The Journey To Success

                      "If you want to have more, you have to become more.
                           For things to change for you, you have to change.
                            For things to get better, you have to get better.
                               For things to improve, you have to improve.
                                 If you grow, everything grows for you."
                                                    - Jim Rohn


What do you want to do with your life?

Identify exactly what it is that you want. It might take you a while to figure this one out.
After you figure out what you want .....then don't let anything get in your way of getting it.

Your future is your responsibility.
No one is going to do things for you. No one is going to solve your problems for you. It's up to you. You are responsible for you.

Do you want to add value to the world? Great.
So many people would like to do something wonderful for others. It's a great vision to have. But first you have to learn and accumulate the skills required that you would like to teach others.

This is where everyone must start on the journey of success.
It doesn't matter what age you are, if you want to help others you must first require the skills needed to do the job. You can't give away to others, what you don't have.
In other words you must get experience.

You can just walk into a financial office without any training or experience, and demand to be paid $50 an hour.
You must first study, learn, experience and then become a master of your craft. Then you will get paid what you deserve.

It doesn't matter if you want to become a sales person, insurance agent, coaching people online, internet marketer, musician, author or some kind of entrepreneur.....the path will look the same.

Figure out what you want to do
Study other people that have already done what you are trying to do
Find a mentor
Go to seminars

Then you must be willing to take some chances. Be willing to act when opportunity arises.

If you can find a mentor....there are plenty of mentors online. I have a lot of virtual mentors and it works very well. You can also find mentors at the public library. At the library you will find an endless amount of books written by people letting you know how they did it . How they succeeded. But you must read the books to get the valuable information.

After accumulating knowledge you must constantly apply what you have learned.
Your studies are not complete without practice. There is no real substitute for real world experience. Can't stay at the library all the time or in front of your computer.
You actually have to go out in the real world.

Then you must be willing to fail.
Take action, get feedback, learn from your mistakes and do better next time.
Continue to improve. Study the masters.

Your journey to success might take you halfway around the world as you seek out greater wisdom and opportunity.
Don't tell me that you can't.....because you can.

Keep on learning. Keep on practicing. Keep on failing forward and eventually you will become so good that people and the world can't ignore you.


What can you to, starting today to make yourself more valuable to the world?

                                                www.karinglannstam.com

Why Do You Believe What You Believe?

                                                  "Don't limit yourself.
                      Many people limit themselves to what they think they can do.
                                      You can go as far as your mind goes.
                             What you believe, remember, you can achieve."
                                                    - Mary Kay ash


Have you ever analyzed your own thought patterns?

Have you ever really analyzed why you think the way that you do?

Why do you believe what you believe?

Why do you believe these things to be true..... or not true?

Most people never really ask themselves.....WHY do I believe that?

Do you know that almost all of your belief, you have inherited? It's true.

You have inherit the thought patterns of your parents, your siblings, teachers, friends and spouses.

Actually it dates even further back into your genetic nature.

From the moment of conception, you ancestors have built right into your genes.

And because of this we have a lot of ideas and beliefs locked up in our minds that are not true and they violate the laws of this Universe, and that is what causing a lot of our problems.

The thoughts that you repeatedly think becomes fixed in your mind, and those thoughts are then going to determine what happens in your life.


No matter how many people believe or don't believe in you,
you must be the ultimate believer in yourself.


Let me give you an example of what I am talking about

Belief
Action 
Result
Belief

If you believe that something is possible for you
Then you will take more action
Which then will then give you bigger and better results
And that will show you that your belief was right, that it was possible for you.

Now the opposite is also true

If you don't really believe that something is possible for you
Then you will take very little action or no action
Which will give small or no results
And what will show up is that your belief was true, that it wasn't possible for you.

The only difference in the example above is your belief.



What do you believe and why do you believe it?

Maybe it is time for you to start examine your belief patterns?

Maybe some of those beliefs are not true at all?

                                                         www.karinglannstam.com

Dare To Go Forward In Your Life

                         When you fear your struggles, your struggles consume you.
                                When you face your struggles, you overcome them.


Do the thing that you fear.....and the fear disappears.

Courage is an exceptional quality of leaders and of successful people.

Courage means that you have the ability and  the willingness to confront your fears.

Brave and courageous people are not people who are not afraid. They are simply people who learn to master their fears. The are people who face and confront their fears.

When you confront and do what you fear .....it will eventually disappear.

Fear and courage tend to be habits.
If you are afraid and you give in to the fear and back away, that tends to be a habit. It becomes a habit to back away whenever you face something that makes you afraid or unsure.

On the other hand, if you are afraid and you force yourself to confront your fear, it too becomes a habit. It becomes a habit to face and confront what you fear and what makes you uncomfortable.

