Tag Archives: prioritize

Working Hard Should Not Be Done For A Goal’s Sake At The Expense Of Relationship With Others

I was working at my office late tonight when a text came through from a friend with a video clip. I was super busy today and wouldn’t normally have stopped to listen to a video clip but for some reason I found myself hitting play. A young man in his graduation cap and gown stands […]

Looking Back, What Are You Going To Remember Doing?

Thus far, 2018 has been completely insane with activity.  I started off my year jumping feet first into planning my daughter’s wedding reception for the small group of 1,200 people being invited to her May event.  Along with those months of planning I gave several keynote presentations at conferences, was a judge for several business […]

To-Do Lists Don’t Work – Scheduling Everything Does

Whenever I have a big to-do list I find myself sitting and staring at it like I’m a deer in the headlights wondering “where do I even begin?”… Overwhelmed by the question of where to begin the list almost always leads to procrastinating on starting anything on the list…and procrastinating inevitably leads to feeling down […]

Back In The Saddle With The Saddle Sores To Prove It

Let’s face it, no one really looks forward to getting back in the saddle when they know it is going to be painful to do so. And having been off work for so long I knew exactly how painful it was going to be to get myself back in the saddle by going back to […]

Finding Balance is the Eternal Struggle… The Day Will Never Be Longer Than 24 Hours So We Best Schedule Those Hours Wisely!

Autumn is one of my favorite seasons because I love seeing the amazing Fall colors as the leaves on the trees scattered up the mountain behind my home turn beautiful shades of red and yellow. I love apple cider and pumpkin flavored everything. The difficult thing about Autumn is that it also tends to be […]

Put-off Town – Where Procrastination and Unhappiness Reside

PUT-OFF TOWN Did you ever go to Put-Off town, Where the houses are old and tumble-down, And everything tarries and everything drags, With dirty streets and people in rags? On the street of Slow lives Old Man Wait, And his two little boys named Linger and Late; With unclean hands and tousled hair, And a […]

We don’t manage time, we manage ourselves in the time we have

“We don’t really manage time but rather we manage ourselves in the amount of time we have.”  – Rex Allred My life often feels like the never ending battle with time management. “How can I get everything done?” “How can I find enough hours in the day to get everything done that I need to?” […]

How to Wake-Up Such That You’ve Set The Stage For A Happier Day Ahead

I’m just going to put it out there – I do NOT like waking up in the mornings. I tend to be more of a night owl which makes it really hard for me to wake up early, yet most days I’ve got things scheduled all day long which means I end up being grumpy […]

How To Achieve More Than The American Dream (Forbes Article)

“The essence of America – that which really unites us – is not ethnicity, or nationality, or religion – it is an idea – and what an idea it is: That you can come from humble circumstances and do great things.” – Condoleeza Rice The American Dream Awards is an event put on by the […]

Organizing Your Thoughts And Making Room For The Amazing

Just the word “organize” is stressful because it makes me immediately think of all the piles of things that are waiting for me to organize them. And try as I want to, every new day brings in more and more piles of additional emails, additional documents, additional letters, additional phone calls, etc.. all of which […]

Your Presence Is My Present

When my 21 year-old daughter wants to get my attention she will utter the phrase, “Your presence is my present.” That quote is a very effective way to remind someone to put away the distractions and focus on the moment you are sharing together. Spending quality time with someone gets harder and harder with all […]

A Lifetime In A Day

“A funeral is not a day in a lifetime, it’s a lifetime in a day.” One thing in life is certain, and that is that each of us will eventually pass on from this life. When that day comes for each of us, the best we can hope for is to have words spoken about […]

Don’t wait for “someday” to make time for family

Tonight I attended the pre-funeral viewing for my Uncle Buzz who passed away last week (his funeral is tomorrow). Walking in the doors of the room where the viewing was taking place and seeing so many of my aunts and uncles and cousins and siblings and my parents all gathered together inside the room was […]

What appears to be a sacrifice now will prove to be your best investment later

We live in a world where the options seem to be endless, but instead of making life easier, sometimes that make our lives more difficult. For example – when someone asks you where you want to go to lunch it isn’t just a choice of hamburgers or pizza….noooooo…there are literally hundreds of places to eat […]

