Embracing My Journey ~ Living with passion & purpose!

A warm welcome to Karin Abarbanel as she shares her words of inspiration…..

Tell us about the path you traveled to arrive where you are today: I was working for a major consulting firm in the 1990s in marketing. After being downsized, I found myself at a crossroads with a tough choice to make. I could pursue a senior marketing position and continue climbing the corporate ladder or launch a home-based marketing venture. At the time, my son, Alex, had just turned one. I wanted to spend time with him while pursuing my writing career and made the decision to strike out on my own. After sharing launch stories with friends, I realized that making the move from employee to entrepreneur was much more emotionally demanding that we all realized it would be. When you make this move, you aren’t just changing jobs or careers; you’re changing your identity.  To help other women make this transition with less stress, I went on to write a book called How to Succeed on Your Own.

My new book, Birthing the Elephant: the woman’s go for it! guide to the big challenges of launching a business tackles the emotional aspects of launching a business by taking women step by step through the launch cycle showing them smart moves to make and pitfalls to avoid.

I loved writing Birthing the Elephant and interviewing successful entrepreneurs like Bobbi Brown of Bobbi Brown Cosmetics and Liz Lange, the maternity wear pioneer, about their strategies and launch stories. Starting a new business puts you on an emotional roller coaster and helping other women succeed by sharing the advice of seasoned entrepreneurs is tremendously satisfying.

So many women have a secret passion or a great idea for a business that they’ve dreamed about. Helping them make these dreams happen and increasing their chances of success so they can pursue more soul-satisfying work is really a dream come true for me.

What kept you moving forward on the days things were not going exactly the way you were hoping they would? Writing books is a wonderful career, but it’s not easy. Some days, the work goes well and some days it doesn’t. But you have to motivate yourself to keep going. To complete Birthing the Elephant, I disciplined myself to write a set amount each day and I stuck with it, no matter what. Once the book was published, I also set a goal of making at least 7 media contacts a day. Having a specific goal helped me move forward even when I didn’t feel like it. “Fight through it” is my mantra! Whenever I hit an obstacle in my work, I keep pushing forward, step by step.

The women I interviewed for Birthing the Elephant also inspired me to keep moving forward. They were so generous in giving wonderful advice to other aspiring women entrepreneurs that I felt compelled to complete the book so I could share what they shared with me.

I also listened to several motivational hotlines every day to put myself in an upbeat mood so I could boost my performance to new levels.

I also found that when I seemed to have reached my performance limit and then pushed myself just 15% further, I would get a second wind. When this happens, you often find yourself doing some of your best work.

What piece of advice would you give to someone who has decided they would like to live in a world of their own creation? Go for it – and don’t let anyone else’s vision of what your life should look like limit you. Build a support system for success by sharing your vision and dreams with a small group of people who believe in you – and nurture their dreams as well. Working together to help each other makes you all stronger – and bolder.

Be bigger than your fears! So often we let our fears stop us and so often, when we fight through them, we find that they are just paper tigers.  In the end, no one cares about what you didn’t do because you were afraid. What matters is what you did do because you refused to let fear stop you.

What is your favorite reading material and what gives it that special place in your heart? Mastery by John Leonard is a book that I find very inspiring. It is about how to attain peak performance through focused, sustained practice. It is a simple book with a powerful message: we achieve mastery of anything by being willing to stay with it and practice even when we don’t see specific results. According to Leonard, there’s an ebb and flow to mastering anything that’s important to us.  Sometimes we seem to progress quickly; sometimes we seem to fall backwards. and sometimes we seem to hit a plateau and find ourselves at a standstill. But attaining mastery demands that we pass through each of these stages and see the “journey” as part of the mastery process. We need to enjoy the lows as well as the highs because they are all milestones on the road to excelling at something that we really care about. There are no “quick fixes” on the road to mastery. Even a master like Tiger Woods is continually practicing and strengthening his game.

Who has inspired you and what is it about them that you found inspirational? Dr. Rob Gilbert is a peak performance expert who has a daily “Success” hotline (973.743.4690) that I listen to every day. He’s really inspired me because of his wonderful advice and his mission of providing positive motivation to his callers. His advice is very upbeat and practical. His 3-minute pep talks push me to take action and get things done.

Please share the top three things you feel people would benefit from doing if they truly desire to create the life of their dreams? First, I believe you need to commit yourself to achieving mastery in your chosen field. This means being willing to put in the time, energy, and brainpower to reach a level of peak performance. Achieving mastery takes 10,000 hours of focused practice according to recent research. When you’re passionate and committed to your goal, spending this kind of time is very satisfying. It’s play, not work.

Second, I believe you need a strategy for creating “positive addictions.” By this, I mean productive habits that will keep moving you toward your goal. Most of us think it’s hard to change, but if you make it a point to do something every day for at least 31 days, it will become ingrained and you will find yourself doing it automatically. And the longer you stay with it, the stronger the new habit will become. So it is possible to change for the better t we stay focused.

Third, “success likes speed.” If you have an idea or goal, then move ahead with it quickly and energetically. Don’t get it perfect, just get it going. Dive in, make mistakes, adjust your strategy, keep moving forward – that’s how successful entrepreneurs operate. Momentum creates more momentum and moving toward your dream is the only way to make it come alive.

If what you’ve read touched you please take a few minutes to visit Karin Abarbanel’s website at: www.birthingtheelephant.com and connect with her today!

In gratitude,
Caryn

Caryn Gottlieb FitzGerald, the Manifesting Queen
http://www.CarynFitzGerald.com

This entry was posted on Monday, December 14th, 2009 at 6:35 am and is filed under Caryn's writing, Living the life of my dreams. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.