As we were drifting away from “seeking cedar” as we called it, I started thinking about how much we have to be willing to grow, in our own unique way, to create the fully alive life and work we crave.  The work I do with others about their business often becomes about their personal life, too.  Why?  Because we can’t develop into the entrepreneurs we want to be without changing those parts of ourselves that hold us to the normal, everyday life.  As solo business owners we have to be adaptable, just like this “seeking cedar” tree.  We have to reach for the nutrients we need even if it means growing away from the shore that has supported us, or looking a little different than others who work for themselves.  In fact, the more we know ourselves, the more we know our uniqueness, which is, after all, what others buy from us.  Just like this tree, we have to stand out to be noticed.  If we insist on blending in, we make it much more difficult for people to find us and want our services.

Here’s a quick exercise you can try that will help you understand how much you are willing to stretch to build your business.  Get into a quiet spot for about 15 minutes with a pad and pencil (or your laptop if you consider that a thing of the past, LOL).  Ask yourself:

• What two things stop me from being all I truly can be in my life and my work?
• Am I the one stopping myself from removing these two things, or is it someone else?
• Am I willing to stretch myself to change or remove these two things?
• What will I gain by stretching in this way?
• What’s the worst thing that might happen?  And what happens after the worst thing has happened?
• What’s the best thing that might happen?  And what comes after that?

You can use these questions whenever you are scared of an opportunity that presents itself in your business.  They will help you to see what you should do, what actions or thoughts will serve you the most in building your business.  Just don’t be surprised when you realize that stretching to be the entrepreneur you can be also stretches your personal life.  It’s a hand-in-glove proposition – when you stretch one, you stretch the other.  You can die in place when you’ve been pushed or shoved, or you can become a seeking cedar and stretch into a brand new space.

• A good number of people will have a thought something like “I better put this away, I don’t want to lose this money.”
• Fewer people will get a thought that goes “this is a gift, truly found money.  How should I use this, what can I do?”

If your thought was about keeping the money safe, I’ll wager that you think of money as potential loss rather than potential gain.  And that mindset isn’t going to help you create a business where money automatically comes in and goes out, just like the tide.  You can’t stop the tide.  If you constantly try, you still get the inevitable but you are much more miserable over it than if you just let that tide go out and enjoy watching it as it goes.  Same with money!

The other day I had someone contact me who was interested, she said, in coaching for her small business.  Actually, she had two businesses, had them both for several years.  The very first statement out of her mouth was not about her businesses but about her money.  “I make less than $100 a month with these businesses,” she said.  She didn’t tell me about her businesses, ask me how I might help her, or what she hoped to gain in working with me.  Instead, she came at me from a place of lack, focusing on what she doesn’t have.  That lack is fear-based, contracted energy.  Behind it is a poor-me mentality.  That creates a constant story of lack, a negative energy.  It literally “pulls” others toward that lack.  While we didn’t get far in talking about working together, she right away let me know she had little money and probably could not afford to work with me.  Underneath that statement was a subtle pull on me, to join her in her financial lack by cutting a deal to work with her for less money, or to sit there and spend an hour of my time for free while she talked about her financial lack rather than asking me how I could help her go where she wanted to go.  Then, we both could lack and she would have a “community of lack” going.  Do you see?  Very subtle, but very powerful.  Watch for that from others, and don’t let that energy go to work on you.

Let’s think about this solopreneur who has two businesses that are both several years old and who makes about $100 a month from both of them together.  Does she need to be more profitable?  Obviously, yes.  She probably needs to focus down on one of the businesses, build that to an ongoing profit, and then bring the second business on-line.  She may need to ditch one — I don’t know her well enough to say.  I do know, though, that it doesn’t work to approach me about working with you and ask me first thing what I charge.  The money isn’t the issue.  The issue is what would this $100 a month entrepreneur GAIN in working with me (or someone else) rather than what she would LOSE.  If I can’t get her to focus on the gain, she won’t engage in what I suggest to her.  She’ll be thinking about that money she’s losing by paying me (or someone else) rather than what she is GETTING in the process.

There are a lot of reasons why many solopreneurs and small business owners are not profitable.  Many lack knowledge about the basic tools of business.  These things are skills that one can easily get through classes, reading, having a mentor or a coach, or going to workshops. The bigger barrier to making money is your own mind set about money.  If you focus on how little you have it will absolutely never grow.  If, instead, you focus on what you can gain with the money you have (no matter how little or large that amount) you will be OK.

