Motivational

Five years ago yesterday, Hurricane Katrina forever changed the lives of so many people I know – family, friends and strangers. We often forget it affected people not just in New Orleans but throughout the Gulf Coast region and will do so for years to come.

We never know what life will throw at us and how we react to it is entirely up to us. Like many New Orleanians, my family suffered from varying degrees of flood damage. One of my best friends left the city for good and another lost everything due to flooding that nearly reached her attic. They’ve all recovered and are doing better than ever – they all still have that “New Orleans Spirit” wherever they are.

After Katrina struck, I was lucky enough to be in a position to give financial support to my family and friends. One of my best friends who lost everything, asked me to help her family instead of her. I was in awe of her generosity toward her family when she herself was in need.

In the years since Katrina, my best friend purchased another house in a neighborhood close to where her original home stood. She didn’t recover much from her home, only some cookware (the metal survived the immersion), a quilt (that was lying on her mattress when it floated to the ceiling) and some Christmas ornaments (stored in the attic). All her photos and family mementos were lost.

Despite the loss, I never heard her complain about her situation. She moved forward, staying in the same area, rebuilding her life and keeping her “New Orleans Spirit.” Anytime she’d visit me in Houston, we’d go shopping as she rebuilt her home. One piece at a time, she would buy a lamp, outfit or other item. I would joke with her that her car looked like a homeless person’s packed with all the treasures she’d picked up while traveling between New Orleans, Baton Rouge, Dallas and Houston and she’d joke back, “Vickie, I am homeless.”

Throughout her own rebuilding, she helped and supported her family including cousins while they rebuilt their homes and lives. Although her story is just one of many, her selflessness stays with me today. She was, and is a model to me of how to deal with difficult situations.

Ask yourself if you lost everything, could you rebuild your home, family and legal nurse consulting career with my friend’s “New Orleans Spirit?” My hat is off to all those who have and who are still working to do so. I only hope I would be as strong.

Success Is Inside!

I talk to thousands of RNs every year who are becoming increasingly dissatisfied with the healthcare system. Many of these conversations remind me of a dinner I had with my father at an Italian restaurant. After an animated discussion with the waiter, my dad ordered a pasta dish that wasn’t on the menu, telling the waiter exactly what he wanted in it.

When the food came, it was presented beautifully and prepared exactly as he had requested. Bits of scallion, garlic and peppered chicken glistened over a serving of fettuccine, all mixed with basil and olive oil, topped with chunks of ripe, red tomato lightly dusted with Parmesan cheese. The dish looked so good, I wanted it instead of my own.

I expected my father to be delighted with his meal. Instead, he started comparing it to a completely different pasta dish from a different Italian restaurant. Rather than enjoying his dinner, he found fault with the waiter, the restaurant and the chef for not serving this other recipe. According to dad, the dish was prepared wrong and even had the wrong ingredients! He specifically complained that there shouldn’t have been any tomatoes and there wasn’t enough garlic.

I sat there both stunned and amused. Even though my dad’s pasta was prepared exactly as he had requested, it wasn’t what he really wanted because it wasn’t the dish he was used to ordering at the other restaurant. Finally, I gently interrupted his litany of complaints, reminding him that he had received exactly what he ordered. In fact, after tasting it, I liked it even better than the dish he was comparing it to.

Dad replied, “I may have gotten what I ordered, but it isn’t what I want.” My father had expected the waiter to read his mind and bring him something other than what he ordered. Eventually, my dad’s hunger got the best of him and he enjoyed his meal to the last bite. After all, when you’re hungry, even the wrong dish fills your stomach.

What Career Menu Are You Ordering From?

As an RN, are you hungry for job satisfaction but ordering the wrong dish off the wrong menu?

• Do you feel exhausted by your working conditions and environment?
• Do you dislike the hours, the weekends, the administration, the HMOs?
• Are you cranky about too many patients and not enough time to provide the quality of care you know you’re capable of?

If your nursing career isn’t where you want it to be, are you confusing your expectations and desires with what a traditional nursing job menu offers? Are you trying to order a dish that isn’t on the menu?

Like my dad, you may have expectations about what you are being served. You may have tried your best to order exactly what you wanted. Yet what’s on your plate has turned out very differently from what you were expecting.

If you stay at your same RN job and order off the same old RN job menu, don’t be surprised when you get what you’ve always gotten even though it’s not what you want. Much like the Salisbury steak in a hospital cafeteria, what healthcare facilities serve up for your nursing career has been on the menu for years. Sometimes the description changes, sometimes the preparation changes, but it’s still the same old Salisbury steak, and it is still not very satisfying for many RNs I’ve come to know.

