Greetings Friends!

As we move into a new year, I am filled with anticipation as we move into 2007. During this week between Christmas and New Years, I have personally taken time to reflect on the year that we will soon be saying good-bye to, and focusing on what I want to create in my life for the new year.

Life By Design has undergone a bit of a re-focusing itself. LBD is still committed to helping women and working mothers achieve balance in their lives. However, what often gets missed in the efforts to create and maintain balance is the fact that self-care and putting yourself first is the most important step. Without knowing that you are worthy of your goals and putting yourself first, balance will not be achieved.

This is the area in which I feel that many of us struggle with, as nurturers we often forget that we need to nurture ourselves first, in order to ensure that our body, mind and spirit is renewed, revitalized and that we are able to continue to give to others we must give to ourselves.

However, the problem that exists is the generations of programming that women need to give to everyone else first, leaving their own dreams and desires last, if at all. Historically and traditionally, women were taught that they are wrong to want for themselves, that they are bad mothers, bad wives if they go after their own dreams instead of sacrificing for their children and husbands. This is why their our so many women that are unable to balance their lives, because they are not taking care of themselves, balance starts with taking care of YOU. It is not selfish to want to live out your fullest potential, furthermore; it is important for the next generation to see an example of how to living out their dreams and that there is no shame in taking care of their selves in order to maintain a happy, fulfilled life.

Starting new in 2007 LBD will be focusing on the foundation blocks of self, which are self-esteem, self-image, and self-confidence. I have centered coaching around these foundation blocks because without a strong foundation everything built upon it will topple down. Lack of self-esteem, self-confidence and a healthy self-image is why sometimes we get sometimes get caught in an unending cycle that seems to lead to nowhere, it is why we find that no matter how well we plan, how hard we work, we still fail in what we want to accomplish.

In order to be successful in our lives we need to have a strong sense of who we are and what we are deserving of in our lives. To make our dreams a reality, to empower ourselves, and to take care of ourselves the way we take care of others is to know what really being successful is.

LBD will be offering a free class every month, offered at different days and times to accommodate busy schedules, along with a more in depth workshop every month.

As for me in 2007, I am on break from school until the middle of January, meanwhile, I am on break from school I will be spending time developing new classes, writing new articles, along with continuing as one of the team leader for Digital Moms and the Educational Committee Officer for Women Business Owners. Of course, first and foremost is taking care of me and my family, making sure that we are all healthy in all areas of our lives.

I want to wish you all abundance, joy, love, and success in 2007! Together we can achieve anything!

Empowering New Year Wishes,

Tonya Ramsey

Are you carrying around some junk? You know, those hurtful and unconstructive things that you may have been told by someone during the course of your life. It was supposed to be taken with a grain of salt or simply ignored but most of the times we take that criticism and wear it like a hat of shame!

It is one thing to listen to constructive criticism and then make changes to better ourselves or our situation, but it is something else to listen to rude and downright mean criticism and then take it to heart. Well, why not declare this a time to clear out the junk! That means that it is now time unload all of those negative, non-constructive, non-truths that you have been told.

The change is quite simple to start then takes some work to keep up. Start by seeing the best in others and think about all of the good qualities that you have rather than the qualities that you don’t have. Change the actual quality of our thoughts. By concentrating on good, quality thoughts, we begin to experience self-pleasure, happiness and self-respect. Along the way, we also recognize our own unique skills and abilities. Let these quality thoughts become your hat, not the negative thoughts that were thrown at you out of anger, jealousy, or another negative emotion.

Try not to analyze every thought down the teeniest detail. Use your thoughts to keep things in perspective. Many times we fall into a trap of thinking too much and we end up spending a large amount of time debating with ourselves, or trying to see how our thoughts will be perceived by our peers. Many times this process will actually stop us from being who we truly are!

Life will always be filled with a few curve balls and surprises and I encourage everyone to really work at being more positive (in your thoughts, speech and actions). Work at this daily until it becomes so much of a habit, that you won’t even have to think about it.

Positive thinking is infectious and leads to a ‘can do’ attitude within any individual that adopts this approach to life. A positive mind anticipates happiness, joy, health and a successful outcome of every situation and action. Whatever the mind expects, it finds.

Below are just a few examples of typical negative self-talk and how you might apply a positive twist to those thoughts:

Negative Thought: I’ve never done it before & I don’t know how to do it
Positive Spin: It’s an opportunity to learn something new.

Negative Thought: No one wants to communicate with me.
Positive Spin: I’ll see if I can open the channels of communication.

Here are a few action steps that will help you to empty the junk of Negative thoughts and to add the nourishment of positive ones.

· Stop negative thoughts in their tracks. Whenever you hear yourself “thinking” a negative thought ~ STOP and replace it with a positive thought. Instead of saying to yourself, “I’m not good at this.” Stop yourself and say, “I am getting better at this with each and every try.”

· If you catch yourself visualizing failure, switch to visualizing success.

· Look for the positive. No matter what the situation is, there is always a negative and a positive side of it. Sometimes, the positive side may not be easy to see right off the bat, but if you look deep enough it is there.

Decide that from today, you are leaving negative thinking behind, and starting on the way towards positive thinking. It is never too late to start this process and soon you will notice things changing for the better.

About the Author:
Aurelia Williams is the author of Journey To Joy, an inspiring eBook that explores many obstacles that women face. It also provides essential action steps, worksheets, resources and an hour long Balancing Your Life Audio.