You will find that most fears disappear when you confront them.
Fears like..... fear of failure, fear of loss, fear of rejection, fear of pain, fear of the loss of a relationship, fear of losing money or fear of bad health, disappear when you confront them head on.

As you push against your fear, it will just disappear.....just like smoke.

Dare to go forward in your life. Dare to go forward in the direction of your dreams and fulfilling your potential.

Always move forward, even if it's only half a step at a time. Always move forward. Because when you are moving forward..... 100% of your attention is forward.

But when you are moving backwards even if it's a tiny step, your attention is then on where you are going. So always move forward.

When you have a choice dare to go forward instead of standing still and playing it safe....go forward.

Courage doesn't mean that you are never afraid.
It simply means that if you are not afraid once in a while..... you are trying hard enough.
You are living too far within your own comfort zone.

Always live on the outside edge of what you are capable of.


What fear do you need to face today?
What fear is holding you back from taking the next step and to develop your full potential?

Face The Fear..... and by facing it.....it will certainly disappear.

                                                           www.karinglannstam.com

You Have To Participate In Your Own Rescue

                                               "The game of life has two participants,
                                                     spectators and players. Pick one."
                                                                    - Unknown


You are responsible for your own life. You are responsible for YOU.

Stop sitting around waiting on someone to come and rescue you.

Don't waste your time waiting on someone to fix you or to even help you.

You are the only one that have the power to take responsibility and to move your life forward.

You know..... life happens to all of us.
It rains on the poor and it rains on the rich.
The only question is.....what are you going to do about your life when difficult things happen?
When life didn't go as you planned?
When you lost a loved one or your business failed? Or your best friend betrayed you or your spouse divorced you? When you got struck by an illness or had to give up on the life that you had created?
Are you just going to sit around and feeling sorry for yourself? Or are you going to stand back up, brush yourself off and keep on walking?

You know.....what you decide to do is entirely up to you.

Unfortunately many people will allow a setback, loss or difficulties to cripple them and keep them stuck, causing them to miss out on the next chapter in their life.

I think that a lot of us know that change is necessary in order for us to grow and to move to the next level of our lives. Yet, we sometimes simply refuse to address it.

We postpone making decisions to another day.  

Stop looking at the closed door. Turn around and face the open door.
Have faith that what lies in front of you is bigger than what you left behind.
Start focusing on the wonderful possibilities that lie ahead.


Create a plan.
You must take charge of your own life and quickly get back on track. You might not have the perfect plan but you can figure out the next step, even if it's not perfect.
The longer you stay stuck, the harder it will be to get going again.

Study, learn, reflect as much as you can.
It will help you move along and it will help you understand what is going on.
There isn't anything that you can't find out. If you don't know...... google it.
Read books and articles. Listen to seminars and podcasts. Join a support group where you live or you can also find them online.
Get a mentor, hire a coach or a therapist.
Learn and then apply the new knowledge and your new understanding. Become a student of your own life. Sort through everything and keep the necessary knowledge.
You must learn a new way to think before you can master a new way to be.
Pay attention.

Action is key.
Not much will happen if you don't apply what you learn.
Sitting on the coach or staying in bed,  is not going to get you where you want to go.
Do the inner work and put yourself back together..... piece by piece.
Design and build your life. Commit to staying on your new path.
There are no shortcuts to any place worth going.


When my own life imploded back in 2012 this is exactly what I was doing. I knew that I had to care enough about myself to get back up and create a new life for myself.  Everything changed within 4 months and there was very little left of my old life.
I knew that no one was going to create a new life for me and no one was going to do the work for me. Only I could do it. I was responsible for rescuing myself from the situation that I was now sitting in.
This is how I started my own coaching business.

I have written a book about my experience back in 2012.
If you haven't read my book..... Bounce Don't Break..... I recommend it.It tells you how to quickly get back on track after life knocks you down.
You can order it at Amazon in The US and in a lot of countries in Europe.


So stop sitting on the sidelines of your life.
Get in the game and start playing again.
In the end.....you will be glad that you did.

                                                          www.karinglannstam.com

Your Time Is Limited, So Don't Waste It

                                        "It has been my observation that most people
                                             get ahead during the time others waste."
                                                              - Henry Ford



To be productive you must learn to control interruptions.

The biggest interruption today is the phone.

Most people can not resist answering a ringing phone, text message or email.

The phone is an essential part of our lives and we look upon the phone as a social tool.

It's something that we look forward to because we associate it with fun and we also remember back when we were young...... we associated a phone call with romance because we got calls from our boyfriend/girlfriend.