Feast at a Brand New Restaurant

If you’re salivating for a nursing dish with different ingredients, if you want more autonomy, freedom, control or money, it’s time to feast at a new restaurant with a new and modern menu.

Certified Legal Nurse Consultants don’t order off the traditional menu offered by healthcare facilities. They’ve found a new menu that features more of what they want for themselves and they’re willing to leave their hospital restaurant to enjoy that innovative menu. For these nurses, the legal nurse consulting restaurant has the right menu – dishes that satisfy their palate in every way, and choices so plentiful they don’t have to look anywhere else because any dish they can imagine is already on the CLNC^® menu.

Life is meant to be an adventurous banquet filled with tasty and satisfying dining experiences. It’s your meal – you get to choose the restaurant and write your own menu. Shouldn’t you get what you want, what you deserve, like so many other nurses who have chosen to stop ordering off the wrong menu?

Your right menu is just an action step away. Go to the right nursing restaurant today and you’ll find that one dish you’ve been craving. I invite you to join me and my CLNC^® colleagues at the legal nurse consulting banquet – the taste sensation of a lifetime. Don’t miss another minute of this exciting feast – reserve your place at the CLNC^® banquet table today.

Success Is Inside!

Nurses have the strength of fusion. When a patient arrests, your team comes together and fuses like a single entity to do whatever is needed to code the patient successfully. Why not use this strength of fusion to code yourself? The more audacious your goals, the more you will need other people to help you achieve those goals. This means surrounding yourself with strong, successful people of integrity to keep you, and your dream, alive.

More powerful than networking or brainstorming, fusion is the process of collaborating, mentoring, masterminding ideas together and encouraging individual passions and visions. Even though I have a successful business, I also had a personal goal of writing my book Inside Every Woman: Using the 10 Strengths You Didn’t Know You Had to Get the Career and Life You Want Now – and that wasn’t happening. One business excuse after another. It was after I brought nine women together to discuss my book idea that I started on my book in earnest. Fusing with these women stirred my desire and passion and fueled me to move from the dream of the book to the reality of the book.

Even though I’m normally catatonic after 9:00pm, I found myself using my strength of endurance, writing and rewriting, writing and rewriting again and then rewriting the rewrites until 2:00 in the morning. I was energized and ready to move forward. Sure, I lost sleep but I gained a new fire for my life. Suddenly attaining an impossible goal didn’t seem so impossible at all. The collective force of fusing with those nine women is what made my bold venture possible.

The more successful we are, the less time one has to spend with friends and family. We spend less time doing the things we like and more time doing the things we need to do to make our businesses successful. Running your legal nurse consulting business, managing people or navigating your way through the hospital maze can be very stressful and sometimes lonely. That’s why fusing with other successful people is vital to encouraging and empowering you. Hang with winners if you want to be a winner. Only hang with losers if you want to be a loser.

You can fuse with successful CLNC^® consultants from other cities and states. The deepest, most effective fusion will happen when you connect with CLNC^® consultants from different locations and different specialties. CLNC^® consultants who are not your direct competitors and CLNC^® consultants who will wholeheartedly share the bold bursts of genius that have propelled their businesses to higher levels.

Fusing with CLNC^® consultants at a distance will take some planning, but it’s worth it. Don’t expect to have monthly meetings. Instead, plan for getting together in person quarterly or twice a year or even annually at the NACLNC^® Conference. To keep the fusion going in between, use Skype video-conference calls, telephone conference calls, Facebook, monthly chats and emails.

You can also fuse with entrepreneurs who are not CLNC^® consultants. In any group of entrepreneurs, someone has already solved the very challenge you’re about to face – getting your first client, hiring your first employee, working with a difficult client. The key is to remember that successful people hang with other successful people. There’s nothing wrong with fusing with people who, like you, are on the way up.

In fusion, we all have to pull our own weight, carry our own loads and be responsible for our own actions. Choose ruthlessly and honestly. Remember – it’s your career, your life and your goals. Choose carefully so that your fusion team is one that supports you.

Success Is Inside!

Some people, I’m convinced, have a gene for exploration and discovery. What else could explain why one person spends his life striving to stand on the peak of Mt. Everest while another is happy to sit in a hammock or lounge chair in their backyard?

