Wow!

What a journey I've been on this year. Scroll down this blog and you can see some of my progress in the last nine months. It's really remarkable to reflect on where I've been - and astounding to think about how much more I can accomplish in 2009.

This evening, I will be sitting down with my notebook, a favorite pen, and a beautiful candle. After listing my top 25 accomplishments of 2008, I plan to read each one aloud three times. When the sound of the last one has faded, I'll blow out the candle, grab a red pen, and immediately write down 10 goals for 2009.

Everywhere you turn these days, people are promising to help you make 2009 "the best year ever." I'm not aiming for that. For me - and for my team - 2009 will be the best year YET.

Happy holidays everyone.

Yes, I'm positive.

I've been working on gratitude. Every day, as soon as I'm awake enough to know I'm not asleep, I start thinking about things I'm grateful for. When I take a walk or have a moment between tasks, I'll fill the time by saying what I'm grateful for. Mostly I'm grateful that I've learned to be grateful - especially in these wacky times we're living in, it helps me to stay centered in my life, reminds me that here, in Elaine-Land, everything is just fine. Perfect, even. Awesome.

I guess it's been working pretty well, because yesterday I was rendered momentarily speechless when an interviewer asked me, "What do you hate about [the subject we were discussing]?"

What do I hate? It was like I'd forgotten what the word meant. And that was a pretty amazing thing to realize. Still, I had to answer the question...but it took me a good minute to come up with something. And in the end, it wasn't really something I hate, more like something that I allow to annoy me from time to time.

Still, it was a good experience for me. I learned that I really have internalized this gratitude thing. Yes, I'm positive.

Law & Order

So I've been studying Law. Well, one law in particular - the Law of Attraction. And a couple of days ago, one of my team members said that she decided to test it by attracting a bouquet of flowers to herself. So I thought, "Okay, I can do something like that."

I didn't want to risk flowers - too many of them make me sneeze - but there was something I wanted...and didn't see how I could get. I wanted highlights in my hair, but I didn't have the budget for them. Haircut, check; regular color, check. And in fact I was on my way to the hairdresser to get those things done. But in this wacky economy, the highlights would just have to wait another month or so. Unless I could attract them.

So I placed my Order. And went to the hairdresser...who messed up my color big-time. Way too bright. He threw some goop on it that toned down the neon and I went home semi-satisfied. But the next morning I realized, no I couldn't live with it. I called him and he said, no problem - he would fix it.

He squeezed me in past his regular closing time tonight, put more of the goop on my hair and...no, still too red. "Highlights, you need," he said. (He's German, so he speaks like a character from NYPD Blue - always the verb on the end of the sentence he puts.)

Highlights I needed. Highlights I got. And when he was done, he hugged me and helped me on with my coat. And they were free. Free. Free! Thanks to the Order I placed with the Law.

Can't wait to see what I get next!

"If you want to change your life..."

It was a weekend of learning for me, and perhaps even a few breakthroughs; time will tell. All-day seminars on Saturday (two of my favorite marketing gurus) and Sunday (the inspiring people who lead the company I work with) left me equally exhausted and exhilarated.

And when I woke up Monday morning, I realized that out of all the things I heard in all those hours of sitting in hotel catering chairs, perhaps the most profound was one very simple sentence:

"If you want to change your life, you have to change your life."

Leverage

"Give me a place to stand and a lever and I will move the whole world."

The philosopher Archimedes said that, about 2300 years ago. Actually, Archimedes said, "Πα βω και χαριστιωνι ταν γαν κινησω πασαν" -- but that's Greek to me.

What I do understand is that I can do more when I'm working with someone (or several someones) than I can ever hope to do alone.

So if our friend Archimedes were a network marketer, I think what he'd be saying is, "Give me a great product and a team to leverage and we will all make a world of money."

No gym membership required

I know I shouldn't feel this way, but I'm not really crazy about gyms. I'm not proud of it, but it's a fact.

But yesterday I learned a way to give my body a great workout without going near a gym. No running shoes or sweatpants required. All you have to do is one thing, one little tiny thing:
Leave your comfort zone.

Okay, I lied. Not such a little thing after all, is it? At least not the first time you leave your comfort zone. But keep taking regular trips out of the comfort zone and an amazing thing happens: you get used to life on the outside. And your comfort zone expands.