As adults we have to change our thinking and especially during our working hours.
If you are in the middle of doing something important and you get interrupted by a phone call, text or email and you stop working and answer the call, text or email, it can take you as long as 25 minutes to be able to get back to concentrating on what you were doing before you answered the call.

And if the phone call was about something upsetting or negative you might not be able to let go off it at all during the day. Your mind will constantly go back to what was said during the phone call.

Learn to control interruptions. Don't be a slave to your phone. If it's important people will call back or even better call them back at the end of your day when you are through working on your project. That way they won't interrupt your concentration and your flow and you can control the time.

Most people are time wasters. The majority of people have no goals. They have no priorities, no plans and they have no concern about becoming successful and they think that you are the same.

They think that because their time isn't worth anything, therefore they don't think that your time is worth anything either.

Your time is limited, so don't waste it.

www.karinglannstam.com

The Core Of Success

                                 "The tragedy of life doesn't lie in NOT reaching your goals.
                                           The tragedy lies in having no goals to reach."
                                                             - Benjamin Mays


The core of success..... GOALS.

Have clear, specific and written goals.

All goals must be in writing. You must re-write them. You must define them and re-define them.

Carry your goals around with you.
Keep them in your pocket or in a notebook that you take with you, wherever you go.

What are your goals?

What is it that you want to be?
Or to have?
Or do?

What is it that you want to accomplish in the next 1, 3, 5 or 10 years?

The top 3% of people in every field have clear specific goals for their lives.
The rest of the population have either very vague goals or no goals at all.


Here are a few major questions to ask yourself.

Who am I?
Where am I going?
What do I want to accomplish?

There are 3 major areas of goals that you have to think about.

1. Your personal and your family goals.
What do your want to accomplish for yourself and your family?

2. Your business, your career, financial and your material goals.
What is that you want to accomplish in the external world?
What do you want to contribute to?

3. Your personal or self development goals.
Your ability and your willingness to grow and develop yourself is the key to accomplish everything else.


Here are 3 excellent questions to ask yourself.

Question number one
What would you do, what goal would you set for yourself if you just won a million dollars?
What would you want, or be or have if you all of a sudden were given one million dollars?
What would you do if you had all the time, money and you were completely free to do anything that you wanted to do?
What would you do differently if you had this money?

Here is question number two
What would you do if you learned today that you only had 6 months to live?
What would you stop doing?
What would you start doing?
Who would you spend time with?
The answer to this question will tell you what you really value and what is really important to you.

Question number three
What great thing would you dare to dream if you knew you could not fail?
If you knew that success was going to happen no matter what you did, what big dream would you dare to dream?
What big goal would you set for yourself?
Answering this question will tell you the one thing that you were put on this earth to accomplish.

Give these three questions some thought!

                                                         www.karinglannstam.com

The Magic Word

                                       "It's only by saying "NO" that you can concentrate
                                                on the things that are really important."
                                                                 - Steve Jobs


In time management there is one magic word.

The word is NO.

Learn to say NO to activities, tasks, responsibilities, obligations that do not contribute to the most important goals that you set for yourself.

NO is really a magic word and the place and the time to use this word is early in a conversation and often.

It's simply amazing how much of  our time is taken up by people that are asking you to do things..... and you do these things out of a sense of obligation.

Unfortunately most people don't value their own time so they don't value yours.

How can we deal with a person that we normally like and respect when they ask us to do something?

When someone asks you to do something, take on a project or to be on a committee.....simply say..... let me think about it, and I'll get back to you.

If someone is pressing you for a decision.....simply explain to them that you cannot make a decision right now and that you have to think about it.

After you thought about if for 24 hours, call them back and tell them that you thought about it and that you simply don't have the time, but you thank them for thinking of you.


                                              "Learn to say "NO" to the good,
                                                 so you say "YES to the best."
                                                           - John Maxwell


Just say NO.

In time management the word NO is one of the most powerful words there is.

It will save you hours, days, weeks and months of working on projects that contributes nothing to your goals.

When you are saying YES to others, make sure that you are not saying NO to yourself.

                                                             www.karinglannstam.com

Always Find Time To Do What Makes You Feel Happy And Alive

                                                 "Don't ask what the world needs;
                                         ask yourself what makes you come alive. 
                                                     And then go and do that.
                           Because what the world needs is people who come alive."
                                                        - Harold Whitman


Have you done anything lately that will make you feel truly happy and alive?

Maybe you have forgotten what makes you feel happy and alive?

So often we allow life to take over and we get so busy that we stop doing the things that would make us truly happy. The things that will energize us and make us feel great.

Remember when you were a kid, it was all about fun and play. But for some reason as we get a little older we forget how to have fun and we forget how to play.
Life takes over and we think that everything has to be so serious.

