I was recently asked by a client "what is the most important 'key' to success?" Unfortunately, there is no one "key" to success (or most anything else, for that matter). If I had to choose, I'd narrow it down to these few: clarity, congruency, focus and action, probably in that order.

Clarity is the same as self-awareness or insight. It means that you know who you are and what you want at a deeper than surface level. The deeper the clarity, the better. If you truly know yourself, you'll have reasonable expectations of yourself, acceptance of who you are and are not, and knowledge of your own strengths and challenges. You may know who you really are, but not live it. That is where congruency comes in.

Congruency is based on having some level of self- awareness. It is the alignment of who you really are with the way you behave and interact with the world. It can also be called authenticity. If you are truly congruent, it shows up in your career and relationship choices. They will match who you really are, not necessarily who you think you should be or you wish you were. Congruency is where your day to day choices line up with your clarity. Even if you know who you are and you know what you "should" be doing, you may not do it because of the millions of distractions and pressures we face every day. That's where focus comes in.

Focus is paying attention; concentrating on staying in alignment, furthering your clarity and congruency by making conscious choices. It means slowing down your life so that you can focus. Studies have shown that, in fact, humans are unable to do two things at once. If it seems that they do, it is because of the incredibly elastic human brain, able to stop doing one thing and do another in extremely short intervals of time. However, doing this is actually less efficient that doing one thing at a time, because of the additional time your brain takes to switch tasks. So focusing on who you are, what you want and how to get it are very important to your success. However, they are not sufficient without action.

Action is what you do to make things happen. Action builds momentum and moves you forward. It is one of the ways you express your energy and desires in the world. Action can include anything from thinking, to working, to creating, to resting, well, you get the idea. When you apply clarity, congruency and focus to action, I call it "informed action". Your actions are informed by who you are, what you want, your purpose or place in the world, what you think and feel, how you express yourself, what you concentrate on, etc.

When these four ingredients are all in play, you can't help but be successful. Understanding and knowing yourself, living consciously according to that knowledge, focusing on what really matters to you, and taking deliberate action will propel you forward to achieve more than you ever thought possible. And a wonderful by-product of all this is you will be happier.

Coaching Comments: If success and happiness are your goals, choose one of the key areas above to think about. How does the key concept apply in your life? For example, how congruent is your life with who you really are? Can you identify areas that are out of alignment? Areas that don't seem to match the real you? Does your career or work mirror your life's purpose(s) or sense of self? Does it give you energy or drain you? What do your relationships say about you and your life? Would you choose the same relationships if you had it to do all over again? Going through this "thinking" process adds to your self-awareness. And answering honestly may lead you to better congruency and actions.

Of course, the real question is, what is success to you? We'll talk more about that in the next newsletter.

If the above article resonates with you, and you feel you could use some help in your own seeking of clarity, congruency, focus and action, give me a call. I help clients every day with improving their quality of life by addressing these concerns. Let's collaborate. Don't delay, call today!

"We are all huge magnets. We attract. Whether we realize it or not, we are always, always, always attracting exactly whatever we are putting out to the universe. Like attracts like. Positive attracts positive. Negative attracts negative.

We create everything we experience in our lives. Everything. And if we understand and use the Law of Attraction, we can deliberately create and effortlessly attract whatever we want (love, money, peace, success).

The Law of Attraction is easy to remember -- what you feel is what you get." Drew Rozell, Ph.D.

Watch this newsletter and your email for an upcoming workshop called "The Attraction Circle" to be led by Susan Lupton and I. If you've wanted to experience the Laws of Attraction, this is the class for you!

"Time is a created thing. To say 'I don't have time' is like saying, 'I don't want to...'." Lao-Tzu

One thing I hear often as a coach is "I don't have the time to...". We all feel we don't have enough time at least occasionally. But I'd like to offer a different point of view, which mirrors that of Lao-Tzu above. While time is finite and we can't create more of it, we do have total 100% control over how we use our time.

Okay, I can already hear you complaining that you don't have total control. Relax. Breathe. Try to keep an open mind here. It is true that we live our lives at a furious pace. We often feel as if we don't have time to take a breath, much less have fun or get everything done. I'm with you so far.

However, when was the last time that you took a really careful, detailed look at where your time is spent? How much time do you really spend working? How much time is spent in non-productive time at work (visiting, reading the paper, walking the halls, attending useless meetings, etc.) How much time do you spend getting ready for work? How much time do you spend with your loved ones? How much time do you spend caring for others? How much time do you spend caring for yourself? How about watching TV? How about with friends? How about cleaning house? If you are able to truly look at your life in an objective way, I will bet that you will find you spend a lot of time doing unimportant, useless, even harmful (to yourself) things, all of which you accept as just a normal part of your life.

So, here's the challenge: keep a log for a few days of everything you do, broken down by at least 15 minutes increments. Be brutally honest about your activities. After you've kept the log for a few days, review it and try to identify areas where time is wasted, you just don't want to do it, or where you might like to do it if you had all the time in the world, you don't, so you choose not to do this anymore. You will find free time to spare.

Now what you do with it is something else. It is at this point that you can also be totally honest with yourself about things like exercising more, walking the dog more often, cooking more, etc. All the things you think you should do and, of course, would do if you "had the time". Now you can admit that you just don't want to do them, and stop blaming it on lack of time. It is 100% okay to be who you are, and stop trying so hard to be who you think you should be.

Read this informative article in Inc Magazine about entrepreneurs who actually work 40 hours a week or less and have a life! If your business is consuming your life, this article may inspire you to make some changes.

Simplifying your life, both in business and at home, is one of my coaching specialties. If you are overwhelmed and consumed by your business, give me a call. I CAN help!

I just re-read the book, "The E-Myth" by Michael E. Gerber. It is a very helpful resource for those of us who have started or are thinking about starting a business. It is especially helpful for those whose businesses are floundering or stagnating. He includes free how-to articles and samples on his website for creating a business plan. I found it very useful.

Money will come when you are doing the right thing. - Mike Phillips * * * All substance is energy in motion. It lives and flows. Money is symbolically a golden, flowing, stream of concretized vital energy. - from "The Magical Work of the Soul" * * * All too often, we become blocked (in doing what we really want, creatively) and blame it on our lack of money. This is never an authentic block. The actual block is our feeling of constriction, our sense of powerlessness. Art requires us to empower ourselves with choice. At the most basic level, this means choosing to do self-care. Julia Cameron, The Artist's Way * * * I live a gracious and abundant life filled with the financial resources and possession that most people yearn for. However, I did not achieve this life by yearning after those things. The finances and the possessions are, to me, merely the trappings of the life I dreamed of. For I longed to deeply know and be in harmony with the laws of divine providence. We live in a vast and supremely universe. Within this great being, held in divine providence, we are infinitely prosperous. - Lenedra Carroll (Architecture of All Abundance) * * * To create money, and use it, each one of us must believe and everyone must believe. Only then worthless pieces of paper take on value. When a society loses faith in money, it implicitly loses faith in itself. The money process, nonetheless, still requires deep unacknowledged acts of faith, so mysterious that it could easily be confused with divine powers. - Secrets of the Temple