I got a chuckle out of this press release that was sent to me today…

Men head to the bedroom for fun, women for sleep!

(February 22, 2012) – The bedroom is the first place both men and women would go if they had more free time in a day. The catch – men go there for sex, women for sleep!

In a survey, Great Clips, the first ever hair salon brand to introduce time saving online check-in, asked 316 Americans how they would spend 15 minutes of more time in a day. (15 minutes is important to Great Clips because Online Check-in has trimmed average haircut wait times by 15 minutes to five minutes or less, giving customers 15 more minutes of time in a day.)

1.  Survey recipients were given a list of options and asked to choose what they would do with 15 minutes of extra time in a day.

THE #1 CHOICE FOR MOST WOMEN IS SLEEP (Ranked #1 by nearly 1 in 4 women, 24%)

• Most Often Ranked in The Top 5 were Sleep, Clean (organizing closets, dust baseboards, mop floors), Read, Watch TV and Exercise.
• Have Sex was lower on the list after Sit There and Do Nothing with No Disturbances and Cook.

THE #1 CHOICE FOR MOST MEN IS HAVE SEX (Ranked #1 by 28% of men)

• Most Often Ranked in the Top 5 were Have Sex, Sleep, Listen to Music, Exercise, Sit There and Do Nothing with No Disturbances

2.    When survey recipients were given a list and asked to rank the 3 most annoying time wasters of their spouses/significant others:

THE #1 CHOICE FOR WOMEN as the most annoying time waster of their spouse/significant other is PLAY VIDEO GAMES

Most often Ranked as the Top Choice is Play Video Games, Work Too Much and Do Nothing (Tie) and Zone in front of the TV

THE #1 CHOICE FOR MEN as the most annoying time waster of their spouse/significant other is PRIMP AND GET READY   

Most often Ranked as the Top Choice is Primp and Get Ready, Complain/Whine/Stress, and Stare at a Closet Full of Clothes and Whine “I have nothing to wear.”

3.  When Both Men and Women were asked to rank the Most Annoying Time Waster in Your Own Life?

Most often ranked as the Top Choices:

#1) Being Placed on Hold #2) Waiting In Line #3) Traffic

4.  When both men and women were asked What Do You Want More of? and asked to pick one from Time, Money, Sleep, Exercise and Sex:

Respondents Chose:

#1) Money (70%) #2) Time (13%) #3) Sleep (9%) #4) Exercise (8%) #5) Sex (0%) NONE CHOSE SEX (0%)

“In all our research, in focus group after focus group, we heard that today’s busy families are stressed out, exhausted and short on time – and today time is money,” says Rhoda Olsen, CEO of Great Clips. “We had to figure out a way to cut wait times and give our customers more free time to have fun and do the things they love to do. Online check-in allows people to check in from their desks or from their smart phones so when they get to the salon they have little or no wait and have more time.”

Other survey findings:

• 87% of respondents say they would use a technology that kept them from waiting in lines at retail stores if it saved them 15 minutes waiting for an appointment.

• When a retail business makes them wait more than 15 minutes:
• 63% say it shows bad customer service and a lack of respect for their time
• 52% of respondents say they don’t go back and take their business elsewhere
• 48% say they assume the business is poorly managed
• Only 19% say they get annoyed with the people in line with them.

• 9 out of 10 respondents (93%) said a reasonable amount of time to wait at a retail business is 5 – 10 minutes or less.
• 2 out of 3 respondents say they would use a check-in or download app that saved their place in line at a retail business.

*This online survey was done by a third party, commissioned by Great Clips Online Check- In. *The survey included 316 respondents, 172 female and 144 male (ages 30 -55). Full survey data available upon request.

About Great Clips’ Online Check-In Great Clips’ Online Check-In feature is powered by ICS Net Check In™, a patent-pending, internet-based technology platform developed by Innovative Computer Software. Online Check-in allows customers to remotely log in from a computer or smart phone and view the estimated wait time at surrounding salons. Consumers can click the “check in” icon to add their name to the list at the Great Clips salon of their choice, and by the time they arrive they are likely next or almost next in line – saving precious time they might have spent waiting in the lobby for their haircut.