Maybe you tell yourself ..... "I can do that any longer, I am adult now" or "what would people think if I do this, it's too childish" or "what about if I look stupid doing it or I can't do it?" and the reasons and the excuses go and on and on and you probably won't do it because you think you are too old, too out of shape or you are afraid of looking foolish in front of others.

Let me give you an example of what I am talking about.

This past Saturday I was working together with 2 other adults and 4 children and since it was a lot of snow and cold weather we decided to go sledding for an hour, so the kids could have some fun.
Now here was the problem....I had not gone sledding in over 30 years. I was standing on top of the hill with the sled in my hand telling myself all the excuses that I mentioned earlier.
Why I couldn't do it or why I shouldn't even try it.

I stood there for a few minutes discussing it with another adult that was also hesitating if she dared to sled down the hill, but we decided....what the heck....let's do it!
So off she went down the hill and I followed right after her.

Ohhh....It was a lot of fun!!!!
Let me tell you..... the adults had more fun the kids. We kept on climbing the small hill and off we went. Just having so much fun. At the end of the hour the kids were watching the adults sledding down the hill over and over again. We seemed to have more fun than the kids as we were screaming, laughing and cheering each other on..

I believe that as adults we have forgotten what makes us truly feel truly alive.
A lot of times we are sleepwalking through life and most of the time we are on auto pilot. In other words we have stopped doing the things that would bring a lot of fun, laughter and joy into our lives in a natural way and instead we have come to rely on artificial ways of improving our mood..... substances like sugar, caffeine, food, alcohol, drugs and behaviors like shopping, gambling, constantly surfing the internet, working too much... in a way to bring our mood up and to get the dopamine, serotonin and endorphins to flow in our bodies.

The problem is that all these ways of trying to improve on our mood and to make up for a lack of energy might end up hooking us and we will eventually get addicted to them in order to feel good all the time. The problem with addiction is that we might only need a small dose in the beginning but as time goes on we will most likely require bigger and bigger doses to get the same feeling again.
Short term gain that will lead to long term pain.

We settle for things that will give us some pleasure and satisfaction in the short term, instead of creating something that will give us pleasure all the time or in the long run.

It's not that we are having less energy, inspiration and motivation as adults. Most of the time we have stopped doing the things that will give us energy in a healthy way. The things we used to really enjoy doing when we were younger.
Instead we end up on the couch in the evening, watching hour after hour of TV or surfing the internet instead of actually engage in things that would give us a boost of energy naturally. We have come to rely on poor substitutes to be able to make up for low energy levels.
Yes..... it takes a little effort on our part and the willingness to take the first step.
The willingness to make and effort to change the habits that are not working and replace them with habits that are working.

I often hear people say...." I am so bad at getting together with my friends and in the evening I am just too tired to even call. I rather just sit on the couch." And then they wonder why they don't have any friends.
Sitting on the couch every evening won't bring up you energy level and it won't make you feel alive.

Everything start with you.
You must be willing to change what you do on a daily basis. In other words you must take a good look a your habits and then make a decision on how what you want to feel in the future.
Decide that you are no longer willing to accept low energy and that you are no longer going to try to bring up your energy level by engaging in addictive behaviors. Instead you are now going to discover what truly makes you feel happy and alive and then decide to this instead on a daily base to feel more energized.

When was the last time you dance or sang like no one was listening or watching?
When was the last time you actually went out for coffee with a friend that you haven't seen in a while?
When was the last time you played music..... really loud?
When was the last time you called an old friend or relative?
When was the last time you spent some time in nature?
When was the last time you went to the movies?
When was the last time you walked on a beach?
How about volunteering? There are a lot of people that could use some help.
How about starting your own business?
How about a new hobby, like Salsa dancing, take singing lessons or join a choir.
How about learning a new language?
Try yoga classes or learn how to meditate
How about paining or start writing that book that you have been talking about for years?
How about starting a blog?
When was the last time that you did some travelling?
Gardening is fun, spend some time with your pets, decide on a weekly date-night with your partner
Re-decorate your house.
Join a new group. Get to know some new people.
Start a gratitude journal
Get in shape
Study personal development
Take a computer class
Smile
This list can get very long so I will stop now, because I think you will get the idea.

Doing these things will bring up your energy level naturally and the more you engage in some of these activities the more energy you will eventually get.
You can start small and work your way up to more and bigger things.

Don't settle for things that will only give you pleasure, energy and happiness in the short term.
Create activities and fun in your life that will give you happiness and aliveness in the long run.

Set some new goals, move your body, connect with people and get out of your comfort zone.

Find time to do the things that will make you happy and alive.

                                                       www.karinglannstam.com