Is It Time to Let God and Let God?

Dear Friend,

"God speaks in the silence of the heart. Listening is the beginning of prayer."

~Mother Teresa

Three months ago, my family suddenly lost our beloved dog, Clementine. She was feisty black lab with a lot of bark and no bite except for any food in sight. She left behind a sad family and a brother, Winston. Slowly over the last couple of months, our wound has healed and we started thinking about adding a new puppy to our lives. My fiancé, Blair, and I were at PetSmart purchasing dog food when we spotted an energetic, cute-as-a-button rescue puppy. Immediately, I knew she had to join our family. Gracie, as we have named her, has raised our spirits and helped our family to recover from the loss of Clementine. Her loving nature and spirit are contagious. I call her a prodigy because she was potty trained within a week! This past Friday, we noticed one of her paws looked liked someone stepped on her. So, we headed to the vet thinking that the worst case scenario was that she needed a little doggy cast. Instead, we found out that one part of her leg has stopped growing. Right now, we don't need to do anything, but as she gets older and bigger there are several options - the least painful of which includes amputating her front left leg. For now, we've decided to turn to prayer and to ask God to heal her. Sometimes letting go and letting God is the hardest thing to do.

Make It Happen

This week I'd like to ask you to consider where you need to turn to prayer. What area of your life do you need to - Let Go and Let God? Is there a particular area of your life where you are struggling? Perhaps the solution isn't for you to do more, but rather for you to do less and turn it over to God. Consider that at some point in any situation we can only do so much and worrying doesn't solve anything. Rather our worry and despair depletes our energy and erodes our sanity. May you be blessed for you are a blessing!

Make Meaningful Connections This Summer!

Dear Friend, "In nature we never see anything isolated, but everything in connection with something else which is before it, beside it, under it, and over it." ~Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe None of us is an island unless we choose to ignore the bridges in our life. Reach out. Walk across your bridges. In this world of drive-throughs, delivery service, and technology devices, it is easy to sit in our office or home and feel alone. In fact, even if we are "chatting" on the Internet, I am not sure we can fool ourselves into believing that we are meaningfully connected to anyone. It is easy to be stuck in a rut and forget that we have a beautiful web of friends, family, and colleagues who love us and care for us. This web of friendship is designed to support us and celebrate with us. Yet our web of connections is only as good as we are at using it. Last November I suggested you Make Meaningful Connections! This week I want to discuss 10 ways you can make meaningful connections and have fun this summer. Here are 10 ways to make meaningful connections and have fun this summer: Help your neighbor with their yard work. Invite your friends or family for a bbq. Turn on your sprinkler and run through like you are a child at play! Encourage your neighbors to join in the fun. Invite your friends to a potluck picnic in your backyard. Invite your significant other to a park bench picnic. Bring a cheese plate, some wine (and nice glasses, too) and enjoy being together. Have a car wash and use the proceeds for a trip to the amusement park. Pick fruit and make a jam for all of your neighbors and your postal worker too! Have a garage sale with your neighbors - clean up and make money! Have a lemonade stand and donate the proceeds to a local animal shelter. Get a group of friends together to do a walk, run, or race - make connections and support a great cause! Make It Happen This week I'd like to ask you to consider how you can make meaningful connections with the people in your life. Take a leap and try one of the 10 suggestions above or something new that is uniquely yours. Make of point of connecting, not for them, but for you.

Blessings to you, Margaret. P.S. Encourage your friends, family, and colleagues by sharing this newsletter with them and invite them to subscribe! Direct them to www.MargaretPundmann.com where they can sign up. Margaret Pundmann is a life and business coach, speaker, and author of numerous articles on living your most powerful life. Stay tuned, Margaret's first book for emerging women will be available for pre-order in the coming weeks.