When I was a young girl, my family couldn’t afford to travel but that didn’t stop me from becoming a world traveler in any possible way I could. I travelled through the eyes of beautiful glossy brochures to many countries. I wrote to every consulate of practically every country I could think of for information. I’d open our mailbox and that’s when the adventure would begin. Through the most amazing photos in those glossy publications I walked the Great Wall of China, trekked the Himalayas and tracked lions, wildebeest and elephants on the Serengeti.

Since then I’ve been blessed to travel the world and visit the Serengeti as well as many, but not yet all, of the other places that were once simple childhood fantasies. My real traveling didn’t start until I started working in the hospital as an RN. A colleague and I often chose our nursing continuing education based on location rather than the educational offerings. Critical care nursing principles suddenly became much more compelling in places like Hawaii, Puerto Rico and London than they ever would have been in Houston. We’d scrimp and save our pennies to make those trips. Later my legal nurse consulting education business took me to 49 states, enjoying the endless bounty and diversity the United States offers along the way. Tom went to most of those states with me, which made the experience all the better. Today our personal adventures have taken us to both polar regions as well as places like Cambodia, Morocco, Patagonia, Bhutan and Tanzania.

Throughout my travels, I’ve visited countries where people enjoy freedom and, sadly, countries where freedom is denied. I’ve visited Communist countries where the “state” discourages regular people from talking to foreigners, countries where children are conscripted against their will into the military and countries where armed rebels roam free. I’ve been to so-called democracies where the governing party enforces its rule through killings, violence and other strong-arm tactics. Some of my favorite trips have been to countries where even the poorest farmers were some of the happiest people I’ve met, simply happy for their mud hut, cattle and the open spaces around them and a life without boundaries (or too many belongings).

Whenever I travel, no matter where I go, what I see or how much fun I have, I am extremely grateful and proud to be a citizen of my beloved United States of America. I’m proud to have the freedom that we so often take for granted and I’m especially glad to hear the U.S. Customs official tell me “welcome home” because I know I am back in the land of the free, and not just the land of big salads and iced tea.

Let’s face it though, freedom for most of us goes way beyond our ability to live where we choose, work a job we select, be able to vote and trust the government not to unjustly imprison or prosecute us. With that in mind, I invite you to join me in celebrating the freedom we all enjoy as Americans and especially as Certified Legal Nurse Consultants.

I’ll get the list started and invite all of you to go ahead and add to it.

Freedom to:

• Say “no” – I was fired once for justifiably saying no. That was one of the best days of my life because it was on that day that I vowed no boss would ever get that chance again. Now I’m the boss and I’m the only one that can fire me.
• Change directions – I’m a Pisces so I thrive on change. I like to navigate all types of waters which I’ve been challenged to do owning my own business. When I do, it’s often my choice and my responsibility – that makes the change so much sweeter.
• Express opinions without fear of recrimination – I was always the nurse at the hospital getting in trouble for saying what every other nurse was thinking (and wouldn’t say at a staff meeting even though they all promised to stand up too). One of my favorite staffers at Vickie Milazzo Institute is just like I was. I call her the “other voice” and value her courage to tell me what I might not want to hear (and sometimes I don’t want to hear it – but I still listen).

Now, it’s your turn to share your stories regarding the CLNC^® freedoms below:

• Live a life of unlimited possibilities –
• Be creative –
• Enjoy confidence and self-respect –
• Define your own happiness –
• Explore passions –
• Spend time with family, or not –
• Dare to believe and achieve –

Success Is Inside!

Nurses have the strength of renewal. You’re a healer. You renew and re-energize the patients you care for, physically and emotionally, turning them out healthier than they were before. You give and you give and you give all your energy to renew everyone else. But do you turn that strength around and apply it to you?

Consider this, if you stepped back and looked at your daily routine objectively, as if it were happening to a good friend, what would be your advice? Slow down? Take a few breaths? Spend a few moments mindfully enjoying one day before another day crashes in with new demands?

You can’t keep giving what you don’t have. If you’re feeling like an overworked, underpaid nurse it’s time to reclaim your life energy through frequent renewal. Remember, our thoughts become our reality and renewal helps us change both our thoughts and our reality.

To have a healthy, exciting and fulfilling relationship with others, you must first have a healthy, exciting and fulfilling relationship with yourself. When you’re your own best friend this is easy, but too often our practices sabotage what we need and instead we act as our own worst enemy – repeating behaviors that we know are bad for us and not taking the renewal steps we need to restore ourselves. If we don’t renew on a regular basis, we’ll slip further and further into the state we’re seeking to escape. When you renew, you recharge your batteries to gain the energy for your big goals while still juggling the daily challenges of your career and life.

