High Time Success

Crush your cravings!

Posted on March 24, 2017 by Chandra

celery

It’s 3 p.m. You have work to do but you can’t focus. The pastry shop on the first floor is screaming at you. Every cell of your being is pleading with you to run down and buy a chocolate croissant.

But you’ve decided to be strong.

You try to push forward with your work, but it’s a slog. You’re barely making progress, in spite of what feels like Herculean efforts.

And all the while, the very physical sensations in your body are demanding that chocolate croissant. You know that if you could just quell this craving, you’d go back to feeling OK and you could concentrate on your work. But what about the promise you made to yourself about not eating pastries in the afternoon?

Your body says “This is no time to stick to the plan. This is a special circumstance! You can go back on your diet after you have the croissant. You’ll feel better.”

“It’s all in your head,” you tell yourself. “You’re not hungry.”

I know this scene all too well. I’ve been there a million times, too. And I’ve tried to persuade myself that I wasn’t hungry. Real hunger feels different. A craving comes from the mind, not the stomach.

Or does it?

It could be that there are certain bacteria in your gut that are hungry. I think of them as little aliens in my gut. Different microbes thrive on different foods. If you feed the croissant microbes, those are the ones who will multiply and take over. If you feed them celery, they starve. And while they’re starving, they’ll trigger cravings in your body to get what they need to survive.

Meanwhile, the celery-loving microbes will have a feast. They’ll get stronger and they’ll multiply.

According to IFL Science, gut microbes manufacture special proteins that are similar to hormones that regulate hunger. In a sense, these microbes are telling your body what they need to survive. http://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/how-bacteria-our-gut-affect-our-cravings-food/

If your gut is full of celery-craving microbes that have no interest in chocolate croissants, sticking to your plan would be much easier.

You’ve probably experienced this yourself. When you’re in “healthy eating mode,” after your body gets used to it, you find that you crave fresh fruits and vegetables. You may have also found, during other times in your life, that the more crap you eat, the more crap you crave, and the less yummy fruits and vegetables seem.

Of course, this is a huge over-simplification. No matter how many celery-loving microbes I have in my gut, I still enjoy the occasional chocolate croissant. But it’s nice to choose when I want to have one instead of being at the mercy of aliens in my gut.

Posted in Weight loss | Leave a comment

Cut the crap!

Posted on February 5, 2017 by Chandra

Portrait of angry woman pointing finger at camera isolated on a

Do you feel like you don’t get enough done during the day, even though you’re dog tired by the end of it? Do you wake up feeling hung over even though you didn’t even do anything to deserve it the night before? Do you suffer brain fog?

When I was in search of answers to these problems, I kept encountering these annoying and perky gurus proclaiming that we should cut out all sugar, bread, coffee, meat, pasta, and everything else in life that brings us joy.

Seriously. Why live?

On the other hand, who wants to die young of a preventable illness? Who wants to go into senior years barely able to move? I asked myself, “What if I live to be 100 but spend the last 30 years of my life unable to climb stairs or tie my own shoes?” Those would be a loooong 30 years.

And who wants to die with unreached potential still in them – – potential that wasn’t reached because you just didn’t have enough health or energy to go for it?

But dang. I’m sick of this kind of advice. Gag, gag, gag. I’m here to enjoy life, and that means I want big and joyous food, not celery sticks.

About a year and a half ago, I had a health scare, so I decided to get serious. I went on an excellent program, and I saw excellent results. And my life began to transform.

For one thing, my house became much more pleasant. Without thinking about it, I started to pick up after myself more, and clean areas of the house I was usually too lazy to get at.

I became super-productive at work. I amazed myself with the amount of stuff I was accomplishing.

I found myself not really even wanting bread and sugar.

And at my check-up, my doctor told me to keep doing whatever I was doing.

But then I drifted back into old habits. I started to eat candy more often, and then bread – how I love bread! And over a period of a few weeks, I drifted off of the program.

So why was I surprised when I started to feel awful again? I didn’t put two and two together at first. I wondered why I was becoming so forgetful. I became depressed as the house sank into chaos. I began to struggle at work, because everything was such a slog! I found I needed sugar, carbs, and caffeine just to keep going.

