It’s almost spring time! And spring represents a time of re-birth, a new beginning, and a chance to get organized and focused. In some ways, it is an opportunity to start anew!

For those of you who live up north, you know that spring time also means the weather finally gets warmer and you just naturally feel better when you can get outside and enjoy! Flowers are blooming, the grass is getting green again, and the days last a little longer…it is enough to get ANYONE feeling better!

It is also a tradition for many people that when spring time rolls around it’s time to do a little ‘Spring Cleaning’ in the house. This is when people go through their homes, room by room, dusting, vacuuming, cleaning and examining their items to determine what stays and what gets tossed. This is one of the primary reasons you see so many folks holding garage sales this time of year.

On this week’s podcast, Jen and Leah discuss how to incorporate the annual spring cleaning ritual into our *internal* home as well as our external home.

Spring is not only an excellent time to clean your *external* house, but it’s also a good time to clean your “internal* house as well! Basically, we all have two houses, our external house – which is the physical structure in which we live; and our internal house – which is our mind, body and soul. There is a direct correlation between these two houses! If our external houses feel cluttered and disorganized, then our internal house is probably feeling a little discombobulated as well!

In order to have focus, motivation and joy in your life, you must take the action steps required to create a balance between your two houses! Have you noticed that when your external house is cluttered and disorganized that you tend to feel anxious and overwhelmed?
So, why not use this time to take a good look at yourself and examine all areas of your life. Go through each *room* of your life and determine what is working – what isn’t, what things you want to keep and what things you want to toss. An easy way to get started with this task is to refer back to the Five key Areas of your life (your life palette).
Those five areas include:
Health/Emotion
Physical Environment
Financial
Relationships
Spirituality

So, let’s take charge of our lives and do some ‘spring cleaning’ for both our houses!

Listen Now

Carpe Diem – Seize the Day!

Are you making time to live in the Present? On this week’s podcast Leah and Jen take a look at the reasons why so many people don’t actually live their lives in the present moment. Most of the time we all get caught up in multi-tasking, that we lose site of the actual moment. Or, we are so pre-occupied with worrying about the past (which we can’t change) or trying to predict the future (which we know we can’t control) that we forget to enjoy the moment!

We need to begin looking at our lives as an adventure! Our life is our big screen movie production, and WE are the star of the show!

Admit it, you have texted or read your e-mail while driving before, right? Well, this is dangerous and in more ways than you think! Not only could you get into a traffic accident, but you could also lose the present moment! When we multi-task like this, our life becomes on giant ‘TO DO’ list and we get so caught up in checking things off the list we forget to savor the moment! We only get this one moment, so why waste it? Enjoy the actual activity at hand.

We have all been so pre-conditioned to think that if we are not doing 15 things at once, we aren’t accomplishing anything. However, we would challenge you to turn this around and start thinking about how much more you can truly accomplish if you put your entire focus and energy and attention on the task at hand. Slow down enough to really embrace what you are doing at this exact moment, without diluting it with all the others demands of the day.

Listen Now

This week Jen and Leah continue their two part series and they discuss their thoughts about one of Jennifer’s favorite coaching tips! This tip is referred to as the ’slow it down, turn it around’ tip, which actually means:  Think Before You Speak! They discuss the manner in which you respond to situations and how often times people tend to react and say things they do not mean because they are acting defensively and haven’t thought their words through before speaking.

If you can begin to slow down, and turn it around before speaking your opinion you might find that you will respond very differently than you would have anticipated.

Referencing the book The Greatest Man Who Ever Lived by Steven K. Scott, Jen and Leah review the checklist that Scott created that will help you to slow down and turn it around before you speak! Excellent tips for living your life from a position of empowerment.

1. Respond calmly – think before you speak and respond calmly instead of just *reacting*

2. Listen first – don’t interrupt, don’t think about what you are going to say in response….just LISTEN

3. Approach others from THEIR frame of reference – realizing that if someone is saying mean or negative things to you, it probably means that they are not happy with themselves

4. Begin to look at others from the perspective of what you can give in the relationship rather than what you can receive. When you live proactively and worry less about what you are *getting* from your relationships, your life becomes more peaceful, easier, less stressful and more fun!

For more great coaching tips from Jennifer and Leah, be sure to purchase their cd Your 30 Day Guide to Becoming the Artist of your life. It’s just a $20 investment and promises to give you the tools, tips and resources needed to start living your life to the fullest!

Listen Now

This week Leah and Jen start a two part series where they each share one of their favorite coaching tips with their podcast listeners. Leah shares one of her favorite tips this week, which is Setting Boundaries in your life. Boundaries are imaginary lines that you draw around yourself that allow you to grow and become your authentic self, because these imaginary lines *protect* us from the actions of others. When we create boundaries in our lives, we are basically setting *rules* for what are acceptable behaviors by others in our lives. Boundaries clearly define what people can and can not do to you.

Some examples of setting boundaries include:

1. Determining what actions and behaviors are acceptable in your marriage, with your family/children and with your friends and co-workers. This is probably the most important (and often most difficult) area to set clear boundaries. When you don’t set boundaries in this area, many times you end of feeling like a *victim* or that you are being taken advantage by others.

2. Deciding how you will be spoken to and treated by others – what you accept and what you do not accept.

3. Deciding what places that you will go, things that you will do, and people that you choose to have in your life. When you know what you do not want to do, then you no longer have to do it.

4. Determing what type of risks that you will take in life and ones that you won’t.

One tip that will help you in beginning to set boundaries in your life is by learning to say NO. Leah and Jen often talk about that fact that ‘NO” is a complete sentence. When we learn to say no to those things that we do not want to do, we are in essence saying Yes to ourselves.

To learn more about setting clear boundaries in your life, be sure to listen to this week’s podcast! Also, you can purchase Leah & Jen’s CD – 30 Days to Becoming the Artist of Your Life! It is chock full of coaching tips, techniques and practices to help you begin living a proactively, passionate and purposeful life!

Listen Now

This week on the Creating Your Masterpiece podcast, Leah and Jen focus the conversation around a quote that is used quite often by Dr. Phil Mcgraw. If you have ever watched the Dr. Phil Show, you know that he often asks his quests the famous question: How’s that working for ya? He usually asks the question to emphasize the point that whatever the guest happens to currently be doing in their life isn’t working out the way they had intended it to.

Leah and Jen discuss what to do with your life when things aren’t working out exactly as they should. By now, most people who made New Year’s Resolutions in Janaury have fallen off the wagon, and are probably not feeling really good about themselves…So, how can we get back on track in our lives and make things happen!

Leah and Jen suggest reviewing each area of your Life Palette and determining what’s working and what isn’t. Once you identify what ISN’T working the way you want it to, then its time to create the PLAN and the PATH to reach your goals.

Remember, the five areas of your Life Palette include:

Health/Emotion

Financial

Physical Environment

Spirituality

Relationships

Take a good look at each area and write down what changes you want to make to improve each area, and thne create the Action Plan to get there!

Listen Now