So what does that have to do with the gym? When you exercise, one of the things your body does is produce adrenaline. It widens your blood vessels, makes your heart beat a little faster. Just like aerobic exercise. So you can give yourself a workout without going to the gym. At first, this burst of adrenaline feels uncomfortable - you get that "fight or flight" urge. But the more you do the thing that scares you, the more used your body will get to this adrenaline rush. And pretty soon, your body will get so used to that level of adrenaline that it won't make you feel uncomfortable anymore. Cool or cool? Oh yeah.

Guru M.J.

I met one of my network marketing heroes this week, sales guru M.J. Durkin. Soon after I started doing this business, my mentor lent me "M.J. Live!" - a bundle of prospecting wisdom packed into two CDs. I've been a fan ever since.

When I slid the first disc into my car's CD player, I had been expecting (read: wanting) someone to give me scripts - say this, don't say that. But M.J. gave me much more: Power. The power to let go of people - because I had the power to find more. (My mother's "plenty of fish in the sea" theory applied to sales.) My favorite moment from the CDs? M.J. and the attendees at the live seminar shouting "Flush 'em!" in reference to a balky or uncooperative prospect.

You can also find M.J.'s wisdom in printed form - his book "Double Your Contacts" is a great, and quick, read. And apparently he's due out with another book soon - I can't wait!

You are what you eat

You know that old saying "you are what you eat"? Well you are also what you drink. And breathe. And that's not good news.

See this slideshow on MSN - it focuses on toxins that may be related to breast cancer. Pretty much everything from your car exhaust to your hair dye, to the oils in which those potatoes we all love so much were just French fried.

Pretty scary stuff.

I mean, you can avoid French fries (I've at least cut way back on the fast food kind) and hair dye, but it's kind hard to avoid breathing. So no matter what kind of an eco-friendly life you live, you're going to take in some toxins.

Fortunately, you can take them right out again. Nutritional cleansing is the key to removing impurities from our systems. And if you're interested in knowing more, let me know.

Soliciting

I was in NYC yesterday, left one meeting and heading to another about a mile away. It was a beautiful day, so I decided to walk. You can keep the forest glades; I love walking in the city.

About halfway to my destination, I was stopped by a young man working for a children's charity. He was very personable - and obviously liked talking to people - so I asked him if he was making enough money doing what he was doing. "They don't pay me nearly enough," he said. Next question: "Would you be interested in learning about a way you could make money from home, on your own schedule?" And, what do you know? He was. I gave him my card and a web site to look at, invited him to the meeting I was heading to, and headed off down the street. I felt pretty happy -- good at what I do and proud of sharing it.

Little did I know that my mentor was halfway down the block with a very nice woman who was thinking of joining our team. They'd been watching me the whole time!

The new woman complimented me on being so good at "solicitation." I just laughed. Of course, that's one of the terms for illegal actions taken by prostitutes. I said, "If I were really soliciting, I'd be making more money...I hope." But seriously, as my mentor said, six months ago I would never have been having that conversation. Even four months ago. So it's great to take note of how I've grown.

This really is an amazing business.

"Go Hard or Go Home"

I had the privilege of going to a gym yesterday. Not a "health club" - a gym, a real, honest-go-God boxers' gym. No carpeting, no air conditioning, no cappuccinos. Just a bunch of dedicated men (and a few women) building their self-esteem and their muscles, and practicing their art. It was a humbling - and inspiring - experience.

One of the walls of the gym is painted with a great quotation from Virgil about strength and spirit, but the words I found most inspiring were on the back of a trainer's T-shirt: "Go hard or go home."

If you're not going to give something your all, why in the world would you bother to do it halfway? I'm taking that message back to my team. We have too much work to do - too many people need our help to improve their health and their financial situations. I don't have any time for people looking for a new hobby.

Go hard or go home. And let's change the world.

Good Deeds & Good Work

Lauren gave away her "fat" clothes this weekend.

That's a big step for a self-described "cheap-skape" New Englander. But she felt she needed to make a commitment to herself, to her slimming, healthier self, putting up a big, neon sign for the Universe:

THIS IS NOT WHO I AM ANYMORE!

So she loaded up two very large garbage bags with stuff she bought 50 lbs. ago and we hauled them off to Goodwill. Her more formal clothes will be going to Dress for Success, a charity that outfits lower-income women in business attire so they can get better jobs. Good deeds, the result of a lot of hard work Lauren has done, sticking to the fat-burning program and exercising regularly.

Look for more donations to come from my growing (and shrinking!) team.

Fair? Nope, Fabulous!

