Ah, the happy dance. One of my favorite things to do. This is a silly dance where you wiggle around, twisting and turning in excitement. The only time you get to do the happy dance is when you are celebrating something. It is a form of celebration and recognition that you have accomplished something. It the accomplishment can be big or small.

I’ve done happy dances when I have gotten book contracts, scheduled TV appearances, and made some sales. I have also done a happy dance when I lost a pound, didn’t cuss even though I really wanted to, or when I actually had a balanced checkbook. I even did a happy dance after making a phone call that I didn’t want to place. It didn’t matter that I totally bombed on the phone call—a happy dance is earned because the job to make that phone call is off my list.

Every day there is something to celebrate. Look for it, recognize it, call attention to the accomplishment and happy dance away.

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Stepping It Up all begins by taking the first step on the path.

A lot of us are standing at the starting line of ambitions, dreams, and desires. We look at the line drawn before us and think about whether we want to cross it. We ask ourselves a whole host of questions, like:

• Do I really want to do this?
• How much work is this going to take?
• Is this really a good idea?
• What is my spouse going to think?
• Maybe I should just forget about this—what was I thinking?

And on and on our mind chatter goes. We spin in confusion as we look at that starting line and stand there waiting. What are we waiting for? We are waiting for the right time. When are we going to know it is the right time? When taking the first step gets easier.

Does this happen in real life? Sometimes. Often not. Is it always good to step across the starting line on our ambitions and dreams? No. So how do we know when we are being wise and when we are allowing fear to hold us back? The answers are simple: ask yourself why you aren’t taking the next step.

Are the reasons because you are unsure that it is the right path? Or is it because of fear? Do you really want to do it and you just don’t think you’d be successful? How long have you been in hesitation mode? If it is forever, and you know deep down inside that you are meant to do something or just want to—cross the starting path now.

If you aren’t taking it because you have an uneasy feeling—listen. If, after listening, you figure out that this is the wrong starting line you came up to—leave. Find the right starting line and, chances are, crossing that line will be much easier.

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Please tell me that I am not the only one guilty of this. I set out a goal, I visualize it, and I review it on a steady basis, and yet I still haven’t taken one action—not even one baby step—toward accomplishing my goal.

I realized last year that I had one of those goals. Day in and day out, I would look at it and do nothing about it.

Now, I am a little slow, but I finally had the ah-hah. That goal—in my case learning to speak French—wasn’t a strong motivater. I really didn’t want it. If I did, I would have done something about it during all those months. When I got very honest with myself and clear, I could care less if I spoke French. It was a passing whim that I wrote down just so I would have a goal in my personal development area. When I changed my goals in that area—in this case to specific tasks that I thought would be character developing lessons for my children and would enhance our relationships together—immediate action took place.

I had been stepping down the wrong path, and because of that, I wasn’t going anywhere and only adding resistance.

Look carefully at the jellybean that you put before yourself. Is it something you really want? Or is it something you wrote down because you feel that you “should,” either out of your own sense of guilt or what others put on you. If you have one of those on the list, do yourself a favor and eliminate it and replace that jellybean with one that will work with you and your life purpose better.

Step It Up Living is not hard work where you force yourself to do things that you believe are good for you. Our purpose is not to recreate flashbacks to when you sat at the dinner table with your parent standing over you insisting that you eat your vegetables or else everything good in your life is over. Those kinds of events only created resistance in your life, and if you set up going after your jellybean in that fashion, it is a sure fire way to set yourself up for some major backlash. The rebellious child within you will throw a fit and demand to eat the ice cream or popcorn and feel she or he deserves it and won’t listen to reason until the consumption has occurred.

Step It Up Living is a regal way of life where things flow in natural order and beauty. As you look forward to the direction where you want to head, it is not a list of “shoulds” and “oughts.” You are the queen or king of your life, and you get to lead out into the world of your wishing and creation. It’s your choice what type of motivation you put in place. It is your choice how you position your jellybean in your environment. It is your choice if you allow your own and other weak-knee excuses to limit the glory of your rein. And last but not least, it is your choice if you pick a jellybean that is truly inspiring and worth the price you’ll have to pay.

If your world is one filled with love, beauty, and reward, uprisings will not occur. The people in your kingdom will notice the flow, the beauty, and the grace of your life and become inspired by it. They will naturally want to be around you and listen to your goals and aspirations and will want to help you make your kingdom and your vision a reality. You will be hailed as a great and blessed ruler. This is possible for each of us to achieve.

