Spending the morning reflecting on the past year ... the challenges faced, experiences shared,  triumphs earned,  the lessons learned.

Grateful for the day ... enjoying the warmth of the fire, surrounded by love, sparkling lights, snow gently falling and the smell of butternut squash soup simmering and fresh bread baking and visitors soon to arrive.

Reflecting on 2012. Looking outward, consciously, with light and love, from the fullness of the present moment.

Shawn Galloway's video captures the essence of my soul perfectly today. Enjoy each moment to the fullest ... and choose love!

http://youtu.be/YHpy_k_kMTU

_ The year 2012 is thought to be a year of great transformation. If you're looking for some guidance or structure around your own personal transformation, I highly recommend Jack Canfield's Success Principles.

It doesn't matter how you define success ... whether it's making more money, improving your relationships, having more free time, creating more fulfilling work, or whatever else you imagine as success ... these principles work if you work them!

Over the next several months, in between other articles and posts of interest, I will be be presenting articles, audio, video and other content highlighting 21 of the success principles that Jack Canfield recommends to support transforming your life from where you are to where you want to be.

Here's an overview of the first 7 I'll be starting with:

1.  Take 100% Responsibility for Your Life
2.  Be Clear Why You're Here
3.  Decide What You Want
4.  Believe That It's Possible
5.  Unleash the Power of Goal Setting
6.  Release the Brakes
7. What You See is What You Get

Stay tuned tomorrow for the first lesson in the series, "Taking 100% Responsibility  for Your Life with E + R = O"

If you want to accelerate your progress or explore a program that is more tailored to your individual needs, feel free to contact me about private coaching by email or phone at 603-452-7350.

_The following post is written by my friend and colleague, Jen Bella. Jen is a psychotherapist and writer who lives, writes and spreads a multitude of joy in the Mount Washington Valley, NH.

Oi to The World
by Jen Bella

 Every year we struggle to give each other the most wonderful and elaborate presents that money can buy.  I would like to offer to alternative suggestions for spreading yuletide joy this season which, depending on your resources (or resolve), we can pick and choose which we may be able to accomplish. 

1.  Spend a day refraining from criticism.
2.  Volunteer to clean up after a meeting.
3.  Go through the park and collect all the trash.
4.  Offer to wash your next door neighbor’s car.
5.   Bake cookies and give them away to every person who drops by.
6.  Give the secretary at your child’s school (often the unsung hero) a special   holiday card letting her know how much you appreciate her.
7.  Give the kids a day off from chores.
8.  Bring your honey breakfast in bed-for no reason.
9.  Go to a church you’ve never been to, open your mind, and listen to what they have to say.
10.  Bring some cat and dog food up to the shelter.
11.  Buy the Salvation Army bell ringer a cup of coffee.
12.  Leave a sexy love note on your honey’s car.
13.  Stick a note in your kid’s lunch letting them know how special you think they are.
14.  Run some hot chocolate out to the plow guy.
15.  Thank the cashier for working on a holiday.
16.  Stick a  Benjamin Franklin in the tip jar at your favorite coffee house.
17.  Look people in eye and genuinely smile.
18.  Be patient with strangers, but especially with loved ones.
19.  Stop trying to be right all the time.
20.  Embrace and practice the concept of empathy.
21.  Practice tolerance, especially when someone’s appearance frightens you.
22.  Call your parents and tell them about your happiest holiday memory that they helped to create.
23.  Forgive.
24.  Make a gratitude list and read it first thing every morning.
25.  Even if they don’t want to at first-bake cookies with your kids.
26.  View “It’s a Wonderful Life” and “Elf” as a family.
27.  Ask your teenager to show you his/her favorite You Tube video ... and don’t be judgmental.
28.  Show your teenager a video of a dance that was popular when you were in high school.
29.  Play “Monopoly”, “Sorry”, “Cranium” or “Pictionary” with your family.
30.  Take some fudge to the volunteers selling Christmas trees at the fire stations, the shelter, and lots.
31.  Pile the kids in the car and go look at the holiday lights.
32.  Take an aspiring ballerina to a performance of the “Nutcracker”.
33.  Make a mixed CD of unusual holiday songs such as No Doubt’s “Oi To the World”, “Christmas Tree” by Lady Gaga or “Father Christmas” by the Kinks.
34.  Host an “orphan’s party” for all your friends who may be spending the holidays alone this year.
35.  Call each of your friends on the phone and let them know why you’re glad they’re in your life.
36.  Learn the historical origins of Christmas and Hanukah and share it with your family.
37.  Give your cat or dog an extra special brushing or grooming.
38.  Make suet the old fashioned way and hang a bunch in your yard.
39.  Introduce your kids (who haven’t tried it) to the joys of real maple syrup on fresh fallen snow.
40.  Be as helpful as you can.
41.  Express love through your eyes to everyone you see.
42.  Remember that the worst of pain is often the best hidden.  Resolve to  never carelessly add to someone’s pain, but work to ease it.
43.  The least loveable among us are often the most in need of love.  Push outside of your comfort zone to reach out to those who are most in need.
44.  Make a bucket list.
45.  Start working on your bucket list.
46.  Get in touch with your sense of wonder.
47.  Embrace humility.   
48.  If you are unhappy, look inward for the answers.
49.  Don’t “practice” Christianity, Buddhism or Islam, etc.. BE a Buddha, a Christ, a Mohammed. 
50.  Look around for the ones you love the most, and thank them for being best Christmas presents you could ever ask for!

