A Cup of Caroll

June 30, 2019 

“You should, you can and if you are brave enough to start, you will.” – Stephen King

 This Thursday is Independence Day in the USA — the day Americans set aside to celebrate the priceless gift of freedom that our forefathers bestowed on us, both in our sovereignty as a nation and in the precious personal freedoms we enjoy. As we pause to show our patriotism, we should also show our gratitude to the brave men and women who serve and sacrifice to help keep us free.

I hope this lightly-edited blog from last year will encourage you to never take our country, our freedoms, our protectors or each other for granted. Importantly, I hope it will inspire you to make the MOST of the opportunities you have been given to fulfill your own dreams and destiny!

 June 30, 2018

 If you live in the USA, I hope you will be celebrating this most American of holidays in a delightful way that fills both your heart and your stomach. But no matter where you live, I hope you will join me in pausing for just a moment to reflect on what freedom means to you and your individual quest to live a life of meaning and abundance.

To me, being FREE means, first and foremost, that I have complete choice in how to live my life.  How it goes is truly up to ME. I am 100% responsible for my own success and happiness, because I am free to co-create it with God/the Universe, as I choose.

This is very much in keeping with the Law of Attraction which states, “energy attracts like energy.”  This means that the thoughts you hold – coupled with the emotions that result from holding those thoughts in your mind — create the energetic vibration that you are sending out into the world every second of your life.

Your own energetic vibration will inevitably attract to you the people, things and circumstances that exactly match your energy – just as a magnet attracts a nail.  Thus, whatever thoughts you consistently focus your attention on will eventually show up in your world in physical form – for good or for not-so-good.  You have the complete freedom to control your own thoughts, so YOU are truly the “magnet” for whomever and whatever shows up in your life.

Gratitude, as I am fond of reminding you, is THE most powerful emotion for creating a positive energetic vibration that will attract more good things to you.  When we are grateful for everything we already have, MORE of the same is attracted to us.  But when we focus on what is lacking in our life, what shows up is more LACK.

In that spirit, I’d like to acknowledge here and now my profound gratitude for the many personal freedoms that I have been blessed with.  In particular, I am deeply grateful to the patriots of every gender, color, sexual orientation, socio-economic level and ethnic origin who have sacrificed to ensure that I will continue to enjoy these precious freedoms throughout my life.

Here are just a tiny fraction of the many personal freedoms for which I am grateful, and which I am fully aware are still NOT available to so many of my brothers and sisters across the globe:

The freedom to choose my friends

The freedom to choose my mate

The freedom to marry or not

The freedom to choose how many children to have (or none at all)

The freedom to choose my political party affiliation (or none at all)

The freedom to vote (or not)

The freedom to read the books and see the plays, movies and television shows I choose

The freedom to express my life purpose by following the path that fulfills me

The freedom to choose military service or to serve my country in other ways

The freedom to go to the church of my choice (or no church at all)

The freedom to travel throughout my country and to many other lands

The freedom to live where I wish

The freedom to express my opinion, as long as it does not harm another

The freedom to dress according to my own tastes

The freedom to spend my money as I wish

The freedom to choose my career and the people I want to work with

The freedom to determine my income – according to my personal beliefs about what I “deserve” and the value I bring to the world

The freedom to celebrate Independence Day just as I please.

So, what’s on your Personal Freedoms gratitude list?  I hope you will record in your Daily Gratitude Journal the personal freedoms that mean the most to YOU and to express sincere gratitude to your Higher Power, your country and your fellow citizens who defend your right to enjoy them each and every day.

The freedom to fulfill your purpose and to prosper is your birthright as a human being, but it’s up to YOU to claim it, appreciate it, and live it to the fullest.

If you or your friends would like your own F*R*E*E subscription to receive this blog three Sundays a month, just go to http://practicalprosperitycoach.com and click on the Prosperity Tips button at the top to enter your name and email.

 ****************Give Yourself the Gift of Dreams Fulfilled******************

 SUMMER SPECIAL!  New clients who begin coaching in either July or August will get 50% OFF of your first month’s fee!  This offer won’t be repeated, so HURRY! If you have a Big Goal you want to pursue – either business or personal — I urge you to schedule a no-obligation, F*R*E*E hour of phone coaching with me that will help you clarify your Big Goals and explore how we can get you into action to make them a reality: Email caroll@practicalprosperitycoach.com TODAY! 

