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Laws for Success #9 and #10

 

#9 Always Take The Higher Ground

There are always two paths through any situation. You can take the “higher ground” or the “lower” one. The higher ground requires you to have integrity, kindness and commitment, while the lower one requires only that you show up. You don’t even have to participate. Which is your preference/ Mine is the first one. It has served me well and I believe it will serve you as well.

Who are you as a person? Do you have integrity? Are you honest and trustworthy? Do you ever give of yourself for no reason and no payoff other than you believe in a cause and want to see it succeed? Just look at all the philanthropy in the world. How does it make you feel when you see someone like Mother Theresa, Ghandi, or your church pastor, even — people working selflessly for the betterment of others? It brings me to tears. I’m not sure whethe it’s sadness because I can’t do what others are doing or because I don’t.

 

It’s very simple to join in the haranguing and complaining that the majority of people indulge in, but when you choose not to do so, your choice puts you on the higher pathway to success. Why waste time with negativity? There’s a really great movement going on right now, started by Will Bowen, who wrote the book, A Complaint Free World. Here’s what he says:

Your thoughts create your world and your words indicate your thoughts. When you eliminate complaining from your life you will enjoy happier relationships, better health and greater prosperity. This simple program helps you set a trap for your own negativity and redirect your mind towards a more positive and rewarding life.

A Complaint Free World, inc. is a non-profit organization which provides Complaint Free purple bracelets and other materials to help people affect positive change in their lives. For more information on the Worldwide Complaint Free movement visit our website at: www.AComplaintFreeWorld.org

#10 Never Take Your Biggest Asset (YOU) For Granted

How do you feel? Are you tired? Feeling depressed? Or are you happy, full of energy and life, ready to go out there and kick some butt? Are you so truly excited to be alive that you bounce out of bed every morning, ready to go out and take on the world?

What do you do for yourself each day? What are your company benefits? (And don’t say what company benefits, I AM the company).

Without you, will your business run? Without you there, does it come to a screeching halt? You need to take care of yourself and value yourself as the company’s spearhead and central-most valuable asset.

It’s a very fine line to walk. You need to be there for your business and you need your business to be there for you. And yet, you have to take the time for yourself to recharge your batteries so you CAN be the dynamo you want to be. Sometimes it’s just lunch at your favorite restaurant or maybe it’s a 3-day getaway with the family. Whatever it takes, you owe it to yourself to do it. You’ve made a commitment to your business; make the commitment to yourself.

There has to be balance in your life.

You can’t do one thing and expect a good time. All work and no play and all that. I have something I call a Life Wheel that I use in my workshops. I got this from Dan McBride. The idea is to have all the segments equally balanced. But if your Life Wheel looks more like a lug nut than a circle, it’s time to check yourself.

 

Life Balance Wheel

 

 

 

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It’s Here! It’s Here! Biz Expert Webinars Launches Monday

Finally, we’re ready to rock and roll! Check out the Press Release that I just sent out! This has been a real labor of love and everyone involved is totally excited!

Business Trainer DeBorah Beatty Is One of Global 100!

 

April 16, 2008, Walla Walla, WA – Local Business Trainer, DeBorah Beatty has recently finalized her joint venture with Business Expert Webinars going live on Monday, April 21, 2008. Always on the technology cutting edge since moving to Walla Walla in 2001 from Silicon Valley in California, DeBorah says this is a logical step for her business. “Geographic boundaries no long apply in so many areas.” she states, . “If I can be more effective through webinars, shame on me if I miss out on this opportunity.”

 

Business Expert Webinars (BEW), an international community of business experts, comprising best-selling authors, award-winning speakers, and business gurus, announced its launch today with more than 100 speakers and 700 live business education webinars that begin airing in May 2008.

 

We are using webinar technology to deliver business eLearning,” said Lee B. Salz, President and CEO of Business Expert Webinars. Topics include all genres of business –sales, networking, public relations, marketing, real estate, human resources, entrepreneurship, management and many others. Visitors interested in participating can view the extensive schedule and sign up for webinars at BusinessExpertWebinars.com. Each webinar is taught by a live presenter on the phone and is supported by a presentation delivered over the Internet.