Here’s what I wrote to this woman. “You know, it’s never about the money, it’s about what will happen if you do NOT change and learn to invest in building your business.  When people e-mail me and ask only what it costs to hire me, I know they are trying to decide only on cost.  The wiser decision is based on value or what it will cost them if they keep on the road they are on.  See, it would benefit you to know more about what we might do for those three months, but instead of asking me that, or asking when we might talk about it, I see that you are asking only what it will cost you, not what you will gain.  So there you have a little bit of coaching for free.  If you change to put your attention on gain rather than loss, you will begin to shift your thinking and your business from cost to benefit, both for yourself and for those you wish to serve.”

If you are not profitable through lack of focus, bad planning, or lack of business skills you can fix it.  It takes risk, self-honesty, willingness to feel a little uncomfortable as you learn new skills and behaviors.  It takes faith!  But the biggest thing it takes is shifting your mind set from lack to gain.  Or, from a poverty mentality to an abundant mentality.  Or, from fear to love.  Not only will you benefit, but those you serve will benefit.  This week, practice not leading with money questions.  Practice focusing on what you gain rather than what you lose.  It will shift your mind set, and in time it will shift your bank account, too!

In fact, “seeing” myself playing a piano piece or “practicing in my mind” as I then called it is one of the first ways I learned that I could make things happen.  An early-bird piano student (I started when I was 7), I somehow realized that I could read the music and then re-play it in my head, and “watch” as my hands played the piece.  In today’s world (7 was a long time ago, ha!) we call it visioning.  Visioning is a key precursor to manifesting what we want to do with our life.  And it’s a very handy little tool to have.  I’ve used it in all sorts of ways.

• Learning music for piano, flute, and guitar for recitals and concerts
• Teaching myself how to do proofs in geometry
• Remembering positioning, draping, and treatment routines for neuromuscular therapy treatments when I took my national boards
• Seeing myself walking again after back surgery as a child
• Finding the exact piece of furniture I wanted for a room in my home
• Speaking to large groups successfully
• Finding the perfect office space for my business

There’s more (ask my husband about my “finding” the perfect car on Ebay for a song), but you get the point.  Visioning leads to manifesting, and manifesting is a critical skill to have as an entrepreneur.  I’m not saying that one doesn’t have to put the time in to get what one wants, but you can work with the flow of things and get there a lot faster than working against the flow.  And working in the flow means having a clear vision, a picture if you will, of what you want to create in and around you as you work.

Here, then, are three ways to make things happen.  You can use them to accelerate your income, build your business faster, get clear about the products and services you want to offer, and even find the perfect office space!

1. Step one is to find about 15 minutes of totally quiet, alone time for yourself.  Get some paper and a pen, sit or lay down, and close your eyes.  Ask yourself “how exactly do I see my business?”  And then wait until words or pictures form in your mind.  Follow them, make them fuller.  If you see yourself in an office, look around and get a detailed look.  How much of the time are you there?  Are there other staff members?  What are you wearing?  Where is this office located?  Do you see people there?  Make whatever pictures come to you as full as you possibly can.  If you’re traveling in the pictures that come to you, ask where, how much you travel, who you are with, what you do when you get there.  No matter how outlandish the pictures or words are that come to you, let them become detailed and full, and follow where they lead.  Jot down anything you think you won’t remember about the words or pictures.  Keep at it until you have a full vision of the things you want to manifest in your business.
2. Make a vision board.  You can do this any way you like.  I sometimes use large poster board, sometimes just a sheet of paper.  Either way, go to Google images and search for pictures that represent what you want to make happen.  Get the pictures out of your mind and into the world.  Print them, stick them onto your vision board, and put it where you can see it often.  Your eye will go to it many times during the day, and your brain and your energy will lock on to the visions you put there.  Soon enough, you’ll begin to see your way to each one of those pictures.  Your energy will be so full of what you want to manifest that you literally will begin to pull the thing toward you.  I’ve had completely doubtful clients do vision boards in my workshops, only to call me up six months later and report that every single thing on their board was “magically” accomplished or found.  No, it isn’t magic.  It’s putting your energy and intention toward what you see in your mind’s eye, and have helped to make real by creating your vision board.
3. Share the vision board you made with your family, friends, and team members.  If you want to put even more thrust into your vision, take the time to share what you are going to make happen by showing your vision board around.  You’re not asking for help, you’re just saying what you are going for to those you spend the most time around.  You’re creating a wider, broader energy for what you want, even if you don’t think anyone will actually do something to help you.  The fact is, you just never know.  One person might mention something in passing to another person, who happens to be just the person you are looking for to help make something happen.  Sharing your vision deepens your own commitment to it, too.  It helps you lose the “oh, I don’t know if this will actually happen” self-doubt that seems to always be lurking underneath us.  Just make your board, share it with a few people, and go about your business.  You don’t even need lengthy explanations – let the pictures speak for themselves.