Great Clips, Inc. was established in 1982 in Minneapolis.  Today, Great Clips has nearly 3,000 salons throughout the United States and Canada, making it the world’s largest salon brand. Great Clips salons employ nearly 25,000 stylists who receive ongoing training to learn advanced skills and the latest trends. Make Great Clips your choice for value-priced, high-quality hair care for men, women and children. No appointments needed, and salons are open nights and weekends. For more information about Great Clips, Inc. or to find a location near you, visit www.greatclips.com.

Over the weekend, I created a list of the people who have made an impact on my life. These are people that I resonate with, who have taught me valuable truths, who have inspired me, and taught me to love. I came up with a list of 20 individuals, six of whom are my own children.

Then, I wrote down next to each person what I love about them, what inspires me about them. As I did this, I began to see a pattern. Right off the bat, I saw a common theme of liberty. Each has taught me about some aspect of freedom:

- Freedom to Create - Freedom to Change/break free of bondage - Owning Your Own Power and Respecting Other People’s Right to Own Theirs - Freedom of Expression - Freedom to Love without Limits

Over the course of four days I studied the common characteristics and threads in these people even more and discovered what they symbolize to me.

As I did this, I received

- A deeper understanding of who I am and what my own message is. What we see and admire in others, is what exists in ourselves.

- A clearer description of the typical person I’m passionate about serving.

Here’s what I uncovered about both who I am and who I serve. I call it being a Light Bearer.

Who We Are

• Courageous creatives who choose to be conduits of charity (aka pure love). • Leaders who stand for life, liberty, learning, love and beauty.

Definition of Light Bearers

Wise, intuitive, synergistic Inspired Creatives who are grounded in truth. They courageously lead the rising generation and lifelong learners. With love, beauty and respect for others, they light the way for people who are ready to break free of bondage into ultimate freedom (whether the bondage is of their own making, generational, or imposed upon them by others).

Going forward I will be focusing more on being a courageous light bearer and working synergistically with my fellow light bearers.

My Challenge to You

Try this exercise for yourself. Write down the names of the people you admire most, who have impacted your life. You don’t even have to know them personally. Then write next to their names what you love most about them, what you admire.

Then look for the common threads and themes. I put my people’s photos in columns and rows and rearranged them until I started to see commonalities. For example, my matrix has five rows.

- Row 1: Courageous advocates of truth. - Row 2: Inspired creatives who think outside the box. - Row 3: These people have taught me about respecting other people’s freedom to choose and how to help people without encroaching upon their agency. - Row 4: Lifelong learners who express themselves in beautiful, creative ways, particularly through music. - Row 5: I fondly call these folks, “glowing balls of love.” Their love seems to have no limits and others are drawn to them because of it.

There are other common threads going down the columns or even across the rows. The more I look at my matrix, the more insights I gain about the people I love to serve and who I long to be. Using the words and attributes I discovered from the matrix, I composed my definition of Light Bearers.

Give it a try! It’s a fun, enlightening experience. Please share with me what you discover about yourself!

I’m sitting on the balcony in an Orlando resort, overlooking the golf course. The sun is shining, the sky is blue, and the temperature is perfect. Three men are putting on the green and then move on to the next hole. Entering the course behind them are two small boys. They run across the golf course and explore the terrain. They tumble to the ground and roll, eager to experience a great big world. They run to a sand trap and skip across it to the other side.

Uninhibited they explore the course as fast as their little legs can carry them. One minute they’re racing a golf cart and the next they’re picking their way through the rough. Full of energy and life, their arms swing as they climb a hill, then plop to the ground rolling. Free, limitless.

In and out of sand traps that hold no meaning for them, but fun sand boxes. The golfers would see these traps as negative, a deterrent, something to keep them from winning the game. But the boys don’t interpret them that way. Quite the reverse. The boys are outside the game. Beyond the confines and limits of the man-made rules. For them, the green isn’t reverenced. The traps aren’t pitfalls and the rough is a fun place to explore.

Perspective is everything, isn’t it? What if all the rules and limits I place on myself meant no more to me than rough and traps to a 10-year-old boy oblivious to the game of golf? What joy, elation and energy might burst forth for me if I set aside my inhibitions and preconceived notions about the man-made rules of life and business?