I recently mentored a CLNC^® student who shared that she had lost the connection to herself, to her vision and to what really mattered in life. After our visit she vowed to go home and get reacquainted with herself.

I’m just as challenged as you are. When I left my hospital job to start my own business, I fantasized about 4-hour work days and lying by the pool sipping margaritas. Boy was that a hallucination!

Knowing all the issues and the 21 employees waiting for me at the office, I wake up 30 minutes earlier than I have to, and well before any sane person, to make time for a cup of quiet renewal in the form of healthy green tea. When I get into the office I’m ready: “Come on, bring on the madness!” Taking time to charge my own batteries prepares me that much more for the challenges and opportunities each day brings.

It’s okay to take care of yourself. If you don’t, the odds are nobody else will. Carve out your own 30-minute renewal break daily, before everyone gets up or after everyone has gone to bed, and you’ll find energy abundantly available when you need it to grow your nursing career, your legal nurse consulting business and your life.

Success Is Inside!

I’ve told you about the bamboo that highlights my morning tea time. Lately there’s been a pair of northern cardinals living in the bougainvillea growing outside my living room windows. They’re a matched set, a male and female, and whenever they appear, they bring a joyful mindfulness to my day, reminding me that life is good. I used to think they mate for life (like me) but found out that it’s more likely just for one season. I also learned that during the wooing process the male will not only sing to the female, but he’ll bring her seeds and feed them to her beak-to-beak. I’m still waiting to see that action (and I don’t mean from Tom).

Blogging about the bamboo and the cardinals reminds me of another practice I’d like to share with my Certified Legal Nurse Consulting colleagues. That’s the practice of mindfulness. Mindfulness, in its simplest form, is simply being fully in the present and taking in things as they are. It is also being fully aware of our body’s sensations, such as our breathing. It can be fully embracing the joy I feel watching the cardinals hop from branch to branch. When you’re walking, it can be feeling the satisfaction of using your muscles, noticing and appreciating the beauty of the budding trees or smelling the hamburgers from the local cafe.

I’ve found that it is easier to be mindful when I’m doing nonwork-related activities such as hiking in the woods. When I’m working, I need to be intentional about mindfulness and not let my mind start flying in a thousand different directions about what has to get done by whom. I need to be mindful about eliminating the clutter that distracts me from my big vision. I have a friend who defines multitasking as worrying about many things at the same time. Worry is a completely useless emotion and that’s why mindfulness is so relevant to everything we do. Mindfulness gives us the focus we need to complete even the most challenging projects.

What about you? When you’re working in your legal nurse consulting business on a report for an attorney-client, are you thinking about the time-crunch, how much you don’t like typing or are you wishing your children would quit interrupting your work? Are you wondering how you can find a CLNC^® subcontractor with a particular specialty or where you’ll locate an expert witness for a case. Is your mind flying everywhere but on your work? Be honest, it happens to all of us.

It’s been said that any activity that is done mindfully is a form of meditation. In other words, if you fully release yourself into the work, feeling the mouse in your hand, listening to the clacking of the keys on your keyboard, marveling at the science that brings the Internet into your home and the computer technology that allows you to share your knowledge with the attorney-client, you turn a chore into a mindful activity. Even pausing to appreciate the interplay of the sun in the branches of the trees outside your window or the sound of your house as it heats in the day can be an exercise in mindfulness.

Apply mindfulness to anything you consider a chore and turn it from a chore into a meditation – dialing the phone and being fully present in the conversation, enjoying the smell and warmth of the clothes as you fold them from the dryer or just feeling the texture of the crisp pages of the research study you’re reading. I’m trying to be mindful as I type this. I’ve closed my email program and am engaging my fingers on the keyboard, listening to my own mind and blocking out the ringing phones in the office.

But, don’t force mindfulness, it needs to become a natural act. Muho Noelke has pointed out “…we have to forget things like I should be mindful of this or that. If you are mindful, you are already creating a separation (I – am – mindful – of – ….). Don’t be mindful, please! When you walk, just walk. Let the walk walk. Let the talk talk. Let the eating eat, the sitting sit, the work work. Let sleep sleep.”

That’s the first step on the path to true mindfulness. Don’t “be” mindful, “become” mindful.

Success Is Inside!