Jen Bella can be reached at [email protected] or at her North Conway office at 603-356-7345.

_Research indicates that being in a state of gratitude, love and appreciation affects us, and those around us, on an emotional and physiological level.

The period between Thanksgiving and New Year’s Day is the time when most people tend to demonstrate their love and appreciation. But wouldn’t it be nice to experience that level of joy, love and appreciation every day of the year?

Consider using Jack Canfield's article as a guide to help up-level your expressions of gratitude, love and appreciation in 2012. It can literally transforms our way of living, being and relating to those around us!

Paying attention to the ways in which those around us prefer to receive our expressions of appreciation is something that can expand the impact of our expressions even further. Read more about this in the article:

Three Ways to Express Appreciation for Greater Impact

_According to Jack Canfield ...

As you set goals for the coming year, it's a good idea to take stock of the progress you've made toward your goals this year. For many people, this review is unpleasant and even can lead to a downward spiral.

If you didn't achieve all of the goals you set at the beginning of the year, you may feel like you have failed. Our self-esteem can take a hit, we can become disheartened and discouraged, and our motivation drops. Some people actually become depressed.

If this sounds familiar, it's time to reframe how you look at success.

Develop your "Wins List" with the help of Jack's article Celebrate Your Year: 23 Questions to Inventory Your Successes

For a more detailed 2011 Year in Review Process, join Jack's Inner Circle Club for a 10 day free trial to get his step by step video instruction about how to complete the 2011 Year in Review Process. He'll also provide some insight on goal setting  to help you to begin charting your course for 2012!

Because of Jack's Year in Review process and the content and support in the Inner Circle Club, I've given up making New Year's resolutions that never come to fruition. I now start each New Year with a clear vision, of what I want, specific goals to guide me and the inspiration and support to help me take action toward achieving my goals!

Rather than beginning 2012 feeling expired by all I didn't accomplish, I am beginning the year inspired, fueled and motivated by the amazing inventory of things I've accomplished in 2011 that serve as a springboard for 2012!

Visualizing is one of the most powerful ways to achieve our goals and fulfill our dreams. Engaging the subconscious mind in the visualization process is a very powerful approach to further advance our goals toward achievement.

My interest in this concept was piqued in the movie, The Secret. Over the past couple of years I have become fascinated with the subconscious mind and have become an avid student.

Click here to read John Assaraf's article on understanding the brain and why visualization works.

The following story is an example of one huge thing I have manifested using the power of my subconscious mind along with visualization. I could share accounts of many, many smaller tjhings I manifest on a daily basis, but this story is one of my most profound ... and it is literally changing my life!

In August, 2010, while sitting in the audience on the last day of the 7 day Breakthrough to Success event with transformational leader Jack Canfield, I set a goal to become one of his trainers. I was inspired by his Success Principles and had witnessed, first hand, major transformation as the result of incorporating the them into my life.

I love teaching, coaching and inspiring others to be the best they can be and especially love working with teens and young adults. I knew in my heart of hearts that the Success Principles was an amazing system that needed to be brought to teen and young adult audiences across the country and I knew that I wanted to be instrumental in doing just that.

In order to accomplish this goal, I would need to complete Jack's Train the Trainer program. This would require me to come up with the tuition, travel and related expenses (approximately $25,000) as well as apply and be accepted into the program. My financial status was pretty bleak due to budget cuts and having just started a new business, but I didn't let that get in my way!

On Jack's suggestion, I have become an inverse paranoid. I believe that the Universe is always conspiring on my behalf according to what my subconscious mind is putting out there. I have come to believe that anything is possible and the only thing standing in my way is old limiting beliefs that serve as blocks.

