I worked two years for free.

My business was failing.

Then I drove 20 hours a day for Uber.

And slept in my car.

I had two degrees from two prestigious schools, three certifications from highly-accredited programs, and a lifetime seeped in studying health, healing and human potential.

I thought about the corporate route.

Instead, I chose work that I know makes a difference, 20-hour days, and the entrepreneurial life.

I had to give up my home, move in with my Mom and miss out on every social event for 3 years.

It didn’t matter.

Health matters.

I put myself behind the wheel.

Three years later, clients started lining up.

The hardest part is Faith.

And tenacity.

My first client knew I could make a difference for her.

She said that my “glowing skin” and “upbeat energy” reflected how she wanted to look and feel.

I did everything I could to show her she made the right decision.

That she too could look and feel her best.

Since then, I’ve served 100s of clients.

They’ve established my reputation.

Auto-immune disease in remission.

Ulcerative colitis in healing.

Insulin reduced by 70%.

Weight down 50 pounds.

I’m no longer a one-woman business, but a team who helps me serve my clients.

It takes time.

This year, I added more clients than the first three combined.

We all start somewhere.

And I never started at the finish line.

I failed more times than I succeeded in growing my business.

The only way I’ve grown is by solving one problem at a time.

I succeed because I fail.

The night sky is filled with millions of stars.

Every snowflake looks different from another.

The sun rises in the east every morning.

Life is but an endless series of experiences, with many extraordinary, seemingly disconnected, little details.

And the sum is breathtaking.

Your Turn

Would you work for free?

Would you leave a steady income and take any work to bring your dream to life?

Do you succeed now, because you failed?

Or, do you still fail, to succeed?

Post your comments below. I’d love to hear your story.

What are your health goals? Do you want to simply lose weight to slip into that favorite little black dress, or do you want to look and feel gorgeous and confident, emotionally balanced, mentally clear and in control of healthy habits everyday?

Do you want to simply burn excess fat so you look leaner, or do you want to turn back the hands of time in ways that the notch in your belt, the texture of your skin, the clarity of your mind and the contours of your muscles bespeak the seemingly elusive Fountain of Youth’s secrets?

Along the historical path to optimizing health and vitality, counting calories was introduced as “the” method to look and feel your best, even more than vital nutrition.

If you follow this protocol, yes, oh yes, you will lose weight, simply because the counting-calorie philosophy recommends you reduce the amount of food you eat everyday.

But the downside is, calorie-reduction programs across-the-board allow you to eat whatever you want, as long as you stay within the caloric-range recommended for your weight… even if it is not necessarily a healthy choice. This is a huge appeal for many.

You can eat chocolate cake. You can eat pizza. You can eat doughnuts, as long you don’t exceed your caloric-intake for the day.

Now add in the fitness-trainers who tell you you can eat whatever you want, if you “burn more calories” in their classes, and you’re going to end up at the bottom of the rabbit-hole in unhealthy-land chasing calories, while consuming foods that keep you in a state of cravings, imbalance and poor health.

The most important thing that the calorie-restriction diet companies, like Weight Watchers, Jenny Craig and Nutri-Systems is missing is, calories have NOTHING to do with the state of your health.

Think about it, HOW can nutrient-devoid foods that the body can’t eliminate, like chocolate cake, pizza and doughnuts, promote the vitality and energy you need to look and feel your best when your body is incapable of healthfully eliminating them, and all the problems that causes?

Counting calories is a joke, if your goal is more than just weight loss, if your goal is to look and feel radiant, inside and out! 

Want to slip into that little black dress, buy a new wardrobe full of clothes you love, or simply look and feel as gloriously healthy as you are successful?

Stop counting calories. Stop listening to those who tell you to count calories as a viable approach to looking and feeling your best, and start counting the ways you bring oxygen into your body.

Start by eating foods high in oxygen.

Oxygen is the primary nutrition you need, it’s your lifeline.

Foods highest in oxygen were just picked, so they carry the highest amount of “life force energy,” because they were just picked.