I’ve got a confession to make. I’m not hooked on Lost. I don’t know what “frack” means and I’ve never watched American Idol. I used to keep my television in my closet (it was a 12″ black and white) and it wasn’t out of shame – I just didn’t watch TV. Even though we now have one of those state-of-the-art flat screen, surround-sound systems (ask Tom for details), I still don’t watch TV. I will also confess there are a couple of exceptions. I set aside an evening for each of the Grammys^®, Golden Globes^®, Super Bowl^® (for Tom) and the Academy Awards^® as sacrosanct (don’t call me, I won’t answer). But the other 361 days of the year, my TV is off. My Google^® homepage tells me the news headlines and Tom keeps me in the loop. If the world was going to come to an end, my executive team would notify me and ask me to release the Institute employees early so they can go home and prepare (being on the Gulf Coast, I’ve even gotten tsunami warnings). In other words, TV doesn’t play a role in my life – it’s not an early warning system and it’s not a distraction.

Now, on the other extreme, I know legal nurse consultants who live and die by their TVs. Between reruns of Seinfeld, Friends and shows like The Bachelor and Dancing with the Stars, they eat, sleep, relax and work. That’s okay for them and possibly for you. I understand the need to let your mind coast and let your body relax. One of my best friends gets home from work each day in time to watch Oprah – that’s how he (correct, this is not a typo) relaxes. I relax through books, movies, Jacuzzi^®, meditation and a glass of a great red wine.

Let me ask you a question – if you turned your television off for just one night a week and put that time into your legal nurse consulting business, what dividends would it return?

TV is passive. As Zen master Takuan says, “This day will not come again.” Every hour you sit in front of a television you’re accomplishing nothing. Each of those hours is irretrievably lost to you. Sure, the next morning you and your friends can discuss Glee or which of the fifteen hundred versions of CSI had the most fun autopsy scene, but where will that get your legal nurse consulting career?

I challenge all Certified Legal Nurse Consultants to take one day a week and turn off your TV. Put that evening into your legal nurse consulting business. Concentrate on a different aspect of your business each week, marketing, report writing or a new CLNC^® service. See what you’ll reap from that time. You’ll never be able to say “I’m too busy to…” again because you’ll have recovered 2-3 hours of time lost from Lost. If this whole topic is making you nervous, you can always TiVo^® your shows to watch them at a later date (after you’ve accomplished all you want).

If you dare to fully realize the power of this, try taking a week off from the TV. Put that time into your CLNC^® business and your family. You’ll make exponential leaps in both. I warn you though, this powerful practice is not for everyone – it’s only for those who choose to take back their time and make something powerful from it.

Success Is Inside!

Nurses have the strength of enterprise. Think about all the creative, enterprising ways you’ve worked around administration, the doctors, the insurance companies – all on behalf of your patients. To satisfy everybody you have to be enterprising. But being enterprising isn’t just about satisfying patients, doctors and administration. It’s about being enterprising in the pursuit of your career and professional advancement. You must be as enterprising as the CEO of a successful business.

One way CEOs are more enterprising is they expect a payoff for every venture, large or small. After I got my masters degree, my hospital failed to acknowledge it. I didn’t even get a 25¢/hour pay raise. I thought this venture deserved a payoff, so I gave myself a pay raise by announcing my resignation and getting a job at a hospital that recognized my new level of knowledge.

A few years after I started my legal nurse consulting business I attended law school at night. At the time, I thought I would be interested in practicing law, but later decided I preferred the payoff of the freedom and flexibility that my legal nurse consulting business afforded me.

After I graduated, one of the law firms I consulted with offered me a position as an associate attorney. I didn’t have to think hard about the offer. Not only was I already doing what I loved, I was also earning more money as a legal nurse consultant than any of the associate attorneys just out of law school. Saying no was easy.

Then, a year after I politely turned down the associate position, they upped the ante and offered me a partnership at the law firm. Now, the stakes were much higher. These were some of the best medical-malpractice attorneys in Texas! Between working with these attorneys and thinking about the partner bonuses, that offer was more lucrative than I thought my legal nurse consulting and education businesses could ever be.

But then I remembered that payoff isn’t always about money. Practicing law wouldn’t provide the emotional payoff I was receiving from helping nurses start their own legal nurse consulting businesses. My passion was teaching, not lawyering. My enterprising spirit (and intuitive vision) told me something grander lay ahead. So I stayed with what I loved and passed on what certainly seemed to be a firm financial future. Eventually, as our intuitive decisions often do, my decision paid off, both financially and emotionally.