I won’t lie and tell you I jumped back on the program and have been on it faithfully ever since. I did get back on and was thrilled with how I began to feel great again. But then life took a dive, we had a family crisis, and I found it hard to stick to the program.

But this time I clung to some pillars, which saved me.

I continued to have my protein-rich, dairy-free breakfast shake faithfully every day. I continued to drink this nourishing and energizing supplement every day. And I continued to focus on eating “real” food as opposed to overly-processed food. Sure, I slipped here and there, but as long as I ate more “real” food than I did the other stuff, I wasn’t going to beat myself up.

So when life improved, I was in a much better position to jump back on to the program full force and feel great again.

The moral of the story is that as much as I hate it and have tried to figure out a cheat way around it, what you eat really does have an impact not just on the way you feel but on everything else in your life. It affects your job, your parenting, your decision-making, your attitude, your willingness, and your whole outlook on life.

So if you’re struggling with anything in life, cut the crap. It might not directly solve your problems, but it will make you a better person to tackle them!

Posted in Health at any age, Weight loss | Leave a comment

Frustrated by slow results in your business?

Posted on March 7, 2016 by Chandra

Frustration and impatience

Are you impatient because your home business isn’t taking off as quickly as you’d like?

Maybe you’re feeling frustrated because you thought you’d be more successful by now.

Maybe you’re angry because you believe you’ve been doing everything right, and you still don’t have the results you’re looking for.

Maybe you need results soon because you’re running out of time – – you expect to be downsized out of your day job or you anticipate your expenses going up.

I can’t wave a magic wand over your head to get the results you need right now. But I can give you some good advice for using your impatience and frustration for yourself instead of against yourself.

Take your anger, frustration, and impatience out through strategic activity.

Strategic activity

Every time you feel discouraged, impatient, or frustrated, immediately launch into an activity that will move your business forward, even if it’s just incrementally.

Here are ten ideas:

Write a blog post. (In fact, some experts recommend generating one piece of content per day.)
If you’re using Twitter, go to Hootsuite.com or another Twitter management application and schedule several future tweets for yourself. They can be motivational quotes, links to past blog articles, links to your irresistable offer, or links to other articles and resources that your audience might find useful.
If your business is an MLM, look through your list of prospects that you’ve called, and see if there’s anyone you can follow up with.
Or, look through your list of friends and associates and just reach out to suggest getting together over coffee – – not to talk about your business, but just to do what friends do. And who knows? They just MIGHT ask you how your business is going, which could open up the conversation to ask for referrals.
Pull up the scheduled emails in your autoresponder and see if they need improved or edited. Or perhaps you could add some emails to the scheduler.
If there’s something you’ve been meaning to do with your website, start working on that. Maybe you need a new landing page, or need to rework another section.
You know all those free ebooks you downloaded over the past year but haven’t gotten around to reading them? Pull them up and read them.
Download some free podcasts at iTunes that will inspire you. There are soooo many to choose from! If you need a place to start, go into the search feature at the iTunes store. If your business is an MLM, some names to look for are Ray Higdon, Simon Chan, and David T.S. Wood. For online marketing and general entrepreneurial motivation, look up Michael Hyatt, Sam Crowley, John Lee Dumas, and Patt Flynn.
Have you purchased any motivational books lately? If you have, and there are some you haven’t read yet, go dig them out and start reading. If you haven’t purchased any motivational books lately, why not? You can download books from Amazon right to your Kindle app on the phone – heck, you can do this lying in bed or sitting on the . . . well, you get the idea.
If your business is an MLM and you’re out of prospects to talk to, consider purchasing leads from a leads company. I know there’s a lot of controversy out there about this, but I’ve had great success with this! Plus, it really makes me feel like I’m doing something active, and not giving in to frustration and impatience. BEFORE you do this, though, get some training. I learned almost everything I know about calling leads from Network Marketing Success Series on iTunes – go there first, and download every episode. There are 23 episodes. They’re not producing them anymore (sad sniff). The podcast is really just a promotion for Networker Central, a leads generation business. However, the information is valuable no matter where you get your leads. (Lately I’ve been getting mine from Selfserveleads.com.)