Plus, foods like raw fruits and vegetables are low in calories, so there’s the release-excess-weight appeal, and they’ll deliver the maximum levels of oxygen and electricity your body needs for more energy, more vitality, more mental strength and clarity, more focus and feelings of creativity, more glowing skin… and less stress, less accumulated waste and less chronic symptoms.

Do you know that diseases like cancer, autoimmunity and heart-disease thrive in a low-oxygenated environment?

Yes, a body deprived of oxygen becomes dirty, obstructed and toxic. And the crux of this matter, that is politely not talked about nearly enough is, yeast, mold, fungus and bacteria thrive and grow on the stagnant waste, inside the body. Hello common, acute and chronic symptoms.

So how on earth can a calorie-reduction program, that includes, chocolate cake, pizza and doughnuts, all that process like sugar in the body, choices that offer zero nutritional value, not be considered a joke?

Sugar causes imbalance in the body, which leads to chronic disease, because it feeds the growth of unfriendly pathogen (on stagnant waste matter in the body), which is hardly the foundation for optimal health and vitality.

Stop counting calories. It’s like shooting yourself in the foot. Instead, count all the ways you can bring oxygen into your body, to look and feel every bit as healthy as you are successful!

Your Turn

Have you tried calorie-reduction programs? Had success, but fell back off?

Does removing foods like chocolate cake, pizza and doughnuts make sense to you?

Post your take on this blog in the comments below. I’d love to hear your take on this post.

Do you struggle with staying in the get-healthy game? Download Eliminate Excuses today. It will help. It’s an awesome mini-program that will help you deal with the endless reasons and excuses that typically get in the way!

Do you strive to cultivate a work culture that is happy and productive, focused and results-driven? Do you strive to both challenge and nurture your team? Do you, with your team, set out to solve some of the world’s biggest problems?

One of the things I consistently hear from leaders is they feel burned-out and unsure of how to balance what matters most, with everything else in their life.

Tom said to me, “I’d love to be more spiritual. I used to be, but I’m not anymore. I don’t know why. I think work took over my life”

Susan said, “I’ve accomplished everything I set out to achieve in my life. I’ve got a beautiful home. A wonderful family. A very full life, but I don’t know who I am anymore. I got lost along the way.”

One of the things I consistently say is, “You can’t successfully do anything over the long-haul, if you do not successfully take care of you.”

You can hire the very best consultants to help you learn how to be the best leader. You can learn cutting-edge business strategies to learn how to bring out the best in yourself and your team. But to consistently cultivate a high-performing work culture, make no mistake, it all begins with you.

Everything in your life circles back to how you care for you.

You know how the saying goes, “How you do anything is how you do everything.” 

Your health and your energy impact everything, your attitude, your outlook on life, your focus, your productivity, your ability to be a high-performer… your happiness.

Without acknowledging and attending to this, everything else is like icing on a mud pie — it’s like chasing a tail that you can never quite reach.

When you go out to dinner, never underestimate the power of consistent healthy food choices.

When you plan your week ahead, never underestimate the importance of scheduling in exercise.

When you’re co-workers invite you out to Happy Hour, and the night gets late and the festivities grow strong, never underestimate the value of saying no, leaving early to get to bed early, choosing healthy lifestyle habits across the board, to choose you, and what matters most to you.

You are the most important lynchpin to your team’s success. It all comes back to you. Not in a burdensome way, but in your health and wellbeing matters kind of way.

If you are responsible for leading your team to solve some of the world’s biggest problems, you’d be sorely remiss if you stepped over the ways your heath and wellbeing impact the results you all achieve. Statistics say it’s high-time you attend to your health and wellbeing.

Take your first step: Download Five-To-Thrive: 5 Daily Habits Top-Achievers Use to Increase Energy by 30% to learn the primary reasons why you’re experiencing low energy and falling behind.

“I alone cannot change the world, but I can cast a stone across the waters to create many ripples.” ~ Mother Teresa 

Imagine you buy four new tires for your car, but you hit a pothole in the road and get a blow-out on one. Can your car run smoothly with one flat tire?