I decided that nothing was going to stop me from reaching this goal. It felt important and I knew way down deep that it was connected to my life purpose.

I incorporated visualization into my daily life. I developed a Mind Movie which is a fun way to add pictures, affirmations and emotion to your vision.

I watched my movie twice a day, in the morning when I woke up and at night just before falling asleep. As I watched the two and a half minute movie, I allowed myself to experience the end result as if it were already completed. I felt the feelings of being on stage in front of the audience, microphone in hand, teaching what I had learned from one of the best teachers, coaches and mentors in the world of personal and professional transformation.

I booked the training dates in my calendar, as if I had already been accepted into the program. I filled out the application so it would be ready to send out when I had raised the money. I started to develop a concept proposal for the curriculum I had envisioned and put together a group of teens, young adults and professionals to help me accomplish my goal. I set up a file for the project and develooped an implementation timeline.

I refused to let my less than stable financial status have any impact on my "knowing" that I would be in Jack's 2012 Train the Trainer class and that my project would come to fruition.

I had no idea how it would all come together. I was just barely paying my bills ... but I kept visualizing and feeling and acting as if the goal were already completed.

I even started a fundraising effort and succeeded in raising about $5000 which provided me with some seed money so I could begin to develop my plan to bring this work to teens and young adults. I began to pilot it locally in the classrooms I was already teaching in.

A year later, in August 2011, a friend contacted me and asked me to take a road trip with her. She had just lost both her parents and needed a mental health break and change of scenery. She wanted to come to New England, travel up the coast of Maine, spend a few days in Acadia National Park and eat as much lobster as possible along the way. Acadia is one of my favorite places on the planet, and although money was tight, something made me say yes to the trip.

Call it inspired action, but I "knew" I needed to go ... and so I did. We had a great time. She got what she needed, as did I.  Acadia is always good for the soul!

At breakfast one day, my friend told me that there was something she wanted to tell me. I listened as she told me that she had inherited a significant amount of money from her parents. She told me that she had been following my work with teens, that she knew Jack's work and had heard me share my vision of bringing his work to teens across the country. Over coffee and Belgian waffles, told me that she wanted to help me realize my vision.

She then gifted me the entire cost of the year long program!

I was in shock and couldn't speak through my tears of gratitude. I accepted the gift immediately. When I got home, I emailed the Train the Trainer application I had already completed several months before. Two days later I received a call from the Canfield Training Group to set up an admission interview and I was accepted into the program.

I start the training in February 2012. Ironically (or not) Jack has publicly announced his interest  in bringing his Success Principles work to teens. Although it is not quite clear yet exactly how,  I have no doubt we will be working together toward this end in some capacity.

I am totally convinced that the subconscious mind is incredibly powerful in creating the life of our dreams. I am now in the process of exploring the power of the heart combined with the subconscious mind using tools and techniques from the Heart Math Institute. The combination of the two is profoundly powerful! More on that later ...

_Mistake #1: Not being clear about exactly what you want.

"The indispensible first step to getting what you want out of life is this: decide what you want." ~Ben Stein

What to do instead!

How about starting 2012 by clarifying your life purpose?

Click here for The Life Purpose Exercise to help you get clear about your purpose. Once you have it, all the goals you create, decisions that you make and actions that you take will ideally reflect your purpose for being on the planet!

Mistake #2: Surrounding yourself with negativity.

"You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with." ~Jim Rohn

What to do instead!

Try this to help you increase your awareness of the people in your life. List those people you spend the most time with ... family members, friends, co-workers, neighbors, people in your civic organizations, etc. Once you have your list, place a + sign next to the the people who are nurturing and positive and a - sign next to the people who are negative or toxic. Place a * next to the five people you spend the most time with.

This activity takes just a few minutes, but serves as a wonderful index of the positive and negative influences in your life.

When I first did this, I realized that I needed to take some action to end a friendship that wasn't serving me and even decrease the quantity of time I spent with a couple of family members. I couldn't eliminate these people from my life, but I was able to set some boundaries and replace our time together in way that shifted things to the positive side.

I also became aware of the impact of my own self talk! I noticed I was more positive when I surrounded myself with more positive people. I felt so much better, had more energy and accomplished more things that made me even happier!

Mistake #3: Focusing on your failures rather than your successes.

"The problem is that most people focus on their failures rather than their successes. But the truth is that most people have many more successes than failures." - Jack Canfield

Have you ever made a New Year's Resolution? Did you keep it? Did you reach the goal that you had in mind when you made the resolution?

What to do instead!