June 16, 2019

 Happy Father’s Day in the USA!  I gratefully acknowledge everyone who is a father or who acts as a role model/mentor for someone else. The influence of a strong, positive role model on a young child is one of life’s most precious gifts, and those heroes don’t always get the credit they deserve for fulfilling this challenging role.

 I was originally planning to take this week off from writing the blog, to give me time to celebrate my upcoming birthday and prepare for this week’s training in the third annual Prosperity Summer Camp webinar series. But since today is Father’s Day, I decided to re-post a tribute to fathers everywhere that I last published in 2016 and share with my many new readers the invaluable life lessons that my own wonderful father taught me.

(I dedicate this blog to my own Big Bro, who is the father of six wonderful men and women and grandfather to five amazing grandchildren – Much love from your Lil Sis!)

 June 19, 2016

 “Love life, engage in it, give it all you’ve got.  Love it with a passion, because life truly does give back, many times over, what you put into it.” – Maya Angelou

This quote from the late, great Maya Angelou perfectly describes the way my Dad lived his life.  Although his years on earth were far too short, he lived each of them with maximum gusto and I am quite sure he had no regrets when he died suddenly at age 57, right at the beginning of my senior year of high school.

My mother was my source of unconditional love, whatever minor discipline I needed, and the usual “always wear clean underwear for the ambulance” practical advice.

My father was my playmate, teacher, walking thesaurus/dictionary/encyclopedia, and my #1 Role Model.  I don’t remember him talking to me directly about rules to live by. Instead, he just lived his life on his own terms and I learned how I wanted to live mine by observing how he did it.

Here are the key Rules for Abundant Living that I got from observing the happiness and fulfillment my Dad derived from living by them himself:

• Be happy – Other than the day President Kennedy was assassinated, when I saw him cry for the first time, my Dad was invariably optimistic, cheerful and humorous. He loved to laugh at and tell jokes (especially bad puns), watched all the 60s comedy TV shows with me, and could find the hidden humor or irony in any problem. From him, I decided that hanging out with happy, positive people is the only way to go!  While I got my inclination to worry from my mother, I got my sense of humor from my father.  Guess which trait has helped me more in life?

• Be curious – My Dad was the most insatiable life-long learner I’ve ever known. He never passed by a used bookstore without buying something.  He left behind boxes of notebooks and reading materials on everything from Elizabethan poetry to paranormal science.  It’s too bad he didn’t live into the Internet Age because he would have spent hours Googling everything.  He taught me how great it could be to know a little bit about a lot of things (which led a high school English teacher to dub me a “Renaissance Woman”). Dad never pontificated about his own views, but sought to learn from others’ opinions. His attitude set me up for career success because coaching requires more listening than talking, being curious instead of judgmental, and having a wide variety of resources at my fingertips to support my clients’ needs.

• Be creative – My Dad was one of the most creative problem-solvers I’ve ever known. He was an amateur inventor who came up with what he believed was a breakthrough system for teaching reading that was better than phonics. Unfortunately, he died before he got to finish it. My Dad taught me to stretch my imagination and ingenuity with his homemade inventions, like a teeter-totter I could play on all by myself, consisting of a long board balanced on an old oil drum and weighted on the other side with bricks that were equal to my weight. (This was in the days before “helicopter parenting” and Cal OSHA, you understand.)

• Be of service – By Dad’s example, I learned that while life can be enjoyable when we meet our own needs, it can be truly fulfilling only when we help others meet their needs. He voluntarily gave up a lucrative professorship at the University of California to teach at a community college where he felt he could make a bigger difference teaching remedial English to working adults striving to improve their lives.

Dad took a personal interest in Mrs. Edwards, an elderly widow in his night school class who wanted to improve her English. One day he hitched a trailer to our station wagon and filled it with boxes of hand-me-down clothes and a used refrigerator. Then my parents, Mrs. Edwards and I drove from Orange County to Tecate, Mexico to give her extended family these precious gifts.  I was just eight, but I still remember what the dirt-floored, one-room adobe shack smelled like, with all the flies buzzing about. I am certain those strangers never forgot my Dad’s generosity.