From this perspective might I see challenges not as adversity, but as fun places to explore?

These boys simply are. There’s no grand objective, no pressing goal. Happiness and exploration are their objectives. They do no harm to others in this pursuit, but with childlike wonder and innocence, they embrace the world. Grateful, giddy to be alive.

Is this why Jesus admonished us to be like little children? Inquisitive, open, teachable, unburdened by men’s perceptions?

I ran across this story in an article by Spencer W. Kimball and thought it compelling:

“I am reminded of an article I read some years ago about a group of men who had gone to the jungles to capture monkeys. They tried a number of different things to catch the monkeys, including nets. But finding that the nets could injure such small creatures, they finally came upon an ingenious solution. They built a large number of small boxes, and in the top of each, they bored a hole just large enough for a monkey to get his hand into. They then set these boxes out under the trees and in each one they put a nut that the monkeys were particularly fond of.

When the men left, the monkeys began to come down from the trees and examine the boxes. Finding that there were nuts to be had, they reached into the boxes to get them. But when a monkey would try to withdraw his hand with the nut, he could not get his hand out of the box because his little fist, with the nut inside, was now too large.

At about this time, the men would come out of the underbrush and converge on the monkeys. And here is the curious thing: When the monkeys saw the men coming, they would shriek and scramble about with the thought of escaping; but as easy as it would have been, they would not let go of the nut so that they could withdraw their hands from the boxes and thus escape. The men captured them easily.”

It made me think. What objects, old beliefs, habit patterns, or aspirations am I holding onto that I should release in order to maintain my freedom? What do I focus on so much I put my freedom in jeopardy? Ever thought about that?

* Spencer W. Kimball, “The False Gods We Worship,” August 1977 Enisgn

Step 1: Start with Focus

Having a governing focus for your business is critical. Until you get clear on who you serve and how you serve them, your business will flounder. For example, until I decided to work with creative entrepreneurs and assist them in getting their messages out to the world, my business remained stagnant. Once I got clear on that, it was easier to create products and services that would serve my market. It also became clear what types of training and certifications I needed to obtain to optimally fill their needs. If you need greater clarity and focus, look into my Radiant Branding course with Phillip Davis.

Step 2: Find Out What Your Market Needs

Whether you want to use polling software to conduct a survey or you pick up the phone and talk to a few clients, you need to get inside the head of your typical customer. I’ve used both methods. Nothing beats having a chat — especially if you are personable and can get people to open up about their needs and concerns. The more you care about people, the more that will come across, and they will be more willing to share how they really feel.

Step 3: Brainstorm on How to Fill Client Needs

Make a list of your prospects’ most pressing problems. Then out next to each, brainstorm ways you can solve those problems. You may not even know how to solve them yet. Maybe you’ll need additional training or need to read a few books. That’s okay. Write down the ideal solution to each problem.

For example, after a round-robin discussion with 4 of my typical customers, I learned that fear, self-doubt and overwhelm are the universal challenges of creative entrepreneurs. When I discovered that, I didn’t know how to get rid of these challenges completely. I did know if I worked closely with clients and held their hands, I could help them navigate their businesses and reduce fear, overwhelm and self-doubt as they leaned on me. But removing those obstacles completely wasn’t something I knew how to do.

Yet, I did know people who could do that. So I went to the best and took her certification training. Now I’m able to remove these types of blocks and challenges for my clients. Which brings us to Step 4…

Step 4: Fill The Gaps

If there’s something your market needs, but you don’t know how to solve it, you have three options.

1. You can bundle someone else’s product or services into your solution.
2. You can refer clients to someone else (and perhaps earn an affiliate commission).
3. You can get the training you need to fill the gap for your clients.

I’ve used all these methods. Whether you choose to get the training depends upon your own interests and temperament. For example, if you hate technical details, taking Web design training to fill a client’s need for a web site is a waste of time. Farm out the web design to a capable professional.

But if you’re a health coach who works with weight-challenged individuals and you’ve always wanted to learn how to help them get their mindset straight and overcome their mental blocks, then taking training on how to do that would be right up your alley.

