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Step 3-Find Abundance in a World of Scarcity

Written on October 22, 2009 by George Krueger & Mary-Lynn Foster in Personal Growth

abundance We’re right in the middle of a five-part series. First we talked about feeling fortunate. Last time, we discussed the importance of building a reserve in your schedule and in your finances.

Defining what bigg success means to you – what it means to live your life on your own terms – is a critical component of building a reserve. It’s also a part of the third step which we’ll discuss today. Step 3 is …

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Hear George & Mary-Lynn have a run-in with clutter on The Bigg Success Show! Click the purple player to listen: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

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Conquer Clutter

There are two kinds of clutter – physical (the one we most often think about) and mental. As long as you have clutter, you won't feel abundance in your life.

Physical clutter
There are three levels of physical clutter, according to Julie Morgenstern, author of Organizing from the Inside Out:

Level 1 clutter means simple mistakes that are relatively easy to fix. Have a place for everything that’s easily accessible. If you don’t have a place, get it out of your space!

Level 2 clutter is about outside forces. You may simply have too much responsibility. You may be going through a transition. Maybe you don’t have the space you need. It could even be the person with whom you live!

Level 3 physical clutter stems from deeper issues. Some people fulfill their need for abundance by having an abundance of “stuff”. Others like the thrill of the hunt. It may symbolize a lack of goals. Maybe there’s some sentimental attachment to the “stuff”. It can even indicate a perfectionist, believe it or not.

Mental clutter
It's also important to clear out the clutter in our minds. We get bogged down in the past.

Holding grudges holds us back. Forgiveness frees up our minds and spirits to press forward.

Not only do we need to forgive others, we need to forgive ourselves. In fact, if you can’t truly forgive yourself, how can you possibly forgive others?

Cut yourself some slack, for crying out loud! You deserve a break today!

We also need to learn the right lessons from the past. As kids, we put our hands on a hot stove and got burned. So we didn’t put our hand on a hot stove again.

As adults, we’ve put our hand on a symbolic hot stove and gotten burned. How did we respond? We don’t turn on the stove anymore!

Life is full of risk. Try as you might, you can’t avoid it. More importantly, you shouldn’t avoid it!

Bigg success comes to those who take calculated risks. Sometimes it works out; sometimes it doesn’t. Either way, learn from it and then turn that stove on again and cook up some bigg success for yourself!

Finally, it's important to understand our strengths and weaknesses. But we clutter our mind with our weaknesses.

Then we reinforce those thoughts by telling ourselves all of the reasons why we can't do something. Stop telling yourself what you can’t do. Focus on what you can, and will, do!

We need to believe that we can do it so we will find a way to get it done. Then we will find abundance. That’s bigg success!

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Thanks so much for the gift of your time today. Please join us next time when we’ll take the fourth step to abundant living. Until then, here’s to your bigg success!

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Step 2-Find Abundance in a World of Scarcity

Tags: abundance, bigg success, clutter, forgiveness, george krueger, getting organized, holding grudges, Julie Morgenstern, life, living, mary-lynn foster, organizing, perfectionist, podcast, risk, sentimental attachment, the bigg success show, transition, your terms

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It’s Your Choice

Written on November 25, 2008 by George Krueger & Mary-Lynn Foster in Time Management

thanksgiving

Today we want to discuss preferences – making the right choices for ourselves – and how our preferences affect our relationship with others and with ourselves.

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Hear George & Mary-Lynn discuss today's topic on The Bigg Success Show! Click the purple player: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

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marylynn I was talking with my dad the other day. He’s really looking forward to Thanksgiving Day because he is going to cook all day. My dad is the make-everything-from-scratch kind of guy. He just can’t wait. For him, it’s going to be super-relaxing and he’s excited about it. I, on the other hand, would hate that. I can’t see how cooking and doing dishes all day is fun and relaxing.

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george As we were talking about this, we realized that we assess other people, and what they’re doing, based on our own preferences.

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marylynn Obviously, I don’t think what my dad’s doing is wrong. I’m happy for him that he’s excited. It’s just that it’s not what I would want to do.

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george I’m closer to your league, Mary-Lynn. If we were doing this whole thing ourselves, there would be a lot of semi-homemade cooking – out of the box with modifications stuff.

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marylynn I’m all about the Stove Top stuffing and getting a turkey breast instead of a whole turkey, so you don’t have to carve it. I guess what I’m saying here is that my choice is to be lazy!

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george Which works fine on Thanksgiving Day for you. But I think sometimes we look at other people and wonder why in the world they’re doing what they’re doing. Like with what your dad’s doing – it works for him and brings him joy.

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The perfect meal

Then sometimes we make choices for ourselves based on what we think other people expect from us. We put pressure on ourselves to be perfect. Let’s keep the Thanksgiving theme going. We think we have to have the perfect meal – we have to serve the dinner on the china, the stuffing has to be homemade, we have to make the pies from scratch.

It’s what we’ve always done

We put all these pressures on ourselves because we think that’s what our guests expect. Those expectations may be based on tradition – this is what we’ve always done. Just because we’ve “always done” something doesn’t mean we should necessarily feel pressure to keep doing it every single time, or any time for that matter! There should be a good reason for it.

Guilt

If you are strapped for time, if you are tuckered out, why put yourself through all of this extra work? You could just get a store-bought pie or call someone and ask them to make one or pick one up.

But if we do that, we feel guilty. Because we’re not doing what’s always been done, because our family’s going to expect that everything is going to be perfect – we’re going to have the homemade pie, the stuffing is going to be made from scratch, the turkey will be nice and golden, fresh out of the oven, ready to carve.

Who really expects it?

We do all of these things because we feel these expectations even though the people around us may not. We place all of this pressure on ourselves!

We may do this because we want everything to be perfect. That’s fine as long as it’s really your choice and you’re not doing it because you feel guilty if you don’t do it.

Conscious choices

Maybe if you really thought about it, and you talked with your loved ones, you might decide that the best solution is to go out for Thanksgiving dinner. Or have spaghetti with turkey meatballs!

That’s the point – it doesn’t matter what you do if you consciously make the choice. If it works for you and the people you care about, then it works! And this doesn’t just apply to Thanksgiving dinner!

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