 

People are frustrated with the free webinar offerings where the price of admission is a sales and marketing pitch. Either the entire webinar is an infomercial or the content is delivered at a high-level in the session and concludes with, ‘if you really want to know how to do this, buy my CD, DVD, book, etc.’ Thus, they aren’t really free,” said Salz.

 

Business expert and author of “Selling to Big Companies,” Jill Konrath, said, “What attracted me to deliver content with Business Expert Webinars was that the experts pick very specific topics and go deep into the subject matter. This is strictly business education. Participants come away from BEW webinars with actionable information they can implement immediately. It is a great way for adults to learn valuable information inexpensively, without leaving the office.”

About Business Expert Webinars

Business Expert Webinars is an international community of business experts that comprises best-selling authors, award-winning speakers, and business gurus. For more information, visit BusinessExpertWebinars.com.

 

 

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Laws for Success #7 & #8

#7 Failure Is Only A Word

What do you think failure is? Is it merely a bump in the road on the way to your success or is it a wall stopping you cold?

 

I’ve been seriously rethinking my views on just what failure is and is not. Just recently I realized that I am now and continue to be an amazing failure!

 

I am a failure at being what other people think I should be.

I am a failure at thinking the way other people think I should think.

I am a failure at looking the way other people think I should look.

And I couldn’t be happier.

 

Not being what other people think I should be has given me the freedom to explore my life and my opportunitites in different, innovative ways.

 

Not thinking the way other people think I should think has given me the freedom to explore self-education, alternative education and to have my education actually serve my needs.

 

Not looking the way other people think I should look as given me permission to be a unique individual with my own style and my own likes and dislikes.

 

Most of the dictionaries and 99% of society think of failure as a bad thing. I don’t happen to share their opinion. How could you possibly succeed if you don’t know how to fail? How would you recognize success, then? Look at Thomas Edison - he failed 10,000 times to make a light bulb. When asked how he felt about so many failures, he said “I have not failed, I have simply found 10,000 ways not to make a light bulb.”.

 

Go try something you’ve never done before. Give yourself permission to fail. That way, you get a lot more joy when you succeed! After all, if you’ve never done it before, you have nothing to compare it to and you decide whether you’ve failed at all! Failure is all in YOUR mind. How many people do you know that blow off compliments saying that they could have done better and then list excuses? Especially when they’ve done something you are aching to just achieve a 10th of? It’s all relative and it’s all so very personal.

 

I give you permission (if you need it) to go try something new this next week. Something you’ve never done before and know nothing about. Go ahead, have fun.

 

Celebrate Failure

 

 

 

#8 Money Is A Tool; Not An End Result

 

If you’re in business just for the money, I wish you good luck. How often have you met entrepreneurs who are just after the almighty dollar? When you have business dealings with those folks, are they pleasant? Do you feel served? Do you even remotely feel as if they are interested in why you’re doing business with them? Or is it just how you’re going to pay for what you need? I try to remember this in my dealings with people when money is tight and I “have” to make a certain amount to pay a bill or something. I have often noticed that when I set up my business with the mental thought that I need a certain amount from a show or a client, I never make it. When I honestly don’t give a flying aerobic romantic maneuver on a rotating pastry, I do fine.

 

Customers can smell it on you. The need, the stress. The desperation to make a buck. This is not the way you want to succeed.

 

It’s what you do with the money you make that’s important. What difference you can make in the world with it. Look at Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Donald Trump. Al Gore. They all made/make a lot of money, but once their living condition requirements are met, they begin looking at what they can do to improve those of others.

 

Money is energy. It’s a tool to use to leave a legacy. What will yours be?

Work well, play well, be well

db

(c) 2008 DeBorah Beatty

Want To Use This Article in Your Ezine or Website? You have my permission, as long as you include this complete notice with it: “DeBorah Beatty publishes innovative tips and resource information in her blog, Opportunity’s Knocking , and is a successful speaker, meeting facilitator, trainer and business coach. If you’re ready to move to the next level, check out her website, DEBORAHBEATTY.COM “

 

 

 

 

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The Power of Stubborness

I remember when I was younger, my father used to tell me that I was willful, stubborn and determined. Of course, in those days, that was a bad thing since I was 10 and the person I was butting heads with was him!