If, every time you feel frustrated or impatient, you launch into an activity that will move your business forward, eventually you will get traction and you will get the results you want.

Posted in Motivation and achievement, Self-employment / work from home | Leave a comment

The real secret to achievement

Posted on March 6, 2016 by Chandra

The real secret to achievement lies in a question.

“How much do you want it?”

Don’t dismiss this. In fact, read the question again.

I haven’t achieved every goal I’ve aimed for. When I look back and ask myself why I didn’t achieve the goals I missed, there is always one answer. I wanted something else more than I wanted the goal.

Sometimes it’s very justifiable. I didn’t go to graduate school, because I got pregnant. True, many graduate students are pregnant and many have small children. But as a late-in-life first-time parent, I wanted to focus on my pregnancy and my new baby. I wanted that more than I wanted graduate school. After that, I was no longer interested in graduate school. Fifteen years later, I still believe I made the right decision.

Sometimes we have to give ourselves tough love. I spent many years trying to lose weight. I desperately wanted to lose weight – – this was no lukewarm desire. Yet when my blood sugar was a little low and I had the opportunity to plow through a pizza, I wanted the pizza more than I wanted to lose weight.

I eventually had to decide that even when the struggle in the moment was immense, my long-term goal of losing weight was what I wanted more.

They’re just reasons.

The reasons aren’t wrong or right. They’re just reasons. We make decisions based on those reasons.

But sometimes we have to probe to understand our real reasons. I know of a very talented dancer who was told by the “greats” that if she were willing to relocate to a major city, she would probably be very successful. It was her life-long dream to do just this.

But she was a single mother of two, and believed that she couldn’t uproot her children, and she couldn’t be the parent that she wanted to be if she pursued this dream.

She spent the next several years . . . no, make that decades . . . feeling bitter and unfulfilled. To this day, she makes sure everyone she meets is aware of the fact that she could have been a world-class famous dancer.

I’m not saying she made the wrong decision. I wasn’t in her shoes. After all, didn’t I choose motherhood over another goal at one point in my life?

But the question remains: how much did she want it? Obviously she wanted something else more than she wanted the career she had dreamed of.

And if we explore this more deeply, we could even ask if it was actually her children’s welfare she chose over her career aspirations. Maybe that was part of it. But maybe something else she really wanted more than she wanted a fabulous dancing career was the safety of staying in her own small town. She may have wanted the safety of not failing. As long as she never took the risk, she could always feel in her heart that she “could have been.” If she tried and failed, she would no longer have that.

What are the real reasons?

So, we’re back to the question: How much do you want it?

If there’s something preventing you from reaching your goal, what is it, and why is it holding you back?

If you launch into “Well, I can’t because I’d have to relocate/spend a lot of money/quit my job/put my family at risk/blahblahblahblah . . . ” that’s fine. Acknowledge that you want whatever is behind those reasons more than you want the goal you speak of, and then move on.

But if you can’t let go of that goal, and if you’re still feeling tormented by it, then maybe it’s time to ask yourself for the real reasons you’re unable to make the sacrifices necessary to achieve your goal.

Seriously. How much do you want it?

Posted in Motivation and achievement, Weight loss | Leave a comment

Can you teach an old dog new tricks?

Posted on January 27, 2016 by Chandra

I’m sure you’ve heard all the old cliches about not putting off those things that you really want to do. Well, I’m as guilty as anyone else of this.

I’ve always wanted to be more of a do-it-yourselfer. I’ve dabbled in it with mixed results over the years, but but I allowed my lack of skills, patience, and time to interfere. My most hideous lab experiment was when I decided I could certainly re-tile my kitchen floor on my own. After I pulled up the cheap vinyl flooring some previous owner had laid, I was confronted with a globby mess of tar-like black stuff that needed to be removed from the floor. I found I could remove it with a putty knife and sandpaper, but it took forever to do even just a square foot.

(This was before YouTube and other sites where I could have learned about technique, tools, and the magical mixture from a bottle that removes that crud.)