5 Strategies to Thrive!

This Week's Topic: 5 Strategies to Thrive! Dear Friend,   For every mountain there is a miracle Robert Schuller   This week I want to discuss a ground-breaking study by McKinsey & Company, a global consulting firm, and published in The McKinsey Quarterly.   In September of 2008 they published an article based upon the McKinsey Leadership Project - an initiative founded four years ago to advance professional women. One goal of this project is to learn what drives and sustains successful female leaders. My newsletter this week will summarize the findings; however, I encourage you to read the full report. I believe men and women alike can learn from the findings within this research.   McKinsey's findings led to a five dimension leadership model comprised of broad yet connected categories: Meaning Managing Energy Positive Framing Connecting Engaging   Meaning Meaning is what takes something from simply a job to a calling. It is important to recognize that in various points of our life our 'meaning' may be driven from different places of our life. For example, many young mothers are happy to simply have a job because they derive meaning from their children. What is essential is that you understand what you enjoy doing and what you are good at and allow meaning and purpose to flow from there. Positive psychology has also connected happiness to meaning. Happiness is achieved as the progression from pleasure to engagement to meaning. Simply stated we derive more meaning from teaching a child to read than we do from eating ice cream. Therefore, the greater the meaning in our lives, ultimately the greater the happiness. Managing Energy This concept addresses having flow in your activity. Successful people by and large spend a large portion of their day doing activities that keep them in-the-flow and give energy rather than zap energy. Researchers also found that the more time spent in activities that provide flow the greater our productivity and our satisfaction.   Positive Framing A glass of water is filled halfway - do you see it as half-full or half-empty? Those who can see situations from a positive vantage point more easily manage difficult situations. However, there is an important distinction between positive framing and positive thinking. Positive framing is characterized by taking an inventory of positive and negative and taking action. In contrast, positive thinking relies on replacing a belief rather than taking action.   Connecting According to Louann Brizendine, author of The Female Brain, people with strong networks and mentors experience more promotions, higher pay, and greater career satisfaction. We are wired to be connected beings. As an emerging woman it is important to cultivate advocates who will teach you, guide you, and if necessary stick up for you. Ever heard the phrase, "make it personal?" This was advice that I received from my first boss. It is true, people connect with individuals, people buy from individuals, people promote individuals, and people do business with individuals. Show your true self - your human side and you will open your door for connection. Engaging Engaging isn't about bragging; it is about being excited about and proud of the work you do and sharing this with others. Have you ever heard the phrase "create your own luck?" Well in a sense this is very true. Working hard and toiling away without speaking up and celebrating your work with others isn't going to get you noticed. Creating your own luck is about being genuine, but also recognizing the opportunities where you can share your results with others.   This research by McKinsey provides a window into creating your most powerful personal and professional life. Again I encourage you to read the full reporrt!   Make It Happen This week I invite you to explore one of these five areas of your life. Select one area and commit to finding a couple of ways you can grow. If you are in the beginning of your career perhaps you examine which part of your job makes you surge with energy and which areas make you feel like your energy is zapped? If you are a more experienced woman, perhaps now is the right time to spend time helping a young woman develop her career? Perhaps you are in a place of transition (as I was last year) and you want to consider what type of work will provide you with both meaning and purpose?

May all of your mountains become miracles!

Blessings to you, Margaret.        P.S. Encourage your friends, family, and colleagues by sharing this newsletter with them and invite them to subscribe! Direct them to www.MargaretPundmann.com where they can sign up.  Margaret Pundmann is a life and business coach, speaker, and author of numerous articles on living your most powerful life. Stay tuned, Margaret's first book for emerging women will be available for pre-order in the coming weeks.

What is Your Sweet Spot?

Dear Friend,   Portions of this week's newsletter are taken from The Emerging Woman.   All truths are easy to understand once they are discovered: the point is to discover them. ~Galileo Galilei   A sweet spot in baseball is when the ball and bat connect in just the right place. And the ball goes flying, unstoppable. The same is true for golf. It describes the moment when the golf club and the golf ball meet in just the right place to launch the ball far into the distance. Tiger Woods understands "sweet spot" though he may have another word for it. A sweet spot is the place where time ceases to exist and all else around you bypasses reality, and meets or exceeds expectation.   Author Max Lucado in Cure for the Common Life: Living in Your Sweet Spot, offers inspiration on finding our sweet spot in life. He suggests that what engineers and technology gurus have done for sports equipment Goad has provided for each of us. We each have a special sweet spot specifically fitted for our strengths, gifts, and talents.   Make It Happen   This week ponder when and where you are in your sweet spot. To do so, start by identifying five activities when you find yourself totally and completely immersed, when you forget time and lose track of what is going on around you. Once you find these five activities look to identify two or three common themes. A theme might be working outdoors, being with people, facing a mental or physical challenge. Take this week and see if you can zone in on your sweet spot. Once you get close, test it out. Ask yourself, when doing "your sweet spot" are you lost in time and space enjoying yourself? If not, keep searching. Once you identify and verbalize your sweet spot take the next step and deliberately weave these elements into your day. See how you can incorporate more of "your sweet spot" into your day, your week, and your month. Don't be afraid to get creative! The result of course is that you will get to work less and be more.

Blessings to you, Margaret.