What You Forget You Can Never Retell

“Preserve your memories, keep them well, what you forget you can never retell.” – Louisa May Alcot Tonight my sweet Mother came over to my home and we sat and scanned in several stacks of her Father’s (my Grandfather’s) papers he had written back while he was alive. As I sat scanning the different documents […]

Everyone Needs Some “No Phone Time Together” (Our European Adventure)

Over the last two weeks my husband and I and our son Dalton and his wife Alexis and our daughter Ashley all went together on a European Family Adventure! We planned this trip to be our first family trip of just our own family because we wanted our daughter Ashley to get to know her […]

The Parable of the Rocks

A philosophy professor stood before his class with some items on the table in front of him. When the class began, wordlessly he picked up a very large and empty mayonnaise jar and proceeded to fill it with rocks, about 2 inches in diameter. He then asked the students if the jar was full. They […]

It’s all about relationships

A dear friend of mine received an award this last week and I was able to be there to congratulate him at the event. I knew I was going to have to slip out early and that I might miss his acceptance speech so I asked him to quickly share it with me before we went […]

Do what you can FABULOUSLY

“I realized this week that I just cannot do it all. So I will choose to do what I can FABULOUSLY.” –Clinton Kelly Some weeks you have so much to do that you have to admit to yourself that you are never going to be able to get it all done…so this is me admitting […]

Never Assume..Let Them Know

Over this last few days my husband and I were able to go and visit his family up in Idaho where he is from for his family reunion. His family, like mine, is large and spread out to several states across the country so it becomes increasingly more difficult to get everyone together in one […]

Unplug and Make Time For Friends and Family

“Friendship is born at that moment when one person says to another: What! You too? I thought I was the only one.”   –C.S. Lewis Last week was a great experience. My husband and I took both our sets of parents as well as several other couples we are friends with along with our son Dalton and […]

Learn To Be Comfortable Saying ‘No’ Or You Won’t Be Available To Say ‘Yes’ When It Really Matters (Forbes Article)

“It’s only by saying “no” that you can concentrate on the things that are really important.” – Steve Jobs Saying “No” can be awkward, uncomfortable, and downright difficult. After all, it is human nature to want to be liked, and what better way to be liked then to make people happy by saying “Yes” when […]

Life is short, Live it well

Today we got word that a friend of ours, who we love and admire greatly, has been diagnosed with stage four lung cancer which has spread throughout her body. It came as such a shock to hear the news about her because we ran into her and her husband just a few weeks ago and […]

Time Management and the Parable of the Rocks

Getting back into work after being gone for the summer has made for a hectic week so far. As I started to go through all of the meeting requests and emails and calls I missed the last few months in order to prioritize them, the memory of a parable I once heard came to my mind. […]

Sometimes You Have to Choose

Sometimes in life you are faced with a choice between two things that both matter to you.  Today I had that experience.  I will give you some background that will help explain the situation:  My entire life since I was old enough to have a workers permit (which I think was 14 years old) I […]

I Try To Take One Day at a Time

“I try to take one day at a time, but lately several days have attacked me at once.” How often do we feel like that lady looks!  Way too often!!! Taking one thing at a time feels impossible most days.  Life doesn’t throw things at you one at a time with a nice little time […]

Taming the Desktop Monsters

For those of you who have ever seen my offices, you can attest that my office is often times a disaster, with stacks and stacks of papers and piles of post-its everywhere you look. Just looking at my desk in the mornings gets my stress level rising. There is no feeling of peace when your […]

It’s Not About Having Time, It’s About Making Time

Ah, yes, time.  The one thing we never seem to have enough of.  Days pass by so quickly that it feels impossible to get it all done.  And yet some days we go at a million miles an hour only to come to the end of the day and wonder what the heck we actually […]

“It’s only by saying “no” that you can concentrate on the things that are really important” – Steve Jobs

One of my biggest weaknesses in this life is being able to say “no” when someone needs me.  I struggle when I see any situation where I know I can be of help to not make time to help someone.  And I know the real reason it is hard for me is because I desperately […]