Entrepreneurs, Small Business Owners, Professionals, and Managers all have challenges of obtaining results and achieving goals across multiple dimensions and put their health and happiness at risk.

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Do you feel like some parts of your life are working great, yet others are a mess?

Consider how “busy” has become a way of life or a badge of honor.  If you lead a full life, are driving hard toward your goals then you risk burn-out or knocking the important elements of your life out of balance.  The “tire on which you roll through life” will go flat.

The good news is you can easily fix this situation.  This week’s guest, Walt Hampton, Senior Mentor for Life Leadership International, will show you how to rediscover joy in your life, discover more fun, freedom, and fulfillment, and will help you achieve success without the stress.

Walt shares the secrets of living a balanced life.  It starts with recognizing that this requires daily effort.  It’s not hard, but it’s not simple either.  Think of the habits and routines you’ve allowed yourself to fall into.  How many of them give you a sense of fulfillment?  One message from a favorite author of Walt’s, Robin Sharma, is that the way you start your day really determines you day’s outcomes and the quality of your day.

Walt starts his day at 4:30 am and spends time working on himself before he engages his clients or his “work”.  What are some of his core routines?  Outdoor exercise such as biking or running, journaling, reading, and meditating are great ways to work on yourself.

How do you know that you might need some more attention on yourself?  If you feel stressed, tired, or too busy then listen to that signal.  A life in balance is a life in flow – things are working without stress.  They are effortless.  As Walt describes from his days as a high-altitude mountain climber, if it feels hard, then you’re probably on the wrong route.  The same applies in our lives.

Listen in to the great wisdom that Walt shares in this interview and you’ll be inspired to make some conscious choices regarding how you spend your time and invest in yourself.

Be sure to leave a comment below to let us know what your thoughts are!

Have you ever felt awkward or uncomfortable networking or following-up with people you’ve recently met?   Would you like the tools, strategies and motivation to do it with confidence and gusto?

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Kathy McAfee joins us as a special guest to talk about the role of professional networking for success and goal achievement.  Kathy gives you a new perspective on networking and shows you how it can help you realize more fun, freedom and fulfillment in your career, business and life.

Now more than ever your best investment is in building your professional network.  Listen to this stimulating conversation about how you can create a robust professional and personal network that works for you.

Kathy describes that the real purpose of Networking is Relationship Building – a purposeful exercise to build mutually beneficial relationships.  That’s an interesting perspective given all the 1-way “transactional” conversations you might hear when you go to a networking event.  Or, think of all the requests on Twitter or Facebook to click here to buy now – without the relationship first.  (This is one of the biggest mistakes people make.)

Kathy lays out the basics of networking for us, and points out that many of us are happy to help others but few have the courage to ask for help.

Here are two exercises to consider doing now that will help you determine the power of your network.

1)    How many people do you know? List them all out – break this up by category if it helps you, such as work, family, college, neighbors, etc.  (Note: this is not the number of friends on Facebook or Twitter, but real people you know by name.)  Did you come up with more than 250?  If yes, you’re doing pretty well.

2)    Who are your top 50 people – the influential people in your network who are motivated to help you out?

Catch the details of this interview and discover how easy it is to become a powerful networker!

Be sure to leave a comment below to let us know what your thoughts are!

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Although it may seem that you will have to stay in your current career path forever, you’ll notice that this is not only possible to align your work and your passion but people are doing this actively right now.

This week’s guest, Tomas Michaud, has made some deliberate decisions about how to align his work with his passion for music. Hear how Tomas built around his passion as a guitarist to create a music school and develop a special teaching system.

You’ll hear him describe his passion for creativity, from being a child “mad scientist” to musician, to video editor.

His opportunity to buy the music school he at which he was employed solidified his career in music, and his creativity helped him develop the guitar instruction method he teaches. In fact, you can look for his method on video so you don’t have to travel to California to learn from him!

Listen carefully as Tomas describes that he meditates twice every day – this may be an important success secret for you to pick up on!

