New York Times

It’s a new year and I am reminded of a line from Sex and the City: “You don’t want to peak in high school.” Life and career are so much more interesting and satisfying when you constantly strive for your next peak. While most of your friends, family and coworkers have moved far past high school, you probably know someone who is still living, or constantly reliving, a “glory day” of scoring a winning point in a sports event, nailing a promotion or getting the biggest law firm in the city as a client for her CLNC^® business.

I’ve hit a few personal and professional peaks of my own: appearing on National Public Radio, Fox & Friends, becoming a New York Times bestselling author and staying happily married for 21 years. But I don’t want to be buried with any of those peaks as my crowning lifetime achievement. Why? Because I don’t want to peak – ever!

Some days we peak higher than others, and that can be okay. For example, I recently hiked in the Rincon mountains outside of Tucson, Arizona. It was a beautiful fall morning and our trail steadily climbed up and down until we reached the top of one mountain where we had a wonderful picnic lunch. There were higher and lower peaks around us, but the peak where we had lunch was a sunny, warm spot with a view of the Mission San Xavier del Bac in the distance as a bonus. That peak was perfect for that day, even though I’ve hiked more challenging trails.

People who never stop peaking are happier because they have something to look forward to besides the distant memory of past peaks, or even worse, high school.

Let’s all keep peaking in 2012! Happy New Year!

Success Is Inside!

I’m writing this at the CLNC^® 6-Day Certification Seminar in Atlanta after I just came off one of the most hectic weeks of my life. First I had the official launch of my new book Wicked Success Is Inside Every Woman. If you haven’t been following me on Facebook or Twitter, Wicked Success was #10 on the New York Times Monthly Business Bestseller list Sunday, October 2nd and my publisher just told me Wicked Success will be #6 on the New York Times Hardcover Advice & Misc. bestseller list on Sunday, October 9th! Wicked Success hit #1 on Amazon.com, #3 on the USA Today business bestseller list and it was not only #3 on the Wall Street Journal’s bestselling business book list but also #8 on the WSJ’s bestselling nonfiction book list in the same week! Thank you all for supporting the book and sharing it with all the women you love. Being a New York Times bestselling author is every writer’s dream and you helped to make that dream come true.

If the book launch and hoopla wasn’t enough, that same week also had site visits, rehearsals, event planning, preparation, and all the last-minute details leading up to the events with Stedman Graham – our Friday night Women Embracing Leadership (WEL) reception and event at Unity Church and the all-day Saturday WEL workshop. Forget rest! Thursday night was a late night taping our TV appearance on After the Headlines and a late dinner at a favorite restaurant of mine – Brasserie 19. Friday morning we started very early with a live TV appearance on Great Day Houston and continued with a live radio appearance that afternoon. You would not believe how much hurry up and wait time surrounds TV and radio shows!

So, my staff and I were hopping like toads every day and well into the night on Friday. In fact, when I say well into the night, I mean it. Friday night we had so much fun at the Unity Women Embracing Leadership event that Stedman and I were still signing books until 11:30pm! If you know me, you know I’m a morning person and have usually enjoyed a couple of REM cycles before midnight. But I was still wide awake when we got home and was so excited about Saturday’s WEL workshop that I had trouble going to sleep at 1:00am (really!).

Saturday’s 4:00am alarm came way too soon but I somehow managed to get out of bed and Tom (I love you man!) found some Starbucks before he went off to manage the AV setup for the WEL workshop. That Women Embracing Leadership workshop went flawlessly and everyone who attended walked away with a new direction, ready to achieve their next audacious goal. It was so interesting working with such a diverse group of professional women, all with different issues, goals and dreams. I’m already planning the next event! Afterwards, I took Stedman to a second favorite restaurant, Da Marco, then invited my best friends from New Orleans, who had come in for the weekend, to a private “after party.”

Sunday we all got to spend the day kicking back over a late breakfast and a later lunch. In between, we did a post-mortem on the weekend, bonded over those deep and personal conversations about sex and relationships that only women have and had lots of laughs and cutting up. Our ages range from 26 to 80 which made for a rich experience and even more laughter and cutting up when our 80-year-old friend shared that she’s just as enthusiastic about sex as ever. Tom conveniently discovered that he needed to run some errands, so we got some quality girl-talk time while he escaped the overwhelming surge of oxytocin.

I shared with my friends how inspired I was by a workshop attendee who had just retired from a successful career but was finding that retirement was bringing her no joy. She had been looking forward to retirement, and certainly had no money issues, but just wasn’t finding retirement to be “What I worked 30 years to do.” I advised her that it didn’t matter to me whether she went back to work, started a business or stayed retired. What did matter was that she find joy in her life because we all deserve to have that.

At the workshop, Stedman and I both worked with her to help her not only discover her passion but to create a plan to turn that passion into a business. She left Saturday not only with a plan, but with a new spark in her eye, a spring in her step and a fire burning inside.

