after putting him to bed at my sister-in-law’s house and then waking him up to go home. He went right back to bed when we got home. I consider that a success!

4)I switched the laundry at the end of the day when I didn’t want to!

5) My husband and I bought a rug for our children’s play room so that they don’t have to play on hardwood floors anymore.

I consider those five great things just in one day. Imagine how good I feel after a week worth of accomplishments! What are five things that you have accomplished today?

When I met with my life coach for our very first meeting, she asked me what some of my goals were. One thing that was at the top of my list was being able to spend more quality time with my husband. For those of you with kids, you know that it gets a little bit hard to do when the majority of your time is spent with them as well. Sometimes just getting a sentence in at the dinner table is a challenge.

Well, the only way to start getting some quality time with my husband was to start consciously planning a date once a month. We started in September, a great month to begin considering it’s our anniversary. We took the kids to my mom’s for the night and then went downtown to the place where we had our first date… which happened to be a pub. What a perfect place though. We were able to sit down, enjoy some drinks, and talk for hours. It was great to catch up and talk about everything that was going on in each other’s lives. I felt completely reconnected with him. What a great feeling!

We continue to plan a day each month for our date. In October, we went to a football game and our third date of the year (yes, year) is coming up this Friday. I’m actually not even sure what we’re doing yet, but that’s the least of my concerns. I’ve become very excited about this time that I get to spend with him. It’s something to look forward to and a time that I know we’ll be able to kick back and have fun.

So I guess what I’m saying is if it’s been a while since you’ve put your spouse at the top of your list, I highly recommend doing so. Its fun, stress free, keeps your relationship strong.

In one of my recent posts called “Taking Control of My Schedule”, I mentioned that I’d like to save time by making meals ahead of schedule so that I eliminate having to cook meals from scratch during the week. I recently found a website called Once a Month Mom. This website provides an entire month of meals that can be prepared and cooked in one day with a friend. Once a Month Mom provides the recipes, grocery lists, and anything else that you may need to know. In a nutshell, all of the time and energy it would take to put together the menu items and grocery list is already complete. All that needs to be done is the grocery shopping and cooking.

Of course I jumped on board with this idea right away. It didn’t take much convincing. Next Saturday a friend and I are getting together to do a trial run and do a shortened version of the menu. The website provides most meals including breakfast, lunch, and dinner. It also indicates that you should plan for eight hours. We are going to plan for three hours and try a few dinner recipes.

I think a lot of things will be accomplished:

-I’ll get some well needed “girl” time with a friend
-I’ll save money buy buying and cooking in larger quantities
-I’ll save time by not having to cook during the week

I’ll let you know how it goes!

The day that I spent with my dad couldn’t have gone better. My dad is one of the strongest and most effective leaders that I know. I consider this a huge advantage because I often use him as a resource. I purposely planned a day that included travel time in the car so that I could ask as many questions as possible.

We spent a lot of our day talking about setting goals and how to accomplish them. I often get really excited about goals that I want to accomplish, but that excitement is often followed by fear of not knowing how to go about achieving them. It’s almost as if a flood gate opens and my brain is filled with all the reasons why I’m not going to accomplish what I set out to achieve.

My dad talked to me a lot about breaking goals into chunks and just worrying about one chunk at a time. He used an example that helped me put it into perspective. Instead of worrying about about how we were going to get to Chicago, what time we were going to get there, how much traffic there was going to be, etc, he told me that the only thing we really needed to worry about was getting from my driveway onto the highway, which was of course no problem. Once we were on the highway, we focused on getting to the next biggest city half way to Chicago. Again, no problem. Before I knew it, we were driving into downtown Chicago. And because we broke it up into manageable pieces that took my attention away from the bigger goal, we’d succeeded without even thinking about it.

This small exercise was an eye opener for me. All of a sudden, I feel like my goals are achievable. From today on, I’m going to stop worrying about how far I need to go and instead think about the first thing I need to do tomorrow that will put me one step closer to where I want to be.