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Another important principle of creating the right jellybean motivation is having a deadline. It was a do-or-die situation for my children. Either they got the basement cleaned in the time frame that I set out, or they wouldn’t get the jellybean. No weak-knee parenting from me. I have been around children long enough to know that if you go soft on them and coddle them, saying, “That was close enough,” and then give them the unearned jellybean anyway, you are shooting yourself in your foot. Those kids don’t rise up to their potential. They know they are going to be rescued. This holds them back and quite frankly makes for miserable out-of-control children, because not mastering our potential makes us grouchy. It’s a natural byproduct.
The same byproduct will happen for us if we give ourselves weak-kneed excuses for not accomplishing the tasks that are needed in order to get the jellybean. Think about the times when you gave yourself the excuse to stay in bed instead of dragging yourself out and hitting the gym. Did you feel great about yourself the rest of the day? Or did you do what I do when giving myself a pass and run through the excuses all day, rationalizing and trying to make myself feel better?
Having a timeline that you must meet is important on many levels. 1) It keeps you focused on the goal and helps you overcome many of the distractions. 2) Like what my children found when they didn’t have enough time to argue with me about the guidelines, they had to give up all the excuses or the doubts that the task set out before them was impossible, and get to work.
It has amazed me when I applied this same application to my life. If you set up where you must step it up to get the jellybean, take away all excuses, and make it so the task must be accomplished, miracles can happen. I have completed historical books that required a ton of research in less than a month. With one particular book, I worked nonstop and doubted I could complete it and doubted that it would be quality. But in that same month, I did have time to do several rewrites. And the critics praised that book as one of my best.
I didn’t complete this task alone. When I was asked to do it, I surrounded myself with my supporters and asked them if I should do it. They all wanted to see the book produced, and they were willing to give their assistance. My sister became my full-time researcher, and my husband helped locate documents and was the nanny and editing support. My children happily agreed to put off the housework to play with the neighbors.
I also included on my support team my health professionals, who kept my body in working order so I didn’t have to go down because my arm stopped working or any other of a hundred possibilities.
Now, I don’t choose to write books that fast any longer (exhausting!), but the principle is amazing. I was able to accomplish what I thought was impossible through using focus, support, and not having time for second questioning.
What have you been able to do that you thought was impossible? What principles did you use? How can you incorporate them into your next jellybean effort?

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Often times the answer to creating the right motivation is found in the environments within which we surround ourselves. We will be going more into this in a later chapter. For now, look how you are setting yourself up in your environments. If you are trying to lose weight, do you meet with your friends at a pizza house every weekend or go drinking at bars? How might this behavior not be supporting you?
If you are trying to lose weight and decide to go social dancing every weekend, how might this help you win? If you are motivated more by competition, how can you use that character attribute to support your attainment of the jellybean? Can you set up a competition with another person to see who can lose the most pounds? The popularity of weight loss challenges on various TV shows reveals that the public awareness and the competition can be extremely effective for some.
Others would prefer to motivate themselves more privately by thinking about the benefits of continuing to live with their loved ones, and how better health would improve their lives.
It doesn’t matter how you motivate yourself as long as two things are present, a) it is complimentary to your personality, and b) the method you use has sustainability.

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Clearly the five or ten dollar bribe that the writer mother was using wasn’t the right item to motivate her children. When she dangled it in front of them, they ignored her and went on with their agenda. The mother was unsuccessful in getting their attention. When I used the jellybean as a reward, I knew, both from them asking for it and from years of experience with them, that this was what they wanted.
But rewards have more levels to it than that. I had spent years being the oldest of eight, surviving five brothers, and frequently being in charge. For survival purposes I had to learn quickly to motivate. When I put up a reward, I needed to speak the language of the person I am trying to motivate. For my four- and five-year-olds, the motivation was candy that they rarely got.
When you are trying to set up the proper motivation to get what you want, what needs to be in place? Do you know yourself well enough to set up an environment where you have the proper motivation to go through all the hoops and obstacles that are going to present themselves along the way? What can drive you through all the resistance, excuses, and pressure to quit? What do you want badly enough that all the work would be worth it?