Don't make resolutions anymore ... set goals based on your life purpose.

Do an annual review of your goals, focusing only on your accomplishments.

I just completed my Year in Review for 2011 with my teacher and mentor Jack Canfield. Instead of starting 2012 feeling bad about what I haven't accomplished, I am all fired up over how much I have actually accomplished!

My next step is to revise my goals and add some new ones for 2012! After that, I can focus on taking action towards my goals.

It is amazing how having a clear life purpose, surrounding myself with positive people and focusing on successes can literally transform your life!

By the way, you can access Jack's Year in Review 2011 by joining his Inner Circle Club for a free 10 day trial membership ... it's the best gift you'll ever give yourself!

Contact me here to learn more about coaching yourself to success in 2012 or call me at 603-452-7350 today!

"What's the most important part of your health? Is it eating a balanced diet? Daily exercise? Getting enough sleep? Taking your vitamins? Regular check-ups?

What if I told you that caring for your body is the least important part of your health?

What if I told you the medical profession had it all backwards?"
~ Dr. Lissa Rankin, MD

Check out this youtube video by Dr. Rankin.It is well worth investing 18 minutes of your time to view it ... and another minute or two to share the link with everyone on your email and social media contact lists.

As a former health care professional in our traditional western medical model, I can't begin to emphasize the importance of her message!

On a more self-serving note, Dr. Rankin completely validates my passion, purpose and mission to bring this awareness to teens and young adults across the country!

I also highly recommend the video she cites by Brenee Brown on vulnerability at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=32OP8mdMiTs_

_I simply have to repost this promotion! Today is the last day to save 30% in the Jack Canfield Success Store. Statistics tell us that most people are not happy with their careers. Teens and young adults are becoming more and more disenchanted with the old educational models. They are graduating high school, going to college and coming out without a clear direction.

With that in mind, I highly recommend my favorite products below for the teens and adults on your holiday list. who are looking for transformation in the New Year or the kids of all ages who simply enjoy creating and envisioning big dreams for their future.

Act now to get 30% off on already reduced prices!

For the kids, teens and adults on your holiday list with Jack's Vision Board Collection ... these kits are beautiful, fun, effective & deeply discounted for the holidays!

For teens, The Success Principles for Teens book comes highly recommended by a large group of teens who reviewed the book for me this fall. Teens love the stories, quotes and practical content. (And I am soooo excited to be developing a curriculum for teens based on this book!

For the adults in your life who are looking towards 2012 with a vision of personal and/or professional transformation, check out The Success Principles 3o day audio course and The Success Principles white book.

As you may know, I have been an avid student of Jack Canfield's  over the past year and a half. The Success Principles have literally transformed my life and I have been incorporating the Principles into the teaching and coaching I do with teens and adults alike! No matter how we define success, these principles apply and serve to activate the Law of Attraction in our lives to accelerate our progress and create measurable and magical results!

I am excited to have the opportunity to continue working with Jack as my teacher, coach and mentor in 2012. My big goal is to work with The Canfield Training Group to bring the Success Principles to teen and young adult  across the country.

As you may know, I have been an avid student of Jack Canfield's  over the past year and a half. The Success Principles have literally transformed my life and I have been incorporating the Principles into the teaching and coaching I do with teens and adults alike! No matter how we define success, these principles apply and serve to activate the Law of Attraction in our lives to accelerate our progress and create measurable and magical results!

I am excited to have the opportunity to continue working with Jack as my teacher, coach and mentor in 2012 and look forward to working with him to bring the Success Principles to teen and young adult classrooms across the country.

With that in mind, I highly recommend my favorite products below for the teens and adults on your holiday list. who are looking for transformation in the New Year or the kids of all ages who simply enjoy creating and envisioning big dreams for their future.

Act now to get 30% off on already reduced prices!

For the kids, teens and adults on your holiday list with Jack's Vision Board Collection ... these kits are beautiful, fun, effective & deeply discounted for the holidays!

For teens, The Success Principles for Teens book comes highly recommended by a large group of teens who reviewed the book for me this fall. Teens love the stories, quotes and practical content. (And I am soooo excited to be developing a curriculum for teens based on this book!

For the adults in your life who are looking towards 2012 with a vision of personal and/or professional transformation, check out The Success Principles 3o day audio course and The Success Principles white book.

And finally, get a glimpse of Jack's story, his perspective on 2012 and the vision that has fueled his passion to share this transformational work worldwide. Read an excerpt and get a copy of The Golden Motorcycle Gang for yourself and pass on the inspiration as we head into 2012!