Entrepreneurship Living Intentionally Personal Growth

$170 worth of creativity

January 16, 2014

unnamed-1My love will be back in a few minutes with $170 extra in his pocket. He spent the morning mystery shopping and bam, we have $170 that we didn’t have a few hours ago!

We have done this quick rounding up of money many times in the past through many different avenues. We’ve sold hundreds of dollars worth of stuff on Craigslist and eBay, and made thousands through mystery shopping, window washing, cleaning, and childcare. And the list goes on.

And now, I’m about to embark on the adventure of selling a book I have been working on for the past year. It takes advantage of my background in orthodontics.

When you’re out there trying things like this, something wonderfully creative comes over you. You start thinking in different ways because you can no longer just show up for a paycheck. You start to figure out how to make the money to get the things you need and want.

I love the entrepreneurial lifestyle for exactly this reason!

You want a raise next week? Sure, then let’s figure out a way to increase your income before then. You want to be making double what you are making now? Sure, then let’s figure out a way to get there, to make it happen.

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Living Intentionally Personal Growth

Just take the next step and trust the process

January 13, 2014

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Claudia and I are in the process of going through Michael Hyatt’s Best Year Ever goal-setting program. (Great program, by the way!)

One of the things Michael talked about in the program was, rather than having an elaborate strategic plan for exactly how we’re going to accomplish our goals and how every detail will play out along the way, we just need to take the next step and trust the process as it unfolds.

I have to tell you, this was a great reminder (especially to me as a more strategic, analytical thinker). It means I don’t have to have it all figured out ahead of time.

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Living Intentionally Personal Growth

Seth Godin’s post and ruined afternoon plans

January 9, 2014

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Recently Seth Godin wrote a short post that made me entirely uncomfortable with the perfectly useless and lazy afternoon I had planned. It irritated me because I wanted to ignore the things that I knew were important (the things that would make my day valuable, but I was too scared to start) and watch a movie on Netflix. But now, I couldn’t.

It’s easier to ignore life. And it feels pretty comfortable to live in a place where you don’t make a difference. No feathers are ruffled and you don’t have to decide to stand up or stand out.

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Living Intentionally Personal Growth

Year in review for 2013 [Picture Version]

January 6, 2014

Here we are in 2014 already. It’s great to look back over the past year and review all that has taken place. It’s been a quite a ride. We had some unexpected and challenging twists and turns along the way!

But looking back was a great reminder that we have made progress towards the goals we put in place at the beginning of the year.

We’ve also found the perspective of looking back is a great foundation for setting goals and planning for the year ahead.

Our 2013 year in review:

We did a lot of simplifying and sold our house, moving from Downingtown, Pennsylvania to Embreeville, Pennsylvania. Things went really well thanks to plenty of great help!

moving

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Living Intentionally Personal Growth

When change is hard-nosed and ornery

January 2, 2014

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When change is mentioned, the hair on most people’s backs starts to stand up, especially when it comes to personal change. Sure, change a hairstyle, change a clothing style, even change a job – but change a person (and I mean true lasting change), does it really happen?

Well, I for one am here to say, yes! It does. I know this because change has broken upon my life in so many crashing waves that I will never again be the same.

But, that said, I have also struggled with what I will call “hard-nosed, ornery change.” This might be an area that we try to change but for some reason or another, change keeps evading us.

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Living Intentionally Personal Growth

3 things I’m doing to make 2014 great

December 30, 2013
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Jude’s first snowman

Claudia and I love planning and setting goals this time of year. Together, we take a fresh look at what we’re doing and the direction we want to go. 2013 certainly has definitely had its ups and downs for us so we’re excited about a fresh start.

Some of the ups have been moving into our new place, pregnancy with our second child, and Claudia finishing a big book project!

Some the downs have been the sale of our house dragging on for 12+ months, and one of our major plans for bringing in income falling through after Claudia quit her job over the summer.

We are learning how to let success and failure teach us valuable life lessons, that’s for sure!

Overall though, in everything we do, we try to be purposeful. Here are three things we’re doing this time of the year to be purposeful in 2014. You can do them too.

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Living Intentionally Personal Growth

We’re having another baby!

December 23, 2013

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Claudia and I are excited to announce that we’re expecting our second child in May! We couldn’t be more thrilled and feel like it’s an enormous gift and blessing.

After we got married, we waited 7 years to start a family. Looking back, that seems like a long time, and if we had to do it over, we wouldn’t have waited that long. But we weren’t being very purposeful with our lives back then and the years just passed on by.

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Living Intentionally Personal Growth

Here’s a question for you…

December 19, 2013

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During your day, do you focus more on what you want to happen, or what you don’t want to happen? The difference can be very slight, but extremely powerful.

For instance, do you focus on wanting to be on time for work, or not wanting to be late? Speaking kindly to your children, or not wanting to speak unkindly? Becoming more organized, or not wanting to be continually disorganized? Most of us fall into the latter category. We focus on what we do not want to happen.

The sad part however is this: whatever we focus on, increases.

If we focus on not wanting to be late, we are more likely to be late. If we focus on not wanting to yell at our children, we are more likely to yell, and so on.

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Entrepreneurship Personal Growth

I couldn’t please everyone

December 16, 2013

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This past weekend we were supposed to have our winter concert for our music school. We were expecting about 150 people and had been working towards it for months.

There were a lot of moving parts to the event – rent the facility, find sponsors, print the program booklets, coordinate the refreshments, communicate with all the students and families, and so on. But, I love it. I enjoy thinking about what would make an event like this successful and coordinating all the details.

Everything was going fine until snow showed up in the forecast for the day it was scheduled. I knew we may need to cancel it due to slippery roads.

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Personal Growth

On direction, confidence, mighty things… and feeling blah

December 12, 2013

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Where are you going?

Good question. I’ve been thinking about it a lot myself recently.

Last year, we set our goals for the year and spent the first 6 months working hard towards them.

Then we hit a major bump financially and all other things needed to be set aside just to make sure we could put food on the table each month.

There are seasons of life, I realize where this needs to happen, where we set all other things aside and just work hard to get through. But the key word here is season (and the shorter, the better).

Why?

When I recently set aside all the goals I was working toward, I forgot where I was going. I felt a spark inside of me go dim. When I was working towards something, it gave me energy, excitement, and confidence. When I lost sight of where I was going, I just felt blah.

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