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The windows had frosted from the frigid weather as a group of writers nestled around the dining room oak table. We were reviewing each other’s material, highlighting effective passages, and leaving a trail of red ink over less inspiring words.
My young children often busied themselves downstairs with toys, PBS shows, and games like spying on the adults. The understanding was that the oldest would keep an eye on the younger ones and notify me if there was any trouble. The only drawback to the plan was that the oldest normally instigated the trouble.
On this particular winter day she had slipped into my sewing kit, mesmerized by the multi-colored threads and their possibilities.
The possibility she settled on was stringing the thread from one corner of the room to another, dancing around columns and couches and TV set. Whatever could be ensnared was ensnared, until the basement looked like a large spider web trap of thread.
When I checked on them, I quickly told them to clean it up. A few minutes later, Jackie crept up to me as I sat with the group. She tugged on my shirt sleeve.
“Mom, I want a jellybean.”
I looked into the intense blue eyes, brushed a blonde curl off her forehead, and said, “If you and your brother clean the basement in five minutes then you can have a jellybean. On your mark, get set ….GO!”
My daughter hurried off, calling her brother’s name.
I smiled and turned back to resume work, when a lady in her late thirties crossed her arms over her chest and huffed, “I can’t get my kids to clean anything, no matter what I bribe them with. It doesn’t even matter if it’s ten dollars, they won’t do it. You can get your kids to clean the whole basement for a jellybean?”
Now here is the question:  How did I get my four- and five-year-old to dash off and hurry and clean their mess? And even more importantly, how do you use the same skills to get what you want in your life?

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Competition?  Promise of peace?  Driven by passion? etc.  I still remember when I consciously started doing better in school.  I was a junior in high school (yeah, we can’t all be early bloomers), and I sat next to Jeff Gardner.  We were in social studies class together where I had already determined I was going to struggle through and hope for a B instead of a C.
One day we had just gotten our tests back.  I looked at the seventy-three percent with a sinking feeling.  Here I was going down the path of hardship and misery again.  How many more years of school did I have left?  I was calculating the answer when Jeff leaned over to my desk and looked at my test.
I quickly turned the test over, but the damage had been done.  He had seen it.
“Having a bad day?” he asked.
“What?” I asked, confused that he was even talking to me.  He was in the goody-good-guy-group and a wrestler—not really the type of person who talked to me.
“Your test. That’s not a very good score, and the test was easy.  See,” he said, holding up his test with a big juicy red A splattered across it.  “That score isn’t like you. You always do better.  So, are you having a bad day?”
I agreed, not knowing what else to say. Having a bad grade wasn’t like me? What was he saying? It was totally like me, but I wasn’t going to argue. I would let him believe his positive lie about me.
The teacher interrupted us to give us our assignments. We had a quiz to study for the next day.
Jeff turned to me and smiled. “I’ll kick your butt tomorrow on that quiz. You’re going down, Jones.”
My shoulders squared as I gathered my books.  “Not a chance,” I said with conviction.  And I didn’t go down.  I scored close to him.  It took a few more quizzes for me to outdo him.  Then the competition spread to other classes we had together.  I wasn’t going to let some “wrestler boy” take me down.  I had a cause. I had a mission.  I was pulling good grades.
The semester after that, I hit the straight A list.  I had done what many people thought would be impossible for me—including myself.  Why?  Because I was challenged by some boy?  Because someone told me it wasn’t like me to pull bad grades?  Well, yeah.
We can have self defeat pull us down, like I did for years.  I pulled the cloud of feeling inferior and inadequate over me because my grades weren’t measuring up.  One boy.  One competition completely changed my academic life.  Why?  Because I rose to the challenge.  I could have blown him off, but truthfully, I was too proud for that.  Going head-to-head with a boy and proving the worth of my gender worked for me.
What will work for you?  Maybe you are not as furiously competitive as I am, but what could you put in your environment that would change the whole way you approach your “hard” task?  What would give you the leverage to get what you want?
“Decide not to turn back” scenario.
Sometimes it’s not “other people” that give me the leverage to go for the BHAG (Big Hair Audacious Goal).  Sometimes it is as simple as deciding that such-and-such is simply what I am going to do.  That might sound too easy, but it really isn’t.  You not only have to decide what you want, but you have to decide that you have the abilities to get or accomplish what you want.
I was amazed how I put down a goal to be a NSA (National Speaker Association) speaker for years.  In order to qualify as a speaker, I needed fifteen paid engagements.  Year after year that goal seemed impossible to accomplish—until one year, through working with a friend, I realized that I really wanted it.  So I sat down and made a plan on how I would make it happen.  The plan wasn’t the normal way most speakers approach this task.  I skirted the traditional method, and in five months I easily accomplished what I wasn’t able to accomplish for the past two years.  Was it that my talent was better?  Well, of course I had gotten better from all the experience those years gave me. But I know that wasn’t what made the difference.
Was it that this particular year was a better time to be hired to speak?  Actually, no.  It was a down market—worse than many speakers had seen.  So what was it that made me successful?  And what will you apply in your life to make you succeed with your big goals?
Ready?  Drum roll.  It was that I believed that year that I could do it.  I sat down and came up with a plan.  I followed the plan.  I worked hard—really, really, really hard. I got a couple of lucky breaks, and voila, I did it.
For most things it is really no more difficult than that.  When you cut off all excuses or options but to succeed, it is amazing.  You don’t have time to wallow around in misery.  You have to get going and do what is set before you.  If I would have continued to feel sorry for myself, or accepted the fact that I wasn’t earning a good grade, would I have the experience of achieving a higher test score than Jeff?  Not a chance.  The only way I was able to accomplish a task that was challenging for me was to focus all my energy on doing what I needed to do.
*If you gave a single focus to your BHAG, how would your experience change?
*How would the results change?
*How might that benefit your life?
*If it would be a big change, when are you going to implement that task?