The thing about envisioning is that it will become a habit for you if you do it consistently.  You’ll find yourself stopping for a few seconds to envision even little things in your life – the perfect dinner one night, exactly how you want to look and speak in front of a group.  Learning how to open yourself to the inner knowing, the vision inside yourself, is one of the most powerful things you can do for yourself and your business.  Set aside visioning time once a week for the next six weeks, and notice how your life and your work begins to change.

(c)  Sue Painter

1. Be clear about how many people you want.  What size does the group need to be to function well, let connections and bonding take place, but still remain manageable?   Share this number with  your potential members, and spend a little time actually envisioning the group in your meeting place.  See the faces as you look around the room.  Clarity and visualization are two ways to manifest what you want.
2. Leave yourself enough lead time to schedule more than one “preview” workshop for something that is as big as a year-long higher priced offering.  Choose a different location.   It’s rare to attract all the people you have potential with for just the one single day you have planned.
3. Schedule at least one teleseminar, and preferably 3.  Use these hour-long open and free calls to provide valuable, useful content to your listeners.  Have them sign up to gain access to your call through your website, so that you gain their name and e-mail address in return for sharing a sneak preview of your content.  Talk about the what, but not so much the how.  Take a break before the end of your call to spend a full 5 minutes making your offer for the big event.  Talk about the benefits, not what you plan to do.  Talk about the pain points you feel your listeners have and what can happen when these pain points are eliminated from a person’s life or work.
4. Review the stories of the people who have already signed up for the big event, and ask yourself why they opened their wallets for you.  These early adopters can tell you a lot about what other people are feeling, too.  Change your sales talk and copy slightly if you need to, in order to cover and emphasis these benefits since you already know that they are strong selling points for you.
5. Consider offering a half-price ticket to the spouse or business partner or assistant of someone who has already paid full ticket price for a seat.  This can be a very effective way to fill your seats.  Essentially, you are upselling the already-registered client.  It’s a great benefit to them to bring someone along, and a great benefit to you to have another person at the event.  (Be sure, however, that you are covering your costs with this 50% person.)
6. Be wise in the use of experiential work in your one-day workshop previews.  People buy on emotion, not logic.  So bring the emotion up at these workshops and when it is high, make your offer.
7. Make sure that your offer is time limited.  You can offer the half-price “second person” ticket for a limited time.  You can offer an early-bird discount for a very brief time.  You can offer a bonus but only if the person registers for your big event within the next 24 hours.

Filling the seats at your events and longer-term programs takes persistence and the use of multiple marketing strategies.  Using these can help you gain visibility and build excitement for your big event.  Let me know how it goes!

(c) Sue Painter

My business was brand new and very small, one room in an office building. I had to handle everything, whether I was “trained” to handle it or not. I had to discover what I did well, what I enjoyed the most, what I hated to do, when I could afford to hire help, and what help I needed to hire first. I had to stretch and grow quickly. Fortunately, because I had solid experience in growing a business, the Touch Therapy Center (a massage clinic I own to this day) built itself quickly. Within the year, I could hire help for cleaning and laundry service. Next came a bookkeeper. Now, 13 years later, I manage the business while other staff do most of the therapeutic massage, I’m in a medical office building with multiple treatment rooms, and I have a practice manager to handle the front desk, errands, and most adminstrative tasks.

What I want to point out is the rocky path of personal growth it takes to get from year one to year thirteen, turning a profit the whole way. Here are some of the things I had to learn or consider:

1. Watch my operating costs and bottom line – I had to remain profitable even if I was spending more money on getting help with cleaning, laundry service, and so forth. Watching my weekly financial statements was critical, or I could have worked myself crazy and not made a dime.
2. Know myself well enough to figure out what I liked to do and was good at versus what I am not so good at and am not fond of doing. One of these in the massage business is laundry. I didn’t enjoy dragging home loads of sheets and spending my evenings sorting, washing, drying, and folding them. And I wasn’t particularly great at it, either. On the other hand, I’m very practiced and skillful at attracting clients. I didn’t need or want to pay anyone to handle marketing for me, other than getting help with a design for my business card. It was easy for me and saved me money to develop my own brochures and press releases.
3. I had to find out about my willingness to take risk and how to handle the good and bad that came from that risk. Should I move into larger office space and increase my rent? If so, how much more business would I need to generate to remain at my same level of profit? Could I get larger space, spend more money, and at the same time make even more money? Could I negotiate new lease terms that were favorable to me?

