I love Dec 31. You get to sit on the edge of the end of the year and the beginning of a new one. Perhaps it is because I get to look back and celebrate both my successes and lessons. This year was a massive year of growth for me. This is what I learned in 2010:

1. Trust your gut and take a leap. This past year, I closed down the magnet side of Color the Universe. I just knew it was something I needed to do. My heart was telling me to take the leap and give my coaching business a fair shot. I was able to rapidly build a coaching business taking my vision and mission to Color the Universe to a whole new level.

2.You need to make space for things to grow. Many people didn’t get how I could close down a stream of income like the magnets. After 10 years, my magnet business didn’t take a whole lot of effort each week. However my energy was being pulled in 2 different directions. I learned that with new ventures, you need to make the space for your ideas to grow. By putting the magnets on hold, I was able to give my full attention to my coaching business and make sure the proper foundation was being set up. It also forced me to let go of the crutch of having steady income flow in. When you start up something new you need the space to nurture and grow that idea, but also the fire underneath you to get things going quickly.

3. Surround yourself with people that pull you forward. Being an entrepreneur is different than having a 9-5 job. I have been an entrepreneur for over 10 years. However, in order to rapidly grow my coaching business, I needed to surround myself with new people that could hold a vision for myself much greater than I could see in the beginning. Their ideas, experiences and energy became the contagious fuel I needed to keep my passion and vision alive.

4. You need to have time for yourself. Surrounding yourself with others was one lesson, but having more “me” time was also a lesson I had learned (or perhaps re-learned). Since first becoming an entrepreneur 11 years ago, I have fallen in love and become a wife, become a mom of a dog, cat, and 2 kids, moved to a new town with new friends. Our lives get filled with new (& old)  joys, commitments, duties and tasks all the time.  We often get confused with what “down-time” truly means. Time to yourself doesn’t mean time to hang out with friends, get groceries or fold laundry without your kids around. Those can be all joyful things, but they are still commitments and tasks. True time to yourself is time where you don’t need to be anywhere or do anything. It means there is time to fallen in love with yourself again and time to listen to whether or not anything is off course and more importantly to just sit and do nothing. There is amazing creation in art of silence and doing nothing.

Well I am sure there were many more lessons. But those were definitely the top ones. Would love to hear what your lessons were. Post below your comments and may 2011 bring you all the joy, love and abundance of the Universe.

Happy New Year! Can’t wait to see what 2011 brings.

With much Love and Gratitude for being on this journey to Color the Universe with me,

Shauna Harper

A perfect post to bring in the new year… Now I have been business for many years, so I have also had a business mission statement. But more recently, I have realized that not only do I need a business one, I need a personal one. So, whether you are in business or not, have you ever thought about a personal mission statement? What is your reason for getting out of bed every morning? Do you jump out to face the day, or crawl deeper into the sheets groaning?

Ideally, you should wake up with a new zest to start the day. Corporate companies have a ritual of creating mission statements. These reflect the spirit of that company; the aim that motivates them to achieve it. But why should mission statements be limited to business professionals only. Business person or not, everyone should think about their own personal mission statement. Each human has an inner drive to be more of themselves or to have a calling for what they were meant to do on Earth.

Think deep. Listen to yourself. Find out what drives you. Often times people would say their motivation lies in achieving tremendous wealth. The truth is wealth is just a means to an end, not the end itself. You want wealth to help you live the life of your dreams. But what are your dreams, what are you meant to do here is your personal mission statement, not the dollar value you are meant to earn.

It is the human spirit that needs to be nourished. Set your mission around accomplishing that goal. A personal mission statement helps you to focus on your goals. And stay steady on the course. It works just like affirmations do. But it is aimed at bringing a more positive charge to motivate you.

• Sit down in a quiet place.
• Take a paper and pencil. Make a list of your personal abilities. This step is important because it helps to strengthen your belief in yourself.
• Write about your past accomplishments all the things that you felt the most joy.
• List all the qualities that were utilized in those achievements. Like courage, love, understanding, organization, method.
• What story would someone write about you if they saw you years from now living the life of your dreams.

Study your list carefully. Your mission statement will be based on it. Consider the three ‘V’s before creating it. These are ‘Values’, ‘Vision’ and ‘Validation’. Foremost are the value and vision components.

VALUES

Values define your innermost strengths and beliefs. Decide now what your true values are and that you will adhere to them.

Vision

Now pay attention to your vision. This will address an internal need and values. How do you see yourself in the future?

Validation

Validation is the milestone you set to achieve in the future. As you progress in fulfilling your goals, what milestones will you need to accomplish that will make you feel like you are on the right path.

Write your statement starting with ‘to’. If you want to be a successful entrepreneur, write, “To be innovative and successful in my business.” If your mission is to be the best parent, example would be “To be patient, inspiring and supportive of my family”.