Nowadays, I find that this same stubbornness serves me well. Once I set a goal, I hold onto it with all the tenacity of a pitbull. I guess that’s why I haven’t given up when things don’t go my way starting up my latest venture.

As an entrepreneur, it’s important to be resourceful, canny and always on the prowl for new opportunities. We all know that. We know to do our homework, learn from our mentors and our customers and grow our businesses, right? The most important thing that all the business books leave out, at least to my opinion, is that a healthy dose of stubbornness is also required to make a successful entrepreneur.

You have to be able to visualize your dream and hang on to it. No matter what seems to be going on around you to stop you in your dream realization, you have to be strong enough and committed enough to hear the naysayers and still keep going.

Of course, that being said, a good dose of common sense is also de rigueur. I spend a lot of time listening to experts in our field and the thing I hear again and again is that you have to value your business. By that they mean, if Joe Blow walked up to you today and asked you how much you want for your business and got out their checkbook, what would you say? Could you give them a figure? And most important, could your business run without you or are you your business?

What do you say? Let me hear from you.

Work well, play well, be well

db

(c) 2008 DeBorah Beatty

Want To Use This Article in Your Ezine or Website? You have my permission, as long as you include this complete notice with it: “DeBorah Beatty publishes innovative tips and resource information in her blog, Opportunity’s Knocking , and is a successful speaker, meeting facilitator, trainer and business coach. If you’re ready to move to the next level, check out her website, DEBORAHBEATTY.COM “

 

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Laws of Success 5 & 6

#5 Opportunity’s Knocking, Open the Door

Opportunity is pervasive, ubiquitous and omnipresent; that is, it surrounds us like the air we breathe. Every second of every day we have a choice to ignore it or grab it and hold on. My favorite image is that of a baseball player standing at bat. There’s a catcher crouching at the ready behind him. If the batter missed the pitch, the catcher will grab it and then they get to decide whether it’s a Home Run ball or not!

Play Ball!

Another way of thinking about this might be if you’ve ever had a knock at the door when your family’s home. You open the door and everyone is crowded around behind you to see who it is.

Whatever the image you can conjure up, just always remember…if you don’t grab the opportunities that come your way, someone else definitely will.

#6 Ask, ask, ASK!

If you never ask for what you want, how are you possible going to get it? What’s the worst thing that can happen to you if you do? Someone will say no and you find another way to go for it. But just think about this, what if you are in a situation, working your living you-know-what off, sweating bullets and getting nowhere. Think about the frustration involved. What if, you could have delegated the task to someone else, asked for the information you needed instead of having to go find it somewhere, or gotten the money you needed to keep going?

So many times, it really is that simple. People really do like to say yes. It makes ‘em feel good. Human beings are wired to want to help. Sometimes the wires have gotten disconnected, but mostly, they’re in place. So next time you feel like you have to reinvent the wheel to do something, look around. There may be someone who has already done it who can assist you so that the work isn’t quite so hard.

Work well, play well, be well

db

(c) 2008 DeBorah Beatty

Want To Use This Article in Your Ezine or Website? You have my permission, as long as you include this complete notice with it: “DeBorah Beatty publishes innovative tips and resource information in her blog, Opportunity’s Knocking , and is a successful speaker, meeting facilitator, trainer and business coach. If you’re ready to move to the next level, check out her website, DEBORAHBEATTY.COM “

 

 

 

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Laws of Success - #3 and 4

Ok, these are the two that are sad but true.

#3 - Never hire friends  or the end of a beautiful relationship.

I’ve seen it happen many times, your friends want to help, you want their help.  They work cheap and you can’t think of anything nicer than to have a friend or partner to work with.  Um, WRONG. What happends in this situation is that your friends may not be able to perform the tasks asked of them at the level you need them to.  Not their fault, really, you hired them because they were your friends and they offered to help out.  They had no experience doing what you needed them to do, but it was okay because they were affordable. 

Here’s the scenario - You come up with the next Great Idea and tell your friends about it.  You’re undercapitalized (surprise surprise) so your friends - who believe in your and want to support you - offer to help you out by working for almost no money till you get on your feet.  The first crunchy deadline comes up. Your friends don’t get the same sense of urgency you do, so 12 hours before the drop dead time, the task still is not done.  You can’t really come down hard on the non-compliant “employees” the way you should - they’re your friends. They feel you’re being unreasonable and pushy so then there’s resentment on both sides that simmers and festers until it blows up and nobody likes anybody any more. 

