How Changing One Word Can Create Success

Most recently, I gave a speech to the Los Angeles chapter of the National Association of Professional Women…a group of incredibly professional women who own their own businesses and doing wonderful things in the world.

Since I kicked off the New Year, guess what they wanted to me to speak on? If you guessed New Year’s Resolutions, then you are correct! We all have made these resolutions over the years. Our resolutions were created by Jan 1 and usually broken by Jan. 15th. Why is that? What makes us so focused on creating new goals that are life-serving, such as losing weight, creating more personal time, changing careers…and the list goes on. These are all lovely resolutions or goals. So, what happens within those two weeks….or six weeks if you have a whole lot of willpower?

I’d like to share a few points from the speech I shared last week and a few that I didn’t…

The words we choose,

I can’t point out how important…pivotal…vital (you get the jist here) it is as to the words we choose. Just as everything else, words have an energy to them. Is it any wonder that the title of my speech was “The Secret Energy of Time.” In fact, I have a book and a PBS Special coming out (G-d willing) this year on this topic. I believe our relationship to the energy of time (and the flip side of the coin to time is money) comes from our motivations.

What are our motivations?

Our motivations are what really drives us into making the choices and therefore, the actions that result. These motivations are usually stored where we can’t “see” them …in the subconscious. And, unless we “see” them and bring them into being, we move forward…or not….on our resolutions. Hence, the biggest reason resolutions don’t work for any sustainable time…they are usually based on our willpower rather than our motivations.

Motivational Lifestyle:

I wrote a book talking about our motivations around time called, Time Management Secrets for Working Women and created three types of women centered around their motivations, ie. The Homemaker, The Transitional Woman and The Achieving Women…all of them good and awesome and, choices we make that are connected with our “motivational lifestyle.”

So, if our choices and actions are truly motivated by what is going on in the subconsious, how do we move forward in our goals even when we may not know our true motivations? Great question and I have two suggestions. I actually have many more, but for our time together now, I will share two of them.

Intentions –

By changing only one word… resolution to intention, you can probably feel how differently the energy comes across for you. We tend to have too many negative emotions around resolutions…for me they have the same negative energy as “not;” not completing something, not going through with an idea or action.

When we can change the word to Intention, we then have a direction and the energy is not has critical or parental in my mind. Plus, a resolution implies it is printed in stone…an intention implies direction and I can go with the flow more. I have found that when I feel that I am in the flow rather than a deadline for example, my productivity goes sky high.

Ask the question –

At the end of each day I ask the question…which is related to my Intention for the day or for the week, month or year,”How could I have made today run more smoothly? Another great question might be: “What could I have done today that would have been more life-serving choices for me (centered around your Intention… formerly your resolution) – such as eating choices, time choices, keeping strong boundaries, etc.