Looking back, our relationship reminds me a lot of the bond between Atticus Finch and his young daughter, Scout, in To Kill a Mockingbird.  Like Atticus, my Dad was older when I was born, so we didn’t do much physical play together; our father-daughter bond was more spiritual and mental. And luckily for me, like Atticus, my father demonstrated by his daily life exactly how to be self-confident and stand up for one’s principles, while remaining respectful of the different abilities, lifestyles and opinions of others.

In short, Prof. Harbison Parker was my #1 Role Model for how to “love life, engage in it and give it all you’ve got.” And I feel blessed to be his daughter.

PLEASE NOTE: The blog is taking next Sunday off.  It’s my birthday!  A Cup of Caroll will return with a new blog on Sunday June 30.

If you or your friends would like your own F*R*E*E* subscription to receive this blog three Sundays a month, just go to http://practicalprosperitycoach.com and click on the Prosperity Tips button at the top to enter your name and email.

 *************** Give Yourself the Gift of Dreams Fulfilled******************

To schedule a no-obligation, F*R*E*E* hour of phone coaching that will help you clarify your Big Goals and get you into ACTION to make them a reality, please email me at caroll@practicalprosperitycoach.com TODAY!

June 9, 2019

“Most of your emotions, positive or negative, are determined by how you talk to yourself on a minute-by-minute basis.  It’s not what happens to you, but the way that you interpret the things that are happening to you that determines how you feel.” – from Eat That Frog: 21 Ways to Stop Procrastinating and Get More Done in Less Time

The third annual Prosperity Summer Camp webinar is off to a great start!  All the participants have created an envelope-pushing Intention (a BIG Goal they are 100% committed to reaching on or before July 31).  The focus of the course is to teach them tools and techniques to help them reach those Intentions, even though they don’t yet know HOW they will do it.

Some of the tools I give them involve work smarter not harder strategies, but most are about learning to control their mindset. The dictionary definition of MINDSET is “an attitude, disposition or mood.”  Synonyms for it include “mental make-up, mental processes, way of thinking, where your head is at.”

If you want to be happy AND successful, you must learn to control your mindset because your mindset conjures up emotions that, in turn, trigger the Law of Attraction (“energy attracts like energy”) to attract people, resources and circumstances that will either HELP or HINDER you from creating what you want.

You may think that whatever happens to you makes you spontaneously FEEL a certain way and there’s nothing you can do about it. Fortunately, that is far from the case! Outer circumstances do not have the power to make us FEEL any particular way.  You have the absolute power to CHOOSE how you feel and respond to whatever happens to you.

It all starts with how you choose to interpret what happens to you and the meaning you choose to give it.  That is your MINDSET in daily action.

Here are four main areas in which your MINDSET can greatly affect your EMOTIONS, which in turn, will set the Law of Attraction in motion to either move you forward or hold you back from reaching your Big Goals:

• Negative Interpretations of what others’ words and actions mean about you

A teacher recently told me that she has been waking up every morning in a foul mood.  She didn’t seem to know exactly why, so I asked her to consider what thoughts she was having that could be triggering her negative emotions.  She answered candidly that she was disheartened that, as the final weeks of school wound down, most of her class seemed bored and mentally checked out.  She interpreted her students’ dull mood and distracted behavior to be a reflection of HER teaching skills.  She was telling herself, “If I were a better teacher, they would be more engaged and eager to learn.”

As soon as she said it, she recognized the fallacy of her chosen interpretation. She admitted that she and her students are ALL tired after a long school year, and that the subject she teaches is not a scintillating one that most students would choose unless it was required. In fact, when she was in school, it probably never crossed her mind that she herself would end up in that field!

Just shifting her interpretation of why other people were behaving in a certain way elevated her mood, and she decided to focus her attention on the students who ARE engaged and clearly appreciate her efforts to make the class interesting and useful.

As my friend and mentor Leslie Zann often says, “You are making it all up anyway, so why not make up something GOOD?” 

• Comparing yourself to others

We know we shouldn’t, but our Egos seem to be hard-wired to do this. You MUST consciously stop yourself from doing it because it has a demoralizing effect on your energy and prevents the Law of Attraction from attracting what you want.

