Ready to Learn Mom

Personal empowerment often plays a big role in the quality of your relationships because of the beliefs and behaviors you express in your interactions with others.

If you’ve ever expected a relationship to somehow “complete” you or make you feel strong or whole, you probably experienced disappointment and frustration as it seemed to cause bigger problems in your life.

There are several reasons why personal empowerment is important in relationships:

1) Other people sense the way you feel about yourself and treat you accordingly.

Have you ever noticed that other people seem to pick up on subtle cues and reflect your own beliefs back to you? For example, if you lack confidence, you’ll often find yourself encountering aggressive or intimidating people who seem to exacerbate those feelings. If you don’t have a healthy level of respect for yourself, you’ll probably encounter plenty of people who don’t respect you either.

This is no accident! People tend to sense your inner beliefs based on your demeanor and body language, and gear their behavior to match.

When you’re empowered and strong, you communicate that essence to others, and others will treat you as such, resulting in healthier relationships.

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May your tables be filled with the blessings of food, may your hearts be filled with the blessings of love, may you share your blessings with others less fortunate and may you all have a HAPPY THANKSGIVING!

With love and appreciation for all that have made all of us successful this year – personally, emotionally and profesionally.

Stacey Kannenberg & Family

It’s a shame that there are so many people out there trying to rip off the work-at-home job seeker. It’s even more disheartening to see them targeting the stay-at-home mom, the retiree, and the disabled. But the fact remains; they’re out there trying to capitalize on your desire to stay home and earn an income. And they’re making good money while they’re at it, because there’s no shortage of people who want so badly to believe their claims of easy income and instant wealth.

Lynette Valdez, of Westbrook, Minn., thought that when she gave Pacific Webworks her debit card number last year, it was just for a $1.99 shipping and handling fee to get information about an at-home business offer supposedly connected with Google. But before long, she noticed two mysterious charges of $59.99 each on her card.

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Have you recently gone through some dramatic and transformative changes in your life? Whether these changes are related to your job, relationships, or spirituality, the shift has taken some getting used to and you need something positive to focus on. You enjoy a lot of different pastimes, but you really want to devote yourself to something you simply love doing. How do you find your passion? Perhaps just as important, how do you turn that passion into something meaningful and substantial in your life?

Find out now… 

The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams. –Eleanor Roosevelt 

A passion in life isn’t something you’re born with. It’s cultivated by your interests, what stimulates you and what you are genuinely excited about. But what if you want to pursue many avenues and just don’t know which one you’d be the most successful at or want to invest the most time in? Or what if nothing particularly lights the proverbial fire under your bottom, but you have a lot of energy that you could devote to something? Or maybe you’re stuck in a job you despise, but don’t know what other route to take that would truly be fulfilling.

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I just read a review of a new book coming out, Hard Times & Nursery Rhymes by a working mother (a lawyer with a lawyer husband – power jobs for sure)

In the Post-Gazette interview, she found, as most mothers do, that the best time to get her own work done was after the children were in bed.

Early on in her role as a mom, she was run-down and convinced she must be sick. She went to the doctor, described her life, and his diagnosis was that she was tired.

The cure?

“Get used to it,” the doctor said, “because that’s what your life is going to be.”

And she has gotten used to it, through three children, diaper bags, school conferences and court dates.

Reading that made me think about my own work-life balance. I struggle a lot with this, as I’m sure any other working mom does. I have two jobs…and neither of those two can usually be “left at the office”. I carry my iPhone with me everywhere and answer emails from students, write blog posts for PittsburghMom and catch up on my own research.  The Internet is not a 9-5 job.  It never stops.

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While painting together at the easel, Sonia and Ashley keep dipping their brushes into all of the paint containers. After they make a fascinating discovery that the paints have turned a muddy brown, the preschoolers abandon their brushes and begin to make handprints on the easel paper. Then, continuing this messy process, the four-year-olds giggle as they decide to paint-print each other’s faces!  

Because young children frequently make a mess with art media, you need to think through about how you feel about the mess. For example, did you feel that the girls were developing their cognitive skills as they experimented with color mixing? Did they discover that paint could be applied with a tool other than a brush? Were they learning about the concept of cause and effect? Was this a pleasurable social interaction between friends? Or, were you more apt to feel that they were making a mess because they ruined all of the paints and got paint all over themselves?

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The holidays offer plenty of reasons to be stressed out and anxious — the gifts you haven’t wrapped, the pile of cookie exchange invites, the office parties. But for many, the biggest source of holiday stress is family — the family dinner, the obligations, and the burden of family tradition. And if you’re fighting clinical depression, or have had depression in the past, the holiday stress can be a trigger for more serious problems.

“There’s this idea that holiday gatherings with family are supposed to be joyful and stress-free,” says Ken Duckworth, MD, medical director of the National Alliance on Mental Illness. “That’s not the case. Family relationships are complicated. But that’s doesn’t mean that the solution is to skip the holidays entirely.”

With holiday family reunions looming in your calendar, what are some ways that you can prepare yourself and cope better this season? We turned to the experts for some tips on beating holiday stress and anxiety.

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Working from home, whether as a freelance contractor or remote employee, can be a great thing, particularly if you live alone. But what if you have a spouse and/or children at home with you while you work? Every work environment offers distractions, but those who work from home with their families face a unique set of issues—and need equally unique ways of dealing with them.

How it happened to me

A year ago, I was returning to a full-time career after taking time off to be home with my then toddler daughter. She was going into preschool and my husband had just renovated the back of our basement into a dazzling office just for me. A stellar company in San Diego, Monk Development, hired me to work from home. Life was good. A few weeks into the job, I suddenly became very ill and couldn’t work. I quickly discovered I was pregnant with twins, after five years of trying.

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MRS. OBAMA:  Thank you.  Thank you so much.  Thank you, Donna, and thanks to all of you who are part of the Corporate Voices for Working Families.  I’m happy to join you today as you begin this annual meeting.  This is a very good thing, and I am so glad I could be here.

Many of the issues that you’ll be discussing are issues that, as you know, are near and dear to my heart.  I personally, as Donna described, know the challenges of leading a busy life at work and at home, trying to do a good job at both — and always feeling like you’re not quite living up to either — and trying not to pit one against the other, really trying to balance it so that — if people here are like me — I call myself a 120-percenter.  If I’m not doing any job at 120 percent, I think I’m failing.  So if you’re trying to do that at home and at work, you find it very difficult and stressful and frustrating.

And even though my current life, trust me, is very different than it was and for most people — and I do know that; I know that right now I am living, as challenging as it may seem, in a very blessed situation, because I have what most families don’t have, is tons of support all around, not just my mother but staff and administration.  I have a Chief of Staff and a personal assistant, and everyone needs that; that’s what we need.  (Laughter.)  Everyone should have a Chief of Staff and a set of personal assistants. 

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I keep seeing it!

Last week at the Business Makeover Challenge in North Shore City – two rooms full of business owners showing passion, love and spirit!

And this morning, meeting John and Janet who described their first two years in business as “blood, sweat and tears!” …..you don’t use words like that unless your business is full of passion, love and spirit!

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