And, be sure to hear Tomas’ latest CD, Beauty and Fire!

Be inspired by Tomas and find ways to allow yourself to “work” at your passions, too.

Be sure to leave a comment below to let us know what your thoughts are!

High Intention, Low Attachment.

This is an easy concept to grasp – until you’re in a situation where nothing seems to be working.  Then, it’s not so easy at all – until you actually have a couple successes using this principle.  Let me show you what I mean.

The basic idea is to set your goals and go after them with “high intention”.  This means that you have clarity what you want, you visualize the goals as already complete, you program your subconscious mind to work toward helping find creative ways to achieve the goals using what’s called affirmations and positive self-talk.  When you do all this you put out the intent to the universe that you will successfully achieve this goal.

So far, so good, right?

Low attachment means to relax and let resources line up to help you.  If you’re open and relaxed, then it’s easy to recognize opportunities, even the most subtle signals, as they present themselves to you.  This is also known as the idea of “letting go”.

To see how this works, let’s review the opposite.  Imagine a situation when you’re intense about your goals to the point that they are beginning to stress you out.  You obsess, staying up late thinking about that which you want.  Because you’re tired and stressed out, things seem to spiral in the wrong direction and get worse, not better.   (Raise your hand if this has ever happened to you.)

One example of this might be the girl (or guy) in her late 20s who is single and sees all her friends getting married.  She desperately decides she needs to meet Mr. Right, but can’t land a lasting relationship.  Contrast this with the time when she’s completely at peace with her independence and confident in her being whom she is, and then happens to meet the man of her dreams.  Perhaps you’ve heard someone’s story that found their spouse when they were not looking for a relationship?

To illustrate further, here’s my recent situation.  In my business, I have service lines where I have revenue in exchange for my actual time, and I have those service lines that are products and services that will yield sizable future revenue.  In the recent past, I had focused on these future business lines (including a book I’m writing) and allowed my working capital to drop below comfortable levels.  I was OK with this because I had a project lined up that would replenish my bank account that was starting shortly.

Well, that project was delayed, followed by reduction in scope, and finally the client having internal issues and postponing indefinitely.  I suddenly found that the income I had planned was no longer going to arrive on time to keep me comfortable.  My immediate reaction?  PANIC!  Honestly, it was only for about 24 hours, but during that time I had been thrown into the pit of despair (I think that was in a movie) and suddenly I wasn’t sure how I would pay the next set of bills.

The next morning I decided that the “how” didn’t matter (a key principle of high intention and low attachment), only that I had the clear intent to replace the income with a new client.  I was genuinely relaxed about this and simply “let go”.  As I completed a work out and then my daily meditation (which cleared my mind and relaxed me), I visualized the perfect client situation and then thought of a few people in my network to send emails to, and let them know that I had space on my calendar free up.

The next morning, I had in my email a request looking for my help on a multiple month assignment that would begin immediately.  Not that’s more like it!

What happened?  By letting go and not being so attached to “how” I would achieve this, I had changed my vibrational state to align with that which I was trying to create, which then allowed it to show up.  In the panic state I was previously in, there was no way that I would have attracted anything other than more reason to panic.

Now this takes practice, patience, and coaching (I have had all three of these).  It also helps to trust that it works, and to journal about these stories when they do occur.  I share my personal story because I want to demonstrate that even though we all go through these vicissitudes, there is a way out, even if the way is not clear to us at that time.

Practice high intention, then let go of needing to know exactly how your intent will be realized, and take the actions that seem right to you.  And as you have wins, please write to tell me about them.

To your highest success,

Pete Winiarski

Tiffany Wright is a walking encyclopedia about raising capital for your small business (or, large business – the principles are the same).  Tiffany is the author of Solving the Capital Equation: Financing Solutions for Small Businesses.  This book came from answering her clients’ questions over the past few years, so you know it is full of info that you want to know.