No, keep your friends and your employees separate.  You’ll be much happier.  Then you can state your requirements, your goals and, face it, your demands to your employees.

The same goes for family and that brings me to

Law #4 - Family can help out, but they make lousy employees.

 See the above paragraph. 

Now I know that puts you in a tough spot.  You don’t have enough money to pay employees most of the time when you’re starting out and you need help to deliver a presence in the marketplace.

Sort of brings me back to a joke I read when I was younger - “What does A.F.L.-C.I.O. mean?” Adults Feel Lazy - Call Idle Offspring. (I know, I know, it really means American Federation of Labor - Congress of Industrial Organizations.  It’s must more fun the other way.)

 I recommend that you not use your kids.  If you have siblings or cousins, short-term, okay, but hire a stranger as soon as possible.  Until next time…..

Work well, play well, be well

db

(c) 2008 DeBorah Beatty

Want To Use This Article in Your Ezine or Website? You have my permission, as long as you include this complete notice with it: “DeBorah Beatty publishes innovative tips and resource information in her blog, Opportunity’s Knocking , and is a successful speaker, meeting facilitator, trainer and business coach. If you’re ready to move to the next level, check out her website, DEBORAHBEATTY.COM “

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Please bear with me… I’m moving my site

to another host.  It may be down for a bit, but I believe the inconvenience will be overshadowed by the neat and nifties!  - Well I was - back to square one.  I appreciate your patience.

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Laws of Success - #1 and #2

This is a series of what I have come to call the Laws of Success. There are several and I will discuss each one at length.

#1: YOU DON’T HAVE TO BE THE BEST, YOU CAN HIRE THE BEST.

You may be quite competent in doing everything, but when everything needs to be done, how effective are you at any one thing?

I just want to take a minute and welcome my new Virtual Assistant, Shannon Abbott! Come on now, everybody say hi.

So, why do I need a Virtual Assistant with all my years of secretarial experience (30+)? I no longer have time or desire, frankly, to do all the daily admin tasks it takes to run a business competently. Shannon is competent, she understands what I want, why I want it and by when and I can focus on writing blogs, meeting people and growing my business. Her rates are great. She offers an hourly as well as retainer rates and is just what the doctor ordered.

For anyone else who might like to contact her for your own needs, her website is:

www.thevirtualvantage.com.

I attended a great workshop yesterday on branding and marketing. One of the things they also mented was focusing on what’s important. Administrative tasks are critical, they have to be done, but they can be time consuming in the beginning while you are getting systems set up.

#2 - DO ONE THING AND DO IT BETTER THAN ANYONE ELSE!

This law is not meant to be taked literally. You can probably handle a couple of things, but the point is clear. When you’re spread out so very thing trying to do everything yourself, something somewhere is going to suffer. You need to give all your energy and focus to that which you do best or which you want to do most. For me, it’s making a difference in people’s lives, assisting them in making their dreams happen. I’ve been given a gift I’ve only recently come to recognize. If you tell me your dreams, I can figure out a way to make them happen. It may not be right away or in the fashion you think, but they will happen.

Work well, play well, be well

db

(c) 2008 DeBorah Beatty

Want To Use This Article in Your Ezine or Website? You have my permission, as long as you include this complete notice with it: “DeBorah Beatty publishes innovative tips and resource information in her blog, Opportunity’s Knocking , and is a successful speaker, meeting facilitator, trainer and business coach. If you’re ready to move to the next level, check out her website, DEBORAHBEATTY.COM “

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Time for me to stop foolin’ around!

SPECIAL LIMITED TIME OFFER!

Although I’ve been offering the Living in Left Field Program for a while as an onsite workshop, I’ll be formally launching it as a home-study package in a couple of months. I’m offering a few special, supermotivated people the opportunity to sign up now at a drastically reduced rate! At this price, This special group of 10 people will be my charter members,

Sign up now for only $595 * Save $900!