*What excuses are you using to not get going and stepping it up?*Or if it is not an excuse, what is the obstacle, and how can you work around it?

Posted in: Self Improvement, Step It Up Living at 11:45 am | Comments (0)

Choosing Better Step 1: The Hard Decision
Making the tough decision to do the hard work doesn’t happen naturally for most of us. In fact, if my children are any indicator of what is natural human behavior, our first impulse is to look for any way to get out of work.
When I announce dish duty at the beginning of a chore season, I sometimes get tears and debates about why dishes are not appropriate for that particular child. Either they already learned the dish-doing skill or another sibling hasn’t had as much opportunity to do the dishes. They will say and argue whatever is necessary to avoid the task.
How many of us are exactly like that when it comes to . . . let’s say . . . tax season? We feel like we shouldn’t have to worry about this. Or we wish we didn’t have to mess with that. Although my children don’t like the consequences when they don’t do the dishes, I can tell you that the consequences of not paying your taxes are worse.
Choosing Better Step 2: Figure Out What is Motivating the Decision
Most things that are set before us aren’t as clear cut as taxes. Most law-abiding citizens complain when taxes are imposed on them, but then they pay them and work like a workhorse to recover from the damage. The same level of fear of consequences generally isn’t there for other decisions in our life. When I chose to take the harder route for my education, I wasn’t worried what would have happened if I took the easier route. The thought never entered my mind that I would be building more brain cells, nor was I thinking about how this choice would affect my later years in things like college or my professional life. None of those thoughts entered my head—although my decision did affect all those areas. Nope, my only real thought was that I didn’t want to be stuck in that “stupid group” in junior high.
I know. I hear gasp of shock for my lack of political correctness, but back then, in seventh grade, if political correctness was around I hadn’t heard about it.
I didn’t want to be stupid. That was it. That was enough motivation to kick me out of bed early in the mornings so I could study more for tests. It was enough to kick my shyness in the stomach, driving me to either raise my hand for help or to get in line to talk to the teacher. It was enough for me to avidly write down any extra credit opportunities and to complete every last one of them. (The worst, by far, was seeing the dead cadavers in high school. I got sick and passed out on that one, but still earned my bonus points.)
I chose hard out of the desire to “not” be something. It worked. It drove me on. But if I would have had more self-awareness of what was driving me to succeed, I could have worked on my motivation to be more positive.
What will it take for you to choose hard and start to live the life you truly want? Not wanting something? Wanting something?
Sometimes the choice to choose hard or easy comes tiptoeing in our lives, looking innocent and harmless. Sometimes it presents itself as a simple choice, like whether to get as much sleep as needed or to get up and do some exercise or meditation. Other times it looks like there really is no choice, like eating a great dessert or a salad. On impulse, most of us would choose the great dessert. It wouldn’t be until we got a bigger picture of what exists down the road that we ever make the decision to choose more salad in our lives.
Sometimes fear of consequences motivates us. Oftentimes this happens when something we thought harmless makes too big of a presence in our lives—for example, food. If we continue to choose the desserts, the carbs, and the fats, we might have a couple of spare tires around our middle, or we may be hearing the warning alarms sounding off in dramatic ways, alerting us to decreasing health.
Usually choosing hard doesn’t happen naturally. We must will it at some point.
Choosing Better Step #3: Immediate Satisfaction
Choosing hard doesn’t usually reward you with immediate satisfaction. In fact, when I chose to go into the mainstream of school, I was laughed at by others when they saw the grades I’d get back on assignments. “That was so easy. How could anybody not get it?” was their chant.
I’d turn red, sink in my seat, and hope that no one would pay attention to me. I would forget that I had dyslexia and that I had made the choice to be in mainstream education. Instead, I would sit there and wonder what was wrong with me and why everyone else got it and I didn’t. I would tell myself that I was stupid. Yep, the very thing that motivated me to choose hard, I labeled myself. I had help. My delightful younger brother would join in with the others and chant that I was stupid on a daily basis. He would try to recruit other cheerleaders to join in. Oftentimes he was successful.
Would it have been easier to escape all of them and feel good about coloring a paper? I seriously doubt it. Sometimes it appears like one route is so much easier than the other, but once you’ve traveled down the road, you realize that that road wasn’t so easy after all. Sometimes you will run into difficulties, no matter which road you take.
If I would have chosen resource (that’s what they called it then), I would have been laughed at, mocked, and demeaned probably in a much bigger and more dramatic way than I was in mainstream. I wouldn’t have been developing the tenacity to push through hard things. That choice would have hurt me on many levels and impacted the rest of my life.
Did I know, when I made that decision, that it was going to be so important? Uh, no. Do you know which decisions that you are making on a daily basis are going to be the important ones? Would it help if you did?
Are all of your choices going to be correct ones? Of course not. But fortunately—at least from my experience—life grants you the ability to goof up and then go back and try to get it right. Life is really patient that way. It will give you plenty of chances.
Choosing Better Step #4: Stay On Own Path and Stop Detouring
When I would peek over at the papers of other students and see the beautifully formed letter A sprawled across the top of their homework, my heart would immediately start twisting. I would struggle to take in air as I waited to see what would be written on the top of mine. I knew that there was a great chance that I wouldn’t be getting an A to match theirs, but I always hoped I would.
If I did get that A, it would be one of those times where I’d run the assignment home for Mother to look at instead of what I normally did, which was to rip the paper to shreds and find the nearest trashcan.
When I became focused on what others were doing, and how they were succeeding, I would sink into a depression, feeling stupid and hating myself for having put myself in that position. I was embarrassed and would develop terrible headaches. In class my mind would be filled with dreams of escaping elsewhere where I would be accepted. That, of course, did not help my retention of what I was supposed to be learning.