Add details. Write your purpose, and fix a time frame to check in again. Some personal mission statements are life time journeys while others are just moments in your life right now. Either way, once you come up with it, you should place your personal mission statement somewhere that you can see it daily. This will help strengthen your motivation and give you both purpose and energy.

Although it is raining outside, I know that summer is finally here because there is no snow! I apologize that it has been way too long since my last blog entry… a little over 3 months!

How to stay on purpose and perhaps find the Miss/Mr Positive in all of us

If you talk to my husband, he will be the first to let you know, that Miss Positive/Miss Creator of the Upstones (my little inspirational glass stone magnets) doesn’t live with him all the time! In fact, I am sure there are days he wonders if Miss Upstone ever existed.

Well, one of the things I love to do to remind myself of my purpose and to connect to a place of gratitude is visioning. Through vision boards primarily… and also through keeping a journal, I am able to get back “on track” to my life’s purpose and re-discover Miss.Creator of the UpStones.

Vision Boards:

My vision boards are just a collection of images and words that I am drawn to that I have pasted onto a piece of cardboard. I take old magazines and photos and I cut and paste anything and everything that inspires me or moves me to action. I then use these boards as a very powerful tool to remind myself of the feelings and things that I want to attract into my life…. or that I already have in my life that I am grateful for. Once created, I usually hang them around the house or take photos of them and place them into a frame.

What is amazing is the transformation of my vision boards over the years. To see things that have either manifested or to see things that are no longer of importance to my current life. It is like a visual journal of my dreams. Nothing is set in stone… I give myself the right to change my mind and to live and grow organically towards whatever is important in the moment. Vision boards have helped me set goals for my business, accomplish personal athletic goals that I could not initially wrap my brain around, find my soul mate, and most recently deliver both my children naturally. It is amazing when our mindset is in line with our dreams what can happen.

Some of the things I put onto my vision boards never surface or become reality. However, it is not about crossing things off my list, as much as it is about, opening myself up to possibilities of new things to come into my life.

My way of creating vision boards with scissors, old magazines, cardboard and a glue stick (or sometimes tape when I can’t find the glue!) works for me. However, if that is not your style or you don’t have the time or just can’t seem to get started, there are some newer methods that I have come across that maybe of interest to you:

1. This is Jack Canfield’s website where he has created a vision board kits. Great to check out if you have a problem getting started on your own. Sometimes a DIY Kit helps to get the ball rolling. http://www.dreambigcollection.com/

2. There is also this other great company that I discovered a little while back called http://www.visioningyourworld.com They do online vision boards so that you can have stock images and words on your computer. It gives you a mini-video of your vision boards. Not sure if you can load it up onto your little handheld devices.. but I am sure it is probably possible.

3. The other option is to find yourself a coach to help you. Many coaches lead group vision board workshops. Sometimes when you just can’t get started, joining a group of people and watching them do it will motivate you. If you are in the Lower Mainland, Miriam Evers is an amazing Coach that sometimes leads workshops from the Windsong Co-housing Community in Langley. http://www.joyousrenegade.com/

You can also try to google: vision boards, personalized vision boards, vision board kits, video vision boards for more companies or options.

Journals:

The other method of keeping on “purpose” is to write in a journal. Journalling has been such a powerful tool for me over the years. I used to keep a daily log, but now with time constraints, I usually journal every few weeks to months. I love to go back and re-read my entries to see the mind-space I was in just a few weeks before.

I journal or jot down quick inspirational ideas as well. Or I write in words how life would be in a perfect world… right down to the feelings of how it would feel. Sounds a little bit “out there”, but what it does is it gets the energy flowing where your thought are going.

And finally, writing in my gratitude journal is one of my favorite things to do. Being content with right now and also grateful of what you have is the fastest way to get out of rut and the best way to connect you to that positive energy that aligns you with little miracles that happen.

So the next time you are searching for the Miss/Mr Positive, hopefully you won’t have to look for very long.

Thanks for reading.

Thank you to everyone that joined my facebook business page. I was amazed that my numbers hit 40 within 24 hours.

I was loving facebook and thinking that it was the best thing for business marketing. I started joining different FB groups and posting that I had this great new blog! Now a few days later, I realized that I am so green at this internet marketing/blogging stuff.

Through an amazing website www.stevepavlina.com I heard about Twitter… For those of you already in the loop (and didn’t have 2 babies in the last 2 years!) … I know this sounds really naive… but I HAD NO IDEA about this sub-culture that I was missing! I thought Facebook was it! Now, I have been on Twitter for less than 72 hours and I realized what true internet  networking means! Facebook is great, bc I get to keep in touch with friends and family and people I already know. However, with Twitter, I get to meet new people and see what kind of businesses they have, what they can offer me and what I can hopefully offer them! It is a whole new world… a whole new language to be tweeted.

If you are already a member, please find me and follow me… www.twitter.com/colortheunivers ! Like I mentioned above, in my defense, I have had 2 kids in the last 2 years… so I am just catching up on life