Step 5: Create a Complete Solution

Select one of the primary needs of your typical customer and create a complete solution for it. Select a need that is pressing for them, a need that they are willing to spend money to fix. Then create a system for solving that problem. Bring in other professionals where needed. Get any training you feel inclined to pursue and create a one-stop solution for this pressing need.

Right now you don’t actually have to create the product yet. Just outline it on paper and line up the professionals who will help you deliver this complete solution.

I recommend a “create as you go” method. For example, if you lead people to a 4-session webinar or telecall series, that can be recorded as you actually deliver it to the participants. You can later have it transcribed, the audios cleaned up, and turned into a physical or digital product.

Step 6: Create Your Signature Speech

Once you have the solution outlined, you’re ready to create your signature speech. This is something you can deliver in person to groups, or on telecalls or webinars. It should be informative and address the problem and outline a solution. You don’t have to be a professional speaker to do this.

This could be a Q&A outline that you hand to a webinar host that presents valuable information and informs listeners on how and why they should purchase your solution. If you don’t know how to outline something like this, I highly recommend Kirk Duncan’s Present Yourself training. It’s fantastic. I attended Present Yourself in 2011 and it transformed my business.

Step 7: Create a Sales Page for Your Product/Service

Using your signature speech, you can craft a sales page that speaks to the pain of your prospect and outlines the benefits of your solution. If you’re not good at writing copy, hire a copywriter. A couple excellent ones I’d recommend are Michele PW and Karon Thackston. They both offer copywriting services and copywriting courses if you’d rather learn for yourself.

Step 8: Conduct a Telecall or Webinar

You can start with your own list if you have one. Offer a free telecall to introduce your solution. You’ll use your signature speech for this. This is your trial run to work the kinks out of the system. You’ll need a sign-up page for the call and a thank you page for giving registrants the details on how to attend the call. You’ll also need some kind of list software like TrafficWave.net, 1ShoppingCart.com, or aweber.com to put the registrants on a list and automatically email them confirmation details.

Email your list and announce it to your social media friends.

Be sure to make replays of the call available for those who missed it. Notify your list several times that the audio is available and about any deadlines or special offers.

Step 9: Monitor and Adjust

How well did your call go? Of the people who signed up for it, how many attended? How many listened later? How many purchased? How can you improve your presentation? How can you improve your conversion rate? Make any necessary adjustments. If needed, offer the call again to your list until you are happy with it.

Step 10: Create an Affiliate Program

Once you are satisfied with your presentation and your product, use a service like 1ShoppingCart.com to create an affiliate program. An affiliate program allows other people to sell your product and earn a commission. Make sure you offer a generous commission to make it worth someone’s while in promoting it.

Step 11: Start Your Search for Ideal Affiliates

Who else is reaching your market, but not offering exactly what you offer? Who reaches a group of people who really need your solution? How big are these professionals’ lists? Do they hold telecalls, webinars, telesummits often? Form relationships. Get to know people personally. Be genuine. It’s not all about you selling your product. It’s about building a 2-way relationship that will serve you both into the future.

Start with the people you know well, and call them. Let them know how your material can benefit their audience and ask if they would be interested in having you present your solution to their audience. Let them know they will earn a commission on any sales that are generated from that call.

Step 12: Promote, Promote, Promote

Promote these webinars yourself. Use social media, email, article marketing, press releases, videos, and post events on various online directories. Google “post events for free” and see what you find. Don’t hold a call only a few times and stop. Keep the momentum going. Don’t assume because you’ve presented your material to three prominent peoples’ lists that everyone has seen it. There are millions of people online, and they’re all being reached by different folks. Stay at it!

Rinse and Repeat

Once you’ve created a system to solve one of your audience’s pressing needs, go back to your focus and look for other challenges they experience. Keep creating products and services to address those needs. The possibilities are endless!

If you’re interested in taking your business to the next level in 2012, email me at marnie@marniepehrson.com or visit my calendar to schedule a free 15-minute strategy session.

Disclosure: The only outside resource I referred above that I earn a commission on is 1shoppingcart.com.

