Lemonade Recipe

Digging Deeper with Allison LaMarr…

I’m coming to you from the Big Apple today where we’re concluding our seven-day stint of back-to-back workshops across North America. It’s been a true joy and privilege to Dig Deeper with many of you in person! James and I are going to spend the next few days playing around NYC, so if you have recs on dining or shopping faves, send ‘em on over. Speaking of sharing ideas, THANK YOU for all of the tips you sent me for getting over my allergy-or-cold-or-who-knows-what funk I’ve been fighting for the past 10 days. We should take all of your ideas and compile them into a “recipe” book! But seriously, I simply could not afford to be sick, so I think I tried almost every single suggestion you sent my way. My sweet assistant made a new run to the grocery store with just about every new idea that came in – you should have seen some of the concoctions I gulped down this week! Thank you for sharing your family secrets with me. It’s comforting and refreshing to know that we’re all on this crazy ride of life together!

How many of you made time this past week to compile your list of the changes you want to create in yourself? If you’ll remember with me from last week, I challenged you to evaluate yourself from the inside out and ask what would make you a better you? This exercise is different than goal-setting or making dream boards because we’re not envisioning what our perfect world would look like. We’re deciding who we want to be and become within this less than perfect situation we’re living in. To recap from last week, we came to the conclusion that we can’t control the weather, the economy, or even the state of affairs in our own home all the time, but we can control who we are and how we respond to the world around us. And that will often become the catalyst to every other result that has seemed to elude us for so long. So, you spent the week examining exactly what needs to change within you instead of wishing and waiting for things to change around you. Whatever character traits you identified, we’re going to take them this week and do the reverse engineering that I promised. Remember, this is going to be fun. Making lemonade is always fun. We may get sticky, and it may sting a little in the open wounds, but the end result promises to be very profitable. So, let’s get started!

First, if you missed last week’s edition, I encourage you to go back to the Digging Deeper archives and check it out so that our subject matter is fresh in your mind. Once you’ve done that, we can proceed to the next step. Hopefully, you’ve carved out some time and really analyzed the types of lemons you’re starting with, either from the ones we discussed or your own variety that wasn’t even mentioned. If you really want to take the lemons life has handed you and make award-winning, fortune-building, legacy-leaving lemonade, there are 6 ingredients that must be included for the recipe to work.

1. Honesty—You must allow yourself to absorb and process the cold, hard truth of reality…no matter how ugly it is. Only when we become aware of the truth of who we are and where we are will we get the green light to move forward freely. If we are living in any sort of denial about ourselves or our circumstances (time, money, relationships, etc.), it will keep us stuck in the traffic jam.
2. Ownership—We must take 100% responsibility for our situation. Where in life will the “It’s not my fault!” approach get you? Nowhere. We must stop blaming other people or circumstances for our results. Unless we are totally responsible, there is nothing we can do about our future. Also, be aware of dream-stealers. When other people quit or give up on their dream, are you letting them take your dream with them? You don’t have to. Take ownership of your dream and the awareness that you don’t have to put your dreams at the mercy of other people’s decisions.
3. Closure—Before we can move forward, we must be willing to release the past. This may require you to ask forgiveness, forgive others in your heart, do some serious praying, write a letter to release all of your hurts, angers, and frustrations and then burn it, or whatever you have to do to free yourself from the bondage of your past.
4. Stop waiting—Period. Stop waiting to get organized, to be prepared, for your family to get on board, for things to calm down at work, for the magic solution, or to feel like doing it. The single biggest difference between highly successful people and everyone else is that they stopped waiting for the magic feather and just did the work in spite of the chaos around them.
5. Exercise daily management—This is a deal breaker. You will never change your life until you develop the discipline to change your day. One day at a time. If how you approached today—this one particular day—would dictate the outcome of your entire year, would you plan it and treat it differently? When you begin to approach every day with that degree of importance, you will make quantum leaps in your results. Imagine yourself being bathed in self-control like a paraffin wax pedicure. You are the embodiment of self-discipline and self-management, NO MATTER WHAT. Stone wall consistency of character. It’s amazing how much just meditating on these thoughts as you go throughout your day can impact your decision-making.
6. Trim your rebound time—If you have a disappointment, how long does it take you to bounce back? If your alarm goes off and you wake up late, does it throw your entire day into a tailspin? Are you then tempted to chunk the whole thing, allow yourself to be stressed and frustrated the entire day, and then let all of your plans for excellence slide with the hopes of starting again tomorrow? Or can you take a deep breath, make some quick readjustments, and then decide to live in excellence for the remainder of the day…even if you had to start in a rush?

So, there you have it. The six ingredients to making lemonade. The six components that will determine if this will be your year, or just another year. The ingredients are simple to list, but certainly not easy to come by. Now that you have the list, look back at it and take stock of which ingredients you’re missing. Tape the list to your bathroom mirror and do a quick inventory check every morning, if necessary. If your life and future dreams are really important to you, then you have no time to waste. You can’t afford to let any more weeks, months, and years pass by without taking action toward the new you. Get out there and acquire your missing ingredients!

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