Team "Slim Diva" set up a booth at a street fair yesterday. What an awesome day! Even when it rained - and oh yeah, did it rain! - we made great connections with people. We were talking with a very nice man, a body-builder type who wants to increase his lean muscle mass, when the skies opened up...and then the wind whipped up and started blowing away people's tents! There were only two of us working the booth at the moment (me and Lauren) and our arms weren't long enough to hold down all four sides of the tent, so this guy just grabbed on and stayed with us until the storm had passed. We didn't even have to ask! Thanks again, Malik, wherever you are!

We had various helpers who joined us for parts of the day, but Lauren and I were there from 9 a.m. until 8 p.m. Eleven hours. Physically we were exhausted by the time we got home. But mentally, we were jazzed. We met soooo many people and had tons of great conversations about how we can help them achieve their health (and wealth) goals. Now begins the work of following up with the 100+ people who were interested enough to give us their information. Whew! I can't wait to do it again!

Funny Business

If you ask 10 people what network marketing is about, probably 11 of them would tell you "Sales."

But I don't believe it's about sales at all, I believe it's about listening. Listening to what people say - and to what they mean - and then showing them how I can help.

So who are the best listeners in the world? Besides therapists and maybe bartenders, I think it's comedians. Especially comedians who specialize in stand-up or improv.

Stand-ups have to be engaging; they have to know how to "read" their audience. Improvisers have to be able to go with the flow, building on what the other person in the conversation gives them. These are all golden skills for networkers. And, yes, they're skills anyone can learn. But with comedians, they're standard equipment.

So I'm on the lookout for comics. And I'm currently talking to two of them: One I met at an audition - he was my partner in an improv scene and we made the auditioners laugh, a lot. And another whose business card I found on the bulletin board in a sandwich shop 250 miles from where he lives. It was pinned up alongside cards from a motley collection of Realtors, tutors, and a woman who'll assemble your scrapbook for you. (I'll be calling all of those folks, too - and some of them may even make themselves - and me - some money, but I don't expect any of them to make me laugh.)

"When I win the lottery..."

Spent some time in the dog park today. I just wanted to give the dog (she's 8 months old now - that's an old picture, but way cute) a chance to get some exercise and it was a lovely afternoon. I wasn't thinking about business at all.

And then this woman I was talking to started speaking a foreign language. Okay, not really. It was a language I understood - a language I used to speak, even. But not anymore.

"When I win the lottery," she said. She would have a house on Cape Cod. And a car and driver to get her there and back whenever she liked. Also a cleaning lady. "When I win the lottery."

Like I said, I used to speak that language. The language of, "I can't possibly get ahead on my own so I'll just wait for divine intervention." Of "without a bolt from the blue, my dreams will never become reality." Of "I'm not good, so I'd better be lucky." But I was surprised at how odd and wrong it sounded to me coming out of this nice woman's mouth.

I don't need to wait for the lottery - I'm making my own luck, building my own business. I talked to her about it and she seemed interested. She took my postcard, read it, then folded it up and put it in her pocket. I hope she calls. I'd love to help her make some of her dreams come true.

Gooooooooooal!

I've never been much of a goal-setter in the past. I'll blame The Voice for that, can't I? You know, The Voice in your head that says unhelpful things - sometimes quite loudly and with the kind of annoying frequency usually only found in 2-year-olds who've set their sights on expensive toy.

My Voice told me that setting goals was a waste of time, especially since I wasn't going to meet them anyway! So for years, I never bothered.

But lately I've been working on The Voice, trying to give it a permanent case of laryngitis. And so I set a goal for the month of April. A pretty audacious goal, at that. I have a calendar hanging next to my desk and on the square for April 30th, the last day of the month, I wrote the number of people I wanted to have enrolled on my team.

And I found out...The Voice was right: I didn't meet my goal. I exceeded it!

So we've been making like soccer fans in my house, lots of high-fives and shouts of "Goooooooooooooooooooooal!"

Feels fabulous!

Team Slimdiva now has 17 members...and counting! With more goooooooooooals set weekly.

"Excuse me..."

One of the things I'm enjoying about this work is the opportunity to take some time for self-improvement. I realized early on that the skills I needed to develop to succeed in network marketing are actually skills I have needed to develop for myself anyway - stuff like talking to people, whether on the street or on the phone. I've been a freelance writer for over 15 years and still have trouble making myself pick up the phone and introduce myself to people who might want to hire me. Which pretty much meant that unless I fell into some work, I was out of luck. So learning to talk to and develop a rapport with people has always been high on my To-Do List. It's just never gotten To-Done.