Or, what if you put oil in your gas tank, or gas in your oil tank, will the car break down?

You might want to blame the tire, the car, the pothole, the city or your local government officials for not paving the potholes. But no matter who or what is to blame, irregardless of the reason, you’ve got a flat-tire that you need to repair.

The modern lifestyle has not been kind to the human body, and consequently, the human experience. Statistics of chronic disease today tell us so. But have you ever wondered how chronic disease affects us mentally and emotionally?

For many years, reports emerge telling us that mental illness is on the rise. The U.S. census says that in 2017, 8 million Americans suffer from serious psychological distress (SPD) — a term used to describe feelings of sadness, worthlessness, and restlessness that are hazardous enough to impair physical well being.

It’s fitting to wonder why so many people are suffering from serious psychological distress?

My research over the past 30 years shows that many of us are born with a bacterial imbalance in our body, the bacterial balance that keeps us physically, mentally and emotionally in check. Stable. Balanced.

If digestive health is out of balance, the balance of friendly bacteria and rogue bacteria are off, which impacts our overall wellbeing, including our mental and emotional wellbeing. The body is one unit. No system is a stand-alone unaffected by the other. Each system in the human body works synergistically with the other. If the digestive system is off, every other system is affected.

In my attempt to make sense of the tragedies from Columbine, Co, to Newtown, CT to now Las Vegas, NV, I’ve asked myself each time, would a physically, mentally and emotionally healthy person ever commit such a horrific act?

My response is the same every time, “of course not.”

But because I am a “lowest-common-denominator” kind of person, like, when I look for answers to big problems, like the rise of violence, injustice and hate in our country, I continue to break the question down for the lowest-common-denominator answer.

And every time, every single time, my response is the same common-denominator response: Where do I bring violence, injustice and hate into the world with my thoughts, words and actions? When do I act in ways less than who I am committed to being, because I didn’t good care of me? Violence is violence, yes?

I take my cue from Michael Jackson and begin with me. From this context I find my personal power and the action steps I can take that matter,

I’m starting with the woman in the mirror
I’m asking her to change her ways
And no message could have been any clearer
If you wanna make the world a better place
Take a look at yourself, and then make a change…

From the context of wondering why violence, mass-shootings, injustice and hate are on the rise today, are the answers only stricter gun laws and overhauling the mental health care system? Or do we need to do the deeper work of looking at the ways we participate in perpetuating violence, injustice and hate, with our own thoughts, words and actions?

I don’t think there are any easy answers, in the face of the horrifying live-footage we’ve all seen in the news this week from Las Vegas, in the face of the deadliest mass-shooting in modern U.S. history.

But I think it’s fair to say that our country and communities are desperate for even the most simple expressions of kindness, if only a patient pause. I think it’s fair to say, that those who are different from us sorely need us to honor and love them for who they are, not who we think they should be. I think it’s fair to say that our families need our love more than ever, in spite of the gaping differences we might feel at times.

We need self-love… and sacred relationship with self too, to counter the rise of despair and sadness the U.S. census reports. How can we possibly hope to be a force for good in the world, if we carry self-loathing and violence in our hearts in an unhealthy body, instead of self-love and love for others in a healthy body?

The Buddha said,

Searching all directions
with one’s awareness,
one finds no one dearer
than oneself.
In the same way, others
are dear to themselves.
So one would not hurt others
if one loves oneself.

Again, there are no easy answers at times like this, but when I find myself judging any situation, tragedy or person, I always come back to me and ask lowest-common-denominator questions like, can I be kinder? Do I hurt others with harsh words, brash behavior, impatience or gossip? Is there another perspective? Can I be more loving? Can I be more generous? Can I take better care of me, so I can better take care of ‘you?’

I pray for all the families who lost loved ones in Las Vegas.

I pray for we who are charged with ending all the ways we contribute to judgement, hatred and malevolence in the world.

I pray that we learn better how to honor ourselves, our physical bodies, our emotional selves and our spiritual yearnings, so every choice we make flows from a clear and healthy body.

