New Year, New You!

Hello friend! 

Have you heard that you have the ability to design a life you love?

Ask yourself this question: what if I was given 1 year to live....what would I do? More specifically what would you stop doing? Who would you spend your time with? Where would you live? How would you spend your time? What would be important to you? What would not be important? 

My mentor Clifton Maclin taught me to think about this question and to really focus on the end game that I want to achieve. He says that so many of us are living our lives without any focus on what we truly want it to look like. In order to set our goals and achieve them, we need to have a very clear vision of where we are going.

Over the past two weeks, I've been really working on the vision of my life. What do I want it to look like? How do I spend my time? Who do I help? All of these questions have been swirling in my brain constantly. I've written them down. I've mediated about them. I've tried forgetting them. And I'll admit that I don't have a CLEAR picture of what I want. I don't. 

Is this okay? I believe that it is because the main reason I don't have a clear picture of my vision right now is that for the past twelve months I've been practicing something WAY different in my life. 

This WAY different way of life has lead me to:

- Travel over the equator to Paraguay with #1 Leadership Expert and NY Times Bestselling Author, John Maxwell and his team and while we were there we trained over 5,000 people. 

- I became a bestselling author of my FIRST book, "Life Under Construction: designing a life you love." 

- I spoke at Fortune 500 companies, WED Wisconsin, Empower & Create, Polka Dot Powerhouse, and many more.... 

- I wrote my book to help 1 person, but I hear about how it's helping people all over the world! I've heard stories of people starting new businesses, finally writing their book, writing their bucket list, being inspired to design their lives rather than settle in their life.  

- I trained and spoke to over 470 students about developing themselves as leaders. Yes, this was AWESOME!

- I started my second book and have my first draft DONE! It's going to be amazing. ;) 

- I was featured in You Magazine...this was cool and kinda strange. I saw myself on the cover of a magazine while I was at the grocery store. 

- I was a guest a bunch of amazing podcasts with my new friends...who last year I did not even know. 

- I'm now a bestselling author, international speaker, international trainer and I did a GLOBAL book launch. WHAT? This is craaaaaazzzzyyyyyy! 

- I had more connections, contacts, opportunities than I could have ever imagined. These people have become dear friends and I can't tell you how awesome that is. I love knowing that I'm surrounded by BRILLIANT people. 

Could I have said all of these things would have happened to me on Dec. 31, 2016? Nope. I honestly could not have even imagined all of these cool things. I feel blessed and super excited. 

So, what did I do differently in the last year to make this happen? 

1. I set CRAZY huge goals for myself. I set goals so big that when I'd reach them I'd think to myself, "Wow, I did that." I did this as an experiment because I write about setting these types of goals in my book, "Life Under Construction". Guess what...it REALLY works.

2. I stopped worrying about HOW I would reach the goals. I'm typically very controlling about how I spend my time and I love creating strategic plans for businesses. But, I realized that I couldn't do this. I could have some ideas, but for the most part, I didn't plan how I was going to reach the goal. I put it out into the universe in a positive way and it came to me. I know this may sound CRAZY to you. To the engineering, analytical side of my brain it sounded that way and this is probably why I've never done this before. But, the results speak for themselves...so think whatever you want. It works! 

3.  I put positive energy toward my goals. I bought myself a chalkboard and I wrote my top goals on the chalkboard with a checkbox next to each one. I read this board all day. I read it when I was talking with clients, strategizing, thinking, cleaning, writing..... I got really excited and happy each and every time I thought about achieving these goals. That process helped me cement them into my subconscious mind. Through that process, I was able to manifest the HOW to reaching each goal. 

4. I acted like I already achieved the goal. I use visualizations in my life to help me visualize how I want things to turn out. This is a practice I learned through research of Olympic athletes. If you google visualizations and Olympic athletes you'll see article upon article of how they use this same technique to win gold medals in the Olympics. What do I do? I choose one event and I visualize what I want to have happened during that event. For example, in November I was the keynote speaker at WED Wisconsin and spoke to 400 women entrepreneurs. It was an honor, but I was nervous. So about a week before the event, I traveled to Madison with my husband. I went to the venue and I asked someone to see the room I was speaking in. Then I practiced my speech for hours right outside the doors of the event. I pictured the room filled. I pictured the audience laughing, listening, and interacting during my speech. When I actually did my speech it was awesome because I had already done it in my mind. I wasn't nervous, I knew what it would look like and it turned out great. You can start practicing visualizations in your life to achieve your goals.

5.   Celebrate! This is important. Did you reach any of your 2017 goals? If so, have you taken time to celebrate them? If not, why? I normally would skip this important step as well. But, guess what. The goal of the goal isn't to just reach the goal. The goal of the goal it to become the person that can reach the goal. Celebrate that you became the person that could reach that goal. If I would not have worked at writing and finishing my goal of becoming a Bestselling Author would not have worked. But I spent over a year and a half working on becoming an author. I wrote, edited, looked for help, researched, read and studied other successful authors. All of these things led me to achieve that goal. 

For 2018 take the time to write you your CRAZY huge goals, forget HOW you're going to accomplish them, put POSITIVE ENERGY toward your goals daily, ACT like you've already achieved the goals, and last but not least CELEBRATE when you achieve all of your goals in 2018. 

I believe in you. You CAN do this. 

Love and Laughter! 

XO 

Allison