This is going to be unpopular.

There’s such a big wave of, “you’ve got to take care of yourself and the only way to do that is to say No.” 

While “no” is a complete sentence, the skill needed to take care of yourself isn’t about using that word. It’s about discernment.

We’ve seen the pendulum swing too far back to “say No to everything.” 

One of my sayings is that you can’t give what you don’t have. So if you’re running on fumes, you have nothing left to give anyone else. That doesn’t mean you say no to everything. It means you focus on what’s going to get you closer to what you want.

THIS PART IS REALLY IMPORTANT AND MOST PEOPLE MISS IT – You get more of what you focus on! 

It’s that simple. Feeling overwhelmed by your calendar? Stare at your calendar and see how that makes you feel. 

(Hint: it makes you feel more overwhelmed.)

What would it mean to have everything you wanted? 

Think about that for a second. Most people wish for things but never let themselves truly desire. “Oh, it’d be nice to have a ____.” Fill in the blank. A what? Or a who? Or a where?

What would happen if we leaned into the desires we had? 

And what holds us back from doing so?

Those are two very big questions.

Let’s start with what holds us back. 

What holds us back from pursuing or even entertaining our true desires? It’s simple, early training, guilt, and shame. We’re taught to “be realistic,” and we’re told that we “don’t really need that,” whatever that is. We’re told not to be greedy. And we’re told to save because spending on frivolous things is, well, frivolous. 

And whatever your desire is, it might be frivolous to someone else. And it’s YOUR desire. Like the clothes in your closet are YOUR clothes, someone else...

I jumped on my Peloton treadmill this morning and found myself disappointed. I wanted the leader to push me more. It’s an odd thing to think about those coaching or pushing me, to know there’s more in me and to dig for it, encouraging me to dig for it.

We want our coaches to encourage us to dig deeper and in doing so, to envision (not just imagine or hope for) an amazing future just ahead.

Can you imagine Tiger Woods, Michael Jordan, or any of the Kansas City Chiefs saying that they just wanted to be coddled by their coach. “Just stop pushing me and be a nice cheerleader” would never come out of their mouths. Instead, a level of trust is built and the dynamic is, “Bring Out My Best!”

Push me past the point of my potential.

That’s what we want from our coaches. You might be at the point in your life (or your week, for that matter) where you just want to take it easy for a moment. That’s cool. Even the best coaches know...

Sometimes, we get to the end of a month (or year) and say, “Oh my goodness, how did that happen? Time sure flew by!” And I was going to start this Wednesdays With Wayne blog with something like, “Don’t look now, but…!”

And that’s not the message I want to give you. The message this week is to remind you that YOU ARE IN CONTROL OF YOUR LIFE and that means that you are also in control of your calendar.

Did you have big plans for Quarter One of this year? 

Did you make those plans happen, or did you let them die out as unfulfilled dreams? 

I used to over-commit and admittedly, I sometimes still do. And when that happens, I  don’t negotiate with my goals. I take control of my calendar.

Here are some tips for you as we head into Q2 of this year:

• Look at your calendar for the next week, five weeks (yes, into the next month), and twelve weeks (taking you to the end of the quarter). 
• What did...

Here’s something that I shared this in my first book, Choosing Your Power: Many years ago, I found myself in deep overwhelm. I had a really hard time trying to juggle a job, grad school, and relationships. Though this was many years ago, what turned up for me was a simple statement that snapped me out of overwhelm-thinking.

My fortune said:

  Decisions Terminate Panic

I taped that to my computer monitor. It’s not something I had seen before, nor have I seen it since. It was the perfect three-word sentence to get me focused and I’ve relied on it a lot over the decades from when it first showed up for me. 

Here’s something to keep in mind. It’s an interesting concept: Most stress is caused by not making decisions when we need to. 

Re-read that line to yourself for a moment. 

If you think about any of the stress in your life in the past, you could have approached the situation differently by getting...

The reason that there’s no such thing as “an overnight success” is because it’s a process. A journey. And there’s something pretty special that happens on that journey.

The problem is, most people can’t handle it.

And that is why, my friends, more people aren’t even more successful. 

There lurks a threat, popping up multiple times along the path toward new levels of success. Organizations experience growing pains around it. Individuals stop and retreat to the most unhealthy relationships (with people, food, drink, etc.) because of it.

What is the most intolerable threat that those on The Journey must encounter?

Change.

   Change Is An Intolerable Threat

How can that be so? Simply this – your subconscious has a current baseline for how you operate. You seek approval in certain areas, and you tolerate chaos in others. You have a safety range for finances: you won’t let things...

Have you ever been in such dense fog that you couldn’t see the house across the street? Or driven in something like that where the cars in front of you seem to disappear in the mist?

It’s freaky. If you’re driving, your survival instincts kick in. You want to live and you become hyper-alert. You turn down the radio and you might even crack the window so you can get a “smell” of what’s to come.  

Amazingly enough, all of that is natural. Your awareness through other senses offsets the fear of the unknown conditions that you’re facing.

Now, you’ve been with me long enough to know where I’m headed with this. So, go ahead and extrapolate to your own life.

What you’ll want to keep in mind is this – when we’re in an unknown situation, we don’t think about it like driving in the fog. When we’re driving, we know that it’s a patch – long or short – that...

What happened? It’s the end of February and the plans/goals/resolutions you made just seven or eight weeks ago have started to lose their strength in the way you’re living your year. Yes, you might be on track with one of them. Good going! 

And the others?

You’re proving to yourself that you’re just not trustworthy (harsh, I know). Think about it. How convicted are you about any of the things you said that you wanted to accomplish? 

I used to lie to myself all the time, too. I can do this, and by a month from now, I’ll have done that. And… and… and….

And when it didn’t all come together, I’d vacillate between flogging myself for not being good enough and forgiving myself because it was a lot to take on anyway and I was just being unrealistic.

I don’t do that anymore. 

I’m careful about my commitments to myself and others.

I’ve had people invite me...

The TRUTH is that you’re bigger than the life you’ve been leading.

The truth is that it really is possible to be, do, and have more, all while giving yourself more freedom. 

What stops most people from having the life that they really want is that they don’t believe that those truths are true.

Your personal power comes in the form of declaration (about what you want) and a certainty and faith – a strong belief – that what you want not only can happen, but already exists.

The caveat to this is that you can’t wish for or make a declaration about someone else’s engagement with you. “I wish that person would be more loving towards me” isn’t about you, it’s about the other person. You don’t have control over their truth.

What you do have control over is what you’ll bring into, and/or no longer tolerate, in your life. Using the example of wanting to be shown more love,...

It’s Valentine’s Day and a lot of people are posting sappy-sweet things out there. 

I don’t begrudge them their gooey tidings. I’ve been known to get mushy here and there. 

Just stay aware of feeling swept away by this day being a holiday of sorts. Like so many of our current celebrations, the origins are centuries old (dating back long before St Valentine became a martyr) and not what you might imagine. I’ll leave you to do your own research on this. 

Today, I just want to put your head back in the game.

What game?

This Valentine’s Day – that is TODAY – it’s important to think about yourself. First of all, you can’t give what you don’t have. That means, you have to make sure you’ve got the energy reserves to muster up some kind of positive emotion for the people you see every day. And if you inwardly acknowledge that doing so is hard, you might, maybe, possibly need to give...