I pray that we learn better how to help each other care for each other.

I pray that we each seek ways to heal the our aching world.

I don’t think we can ever fully understand what happened in Las Vegas this past Sunday, October 1, 2017.

And while there are no easy answers, we can cast stones of patience, kindness and understanding.

If I do my part, by taking really good care of me (rather than looking everywhere outside myself for reasons, justifications and excuses why things are as they are), and you do your part, by taking really good care of you (fix the tire), we can join Mother Teresa and the efforts she began in sending ripples of change out into the world with every small act she extended. Surely that can make a difference. Yes?

If you were going to distill down into one sentence who you are, what would you say?

Me? I’ve always said, “I want to be the best version of me possible.”

Average never resonated.

Good enough felt mediocre.

Excellence? Excellence felt right.

Yes, illness brought me to my pursuit of excellence, but excellence took me over.

Why would you or I want average, when excellence is possible?

Why would you or I want good enough, when excellence is within our reach?

Which is why I ‘fell for’ consultant, writer, columnist, Tom Peters, in his wildly popular books, “In Search of Excellence,” and “The Little BIG Things – 163 Ways to Pursue EXCELLENCE.”

Both books are written for business leaders.

Both books speak to all of us.

Peters offers simple, but powerful messages.

Direct. Simple. No-nonsense.

Perfectly my style. The kind of messaging I get high on.

I think you’ll LOVE both books if you’re a no-nonsense, practical, pragmatic type too!

Peters shows how attention to small details creates a ripple effect in life (and business) (and health, I say).

That the solution to the big problems we face everyday is simple, go back to the basics — that the small stuff really matters.

That striving for excellence should be our way of life.

I agree. You?

The pursuit of excellence has the potential to change our health and our lives.

If you were committed to excellence in all you do, what would be different? Specifically, what would be different with your health and wellbeing? How would that difference impact how you move in the world, your career, your relationships?

I offer you here #8 of Peter’s 163 ways to pursue excellence as my rally cry for pursuing excellence:

Excellence Is …

Excellence is the best defense.

Excellence is the best offense.

Excellence is the answer in good times.

Excellence is the answer in tough times.

(Excellence is the answer in tough times.)

Excellence is about the big things.

Excellence is about the little things.

Excellence is a relationship.

Excellence is a philosophy.

Excellence is an aspiration.

Excellence is immoderate.

Excellence is a pragmatic standard.

Excellence is execution.

Excellence is selfish.

Excellence is selfless.

Excellence is what keeps you awake.

Excellence is what lets you sleep well.

Excellence is a moving target.

Excellence is that which … knows no bounds.

EXCELLENCE. Always.

If not EXCELLENCE, what?

If not EXCELLENCE now, when?

Pursue excellent health. It’s the single best investment you can make. Start now. Download Five To Thrive, 5 Daily Habits Top-Achievers Use to Increase Energy by 30%  In this guide, you’ll

• Discover the 5 common-sense things top-achievers do to create 30% more energy
• Learn the primary reasons you’re experiencing low energy and falling behind
• Start creating the energy you deserve, for increased focus and creativity

Do you ever wonder why you’ve got a dry cough all the time? Why you experience chronic headaches, allergies, repeated bouts of acid-reflux, inflammation in your knees or hands?

Do you know that symptoms like these are actually warning signs of imbalance, and that if you ignore them, your body will begin to speak louder, and escalate to more acute health diagnoses from your doctor?

Ah, but you say “I’m busy. There’s no time to slow down, not even for a diagnosis of an acute health problem.”

Alas, you may be unhappy and even inconvenienced with weight gain, low energy, and increasing brain fog, but you’ve got projects that demand your time and attention, and a team counting on you.

I get it, but aren’t you curious as to what will happen if you continue to ignore these symptoms? 

Plus, you’ve got medication that eliminates the symptoms you’d be experiencing otherwise.

I get this too, but isn’t ignoring symptoms like gambling, with too high a risk? 