Not anymore.

I'm much, much better on the phone. (It helps that I've got an awesome product that can benefit just about everyone - which I know because it's benefited me.) But I'm still working on the face-to-face contact with strangers - check that, face-to-face contact with people I have not yet met. So last week, I made a deal with myself. I had to spend the day in New York City, which meant I would be surrounded by people at the train station, on the train, on the street, in the subway, and I was bound and determined that before I got home that night, I was going to Make Contact.

For some people, talking to new people is just like, I don't know, pouring a glass of water. It's effortless, almost second-nature. My partner is one of those people and I used to think she was crazy - now I think she's a genius. She will even talk to celebrities, which always makes me cringe. For the longest time, if I spotted a famous person I would only tell her after either the star or we had left the area. I hated it that much - enough that I would deny her a small pleasure to save myself a cringe.

But I digress. Back to my day of Making Contact: It was not easy. I got all the way to my early-afternoon meeting, and I still hadn't had anything that I thought qualified as a conversation. So when I left the meeting and headed to the subway, I gave myself a stern talking-to. I vowed that I was going to talk to ONE PERSON before the train arrived. I walked past people on the platform, looking for the perfect person to talk to. And there was this man standing by himself, out of earshot of anyone else - so if I made a fool of myself, at least he would be the only person to hear me. I decided he was The One.

I had already planned my opening line. "Excuse me, I was wondering if you could help me. I'm taking a class and my assignment is that I have to talk to people. So can I talk to you?" Okay, so the "taking a class" part was not exactly 100% true, but I was engaged in serious learning. So I walked up to the man - who was standing with his back to me - and said, "Excuse me."

And when he turned around, I saw he was...a celebrity. Well, not a celebrity like a nationally known guy, but an actor. An actor I recognized, whose work I have seen many times and enjoyed. It was like my worst nightmare come true. I wanted to run away, but I was already committed with the "excuse me," so I decided to pretend I didn't recognize him (it's just my mind playing tricks on me) and follow through with my story about the class.

Well, he couldn't have been sweeter. He picked right up and started asking me questions - the best way to draw out someone who's shy - about my "class," about where I was from. I asked him questions back, and eventually got him to give me his name. (It was him. Cringe!) I apologized for "not recognizing" him and reeled off some of his performances that I've enjoyed, looked down the train tracks "Is this train ever going to show up?" and escaped.

It took me a day or two to let the shock of this experience work through my system. But I think that one conversation with the kind of person who's maybe the scariest for me (famous) was the equivalent of 20 or 30 conversations with regular folks. In fact, later that afternoon - though I was still shaking inside - I struck up a conversation with a shop clerk and got his phone number. I wouldn't say I've completely mastered the techniques yet, but I'm a lot farther on than I was before. And that's really good to know.

Awesome month

I'm having a great time doing this work! I've already written about how much fun it is to be talking to people for a living - in my writing work, generally my only steady companion is the puppy and though she's adorable and incredibly smart (her teacher says she has "unlimited potential") she's not much of a conversationalist. Honestly, it continues to surprise me just how much fun it is, even talking to strangers.

I'm also enjoying exploring new skills, getting to flex a different side of my brain for a change. My mentors and business partners are fabulous people and I'm learning a lot from them.

But probably the most fun is developing an income stream that's not connected to the vagaries of corporate America. Maybe it's not a "stream" yet - just a cute, babbling brook - but it'll be wide and deep as the Mississippi one day.

9 people on my team to date, and counting.

Mmmmmmmmmmm, Chocolate

A friend of mine told me she's just started on Weight Watchers. I said, "Congratulations!" And I meant it too. Then I asked her The Question: "Do you like chocolate?"

So I gave her a piece of the aptly named IsaDelight chocolates and explained that it might help curb her cravings, boost her energy and lift her spirits. She said she'd take it the next afternoon.

Two days later, she calls me up: "I have to order some of those chocolates from you!"

I said, "Fabulous! But I can't talk to you right now." (I was having tea with someone I haven't seen in a long time.) "Can I call you back?"

She said, "When? When will you call me? I have to have those chocolates!"

I love chocolate...now more than ever before!

(P.S.: Seven people on the team now!)

The Power of Six

Six people on my team now, six people getting healthier every day. One woman who started the 30-day program on Saturday has already lost 8 pounds! I'm discovering something about myself: helping people makes me very happy.

My story

Before we get too far along here, I should probably tell my story. How did I get from "Before" to "Now"?

