4 Powerful Reasons Why You Have to Listen to Rudolph ... every day from Thanksgiving to New Years

Don't you just hate it when you have to listen to Rudolph and Frosty prior to December 24th??

No? Me, neither!

I put up holiday wreaths on the doors the week before Halloween. I have decorations in the windows now. Gonna start listening to holiday songs and singing lustily with them for two solid months...

WHY? you ask.

Yeah, I know, having holidays go on and on can be annoying. What other cultures do is they have numerous holidays throughout the year. It reminds people of joy and love and the essential sweetness of life at regular intervals year-round.

We benighted savages of the USA really only have two holidays - July 4th (one day, big deal) - and the period from Thanksgiving to New Years. We are forced to work too many hours, with no or expensive health care "benefits", we have practically no holidays, we spend our weekends doing the chores that we can't do during the week. We are the most anxious people on Earth - and no wonder! Every other industrialized nation on earth removes the basic worries of life - health care and education, elder care help and baby care support - so that citizens can soar and strive and live good lives.

So we are exhausted, scared/worried and desperately needing rest most of the time.

When you only have one extended holiday, when you have to pack a year's worth of joyful play into one month of weekends and (if you're lucky) a week off from the long-hours grind.....

Even I, who absolutely practice what I preach and do the 5 Tools every day of the year, yearns for the plethora of official holidays that the rest of the world enjoys. Sure I make every Sunday a spiritual and creative oasis, but - it IS more fun to have fun when the rest of the community is smiling as well.

So - tired of Rudolph by Dec 1st? Have compassion on the rest of us holiday-deprived revelers. And work for a nation where the national good trumps corporate greed. Bless us all, every one.

Biz Advice for a Smashing Fall - and Prepping Now for a Truly Stress-Free Holiday Season

The first quarter of the year is the strongest selling period in most consulting businesses – organizations have budget and consumers are on fire with the New Year energy! – but the two months of Fall are a close second.  The crisp, clear air, after the heat, humidity and lethargy of summer, and the return of the school year, puts a sense of urgency into people’s lives.  They are ready to invest in themselves and they are ready to pour the financial foundation for the new year of business.  It’s an important time to pour on the effort for marketing, releasing new products (especially those that could be purchased or gifted for the holidays), and unleashing your creativity for cooking up the cool beans for the new year.

In addition to your ongoing marketing and product development, it’s not too soon to start having conversations with your spouse and family about setting new dreams in place for what the holidays mean.  If you start now to think of ways to tell people that you love them, without spending money, you will have that money to invest in your business, in your continuing education and in your children’s future.  I tell my loved ones, in detailed letters, exactly why I adore them, citing specific examples.  I bake and crochet up a storm.  Kids get one gift each, sometimes bought and always educational. 

Every year, I make a list of fun, new, magical things I want to ENJOY.  I sip eggnog and decorate enough to feel festive, but not enough to be a significant time drain.  I drive or walk to admire other people’s light displays.  I love, love, love November and December.  How lovely, how magical, how full of love and good cheer.  And no stress.  In my early November issue, I’ll include some tips for your business and your stress-free life.  For now, start thinking about what is truly joyful and what could potentially be eliminated from your Shop and To-Do lists.  You don’t need to do everything this year.  The Grand Canyon was carved over time by the relentless flow of water, and it may take a few years of relentless chipping away to transform The Stress and Broke Season into the season of love and joy – but you can do it.

 

And you deserve it.

Come explore the power and excitement of entrepreneurship in a series of classes.... www.soaringdragon.biz.

Should Everyone Skip College and Just Start a Business? Angela Duckworth and grit

 A colleague of mine, whose brains and good sense I respect, made an impassioned case to a group of women this week, about an upcoming book she was planning, in which she intends to encourage women to forget about college and just start a business.  I’m simplifying in the interests of making this article shorter than her book, but at the 20,000 foot level, she believes that 1) economic independence is the key to every other form of empowerment, and 2) sexism is rampant so 3) start your own business.  And you don’t need a college degree to be successful in business.

Sounds good?

Well, I see some problems.  There are some kinds of work that just do not lend themselves to self-employment at all – police detective, forensics scientist and firefighter come to mind – and for others, entrepreneurship is the Hard Way.  It is possible to be a sole practitioner MD, for example, but the realities of business life in the USA make that a suicidal choice.  You can be an organizational whiz and start a business, but there ain’t much low-hanging fruit in that market.  Contrast that with the joys of being able to focus exclusively on what you do well, because the 40 hours/week of marketing for business is on someone else’s shoulders.  A good senior admin can have salary, benefits, vacations, praise and advancement in a government or business.  I needed two master’s degrees plus a year’s study in hypnotherapy to be able to rapidly and permanently demolish the barriers keeping my entrepreneur clients from their heart’s desire.  Not to mention state licensing.  The number of occupations that can yield much better results for economic independence within an organization are legion.  My own choice to solopreneur does not mean that I buy into the “everyone should be an entrepreneur” ideology. 