Anyway, I gave up, called a local flooring business, and they had the floor cleaned up and tiled in a few hours.

A few decades have passed, and I’ve been building up my courage. What I know this time is that I need to invest in equipment and in time. I also need to invest in learning some skills.

It’s funny – usually when you think of someone who is a DIY-er, you think of someone who has had the knack his or her entire life. It’s not something you typically consider that can be “picked up” later in life.

We see this in all types of learning. Young people learn to play musical instruments much more easily, while older people, finally realizing their dream to learn to play their instrument of choice, struggle with it. They know they’ll never have the years of practice they could have racked up if they would have started sooner. We see young immigrants pick up their new country’s language quickly, while their parents and grandparents struggle, sometimes never becoming comfortably fluent in their adopted language.

So I was curious. Is it true that “you can’t teach an old dog new tricks”? I decided to look into this, and what I found was reassuring.

Dr. Margaret Rutherford over at HuffPost says that sometimes we have to heal our past wounds and forgive ourselves. Of course, she’s referring to changes people are trying to make while in therapy. But she has found that older people are more motivated because they have a deeper appreciation for the value of time. She wrote a little article about it here: HuffPost50-Rutherford

Another article at Psychology Today indicates that getting the brain interested in doing something new is the key. E. Paul Zehr cites research involving older participants learning to dance and learning martial arts. While it’s true that some functions decrease with age, participants not only gained new physical skills, but they also realized some side benefits, such as increased health and improved moods. You can read that article here: Teaching An Old Brain New Tricks (And Kicks)

So, to answer the question “Can you teach an old dog new tricks?” the answer is YES! However, we need to be motivated, committed, and above all, patient with ourselves.

Posted in Motivation and achievement, Uncategorized | Leave a comment

How to make yourself do what you don’t feel like doing

Posted on September 9, 2015 by Chandra

We’ve all been there. You’ve been given an assignment that doesn’t thrill you. Or you’re working on a project that you initiated yourself, but you’re mired in the tedious middle of it. It seems like achieving anything worthwhile involves some boring parts. How do you get yourself to slog through and get to the outcomes as quickly as possible?

I’m wrestling with it right now, actually. I’m in the middle of writing an e-book. I love the idea and I enjoyed getting the first draft into writing – – about 40 pages worth. And now I’m in the middle of the part I’m not so crazy about. I’m working through it to tighten up ideas, connect thoughts, rearrange parts, add parts, delete parts, and try to make it as clear and as well-written as I can.

I want this product to be finished so that I can give it away to people who subscribe to my email list. (And to be among the first to receive this product when it’s ready, along with a cool bonus, sign up at High Time Success email list.)

But I don’t want to send it out until it’s absolutely ready. And now that I’m into the more tedious part of its production, every time I sit down to work on it, other things suddenly seem really interesting. I should check my email. I wonder what my sister is doing today. I wonder if anyone responded to that really funny thing I posted on Facebook a couple of hours ago.

I get this way about a lot of projects, frankly. I’m like this about cleaning out the garage, getting my taxes ready, editing podcasts – – a lot of things seem like good ideas when we launch them, but when we get to the boring, tedious, or repetitive parts, it’s easy to drift away towards more interesting pursuits.

When I drift away from a project, the unfinished work hangs over my head like a gray cloud. It then sucks my energy away, even if I’ve managed to put the project out of my mind. I believe that unfinished business does this to us. It’s like a drain, pulling our energy downwards.

In fact, the more unfinished business we have knocking around in our minds, the more of an energy drain it is. I like to keep the volume of unfinished business in my life down to a dull roar rather than a 100-piece marching band.

Here are some strategies that I use to make myself slog through work that I just don’t feel like doing.

Baby bites

If you’re putting something off, ask yourself what the least amount of work you could possibly do on it would be. Maybe it’s opening up the document on your computer. Maybe it’s making a phone call. Finding some missing information needed to move forward. Negotiate with yourself and tell yourself you’ll just do that one little bit, and then reassess. After you reassess, talk yourself into the next little bit.

If you’re in the middle of a project and you just can’t keep going, ask yourself the same kind of question. What one more bit could you do before stopping?