Before long, I had a very busy practice and was ready to hire other staff.  Now, I could draw on my past experience as an Executive Director and use my past hiring skills. This time, if I made a bad decision, it was mind and mine alone to deal with, for better or for worse.

And, after about 8 years, I had to make a decision about opening my second business, The Confident Marketer. Other entrepreneurs had been asking me for serveral years how I’d built my business, how I knew what to do when, how I got profitable. I found that I absolutely loved helping other self-employed people be successful. So, about 5 years ago, The Confident Marketer was born. And with it, a whole new level of personal growth and challenge was necessary. It’s one reason I keep myself always working with top coaches who can help me face up to the personal growth and new business skills I need to keep my business successful and innovative.

The point to my story is that it takes courage to be an entrepreneur. You have to be willing to find out what you don’t know, get help with those things you don’t do well, and become expert at a few things that are yours and yours alone. You have to be willing to step up to intimately knowing and watching your financials (something I find many new entrepreneurs don’t want to do). You have to make decisions using both the facts and figures AND your gut feelings — your intuitive skills.  And when there is a problem, you have to be willing to meet it and work it through, taking time to consider whether and how much it affects your customer service and your bottom line.

All this takes a great deal of courage and a willingness to grow both personally and professionally. A great business takes three things – a solid biz plan, a creative and well-thought-out marketing plan, and a willingness to do engage in personal growth. And behind those three vital things is courage.  Step right up, and see how quickly your business becomes unstoppable!

(c) Sue Painter

1. Her business is not thriving, meaning she needs more customers and she is not financially successful.
2. When asked who she works with, she replies “Oh, I work with just about anyone.”
3. If asked to thoroughly and completely describe her target market, she is flustered and can’t give more than a sentence.

The “Oh, I work with just about anyone” response is one I’ve heard from both new and not-so-new entrepreneurs many times.  So many times, in fact, that it now drives me a little nuts.  When someone says that, they are setting no boundaries for who they work with, which is a deadly thing.  Let me ask the “just about anyone” entrepreneurs these questions:

1.  Does it matter to you if a customer stiffs you?

2.  Are you open 24/7?

3.  If you were, for instance, a seller of curtains and blinds, would you drive 400 miles to sell a set of blinds to someone?

Of course, the answer to each of these is almost always NO!   And that’s a good, thing, because that entrepreneur has just started on a path of better describing her target market.  Her target market are people who have the money to pay for her products or services, she works with those who contact her during specific days and hours of business, and she has a limited geographical area in which to sell her blinds.  This isn’t a complete description of her target market, but it is a start.

You can picture the creation of your target market as setting fences and gates around a specific group of people with whom you really want to work. You might not be as blatantly obvious about it as the gatekeepers are at hot night clubs, where one must stand outside on the sidewalk and get personally picked to go inside, but that is one very good example of a business who is very picky about who they want to serve.

I’ve learned about finding your niche and describing your target market from 3 or 4 of my coaches and mentors, but the one who made me work the hardest to describe my market, hands down, was Suzanne Falter-Barnes.  She has a very long list of questions that one must answer to get through one of her platform building classes.  The first time I saw that fat list of questions I just about fainted.  In fact, the document she proposed I fill out to describe my market was 17 pages long!  Still, Suzanne knows her stuff and I was there to learn, so I plowed into the questions.  At the end, I felt like I’d invented something akin to a kid’s secret playmate.  I started getting actual pictures of how my target market person looked, how she dressed, what she spent her money on, and more.  I got so familiar with her in that 17 pages of ruthless questioning that I decided I knew her well enough to name her, for Pete’s sake!  And that is what I strongly suggest you do, too.

My suggestion is to sit down with your computer or a piece of paper and describe a “sample” person from your target market as if she (or he) is a character in a book you are writing, and it’s up to you to fill your reader’s head with a detailed, specific, colorful image of the character you are writing about.  Describe age, education, the kind of work she does, where she lives, her likes and dislikes – anything you can think of that will add to the picture in your head.  This may lead you to dig around on the web for demographic or other information.