A friend mentioned to me that she has a hard time deciding what ideas to pursue. Sometimes she gets so excited about them that she’s afraid she could be “running ahead of God.” What if God doesn’t want her to pursue this idea, and she’s stepping outside His will? So she backs up and feels the need to make absolutely 100% sure it’s what God wants her to do. Many ideas are abandoned or back-burnered because she feels like she doesn’t know 100% that it’s what God wants her to do.

While I feel it is important to live your life according to God’s will, I have a different viewpoint than my friend. I don’t spend a lot of time requiring an answer from God before I pursue every idea. I say a quick prayer. If I feel good about it and it fits within my focus and overall plan, I run with it.

When I told my friend this, she said, “Don’t you worry you could be running ahead of God? What if you mess up His plans for you?”

This gave me a chance to analyze how I process things, and I began explaining some foundational beliefs I hold. I feel these beliefs are what enable me to accomplish so much.

1) Humans can’t frustrate God’s plans. As long as I’m pointed in God’s direction, loving Him and wanting to align my will with His, no mistake I make is so big that it could frustrate His plans for me. He can take the biggest lemon and transform it into lemonade. God can even take people who are completely out of His will and make things work together for their good if they’ll turn to Him.

2) You cannot “run ahead of God.” I believe we might have a tendency to run faster than we have human strength to handle. But running ahead of God? Not possible.

3) God’s timing makes itself known. Sometimes I’ll get the feeling that my idea is a good one, but the timing isn’t right. For me, that’s just a “knowing.” But if I don’t pick up on that, God lets His timing be known when all the pieces aren’t in place for me to move past a point. Many times He’s letting me know it’s time to move an obstacle out of the way, and I work on that. Other times, it’s just a matter of other people getting ready and entering my life. In these cases, I’ve learned not to try to force things. Trust His timing!

The Parable of the Sandbox

I sort of look at it this way. God has given me a big sandbox to play in. This sandbox includes all my talents, abilities, resources, friendships, and possibilities. He’s given me all the buckets, shovels, and castle-building gear I need. The boundaries of this sandbox are my life purpose. He hands me all this and says, “Have at it Marnie. Cut your creativity loose and see what you can build.”

Along the way, He might give pointers or suggestions, but He’s not micromanaging me. In fact, some things don’t matter to Him, and if I insisted on a 100% green-light before I proceeded, that might never come. A lot of the things I’ve created in my life wouldn’t exist.

If I get excited and create a castle in the upper right corner of my sandbox instead of the lower left, He’s not stressed. He’s given me my focus and the tools; and He wants me to be anxiously engaged in good causes and do many things of my own free will.

When I pray, “What about this idea for a product?” and still feel good and excited about it, I take that as a yes or an “okay by Me.” Full speed ahead. Waiting inordinate amounts of time to get a booming YES from heaven or constantly second-guessing whether you’re in God’s will is disabling. It keeps you from moving forward and producing good things.

More good ideas die in indecision than anywhere else.

I recommend laying the foundation first. Prayerfully discover what you’re here to do. (Discover the boundaries and focus of your sandbox.) Once you have that God-directive, start creating! As long as you’re in your sandbox, building things that are in alignment with your purpose, are doing things that make the world a better place, and serving others; you don’t need to constantly second guess yourself. Have fun and see what you can create!

All things work together for good for those who love God and are called according to His purpose.” (Romans 8:28)

‎Decisiveness is a characteristic of high-performing men and women. Almost any decision is better than no decision at all” – Brian Tracy

A friend called me the other day, a bit annoyed with her 6-year-old daughter (who we’ll call Tara). Tara’d become a bit of a “handful.”  One of the things she did was weaseled her way out of cleaning her room by trading with her brother. He was supposed to mop the kitchen floor and Tara was supposed to clean her room. So Tara told her brother she’d mop the kitchen if he’d clean her room.  He agreed.

The mopping job took 45 minutes, while the bedroom cleaning job ended up taking a couple hours. My friend didn’t know what to make of it. She was a bit irritated that Tara hadn’t done the job she was supposed to do, but she did such a great job on the kitchen floor, she decided not to say anything.

I started chuckling and observed, “She delegated. I’m impressed.”

“Huh?” my friend replied.