Play the timer game

I’m not fond of tidying the house. But three creative people live here, and we all wear blinders that keep our attention on whatever it is we’re on to at the moment. So we don’t put things away like we should (even though we promise ourselves we will later, after we just do this one thing….). So from time to time, I rally the family around, set the timer for 10 minutes, and tell everyone to tidy the house as quickly as they can. It doesn’t even matter what they do or where they start. Ten minutes later, the house looks like someone tidied frantically for thirty whole minutes.

I use this for other work too. When the work involved a lot of focus, I set the timer for 45 minutes and work very intently until the timer goes off. Then I allow myself to walk around, get some coffee, or stretch.

Go somewhere else and visualize

This one makes you feel like you’re not really accomplishing anything, so if you’re under stress because of a project, you’ll have to talk yourself into calming down first, and give yourself permission to do this.

Go away from the site of the project. It could mean to just move from the table to the sofa. Or go into another room. Or leave the building. Go to a place where you can sit or lie down with your eyes closed. Then just visualize the part of the project you’re working on now. Don’t visualize the outcome – I’ll explain why in a second. Visualize whatever it is you need to do right now. Imagine yourself walking through the steps of the project. Imagine your hands on the equipment. Imagine the project moving forward.

When you do this, you’ll find you start to get into the flow and you’re not even actually working on the project yet. After visualizing for a period of time, you’ll find that you want to get back to work on the project. How long do you need to visualize? It depends. It might take three minutes, it might take ten. My advice is that if you’ve given your best shot at visualizing and if you’re not motivated within fifteen minutes, call it a rest period and find another technique.

Why am I recommending against visualizing the outcome? Some might say this is exactly what you need to do. But for other people, after they’ve visualized the outcome, it’s like the work has already been done and they can move on. But they can’t move on because it’s like the clock has gone backwards and they have to re-do the work. They don’t really have to re-do the work, because they haven’t done it yet. But they’ve allowed themselves to feel like they’ve finished the project, only to face the disappointment that they really still have a volume of work left to do.

So give visualizing just the next few steps a try.

Too many rewards

Some people believe they should only be rewarded when they’ve truly earned the reward. This usually means when the project at hand is complete. So they don’t reward themselves along the way, because they don’t feel like they’ve earned those rewards. If you’re like this and it works for you, good for you!

It doesn’t work for me.

I’m such a big baby that I need many rewards throughout the process. So I give them to myself. I might plan the rewards out ahead of time, such as telling myself that for every 5 pages I write, I get a piece of candy. Or I might reward myself as I go along, such as by telling myself if I just work on this spreadsheet for 15 minutes, I can take a break and play a game on my phone.

I’m not always such a big baby. But sometimes I am. But if it’s what it takes to get me to finish what I started, then heck, I’m all over that action. After all, that’s what this is about – – project completion.

Indulge the distraction beforehand

This is counter-intuitive, but it works, especially if your mind is on something specific, but unrelated to your project. Do you occasionally obsess about things you want to do? I do. For instance, let’s say you downloaded an exciting new training program, and you can’t wait to get your teeth into it to start exploding your results in your business. But you have to finish a lengthy analytical report for your client by the end of the week. You keep trying to move forward on the report, but your head is thinking about the training program. You daydream about how you’re going to follow it faithfully and implement all of the advice it offers. You think about how much more robust your business will be after you implement the advice. You think about how different your results will be six months from now because . . . wait a minute, there you go again, not focusing on your report.

Maybe the secret to focusing on the report is to start the training program. If you allow your mind to play with the training program for a short time, it might be just what your mind needs to get it out of its system, so to speak, so that it can concentrate on the report.

I have to use this technique sometimes. I’ve been wanting to write this particular blog post for the past few days, but haven’t had time. When I’ve had free time, I’ve used it to work on the product I mentioned earlier. But I really wanted to write this blog post. I’ve had a few other things to slog through this week, and each time I used one of the above techniques, I thought “I should blog about this!” So today I’m writing the blog post. And as I bring this post to a close, I can feel my mind getting ready to focus on my other projects that I’m putting off while writing this.