If you’re a small business owner or entrepreneur then this interview is a must!  Have you ever wondered if you had enough working capital to cover your expenses for the next few months?  What about how you will fund that really great project that will certainly bring you loads of revenue?  Is there financing out there for you?  What are your options?  Can you easily get it?

Listen to the replay of this interview if you need to know these answers! 
[audio:http://www.i-saga.net/audio/tiffanywright9556646761147-001.mp3]

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To download the audio to your computer, simply right click on the link and either “save target as” or “save link as,” and save the file to a folder on your computer.

Which makes you wonder a few things, such as: “What did the old foot smell like?”  “New foot – just where can I get one of those?”  and “OK, is that a metaphor, or are we really talking about a new foot?”

As Rich explains, yes, he does have a new foot to replace one that just wasn’t working despite years of trying to make the best of it.  (Rich described it as his “Titanium Upgrade”, and I pictured the movie “Robots” that my kids like to watch.)  He also uses this as a metaphor in his public speeches because often, we are afraid to let go of status quo despite how good things will be once we decide to move on.  While the status quo might be “acceptable”, it often gets in the way of what might be “exceptional”.

Rich Hopkins had tons of interesting content during this interview, including his success story (which included the real truth about his foot), ideas for moving from Acceptable to Exceptional (and why this is important), plus – some great insights from his success as a speaker – he continues to make the Nationals in the Toastmasters competitions.

Find out more about Rich at www.i-saga.net

[audio:http://www.i-saga.net/audio/richhopkins1923646704708-001.mp3]

Download Audio Here

To download the audio to your computer, simply right click on the link and either “save target as” or “save link as,” and save the file to a folder on your computer.

While still young, i-saga is moving from its early phases to become more mature.  Much like a young adult, this organization has a lot of energy and excitement, but also tons of room to grow to reach its full potential.

As I’ve learned (and am still learning) in all areas of my life, it’s important to follow a philosophy of “Progress, not Perfection”.  The Institute of Success and Goal Achievement has followed this well, and as a result has been building a great resource for the rapidly growing community.  I love the quote from Winston Churchill, “Waiting for perfection breeds paralysis”.  Thank goodness I managed to “just start”, despite knowing that i-saga was far from perfect in its early days.

When I did start the Institute of Success and Goal Achievement, it had what I would consider a sub-par website and insufficient content.  I had a vision of where I was going but didn’t have everything lined up perfectly how I wanted them.  I could have delayed … and delayed … and delayed until everything was perfect before scheduling that first guest interview, but I knew in my gut and in my heart that it was time to stop making excuses and get i-saga launched even if all the support wasn’t where I wanted it.

I did exactly that – I just started, knowing that things would begin to fall into place.  I modified the guest interview format into one that I now know from tons of feedback adds value for the audience.  I changed the look of the website from bare bones to a little more than bare bones, to finally doing a complete site redesign that is much closer to my original vision.  Progress, not perfection, and keep building as you get new ideas, new feedback, or new inspiration.

So, it was recently out with the old i-saga site, and in with the new.  The improved site is one that allows you (the i-saga community) a place to visit frequently, as there is new content and updates here regularly.  You can get information about the guest interviews and special links on the calendar page, you can get access to the replays (coming soon!), there are some terrific proven success resources to help accelerate your progress toward your goals, and of course the blog page that is meant to give you a way to interact regularly with me and with the community.

I hope you’re as excited as I am about all these new features, and encourage you to save www.i-saga.net as a favorite and add it as one of your home pages (easy to do with the newer versions of explorer) – you’ll want to come back for a glance at the calendar, blog, and other sections at least weekly.

Thank you for being part of the Institute of Success and Goal Achievement, and for helping make www.i-saga.net the premier success resource on the web.

Note:  I want to give special recognition to i-saga guest Edith Sieg for a great discussion we recently had about “Progress, not Perfection”, and for pointing out that I have made great strides with i-saga in such a short period of time because I was willing to let go of perfection.  Thank you!