Posted in: Self Improvement, Step It Up Living at 9:17 pm | Comments (2)

A queen who lived through high periods of drama and chartered the course of overwhelm was Queen Eleanor of Aquitaine. Her second husband became an Angevins King of England, Henry II (1154-89). With her marriage to Henry II, she brought with her the land of Aquitaine, which added considerably to Henry’s vast continental empire.
Eleanor of Aquitaine was well known for her fiery personality. She let nothing stop her. Not her previous marriage to King Louis VI of France that had been annulled on grounds of consanguinity. Not the fact that she was Henry’s senior by eleven years and they had a tempestuous marriage with eight children in fifteen years—five sons and three daughters. Oh, and not the fact that England was in civil war while she and Henry persevered.
Queen Eleanor of Aquitaine survived the death of her oldest son, who died 11 June 1183 of a fever in France. Her son had been raging war against her other son, Richard. The contention in the family didn’t stop there. The queen wasn’t innocent in the turmoil. When her husband separated from her, actively involved in affairs, she incited a rebellion against the king through her sons. This bold action of conspiracy against the king ended with her being put under house arrest at Winchester for sixteen years, although captivity did not extinguish Queen Eleanor’s ambition. Her husband died 6 July 1189, at age 56, from injuries sustained from being thrown by a horse. Queen Eleanor continued to live for many more years, dying at age 82. After her husband’s passing, Eleanor became actively involved in her son Richard’s taking the throne and arranging for his marriage to Berengaria of Navaue.
Her long life is a testimony to the fact that she learned to rise above the family drama and not allow stress to stop her.
Another signal that she mastered overwhelming events was the fact that she played a major role in the 12th century, which is extremely impressive considering that at the time medieval women were considered nothing more than chattel.

One of the ways Eleanor thrived through the chaos was by capitalizing on her smarts, enterprising nature, and beauty. Eleanor rose to her high position by maintaining a lofty royal vision of herself, which she held onto steadfastly.

Posted in: Uncategorized at 8:47 pm | Comments (2)