What you will receive:

Weekly Focus Group Telecall for 3 months - network, brainstorm, share your dreams
Workbook
Private access to Members Only Forum
Priority Access to DeBorah Beatty

Click here and sign up now.

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Happy New 2008! Hindsight: Looking Forward

You know how “they” always say “hindsight is 20/20”, meaning that it’s easier to see the problems and pitfalls of your choices after they’re over? Well, sometimes we spend a little too much time looking backwards at the choices we’ve made and the things we’ve done and we forget to look at the opportunities we have right now and in the near future; that or we see the current situations through the filters of our past.

With all the talk about the Secret and the Law of Attraction, it occurred to me that a whole lot of people are looking back at their lives so far and making their lists and affirmations about corrections to what they see as problems instead of creating opportunities for new lives and new experiences.

We don’t want to attract more baggage from our past. Let me explain.

Ever notice that when you pack a bag for a trip, things never repack as neatly or compactly once you’ve started going through the contents? You could use this analogy for your memories and experiences, too. Once you begin rummaging around in the memory pile, things don’t fit back neatly and you find errant thoughts and memories creeping into your daily lives like a staticky white sock that attached itself to the back of your good grey wool suit. And they don’t match any better, either! Your past is just that, p-a-s-s-e-d. It’s all over and done with, things happened and you cannot un-happen them. No matter how much effort and perspiration we put into it, we can’t change things that happened 2 seconds ago yet we spend countless hours in contemplation, personal debriefings, should’ing all over our best selves and wishing we’d done something different at the time.

Well, I’m sorry to tell you this, but you didn’t and that’s that. You made the best choice possible at the time based on the information, experiences, gut instincts and situation you were in. There’s no backtracking for a do-over. Yet we spend so much time trying to relive experiences so we can do better next time. It’s not foresight or hindsight we need. We need sight, plain and simple. We need to see what is right in front of us.

I’m going to let you in on a little secret…. You can remember the experiences — I’m not trying to say let’s forget everything that has happened to us– but we don’t need to relive these things over and over. Once is enough to make an impression.

Sidney Madwed says… “How many of your judgments, when you made them, were you perfectly sure they were correct, would you want to change now with the benefit of 20/20 hindsight? Since every judgment is only an opinion based on the limited information at hand, filtered through one’s personal value system, it might be safe to assume no two people will judge anything exactly the same. Even concepts of right and wrong, good or bad, good or bad morals and ethics are only opinions, for what may be good in one case may be a disaster in another. ”

You may have heard this before, but you know, human beings are hard wired to be meaning making machines. We just HAVE to ascribe a meaning to everything that happens. We can’t help ourselves. I’ve heard some people say the windstorm last week was a punishment for the world’s evil ways, some blame it on global warming. Okay, that’s fine, but what happened was we experienced a very strong wind storm. Period.

When we’re faced with an opportunity,whether it’s favorable or not it’s still an opportunity, do we look at it through all the filters of what has gone before, or look at it for what it is? Here’s an example. I may have mentioned to some of you about my particular story. My mother and I never really had the sort of relationship I would call fully realized. It was more like something that had to be endured for the both of us. She was emotionally abusive and incredibly non-supportive of me and my father and when she came along, my daughter as well. But, she was my mother, she got me here through a lot of pain and risk and I felt I at least owed her my respect and thanks. Like many survivors of abusive childhoods, I was determined not to make the same mistakes with my own child and worked very hard to raise her with as much love and support as I could.

My daughter, Siannan and I were okay till she hit puberty then things got rough. I tried to be understanding, but she tested me to my limits and sometimes I got cranky. We developed the same kind of rift I had with my mother and I was heartbroken.

She chose to live with my mother for her early college years, I guess she thought things would be better there, and I stayed where I was. She was now an adult and I felt she needed her freedom (something I was never given, but that’s another story). Anyway, one day the phone rang and it was my mother asking if I could come and see her. I almost fell over. That sort of thing didn’t happen, but it was the first time she’d asked anything of me since my father died so I flew at the chance to perhaps mend this mess that we had.

You see, she had developed cancer and needed a hip replacement and wanted my help. Of course I would help. I could work on healing the mess with my daughter, too! Mother and Siannan were the only two blood relatives I had left in the world, and I was needing family. I moved into my mother’s house and took care of her for the last 6 months of her life. My daughter and I rediscovered each other as adults and I thought we built a pretty good relationship. All was going well until Mother passed away.

