Focus Your Thinking On
The Things You Really Want in Life

Make Continuous Improvement and Personal Growth A Part of Your Daily Routine
by Yvonne F. Brown

Whew! It's been awhile since my last newsletter and I know I owe it to you my faithful readers to explain myself.

First of all, I lost my fabulous web mistress in December and it has held up lots of website work that is still incomplete. She did excellent work for us and I will miss her. LaTisha decided to stop doing website maintenance and focus strictly on working with new website design and development. I wish her the best.

Then I spent the month of January speaking at women's conferences in the United Kingdom. From Plymouth to London, I met some very interesting and remarkable women who graciously shared their views with me. While in the UK I spent the weekend down time with my cousin Gail who is a professor at the University of London and had just completed writing a text book which had consumed many months of her time. Her children Laurence, James and Aretha and her husband Jonathan are hospitable and heartwarming people and I loved spending time with all of them. While there, I also spent time with her mum, my aunt and uncle. Yes, I took some time to commune with family and it was a great way to start the year.

When I returned from the UK I found that my ISP of over a decade had been sold and the new company did not have an equal commitment to customer service. They diminished the values offered, while simultaneously demonstrating they did not care whether our website was up or down. Unexpected service changes became a near daily occurrence. After searching for a new ISP and moving the website to that platform, we found ourselves in an even worse situation. The new ISP would often drop and lose the items sent to us, or by us, and their response to this problem was "well it works most of the time and that's good enough" or "why don't you check it out and let us know what you find out." Consequently we had to move the website a THIRD time to our current ISP who we are very happy with. We've given it some time and I am now confident that we will be with this new ISP for a long time.

The JAD Communications discussion group was attacked by hackers and we lost all of the content. We removed it from the web completely for awhile since the updated version was also hacked. A new version of the discussion group has been created, however this new discussion group will be by invitation only.

Since November of 2005 I know of the shocking suicides of two young people. One was in their early 30s and the other a mere 23 years old. There were days when I felt I understood the difficulty they faced. Especially when a colleague leaned over to me at a business event and suggested that I might have ADD, then tried to convince me that was a good thing. Some people will do anything to try to hold you back. Don't fall for it! The fact that she resorted to this underhanded attempt to diminish my confidence only served to inform me of how insecure she felt in my presence. In the movie "To Kill a Mockingbird" a father told his young daughter "You never really understand somebody until you climb into his skin and live in it." I silently wondered how my colleague would feel if I diagnosed her on a whim and proclaimed her ignorant and insecure. See our quote of the month to learn how I deal with this type of behavior.

But, I digress. The point is that we at JAD Communications are back on track, we have a good ISP with great customer service, we have found a new web mistress, the discussion group is fixed, and we can now return to our monthly newsletter series.

But it was not all negative, we have added a new benefit for you. Visit the JAD Online Leads Exchange at this link to learn more about how to become a client’s ‘go to person’ and increase your effectiveness.

You can download a free article about how to become your clients Emotional Favorite - Also see below in the events section for our upcoming teleseminar and other items of interest.

Take out survey
We invite you to participate in our survey and you will have a chance to win a $30 CD or a book valued at $25. Click here for our survey and to be entered into the drawing:  

Please complete the survey by March 10, 2005, at 5:00 pm EST.

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Life is a Balancing Act
by Mark Victor Hansen

Life on a tightrope

Imagine a tightrope walker in circus. He is on a rope suspended a few feet above the straw covered floor. His purpose is to walk the rope from one end to other. He holds a long bar in his hands to help him maintain his balance. But he must do more than simply walk. On his shoulders he balances a chair. And in that chair sits a young woman who is herself balancing a rod on her forehead, and on top of that rod is a plate.

If at any time one of the items should start to drift off balance, he must stop until he can get all of them in perfect alignment again. For the tightrope artist doesn’t begin until all the elements above him are aligned. Only then does he move forward, carefully, slowly across the rope.

I suggest that life is very much a balancing act and that we are always just a step away from a fall. We are constantly trying to move forward with our purpose, to achieve our goals. All the while trying to keep in balance the various elements of our lives.

Getting out of Balance

Many of us get out of balance with regard to money. If we don’t have sufficient money, then our lives become a money chase. We constantly devote our energies toward improving our finances. In the process we tend to take energy away from our family, our mate, our spiritual and mental needs, even our health. More important, we don’t move forward toward our life purpose. We don’t proceed along the tightrope. Only when we get our finances straightened out can we spread our energies to all the other aspects of our life and proceed with our purpose.

Other areas of our life could be out of harmony. It could be our relationship with our wife or husband. It could be a spiritual emptiness that is gnawing at our insides. It could be lack of appropriate social contract. It could be illness. If any aspect of our life draws a disproportionate amount of energy, we have to shortchange the other aspects. The throws us off and we are unable to move forward on life’s tightrope until a balance can be reestablished.

Getting Balance

Our first priority, therefore, is getting our life in balance. We need to deal with any areas that are taking too much energy and put them in perspective align them so that we have energy available for all areas.

We need to create a balance of winning identities as father or mother, lover, husband, or wife, son or daughter, worker, participant, finisher and so forth. Only when each identity is fulfilled will that area be functioning and not overdrawing our energy.

But it doesn’t happen by itself. Achieving a balanced life is a choice that each of is continually makes second by second, thought by thought, feeling by feeling. On the one hand, we can simply exist. But on the other, we can choose to pack out seconds and create valuable minutes in all aspects of our lives.

It’s important here to understand that others cannot do this for us. I can be me and only you, you. No one can think, breathe, feel, see, experience, love or die for either of us. Inside, we are what we are. We all come into life without a map, an operating manual or a definition of ourselves, other then male or female. It’s up to us to balance all the different aspects of our lives. We can do to by pushing the “decide” buttons in our lives.

Making an Assessment

At first it’s important to stop and assess how we’re doing. We should look at all the various aspects of our life that we are constantly juggling, constantly trying to keep in balance. These include: marriage and family, finances, health, social contact, spiritual development, and mental growth.

Are we able to devote ample energy to all areas? Or are we tipped off to one side, unbalanced in one direction?

This article is by Mark Victor Hansen. For more information about Mark Victor Hansen or his CDs, books and/or videos visit www.YourSuccessStore.com or call 877-929-0439.

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This Month's Event:

Conference—Employee ROI conference and Boardroom Bound Conference in New York

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Book of the Month:
Endless Referrals"
by Bob Burg

After reading this book, I used just one tip and it brought me a new client. Sign up for our March 10th TeleSeminar today.

For more information on Bob visit his website. Sign up for his video briefs and receive a special report.

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Note I received from the Universe today:

Yvonne, to find out how much you've truly been blessed with in terms of love, time, energy, talent, joy, abundance, confidence, intelligence, wit, or any other quality, substance, or dispensation, give of them.

Then you'll know what boundless really means.

—The Universe

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Empowering Your Destiny

This month's Empowering Question
"What can I do today that will get me closer to my larger ambition?"

This month's Empowering Affirmation
"I see my issues around my desires completely now. I set attainable goals and I achieve them. My ambition is growing daily. I set daily goals, and I achieve them."

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JAD Gear

Get your exclusive JAD Gear. This is just a sample of the variety of items we have to choose from. Visit our store to view more.

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