The 2^nd problem I have with my estimable colleague’s advice is the Don’t Go To College.  If you are eschewing academics in order to get an AA in an in-demand, highly-saleable skill like radiology/solography tech (another business you can’t set up in your garage, thank you, legislature), or take on a plumbing apprenticeship, then hooray, I agree with you 100%.  Now close your eyes and imagine an army of women taking up the plumbing tape.  Six figure income entrepreneurship and very little marketing moxie required.  Auto mechanics is mostly computer programming and intelligence at this point in history.  Electricians. Drool, drool, drool.  So, yes, let’s stop pushing everyone into college, and get most young Americans into job-ready occupational training.  I know that the USA has an understandable wariness about repeating the “black kids go to trade school, white kids go to college and then law school” or “boys get trained, girls get typing” paradigm.  Our President is a black lawyer; our First Lady is another black lawyer, but that’s not the norm.  Yes, I get it.  BUT – a focus on giving kids career-ready training does not have to become a vehicle for holding back races or sexes.  What we have now is an entire generation crippled by education debt getting a BA/BS or even graduate degree in a field like Documentary Film Production that doesn’t have much chance of leading to economic stability. In contrast, you can create a product and huckster it with no formal education at all, beyond basic literacy.   I understand the disillusion with college.

The You Don’t Need College argument misses a key point though:  College teaches you how to think rationally and critically, possibly for the first time in your life.  It forces people who have no knowledge of how science works to learn about experimentation, reproducibility and some basic statistics.  And it requires you to sacrifice your time and your impulsive choices to a dedicated quest for a goal.

On the same day that my colleague denounced wasted time in college, I read about Angela Duckworth’s research on grit, the ability to stick to a long-term course of action, and delay gratification of short-term urges in the pursuit of a big reward.  Many researchers before her have impressive results on the advantage of persistence and emotional resilience, over other factors like talent, intelligence or other gifts of one’s DNA.  Here’s her TED talk, for some details:

https://www.ted.com/talks/angela_lee_duckworth_the_key_to_success_grit?language=en

Here is a national Geo article:  http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2014/10/141015

Listen to this:
“…what college admissions officers and business leaders have told her they're looking for these days from applicants is in keeping with her findings. It's no longer students who've padded their résumés by doing a little bit of everything or just prospects with the best college grades; they want people who stuck with something meaningful to them over time and demonstrated some level of mastery, and it doesn't necessarily matter in what.”

Business leaders have told me this over and over again: they want to hire someone who has a college degree, in anything.  Why?  Because it proves that the person can persist in a goal FOR YEARS.  Including jumping through hoops that don’t always make sense to the 18-year-old mind.  Academia has some crazy hoops indeed.

The ability to persist at a goal for years, and the ability to jump through your client’s hoops, are essential skills of any worthwhile undertaking, including being successful in business.  If you genuinely don’t want anyone telling you what to do, about anything, ever, you only have two options: a lower business income than your potential or therapy to blow up the mental blockage caused by an early-life authority figure.  I’m serious.  Nobody who is both honest with you and successful in business has the psychology of a tantruming two-year-old. Clients expect you to be working for them, not doing what you damn well please, when you damn well please.  If you don’t serve their needs, they won’t buy from you.  The sweet spot is finding something that makes you want to soar with creativity and joy AND is the solution to a major pain-point experienced by people with lots of money.

When I took the grit test (URL below), one of the items asks you about persisting in a goal for years – one of the attributes of a college grad.

https://www.sas.upenn.edu/~duckwort/images/8-item%20Grit%20081011.pdf

So, no, I don’t think you should ditch college and just go straight into business.  For one thing, knowing some history, geography, anthropology, math, English grammar and vocabulary will enhance your business potential and keep you from embarrassing yourself with stupid mistakes. Get that broad education that you didn’t get in high school, distracted as you were by blazing hormones and immaturity, and couple it with a concentration in something sale-able, which could include business.  If you really love creating documentaries, make it a double major and prepare yourself to use one profession to bankroll the other.

At least an AA in something sale-able is more relevant than ever before, and the full education of your mind and soul through all those basic subjects toward a bachelor’s at an inexpensive university is even more essential.  Take that preparation and then fly into entrepreneurship, if that fits your personality and your market analysis.  Or fly with another set of dragons, into another form of lifetime fulfillment and joy, like I did. 

Victoria C. Leo blasts through the barriers that keep her clients from their heart’s desire.  Find the program that blasts through your problem at www.soaringdragon.com, join her Facebook group Healing Minds, Healing Bodies, or email for a FREE Getting Unstuck session at victoria.leo.reiki@gmail.com.