As tired as I was after that week, on Monday I was still thinking about that woman and her search for passion. I’m lucky. I love the play side of my life, (I grew up in New Orleans after all) but I also love working and I love being busy. I also love that I can work my passions – teaching nurses to become Certified Legal Nurse Consultants, writing books and helping women to discover their own passions. My crazy busy week was just part of my crazy busy life and I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Without passion our lives are empty and we feel purposeless. We can discover and create a passion for any part of our lives if we take time to go inside and really listen. The woman at the workshop is about to get really busy and I am ecstatic for her. You can call me crazy, but we have just one life so why not live it with passion – even if it means being crazy busy living that passionate life.

Success Is Inside!

Certified Legal Nurse Consultants have long known that the pharmaceutical and medical device industries have a vested interest in not only making sure that their products get wide distribution on the market, but also that they gain favorable press coverage in the healthcare and mainstream media. The extent of the “full court press” they make to gain such coverage takes on different extremes. Everything from parties, trips, gifts and research sponsorships are used to help influence writers. Another popular but hidden measure is the use of ghostwriters. They are often hired by the pharmaceutical or device industries themselves to write the articles, which are then submitted under the signature of an “impartial” doctor. Sometimes the so-called “ghost” may simply have ties, such as a sponsorship from the related industry or manufacturer, but other times the ghost may actually be part of the industry being written about. Just to name a few, many of you will remember the controversy surrounding disclosures of this practice related to Fen-Phen, Vioxx^® and Premarin^®.

According to The New York Times, many major medical journals are taking baby-steps in the right direction to identify and hopefully stop this practice, while others are not yet committed to the process. The Public Library of Science in its PLoS Medicine journal has called for a “zero-tolerance” ban on such ghostwriting and has suggested various remedies, including sanctions in situations where the ghostwriting is not disclosed.

Given the fact that many medical and other healthcare providers rely on these journals for unbiased information to make decisions regarding the use of different drugs, devices and treatments or even when creating standards of care, policies and procedures, etc., the information should be free of slant, spin or other bias. But apparently this isn’t true or at least doesn’t happen as often as we would hope.

The author of an article should be the person or persons who wrote or contributed the majority of the article, not the person who signs their name to it or submits it to a medical journal or other publication. At the very least the ghosts should be disclosed in the article’s acknowledgments, contributions or references.

Unfortunately, it appears that the major medical journals have not completely adopted nor have they enforced this policy. I am also not aware of any research being done to determine whether the professional nursing journals have adopted a similar policy. Until an impartial organization looks into this, or at least until the nursing journals adopt a policy of transparency, we’ll have to assume that nursing journals have the same potential level of bias or influence as do the medical journals.

What should be done? First the journals (scientific, medical or nursing) should put into effect a sanction policy for those situations in which a ghostwriter, sponsorship or other potential for bias is later disclosed or discovered. The second is for those same journals to adopt a transparency policy which then should disclose such bias as soon as it is discovered.

It’s imperative that healthcare professionals and ultimately the consumer are able to fully trust professional journals. Until ghostwriting is “ghostbusted,” we’re not in a position to place that trust. Until that day, Certified Legal Nurse Consultants should continue to question and challenge the validity of research studies where indicated.

Success Is Inside!

We all know when we discover something we feel passionate about. We feel amazingly energetic. Desire is energy. Have you ever experienced a time when desire overcame all physical, emotional and intellectual barriers? Like a child waking up on Christmas morning, you spring alert full speed ahead. Why can’t we experience that passion – that vitality and energy – not only on Christmas but every day? Believe me, you can. When you wake up every day to a life and career that are your heart and soul, a life and career you’re passionate about, you experience maximum joy.

One of my passions was ignited in me when I was eight years old. For hours each day I taught an imaginary class. I was so absorbed with my class that my dad would come in and break it up to encourage me to play outside with my real friends. To this day I have no idea what I was teaching, but I was darned passionate about it.

At eight years old teaching was play. At 28, I turned that passion for teaching into a business, and I’ve been playing ever since. When I left my hospital job as an RN to start my legal nurse consulting business, I promised myself I would work only my passions. That decision proved more important than I realized. Along the way I’ve been tempted by many flattering and interesting offers, the most tempting of which was joining a powerful law firm as a partner my first year out of law school. But I always stop and listen to my heart. When we live and work our passions, we take an uncompromising approach. It means being honest with yourself and others about what you value.

As The New York Times reported, I “crossed nursing with the law and created a new profession” when I started teaching other nurses how to become legal nurse consultants. That’s the kind of BIG Thing that can happen when you commit to Promise 1, to living and working a passionate life.

Commit to Promise 1 right now and you’ll discover the passions that will propel you to a totally fulfilled future.

Success Is Inside!