Spend quality time here, for it pays off in the end. Ask yourself (with pen and paper or keyboard nearby) “who is the most perfect customer for me?”  If you have a hard time doing that, prime the pump by listing the characteristics of your most favorite or best customer so far.  From there, dream on.  Who would be delightful to work with?  Who would you dread working with?  What characteristics drive you crazy?  Who have you worked with who bugs you so much you hope she never calls you again?  You get the picture – and that’s whole point.  For here is a secret about financially successful entrepreneurs:  

Those who describe and visualize their target market well have started the process of manifesting exactly that type of customer for themselves.  You now have a vision of who you want to attract, in detail.  Put that right on your business vision board and keep it in your mind’s eye, for who you focus on tends to come your way.

Having this vision and description on hand also makes it easier to walk away from business that isn’t right for you, doesn’t truly interest you, and has a downside to it.  (The downside being that while you are spending time with uninteresting client A, you cannot very well be also working with or running into very interesting and exciting client B.  This is called “opportunity cost.”)  Realize that it actually COSTS YOU to work with the wrong customer, for you are giving up the opportunity to work with who is just right for you.

Taking the time to dream up your ideal target market person makes finding that type of person much easier.  You now know where to focus your efforts.  If you are spending a lot of time and money networking in a group of direct marketers, and these are not your target market, it’s time to make a change.  Pull your time and money from the wrong group, and go find the right group.  You’ll find more and better business in the new group and waste less of your precious time.  

When you are creating marketing plans, writing sales copy, or pulling together a presentation you’ll be able to keep your secret target market person right with you, writing to them.  There will be less agony over creating these things.  

And finally, when you have the opportunity to build a relationship with a potential customer, you will be much more at ease because, after all, you will pretty much feel as if you know that person in a way.  You’ll be confident that you’ve spent time with someone who has a much higher chance of needing what you offer.  This will shorten your sales cycle and make you more money faster.  I don’t know of any entrepreneur who doesn’t want that!

So, get that blank paper or computer screen and get going.  Breath some life into your target market, and you’ll breath new life into your business, as well.  It’s a win-win for every entrepreneur.

(c) Sue Painter

1. Running your own business is a solitary endeavor.  Decisions are up to you and you alone.  You need the perspective of other business owners to round out your own thoughts.  The perspective of your employees (if you have any) isn’t the same thing.
2. Your own energy waxes and wanes.  I’m not talking about the moon or hormones, either.  The best business owners know that their own energy has to attract others to them – good staff, great customers, good deals for rents or whatever else.  And it is very hard to keep your own energy up where it needs to be without sometimes drawing from the good energy of others.
3. Time inevitably puts you in the box.  What do I mean by this?  When you created your business you did it to put forward a new, not previously done type of business.  You felt what you had to offer was unique and special.  In other words, you were out of the box.  But as time rocks on, your own thinking gets boxed in by the very dailiness of what you do, by your own fatigue, and by the fact that others will emulate you.  To keep on re-creating a business that continually pleases and serves your customers, you need to keep yourself out of the box.
4. Your ideas, although they are great, can be sharpened and improved by your entrepreneurial community.  Simply put, multiple heads are better than one.  Here’s a quick example of this.  In one of my own communities, a woman had a deal with a book publisher for her very first book.  But she was balking about what the publisher wanted to title the book, taking issue with both the main title and the tagline.  She brought it up in our next get together, only to find that her adamant opinion was not shared by a single one of us!  We all though the title was good and that, furthermore, the publisher knew what would sell much more than the author did.  As I pointed out, the author is the subject matter expert but her publisher is the marketing and sales expert for her book.  All but one of the entire community basically told her to suck it up.  And after she listened to us, she did!  She ended up coming all the way back around to what the publisher had suggested, with only a very minor one-word change.  Which leads me to my next point about the benefit of being in an entrepreneurial community….
5. It helps you get your own ego out of the way, and think about what you offer from your customer’s point of view.  Believe you me, you will ONLY be successful if you offer what your customers want and need, not what you in all your wisdom think they need.

I could probably come up with a few more good reasons, but I think you, smart as you are, get the point.  It may take a village to raise a child, but it takes a community to foster a solo business.  I cannot even begin to list for you all that I have learned from constantly participating in my own communities.  I’ve gotten both wonderful, gentle, loving support and a sharp kick in the pants….and both have been beneficial to me.  It will be the same for you.