“I’m really impressed. Most adults aren’t smart enough to realize what they’re good at and what they’re not good at. But here, Tara assessed that she enjoyed and excelled at mopping over cleaning her room. So she ‘hired’ her brother to clean her room (which she hates doing) in exchange for doing something he wasn’t thrilled about doing.”

“Figures you’d see all sides to the story,” my friend quipped.

While I’m sure there are downsides to Tara not learning to properly clean her room, and perhaps one should learn to do things they don’t enjoy, I’m still impressed. One of the keys to successful entrepreneurship is properly assessing what you’re good at, what you enjoy, and delegating the rest. Not only that, but it’s important to properly assess what other people enjoy doing and excel at so you can effectively delegate.

Tara had done both at the ripe old age of six!

How about you? Have you learned to delegate what you don’t enjoy so you can focus on what you do best and enjoy most? Until you do, your business will never become what it could be.

Do you long to share your message with the world, but get overwhelmed with the logistics of making it happen? Do you sometimes doubt yourself and whether anyone really wants to hear what you have to say?

If so, start 2012 off by breaking through all those barriers and start living your life without limits!

Imagine what you could do if the overwhelm melted away, you KNEW you could make an impact and KNEW people were anxious to hear what you had to say. Imagine what you could do if fear was a think of the past.

Join me LIVE in Salt Lake City, Utah Friday January 13th

Break through to a life without limits and start impacting the world in 2012!

http://www.marniepehrson.com/nolimits.htm

Hope to see you there!

If you’re looking for some great reads or gifts for the readers in your life, here are a few books my friends have written that I highly recommend:

Forgiveness Formula: Finding Lasting Freedom in Christ by Shelley and CJ Hitz Are you feeling trapped by recurring issues? Are you feeling like there is no way to move forward because of where you are or where you’ve been?

It doesn’t have to be that way! It doesn’t matter where you’re at in life, or what you’re struggling with, you can find lasting freedom in Christ. My friend Shelley Hitz and her husband CJ are sharing some great insights in their new book, “Forgiveness Formula: Finding Lasting Freedom in Christ.”

A Piece of Time by Victoria Fielding Who hasn’t endured peer pressure and fought low self-esteem? Who hasn’t been angry over losses, and heartbroken at losing a loved one? Whose life hasn’t been impacted with the scourge of an addiction? Who hasn’t stumbled under the weight of forgiving someone? Or, harder yet, forgiving oneself? It isn’t only Lilly who questions why life is so hard, and what IS the point, anyway? Like Lilly, we wonder – when we set this world down – what will be behind death’s door? Lilly discovers what lies far beyond that door. And now, you just may too. This story is for everyone. Read More.

Foster a love for reading in the children in your life with…

THE HUMONGOUS FUNGUS by Periwinkle Blue Illustrated by: Michele Ander­son with help from: Cameron Youngblood

There’s something rotten in the town of Better-Than-Best, and it’s not your stinky socks! Better-Than-Best is one of the prettiest, little towns you ever could enter, with all of the houses facing the center, and then the humongous fungus comes. It’s black and it’s thick, and it’s making them sick! Ick! Some of it got on a hockey stick and all over poor Charlie Twoodle’s noodles. Who can they call? What can they do? Things go from bad to worse when they call in Bubble­head Bingham Blue, an expert from Timbuktu, who claims to have the cure in the bottom of his shoe.

Can they make it go away, or is the humongous fungus here to stay?  Find out here.

Since learning SimplyHealed, I’ve become acutely aware of the signals my body is sending me. It’s almost as if our bodies are little babies without any way to verbally communicate with us, so they get our attention through an ache here, a pain there, a twitch there. And if we ignore its messages long enough, the body allows us to get sick to get our attention.

I’ve noticed that as I pay attention to my body and address the root issue, emotion or concern, my body feels and operates better. Yet, within the last month, I had a bit of a health concern that got my attention. I kept asking my body what it was trying to tell me. The only thing that came up is this reoccurring feeling I have every once in a while that I’m not making a big enough impact, I’m not reaching enough people, I’m not living up to my potential. Mediocrity is the word that kept coming to mind.

I asked myself how many people I’d have to impact to feel satisfied and used a little testing to ascertain the number. You know what it was? 10 million! I was feeling I’d have to reach and/or influence 10 million people to be satisfied with my life. Isn’t that just ridiculous?