When you take on a new venture, make a career decision or simply choose how to spend your time, you should ask, what’s the payoff? Is it monetary, is it good for your spirit, is it good for your career, is it good for your life? If you say no to this opportunity, is there a bigger payoff available to you? You may have to look hard and be imaginative. The profit may not always be in cash but there needs to be a payoff. Passion for your life and work is the best profit of all. But you still don’t want to underprice yourself. So reach for the stars – you deserve them, whether it’s in business or simply personal.

Success Is Inside!

Happy International Nurses Day! And, happy birthday to Florence Nightingale – today, May 12, is her birthday. She laid the foundation of professional nursing with the establishment, in 1860, of her nursing school at St. Thomas’s Hospital in London, the first secular nursing school in the world. The annual International Nurses Day is celebrated around the world on her birthday.

It is fitting that on this day we express our gratitude to our friends at Gannett Healthcare Group, publishers of Nursing Spectrum, NurseWeek and Nurse.com. We are honored that they joined us at our 2010 National Alliance for Legal Nurse Consultants (NACLNC^®) Conference to share some original letters written by Florence Nightingale. These original letters, written in 1861, are truly national treasures and were on display during the NACLNC^® Conference. It was truly fitting as 2010 is the centennial of her death and the International Year of the Nurse.

Photos taken at the Conference are shown here – it was an exceptional exhibit.

Florence Nightingale was born in Florence, Italy to English parents and lived from 1820-1910, 90 years. She set the stage for us “to bring into the field a higher class of persons.” Follow this link to read more about this caring, strong-willed founder of modern nursing.

The exhibit melded well with our NACLNC^® Conference theme: Take the Stage for Legendary CLNC^® Success. The nurses in attendance were impressed, and also touched as they were reminded of the legendary example Florence Nightingale set for all of us.

Thanks again to our friends from Gannett Healthcare Group (Nursing Spectrum, NurseWeek and Nurse.com) for their generous sharing of this exhibit with all the Certified Legal Nurse Consultants at the 2010 NACLNC^® Conference.

Nursing has such a rich history and this is one of those wonderful reminders of just how rich our history is. Happy Birthday, Florence!

Success Is Inside!

Nurses have the strength of endurance. How else would you get through those 12-hour shifts? You work on your feet, you eat on your feet, you think on your feet. Sure – you get to sit down at least once a shift – when you go to the bathroom. Wait a minute – nurses don’t sit, right? We squat – we ain’t touching nothing. But how do you fuel your endurance when the doctor wants it yesterday, your kids want it today and…your spouse wants it tonight?

Endurance is about having the stamina to do what it takes to succeed. When you are launching and growing your business as a Certified Legal Nurse Consultant, you need endurance. I love working and I don’t mind working long, hard hours full of the challenges inevitable in my legal nurse consulting business. Those hours are easier to endure because I love what I do and also because I reward myself by taking off 12 weeks throughout the year to pursue my passion for hiking and traveling. That’s my payoff and the further I get away from the business to places like Bhutan, the Galapagos, Patagonia and the Arctic Circle, the bigger the payoff.

When I’m off, I’m off. I stay disconnected. My office knows they can reach me if the office is on fire, but they also know I’m not calling in unless I need a ride from the airport. When I return home, the fire for my CLNC^® business blazes just like it did 28 years ago. Fuel your endurance with incremental payoffs as you focus on your big dreams for your legal nurse consulting business. Don’t wait for the big win. Celebrate the small steps and reward yourself all along the way.

It’s not just the final payoff but also the amazing small payoffs you receive along the way that will help you endure the journey to success. Reward yourself, and your family, for the small accomplishments; don’t wait for the big win.

At my company we celebrate more than birthdays and work anniversaries. We’ll stop and celebrate a milestone on a project – such as the completion of a website design or the promotional materials for a new product. We don’t wait until the product hits the market or until we see whether it’s successful. We celebrated the proposal for my book, Inside Every Woman: Using the 10 Strengths You Didn’t Know You Had to Get the Career and Life You Want Now when we submitted it to the publisher. We didn’t know if it would be accepted, but we knew we had put a lot of hard work into that proposal and we were proud of our final work product and a job well done. Sometimes the success is in the middle. I like to celebrate stepping out and going for it. When we define success as going for what we want (regardless of the outcome), we can succeed and celebrate every day. Celebrate the hard work that you’ve done and then celebrate again whether or not things work out the way you wanted.

If your endurance is tested and you’re tempted to give up, remember this: whether you’re building a legal nurse consulting business or working toward a promotion, the ultimate reward goes to those who endure even when the big reward is far in the distance.

Success Is Inside!