Moreover, your self-comparison is likely not valid, because you are inevitably comparing apples to oranges.  Anyone who seems to be doing better or going faster than you does not have the identical circumstances or background you have: They grew up with a different family dynamic, have a different education, training and/or experience, different friends and connections, and a different personality and perhaps a different MINDSET. You have nothing in common with them, except perhaps the length of time you have been going after a similar goal.  So forget about competing and concentrate instead on running your own race and making the most of your own unique skills, abilities, qualities and mindset.

• Berating yourself (or others) for past mistakes

The most useless human emotion is guilt.  To be human is to make mistakes and feel regret. But you cannot change the past, no matter how much you wish you could. All you can do is to take full responsibility for your own mess-ups, especially those that affect others.  Sincerely and humbly apologize to anyone you have harmed by your words, actions or inactions.  Make amends if you possibly can. But even if they don’t forgive you, you must forgive yourself and move on.

Staying mentally stuck in the past prevents you from taking the positive actions that can help yourself and others today and tomorrow. Learn from your mistakes so you won’t repeat them and leave the guilt behind.

The second most useless emotion is resentment. If you want to be forgiven, you must be willing to forgive others.  That doesn’t mean you condone their actions, but you have to forgive them for YOUR sake. If you harbor resentment, anger or thirst for revenge, you are only hurting yourself, because the Law of Attraction must inevitably attract to YOU even MORE circumstances to resent.

• Worrying about the future

Worry is a totally unhelpful mindset.  Any time you spend focusing your thoughts on the “worst case scenario” that your Ego fears might happen is wasted time that could be used to create the outcome you DO want.  You can’t hold two separate thoughts in your mind at the same time.  So if you find yourself worrying about a possible negative outcome (which let’s face it, 99 percent of the time never happens anyway), simply turn your thoughts to focusing on what you DO want, and you will be sending your powerful energy in the RIGHT direction for the Law of Attraction to help you get it.

As positive thought preacher Joel Osteen says, “Pay attention to what is playing in your mind. When you dwell on negative thoughts, you’re not going to have peace.  You have to change what you’re dwelling on.  So when the opportunity to worry comes, use it as a reminder to …. thank [God/The Universe] for His good!”

If you want to feel consistently great and create all the success you dream of, you must start right now to monitor your MINDSET closely. You have the power to generate thoughts that are going to call forth positive emotions that will make the Law of Attraction your ally in reaching your Big Goals in record time!

If you or your friends would like your own F*R*E*E* subscription to receive this blog three Sundays a month, just go to http://practicalprosperitycoach.com and click on the Prosperity Tips button at the top to enter your name and email.

*************** Give Yourself the Gift of Dreams Fulfilled******************

To schedule a no-obligation, F*R*E*E* hour of phone coaching that will help you clarify your Big Goals and get you into ACTION to make them a reality, please email me at caroll@practicalprosperitycoach.com today.

June 2, 2019

“Every great dream begins with a dreamer.  Always remember, you have within you the strength, the patience and the passion to reach for the stars to change the world.” – Harriet Tubman

The third annual Prosperity Summer Camp begins soon, and I am immersed in registering the last “campers” (there is still room if you want to join us!) and preparing to launch the webinar on Tuesday.  I hope you will forgive me for re-publishing this lightly-edited blog, but I believe the question “Why am I doing this?” is always relevant and worth reviewing for all of us. It’s also a great motivational antidote to the topic of the last blog (I Don’t Wanna! – Blog 338).

June 10, 2018

“Passion is energy. Feel the power that comes from focusing on what excites you.” – Oprah Winfrey

I am sure you have a number of important Big Goals you want to achieve in many areas of your life.  Some will take a matter of weeks or months to fulfill (like planning a great summer vacation), while others can take years or maybe even a lifetime.  How do you sustain the necessary daily focus and enthusiasm it takes to reach a goal that seems pretty far down the road… When it’s just an average Wednesday?

I believe the first thing you have to do is get crystal clear on your WHY.  What is the compelling reason you are making the effort to pursue your Big Goal in the first place?  What will it mean to you when you when you have attained it?