Take a break

And finally, if you’ve been working very hard on something, maybe it’s time to take a break. This one seems like a no brainer, but it’s funny how people don’t think of it when they’re in the middle of trying to get something accomplished.

I’m sure you’ve heard the old story about the two woodcutters having a contest to see who could chop the most wood by the end of the day. One woodcutter worked as hard as he could, right until the end of the day. The other woodcutter stopped every hour, took a ten minute break, and came back.

The first woodcutter was very excited, knowing he was going to win the contest. At the end of the day, he was astonished that the second woodcutter had chopped almost twice as much wood as he did. He demanded to know how the second woodcutter had managed it, since he had taken so many breaks during the day.

The second woodcutter said “I took breaks so that I could sharpen my axe.”

So if you’re burned out, unable to focus, tired, and maybe even a little cranky, maybe you need to sharpen your axe.

If you have other techniques that you use to make yourself do what you don’t feel like doing, I’d love to see them in the comments section. Or even better, write a blog post about what you do and be sure to send me the link via Twitter or through the comments section of this blog. I’ll be sure to promote your post on Twitter.

Posted in Fabulous at any age | Tagged achievement, goals | Leave a comment

4 reasons that you’re tired

Posted on September 2, 2015 by Chandra

Are you tired? Most people claim to be. When we’re tired, it’s really hard to get the things done that we want to get done, and even harder to get the things done someone else (like our boss) wants us to get done.

Here are 4 common reasons people are tired, along with suggestions for improvement.

1. Bad eating

It seems like a no-brainer, especially these days when there’s so much information out there about healthy eating. However, even though we know what to do, it’s not always easy to do it. Be honest with yourself and consider how much sugar you’ve been consuming, or how many white starches you’ve been eating (white bread, white pasta, etc.). When your blood sugar levels fluctuate wildly, the body has to work hard to keep things under control, and it’s exhausting!

Be sure you’re eating plenty of vegetables, fruit, lean proteins and low glycemic carbs. This is the mainstay of almost all successful eating plans. If you’ve tried to eat this way and you don’t feel satisfied or you feel a little nauseous, one reason might be because your diet is really out of whack. In fact, many health experts believe that the worse you feel when you start eating a healthy diet, the worse your diet must have been before you started. So, the worse you feel when you eat well, the more you need to eat that way.

2. Bad sleep

Insufficient sleep or poor quality sleep is guaranteed to make a person tired. Not only that, but being sleep deprived makes everything else more difficult, especially eating properly. When you’re sleep deprived, you crave high glycemic foods more intensely, and your will power to stay away from them is compromised because you’re tired.

Be sure you’re sleeping in a fully darkened room free of disturbances. Do your best to ensure your bed and your pillow are comfortable and that the temperature of the room is conducive to sleep. Most people prefer temperatures around 68 – 70 F or 19 – 20 C.

Consider a sleep supplement such as melatonin. Better yet, consider a sleep spray that contains melatonin, L-theanine, and safe, natural herbs that work to help you fall sleep more quickly and to stay asleep.

You might be an unknowing sufferer of sleep apnea. This condition is escalating in importance as health care experts gain understanding of the connection between poor sleep and other health problems. A sleep study is required to diagnose sleep apnea. If you’re in the USA, you can find a certified facility at AACM Accredited Sleep Centers. If you’re in Canada, go to Canadian Sleep Society to find a facility.

3. Lack of exercise

It seems counter-intuitive that the expenditure of energy actually makes us more energetic. But it’s true. Many studies confirm that exercise boosts energy. If you don’t have time to exercise, consider that exercise actually gives you more time in the day. How is this possible? It’s because you’ll have more energy and will accomplish more. You’ll get tired later in the day than otherwise, giving you more usable daytime hours. And you’ll be more awake in the morning.

How much exercise do you need? If you’re a regular exerciser, you already know the benefits. But if you’re a sporadic exerciser or a couch potato, be heartened! It doesn’t take a lot of exercise to start feeling noticeable increases in your energy level. Start with a 10 minute walk in the morning, and over the next several weeks, work up to 20 minutes. If you keep at it, you might even be inspired to walk longer or faster.