But business as usual continues, with 5:00 a.m. team-meetings, stressful deadlines, intense negotiations and regular late-night business dinners… though you intuitively know something is not quite right with your health. 

As Voltaire said, “Judge a man by his questions rather than by his answers.”

I offer you a list of 12 questions to gage what you intuitively know is best for you against all the reasons why you’ve not begun to take care of you and your health and wellbeing:

• How is your energy? Is your energy consistent during the day, or do you notice variations?
• Do crave sugar?
• Can you function without coffee?
• How do you sleep? Do you wake during the night or sleep like a baby?
• Do you feel productive through the day?
• Do you experience brain fog?
• Do you feel unmotivated, even apathetic?
• Do you feel hungry, even though you just ate?
• Do you experience gas and/or bloating?
• Do you exercise?
• Do you feel inflamed in your body? Joint pain? Chronic headaches?
• Do you experience food or environmental allergies or sensitivities?

How did you fare in your responses?

Do you feel like your body is telling you through the symptoms you experience something is off with your health? That you need to start taking better care of you?

Isn’t it better to be curious and ask these questions, than to gamble with your health?

Isn’t it better to know that the symptoms you experience are like an alarm you need to answer, rather than ignoring them?

Let me know how I can help in the comments below. You want to nail down these symptoms now…

You can begin with my Five To Thrive, 5 Daily Habits Top-Achievers Use to Increase Energy by 30%  In this guide, you’ll

• Discover the 5 common-sense things top-achievers do to create 30% more energy
• Learn the primary reasons you’re experiencing low energy and falling behind
• Start creating the energy you deserve, for increased focus and creativity

You’re busy, with little to no time to decompress. Life feels like a series of deadlines, long days, team-meetings and stress.

You love to work, challenge yourself and you get high on exceeding the goals you set, but you know your life is out of balance. You know this, because when you don’t take time to slow down you feel burned-out and irritable, your productivity suffers and your team is unhappy.

Nothing smart or healthy can come from exhaustion, stress and burnout. You know it.

Here are 5 simple ways to decompress, so you feel re-charged, less-stressed and more productive… and all the benefits it reaps!

1. Breathe deeply. Breathing deeply lowers stress because you bring in more oxygen and release more carbon dioxide. This sets off a cascade of chemical reactions that inhibit stress-producing responses between your brain and your central nervous system, for increased inner calm, focus, concentration and better decision-making.

2. Spend time in Nature. A simple walk in the woods, swim in the ocean, or a bike ride on a nearby trail can restore your mental energy, improve your short term memory and concentration, stimulate your creative thinking and improve your mood. Naturalist, John Muir said, “In every walk with Nature one receives far more than he seeks.”

3. Turn off electronics 45-60 minutes before you go to bed. The National Sleep Foundation shows that light interferes with the natural circadian rhythms of the day-night cycle. When you safeguard your sleep hours, you safeguard the hours your body heals, regenerates and detoxifies. Arianna Huffington says, “It’s time to sleep your way to the top,” that exhaustion and burnout get in the way of great leadership and innovative thinking.

4. Time Blocking:

• Gives you greater control of your schedule, which reduces the stress you feel from your demanding lifestyle
• Blocks the many distractions that get in your way of focusing on your work, which reduces stress, increases productivity and gives you greater results

5. Laugh. Research from the University of Maryland Medical Center shows that if you laugh more, you’ll feel more emotionally balanced, productive and creative — laughter can offset the impact of mental stress because it releases a flood of neurotransmitters that stimulates your brain, your immune system and your nervous system. Laughter can even impact your team’s productivity and your company’s bottom!

Your Turn:

Which idea resonates most?

Will you take action with that idea today?

What will you do to make sure that action happens?

Let me know in the comments below.

And… if you enjoyed these ideas, you might also enjoy Five To Thrive, 5 Daily Habits Top-Achievers Use to Increase Energy by 30%  In this guide, you’ll

• Discover the 5 common-sense things top-achievers do to create 30% more energy
• Learn the primary reasons you’re experiencing low energy and falling behind
• Start creating the energy you deserve, for increased focus and creativity