Without a compelling Why, every day can feel like just another Wednesday full of To-Dos, errands and actions you promised to take but are looking for an excuse not to do, even though you recognize that they are the very stepping stones that will carry you to your Big Goal.

The good news is that you CAN motivate yourself on a daily basis to do that stuff that nobody WANTS to do to build your business, get your degree, work your way up the corporate ladder, write your novel, learn a skill that will change your life, etc.

In Get Over your Damn Self, Romi Neustadt, a very successful Leader in the network marketing industry, suggests four simple questions you can journal the answers to that will help you dig down to find your fundamental REASON for reaching a Big Goal and why it is worth making the daily effort to reach it:

• What is your WHY? (Peel back the onion to get to your real WHY).
• Why is this so important to you? Get really specific here. How do you see this changing your life, affecting your family, helping you get where you want to be long-term?
• If you don’t achieve your WHY, what’s the pain you’ll experience? In other words, what’s the cost you’ll pay in your life by not taking action [to reach your Big Goal]? Really flesh out this part. What will you and your family miss out on in life? How will this affect your confidence and your self-esteem?
• Look ahead into the future. If you don’t achieve your WHY, where will you be and what will you have given up, all because you didn’t follow through and take action on what was important?

After you have answered these honestly, she says, “Read this every day for three weeks.  I found it very helpful to read it first thing in the morning, even before my feet hit the floor, to help set my intention for the day.  You may decide to do it before you go to sleep.  It doesn’t matter when you do it, as long as you do it.  Every day for 21 days.”

Another tip to help you get motivated to carry out the actions/activities that aren’t so fun and glamorous on an “average Wednesday” is to create an empowering context for what you are REALLY up to.  If you can’t see a direct connection between what you are currently doing and an inspiring, worthwhile OUTCOME (AKA “payoff”) that all your hard work will eventually lead to, you won’t be willing to do the work.

I recently had a context-shifting conversation with one of my coaching clients that helped her uncover a new, much more compelling Why to inspire her to work daily on building her network marketing business with focus and enthusiasm.

She confessed that she just wasn’t feeling motivated to do the work to achieve the next rung on the Leadership ladder.  Titles didn’t mean anything to her.  Her Why wasn’t financial, because her family is already pretty comfortable.  She liked the idea of being able to provide some nice “extras” for them, but they didn’t really NEED her business income in order to have a good life.  She was trying, but she just couldn’t find a motivating reason to get up every day and go after this goal like it mattered to her.

But when I asked her about the other people she could bring into the business if she would just pick up the phone and reach out to them, she started to perk up.  She is a natural giver and what really motivates her is helping others.  As we talked, she began to see that by not reaching out to these people, she could be depriving them of the opportunity to change their lives in ways that might be really important to THEM.

Suddenly, her energy shifted and her new, empowering context for “building a Team” was no longer what recognition or material rewards SHE could attain from doing the work. Her new Why for succeeding in her business became helping as many others as possible to achieve THEIR WHYs.  For the first time, she truly recognized that other people might never have a chance to achieve their Big Goals, unless she makes a consistent effort to reach out to them with passion and enthusiasm!

A week later, she reported making a LOT more calls to prospective business partners.  Even her husband had noticed a marked change in her and asked her what was different about her business these days.  She told him about her new Why and he marveled that he had not seen her so passionate about her business since she first started it.

“I’ve never felt as positive or comfortable with my business as I do now,” she said. “My husband was really impressed.  He could tell.  He said I sounded like a completely different person.  I FEEL better than I have in a long time!”

Building a large, thriving team of successful business partners is going to be a years-long endeavor for her.  But with this new, empowering context, she can turn each “ordinary” day into an extraordinary opportunity to change someone else’s life.

And that’s worth getting out of bed for!

If you or your friends would like your own F*R*E*E* subscription to receive this blog three Sundays a month, just go to http://practicalprosperitycoach.com and click on the Prosperity Tips button at the top to enter your name and email.

*************** Give Yourself the Gift of Dreams Fulfilled******************

To schedule a no-obligation, F*R*E*E* hour of phone coaching that will help you clarify your Big Goals and get you into ACTION to make them a reality, please email me at caroll@practicalprosperitycoach.com today.