4. Underlying symptoms

There are numerous medical reasons for fatigue, such as an underactive thyroid, a food intolerance, mild infection, depression, chronic fatigue syndrome, and others. It’s important to get checked out by a physician to determine possible causes. Often, when you’re too busy and too tired, it seems like a lot of effort to drag yourself to the doctor. A lot of tired people just hope things will get better. However, if you’ve ruled out the first three causes and you have no other idea why you’re so tired, don’t let any more time go by – – schedule that appointment!

(For information on a wonderful sleep spray as referenced in the article, contact me at chandra@hightimesuccess.com. I have an excellent one for you.)

Posted in Health at any age | Tagged better sleep, clean eating | Leave a comment

Job insecurities? Open your mind to a Plan B.

Posted on August 26, 2015 by Chandra

As I write this, the economy seems to be sliding downwards. Today, the China stock market took a huge plunge. Here in North America, oil prices are dropping, but prices at the pump remain high. Corporations have been laying off.

We’re still smarting from the economic downturn of 2008 – it doesn’t feel like it was that long ago. Millions have not recovered from their losses.

If you’re employed, it’s very possible that Online Marketing your job might be at risk. Are you ready to look for a new job in this economy? I don’t know about you, but most people around me are starting to get nervous.

If you’ve ever toyed with the idea of starting a business, now might be the time. If you think I’m crazy, let me tell you that I can’t take credit for the idea. I’m just sharing what other people have said, and what I’m doing myself.

According to Forbes: 10 Reasons The Best Time To Start A New Business Is During An Economic Downturn

And one of the best ways to start a business on the side that won’t intrude as much on your personal or professional life is to combine a few proven models to generate cash flow from more than one source.

Online marketing, combined with network marketing, offers the chance of multiple income streams that you can tailor to your own skills and preferences. There’s no one single way to do this – – there are tons of people out there doing this, and are limited only by their imaginations.

Why do I recommend a combination of the two?

Network marketing has been proclaimed as the business model of the 21st century. If you’ve already dismissed this because you already know all about network marketing and why you shouldn’t get into it, then you don’t know about network marketing today. It’s changed a lot since the days of secret meetings and pressuring your family and friends to join.

In fact, network marketing is the ideal business to be in during an economic downturn. When people feel vulnerable, they’re more likely to prefer buying products from a trusted friend rather than an impersonal big box store that might be closing its doors within a year. Also, people are looking for their own supplemental income opportunities and are more willing to go into business with you.

With the advent of the internet, we now have the entire world as our prospective customer base. You can reach a scope and depth of audiences that business people couldn’t even fathom 25 years ago. And no matter how bad the economy gets, someone somewhere in the world wants what you have to offer.

You might ask why they should buy from you instead of another network marketer online offering the same product. I would be glad you asked that! This is where the power of online marketing comes in. When you establish yourself as a credible and trustworthy internet marketer, it doesn’t really matter what product you represent. People will want to do business with YOU. In fact, you don’t even have to be a network marketer – – you can market products or content you create yourself, or market other people’s products or content for commission, or create a popular site and sell advertising space.

The network marketing piece is just another layer of income opportunity. By combining the two, you actually have 3 layers of income opportunity:

Locally, you can earn an income selling the products offered by the network marketing company
Both locally and internationally, you can earn an income building a team around your network marketing opportunity
You can create and sell other products and content as well.

There are other ways you can earn as well, but that’s a simple overview.

If you’d like to chat about this, I’d love to connect with you. You can reach out to me here: Join My Team! We can have a no-pressure, no obligation chat about how I’m building my Plan B to see if it’s right for you too!

And even if you decide not to connect with me, maybe this article is stirring some exciting ideas around in your head and will inspire you to action.

Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Want business success? Eat clean!

Posted on August 23, 2015 by Chandra

Young fitted man holding a bowl of organic vegetables from his k I conducted a little experiment on myself, and was impressed by the dramatic results. Now, this experiment was not at all scientific, but it was close enough to convince me to be more consistent in my eating habits.