I’m excited to tell you that I’m forming a new community for solo business owners that will offer these benefits ( and more) in just about a month.  I’m calling it Private Matters because I’m creating a group to which you can bring your most private thoughts and worries.  These deeply affect your business, they matter.  So….in a nutshell….Private Matters.  It will be small, full of sharp thinkers and dedicated solo business owners, and  it will change you and your business in ways that you can only dream of.  If you feel you are a good match for Private Matters, you can e-mail me and I’ll make sure you get the application and information.

Meanwhile, keep your business focused on who you serve, what those people need, and how you can best offer products and services that meet those needs.  And remember to reach out for community regularly.  Both you and your customers will benefit.

(c) Sue Painter

When you decide to set a new goal for yourself, how do you do it?  Do you sit down and make a list?  Do you write out an affirmation?  Do you simply think to yourself one day while you’re in the car “I need to do thus-and-such” and set out to do it?  Whatever your method, you can have a higher degree of sticking to your new goal if you include as many of your senses as you can to help you along.

There are several ways of doing this, and most of the methods I know work pretty well.  One that is popular right now is called Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT).  EFT is often used to change our emotional reaction to a certain situation.  For instance, if you get nervous speaking in front of people, you can learn to use EFT to say affirmations and tap yourself on specific points of the body.  EFT is nicknamed “tapping” because you actually do tap yourself repeatedly at specific spots as you are saying the sentences you construct about your goal — the change you desire.  I’ve used EFT more than once and if it is used consistently, it has worked for me.  To learn more about EFT, you can contact my friend Annie Wills, at Full Circle Coaching.

I’m going to give you another way to involve your senses and make your new goal stick, though.  It is often called VAK, which stands for Visual/Auditory/Kinesthetic.  I like VAK because it is another way to become an embodied entrepreneur.  Simply put, that means that you are engaged in your work with your heart, soul, mind AND body – and you are sure to be quite successful if you can achieve that!

So, to set a goal and put the power of VAK behind it, here’s what you do:

1. Write your goal down.
2. Close your eyes, and ask yourself “what will you see that will let you know you’ve attained your goal?”  Even better, you can give this question and the following ones to a friend and ask them to walk you through this and answer to her, out loud.  Take a breath or two, and see what pictures you get, what you’ll see when your goal is met.  You will probably get more than one vision.  Open your eyes, and write each of them down.
3. Again, close your eyes and ask yourself “what will people say to you once you’ve reached the goal?”  After you’ve recorded your answer (or had your friend record it for you), try asking yourself “what will people say about you once you’ve reached your goal?”  And finally, ask what you would say to yourself when your goal is reached.  Record your answers, or have your friend do it for you.
4. (This is my favorite part!)  Now, close your eyes again.  Ask yourself how you will feel when you’ve reached this new goal.  Really take some time to let this sink in, and see what feelings arise in you.  Once you have a good strong feeling going, ask yourself about the color, shape, texture, and even the temperature of that feeling.  Finally, ask yourself where the feeling is located in your body.  Record all your answers.  Don’t rush yourself, give yourself time to really get into the feeling of reaching this goal.
5. Finally, ask yourself what belief you could state about yourself that will help you get this goal.  For instance, if you want to lose weight but always snack at night, could you create a belief about yourself that you are able to easily turn your attention from eating after 8:00 PM?  Work on this replacing your current belief that it is “impossible not to eat” or “I must eat because I get too fatigued, too bored, or too scared  not to eat at night.”  In other words, replace your negative self-talk with a positive belief in yourself as someone who is capable of doing what you want to do.
6. Be sure to ask yourself if you foresee any reason NOT to reach this goal.  If you secretly think that being thinner will be bad in some way you will not reach your goal until you have put that belief to bed.  We almost always have a secret reason that we don’t want to do what we say we want to do.  I say I want to improve my auditory Spanish skills, but secretly I don’t want to put in the extra half hour a day to do that.  So, of course, I don’t!  Bring your secret reasons up into your consciousness, and you’ll go a long way to helping yourself get that goal.

The point here is to create a framework around you that helps support you in all your senses.  If you have a goal to grow a rose garden, you can close your eyes and envision the layout, the sunshine, the colors, and the smells for sure.  The more you can embody your goals, the more you’ll be able to make it stick.  Let me know how it works for you.