Finally I turned to Karol Truman’s book, Feelings Buried Alive Never Die. When I looked up the ailment associated with the symptoms, I found the root cause as “the ego has been injured” or “unexpressed and unresolved hurts.”

Going on these clues, I began asking myself in what way my ego had been injured and what hurts had I not expressed or resolved? I’ve done so much work lately, that I would have thought these things would have been addressed by now. But I decided to trust there may still be something there. I took some time to prayerfully ask for guidance in finding the answer, and I listened.

Then the answer came. It was something deep within my past, all the way back to my childhood. You may have heard me talk about how great my dad was and how he built my confidence and trained me to share what I’ve learned. What I don’t talk about much is that once I entered elementary school, things were quite different. People didn’t strain to listen to my every word. My peers didn’t think I was the best thing since sliced bread. I had friends, but I was on the shy side. In fact, by the time I entered a new school in sixth grade where nobody knew me, I was the geeky teacher’s pet that schoolmates ignore.

My middle school and high school years weren’t much better. Most of the time I felt as if I was invisible. I made good grades, and I had a couple good friends, but I’d hardly call myself popular. I didn’t strive to be popular either. Yet, I remember saying things in a group and nobody even acknowledging that I’d said a word. I didn’t feel heard by or of interest to the vast majority of people.

As I thought back on this ego bruising from childhood, I realized something incredibly important about my motives to be heard today. I’m trying to fill a childhood void. I’m still trying to be heard, trying to prove that I have something of worth to say, straining to be myself yet be accepted by my peers.

The realization was sobering. I’ve never considered myself someone who worried about being popular. I would have told you my motives in getting my message out are to change lives for the better, to help people, to make a positive impact. Surely it wasn’t this sad pathetic motivation of a sixth grader in a new school, unable to fit in!

Yet, the more I faced the facts, the more I realized the truth. Sure, there were good motivations, but mixed in among them was this “neediness” to be valued, appreciated, and fit in.

Once I recognized these old programs running in the background of my mind, I set to work removing them and implementing new beliefs. I installed things like:

I let go of the need to belong. I let go of the need to fit in. I let go of the need to be popular. I can be me and people like me and are attracted to me. I let go of the need to have large groups of people follow me, like me or be my fans. I am satisfied with my life and who I am. I am somebody. I matter. People like me. I offer value to the world. People want what I have to offer. Who I am is more than enough. I am happy with or without fans. I let go of the need to be validated by other people. I let go of the need to have 10 million fans. I let go of the need to have any fans. I am content just as I am. I am content being a mother. I let go of the need to influence or be an agent of change for others. I let go of the need to prove anything to myself. I let go of the need to prove anything to the world. I let go of the need to prove anything to God.

That last one is a big one. But I believe it’s in my highest good to let go of that need. Why am I trying to prove anything to God? He already knows who I am. There’s no need to prove what you already are!

I am exceptional. I am a daughter of God. I am amazing, unique and beautiful. I am brilliant I am feminine and strong. I am determined and resilient.

Why have I been on this insatiable quest to prove something? Because I’ve been trying to fill a void created in childhood! The thought did occur to me that if I install these new beliefs, I might be a completely different person. Maybe I’ll abandon writing, speaking, web desigining and Facebooking. Without the driving need, will I be someone else?

If I am, that’s ok, but I suspect that the underlying “neediness” was bleeding through. I believe when we operate from neediness, we actually repel the things we’re trying to achieve or acquire. Think of the over-eager guy who chases after the girl. Think of the money that never seems to arrive when you’re desperate to make ends meet. The needier we are, the more we drive away what we desire.

When we let go of our neediness and accept and allow what comes, things start to flow.

So, I ask you, is there an underlying need or void that drives you? What if you released it? I’m here to tell you it’s an incredibly liberating experience to let it go! I feel like a new woman — free to be or do anything I choose to!

If the thought of liberating yourself from past limiting beliefs sounds intriguing, join me Friday, January 13th, 2012 live in Salt Lake City for “No More Limits! Impact the World Today!”  I look forward to sharing all this good stuff with you.