That’s when things hit the fan. My daughter couldn’t deal with the loss and disappeared, taking off to find solace with her own friends. Since I was disinherited for some reason and now a lone intruder, I was evicted from the premises with only those things I could prove I owned and wound up living on the streets of Santa Clara for 3 weeks until a shelter opened up and I could finally get a job and a car and get my feet underneath me.

After 3 weeks of waiting for a cot, I’d had enough and I set about creating someone who would trust me enough to let me start over in a safe environment. I just knew something would come my way. I was alive and my life was ahead of me.

I was sitting on my favorite bench in Sunnyvale enjoying the sunshine when a sweet little Filipino lady sat down next to me and struck up a conversation. When I told her my situation, she insisted I come home with her for a meal. She let me shower and gave me clothes to change into, set out a feast fit for a queen and then told me she wanted me to take her spare room until I could find something. I thank God every day for my angel, Rosario. She made it easy to start over.

She fixed me breakfast each morning and gave me bus fare to go to the employment office. I found temporary work almost immediately and ran home to tell her I would soon be paying rent. She called her three daughters who came over with clothes so I could go to my first day.

The rest, as they say, was history. Now I could have wallowed in self-pity (which I did, I admit - it didn’t do anything to get me out of the situation I was in), gotten angry, bitter, cynical or any other way of being, feeling put upon and sorry for myself. I could have looked at the situation as an insurmountable barrier and just given up, thinking I was a terrible person for my own family to have thrown me away like that. I didn’t.

I’d had a huge revelation. I was no longer anyone’s daughter, no longer anyone’s mother. The roles that had defined my life had suddenly dropped away and I had a very rare opportunity to totally change my life as well as my view of the world and everything in it. I knew I had to begin again. I had to sit down and figure out just what I wanted my new life to be. I could have struggled to find the meaning in what had happened to me. My mother hated me, my daughter didn’t trust me, I was a bad person, etc. I choose instead to have all the events that happen mean that my mother knew deep down that I would be all right, that I’d land on my feet and come out the other side; that she had faith in my strength and my common sense after all, and that my daughter was the one that needed the help and the watching over so she set up the trust fund for her instead.

I remember these things, but the emotional charge has gone. There’s no anger, there’s no wasted energy in blame and sadness. I’ve unpacked those bags and don’t intend to fill them up again. One of the things that’s so great about discovering the difference between what happened and what we make something mean is that once we know we give events and situations their meanings, we can make them mean anything we want!

Let me show you this another way:
I’m sure we all have memories of so-called injustices from our teen years. Think of one of those. Now, imagine two circles. One we’ll call What Happened and the other, What It Meant. Let’s take an example: How about the old one where you ask your significant other to choose between outfit A and outfit B. They choose A and you think that means that outfit B makes you look fat or less attractive, but you liked that one, and you get the point….

Now, put that in the circles: What happened: S/O chose A. Period, that’s it. What did you make it mean? Pick any one of a hundred things that popped into your head. Take that second circle, mentally turn it on its side and shake it good to empty out the junk inside. Now, move on, for goodness sake!

You can also use this little trick the next time you have a he said/she said argument.

Now what I’m getting at is this: As you go forward into 2008, 2009, and on and on, you can choose to see each opportunity as something brand new and exciting or a rerun of a boring, sad old tape. If the first thought that enters your mind when something occurs is, “oh, no, not again” or “here we go again”, that’s your signal that you’re just replaying old tapes and digging through those old bags. Fluff all that old stuff up, expose it to some fresh air and sunshine and toss out what doesn’t fit anymore. You don’t need it, really. We’ve turned the corner on Winter and Spring is coming. Start your Spring Soulcleaning a little early.

Work well, play well, be well

db

(c) 2008 DeBorah Beatty

Want To Use This Article in Your Ezine or Website? You have my permission, as long as you include this complete notice with it: “DeBorah Beatty publishes innovative tips and resource information in her blog, Opportunity’s Knocking , and is a successful speaker, meeting facilitator, trainer and business coach. If you’re ready to move to the next level, check out her website, DEBORAHBEATTY.COM “