I spent the summer of 2006 feeling increasingly debilitated. With each flight of stairs that winded me, each sweet dessert I craved even more than ever, I worried that there was something terribly wrong with me.

So did I go to the doctor?

Reader, I did not.

No, I come from a long line of ostriches, generations of people sticking their heads in the sand so they can't see Trouble. Unfortunately, Trouble sees them just fine.

Finally, I came back from vacation thinking, "Maybe - maybe I'll call the doctor next week." Then I unloaded my car. Three trips up and down one flight of stairs from my basement and I was near collapse. I called the doctor the next morning.

She did some tests, but didn't seem unduly alarmed about anything. Next morning, my phone rings. It's the doctor's office. The nurse says, "The doctor wants you to come back in."

"Okay," I said, grabbing my date book. "When?"

"How about NOW?"

Bottom line, I had three different things going on. Later, my partner found an article from a medical journal that basically said, "If you've got these three things going on, you shouldn't be reading this article. You should be dead already."

The doctor said I needed to lose weight. I knew she was serious, as in dead serious. And I also knew that if I pussyfooted around losing a pound or two a week, I would never get the weight off. That approach hadn't worked in the past, and this time I needed something that would really, truly, absolutely work. I needed to get healthy as quickly and as safely as I could.

A friend had recommended Isagenix to me a few years earlier. This time, I took her up on it. I started in October 2006 and by February 2007, I was a size 10. When I went to the doctor for my six-month follow-up, she walked into the exam room and nearly dropped her clipboard. She shouted, "You're skinny!" And she said in all her years of practicing, I was the very first patient who'd ever listened to her warning and lost the weight.

Now, a year and a bit later, I'm still a size 10. But I've recommitted myself to the program and I'm going to take off the last 20 or so pounds I need to lose. And if I can do it...oh yeah, absolutely anyone can!

Reconnecting

I've spent a good part of the last three days reconnecting with people and I have to say it feels great! I'm a writer and I work from home. Most days, the only companionship I have is the puppy (part Australian shepherd and part border collie - I call her my "border colleague"), but doing this has forced me to open up my address book and call people and get out of the house and see people - and I'm finding I like it quite a lot!

I've reconnected with people I haven't seen in five years - no, in one case you can probably make that about a dozen - with friends who never expect me to call and with friends I probably should have been calling all along. And in addition to catching up on what's going on in their lives, I get to offer them an opportunity to improve their health and their financial situation. I can't tell you how good that makes me feel.

I made a small sale yesterday, but today I added the first member to my sales team. Today one sale, tomorrow a sales empire!

"I am not a salesperson"

Nope, not me. "I am not a salesperson." So why did I just spend most of the last three days at a conference to learn how to introduce people to this remarkable product, Isagenix, that changed my life? Because it changed my life. I went from busting out of a women's size 18 (and if you know anything about how women's clothing is sized, you know that's really a size 20) to being a comfortable size 10 - and in some clothes, size 8. I also have more energy and feel and look better than I have, ever in my life.

I went to my high school reunion last summer (I won't say which one, but it was well into the double-digits) and enjoyed being significantly thinner than many of the women who were undisputed hotties when we were back in high school - which was a first for all of us. Although, to tell you the truth, I think I enjoyed the experience a lot more than they did.

But I digress. So why did I go to this conference? Because I don't know whether or not I'm really a "salesperson," but I do know that I am someone who wants to help people. I think everyone who wants it, should have the experience of going into a store fitting room and having to send out for smaller sizes. I think everyone should have the experience of being slimmer in middle age than when she was in high school. Mostly, I think everyone who wants to should get healthy and feel great. So that's what I spent the weekend doing - learning how to help people.

After four hours on Friday evening and 10 hours on Saturday, my head was spinning, so I skipped the group dinner and went home. On my way, I stopped at a Starbucks.

The woman behind the counter said, "How are you this evening?" My head was swimming with all that I'd learned in the previous 14 hours, but unfortunately none of it swum into my mouth when I said, "Oh! I'm exhausted!"

Then it was like someone slapped my forehead - like in the vegetable juice commercials - and I realized that I'd just deflected an opportunity. So when she turned back to me I said, "You know, I really am exhausted. But I'm also excited. Because I just learned how this program that helped me lose 40 pounds may also help me make a lot of money." And she said....

"Losing weight and making money? What's that all about?"

And when she gave me her email address, she became my very first "quality contact."

Stay tuned - I'll let you know how it goes with her.