In a nutshell, I looked at the times I’d made the most progress in business alongside times I was eating the way I wanted to be eating. As it turns out, during the times I was eating the most fresh fruits, vegetables, and lean proteins are the times I accomplished the most in other areas of my life. And although this article is about eating clean to boost your business, I’ll share that when I eat in the ways that my body appreciates the most, miraculously I’m more inclined to stick to an exercise program, clean up after myself around the house, make those phone calls I’ve been putting off, attend to odd jobs around the house that I haven’t had the inclination to get at, and so on.

Now, for those of you who are exceptionally intelligent (and I do mean you there, reading this right now, yes you), you might realize that if I generally have my **** together, it stands to reason that I’d have my eating plan under control as well. So there’s probably no direct connection between what I eat and what I accomplish. If I’m in accomplishment mode, generally speaking, most things in my life should start coming together.

However, here’s what actually happened each time.

I started to get behind on things in life. I found myself more interested in Netflix than in my businesses. I noticed that I had stopped doing little things that took an extra bit of energy, like leaving dishes in the sink instead of transferring them directly to the dishwasher after rinsing them.

Each time, my first question was “Am I getting enough sleep?” because I’ve found that nothing works out if I’m sleep-deprived.

But my second question was always “What have I been eating?” And each time, I had to honestly fact the fact that I’d started back down the “to0 much bread” road, and maybe I’d been drinking too much coffee. And oh yes, I had a candy bar yesterday. I rationalized it at the time because I don’t eat a lot of candy. You get the idea.

Then, when I’ve gotten back on my personal “clean eating” plan, it seems that within 48 hours, my life turns back around. It’s that fast. It’s almost magical how the stuck things in my life become unstuck. And since my businesses are a primary area of concern in my life, some of the most immediate successes are there.

I also become more creative. My capacity expands. It becomes much easier to find and create ideas and systems beneficial to my businesses. It also seems like more people find me and want to connect with me.

By the way, the reason I used the word “personal” along with “clean eating” plan is because we’re all different, and clean eating is not the same for all of us. You probably know what clean eating means for you. For many people, lean meats qualify as “clean,” but for me, meat is by definition dirty, so meat is impossible in a clean diet. But that’s just me. I believe nuts and beans are clean, but other people do not.

You might argue, “Well, what if I decide that potato chips and candy bars qualify as ‘clean’ for me?” Well, that’s just silly, and you know it. If, with all the mountains of books, dvd’s, websites, programs, and so on out there featuring a million very healthy yet diverse approaches to healthy eating, you still can’t figure out what a healthy diet looks like, contact me, and I’ll link you to some excellent resources.

By the way, I’m eating pear slices and sipping on iced herbal tea as I write this.

Posted in Health at any age, Motivation and achievement | Tagged clean eating | Leave a comment

Why online marketing is a great business for people in their 40’s, 50’s, & 60’s

Posted on August 20, 2015 by Chandra

Are you intrigued by the idea of online marketing, but worry that you might be too old to get started? After all, the online marketing community seems to be filled with young, internet-savvy hotshots setting the pace.

Here are three reasons why I believe online marketing is ideal for people in their 40’s, 50’s and 60’s and beyond.

The best online marketing relies on content. By this age, you probably have enough life experience to come up with volumes of your own content, saving you the need to scramble around finding other people’s content to use. You can use knowledge from your career, hobbies, passions, or causes. Or you can explore a new interest that you’ve not allowed yourself time to explore in the past.

It’s a great way to sock extra money away for retirement. Better yet, if you build it now, it will be generating money with little effort on your part by the time you retire. Already have enough money saved for retirement? Good for you! However, do you think a little more money would be a problem for you?

It’s a business that can be launched with minimal capital. As our income-earning years start winding down, we become increasingly risk-averse, since we don’t have as much time to recover from financial errors. If you build your business prudently, you can eventually create an income with comparatively small investment. Also, typically, you invest as you go along, rather than making a huge, up-front financial investment.

There are many people of all ages having fun and earning money with online marketing. If you’re still considering it or just getting started, there are millions of online books, websites, and other resources to help you get started.

Posted in Self-employment / work from home | Tagged network marketing, self employment, working from home | Leave a comment