motivation

Diving into a December Detox

Posted on by Zinga H

I’ve been reading a book called Results by Jamie Smart. At first I thought it was going to help me find some management techniques to ensure that when I work with small businesses or large enterprises, the goals they set bring provable results.

Woops! Judged a book by a cover, but it seems the universe had bigger plans for me in mind. The book Results was actually about how our minds, our very thoughts, can get in our own way of finding the true innate results we can deliver as humans. *Mind blown* It seems simple, but this concept really attempts to get the reader to accept that clarity to a human is as real and pervasive as gravity is on this earth. We did not invent gravity, it just is, and we discovered and name it. We do not create our own clarity, the clarity is there, and sometimes our thoughts can keep us from tapping into it.

As someone who loveeeesssss to think, I still struggle to embrace this concept, but I would like to get closer to stepping into clarity. As a challenge for myself, and this blog, I am going to be embarking on a detox in December. As a way to clear some of the “contaminated” or even “cluttered” areas of my life. I’ve put together some areas to detox and hope that writing will help me commit to this journey over the next 21-days.

So here is a list of 21-day detox ideas that I will be building together.

  • 21 Clean Eating Detox by Fit BodyRock (Food)
  • 21 Day Yoga Challenge by Yoga with Uliana (Fitness)
  • 21 Mind Makeover Challenge by Gravity Life Coaching (Mind)
  • 21 Day Digital Detox Checklist by But First Joy.Com (Tech)

While there are a dozen of ways to detox, I hope these areas hit on the global areas of the self! Here are the details on some.

21-Day Clean Eating Detox by Fit Body Rock

Source: https://www.bodyrock.tv/
From: https://www.bodyrock.tv/ Found on Pinterest

I am choosing level 2, since I am fairly close to level 1 on this. Giving up dairy products will be hard especially during egg nog season!!

Source: https://www.yogawithuliana.com/

I love yoga and it’s been months since I’ve done it in a dedicated way. By releasing the stress and tension from my body, I can definitely open up space for clarity!

21-Day Mind Makeover Challenge by Gravity Life Coaching

Honest, I found most of these challenges on Pinterest 🙂 This one seems to lead to https://www.erinsonlinecoachingcamp.com/

Finally the 21-Day Digital Detox challenge! It’s easy to say that social media can be distracting, especially when you’ve worked in marketing or adjacent to marketing for years! Now that some of my responsibilities are coming to an end I feel comfortable deleting some social media apps, even if its just for a week! I just love this one from But First, Joy.com

From:https://butfirstjoy.com/

So that lays it out! From December 1st to December 21st, I’ll be retreating into myself and practicing these challenges!

Have you ever done a detox? What would you recommend?

Here’s a sneak peek of Week 1, which is underway!

Draw Out The Details

Posted on by Zinga H

I recently revamped my monthly meetups with Cultivated Sisters. We switched from lesson-based format to more of mastermind format. This guaranteed we delved into everyone’s strategies towards success.

One shared theme was keeping consistent when the task list doesn’t create itself. This is a skill entrepreneurs, business owners, and leaders must master to make progress in their goals. When no one but you is running the show, you must be able to give yourself action items, otherwise you might be stuck swirling in a sea of hopes and dreams, instead of swimming to success’ shore.

When we explored this idea forward I realized my knee jerk reaction to create a to-do list, but this  wasn’t actually getting at the source of the problem. What we needed was the Source of the to do list. The foundation from where all those tasks blossom while you’re pursuing your own goals and dreams.

Here’s one  more move  to help you get closer to that list you are looking for:

Drag out the details.

A lot of my people in my circle definitely want to put projects into play and if getting it done seems like a barrier sometimes it may be due to a lack of clarity and one exercise that helps bring about clarity is being verify specific about the outcomes you hope to achieve.

Here are three exercises that can help bring about clarity.

First, figure out what’s in it for you.

Knowing what motivates you and drives you to put this project into play for no reason other than because you want to spend time on it gives you a source and a reason as reward for whatever task you’re about to take on. Sit down and truthfully drag out your personal vision of what the best day would look like for you if this project was fully in bloom.

What would your role be? 
What would you be doing?
Who would be on your team?
Where would you be located? 

These details matter and  will be the fuel for your motivation.
Next would be to figure out who you serve.

If you are in the passion project area of starting a business or non-profit no matter what you must have a customer on the other end.  Someone you serve someone has to buy or use your services in a sustainable way.

Drag out the details of the person you serve.

Why are they coming to you?
What is the problem you’re solving for them?
How did this problem come to be?
How do you solve this problem?
What is their hobbies, likes, and dislikes?
What do they think about in their free time?
Where do they go to find out new information?
How did they find you?
How did they connect with you?

Building all the ways you connect, know, and serve your ideal client or customer is a key  tool for your nonprofit or business organization. It allows you to craft  not only your mission, but also your message to the world and those that would want your help, product, or solution.
Finally leverage your time by dragging out the details of your project. Think about the next big move that is it going to move your project forward from where it is now to where you want it to be. What is the barrier you need to overcome today to take a step forward on whatever you’re working on?  Write that down using whatever tools you can and then look at that project and list all the steps it takes to make this project outcome happen.
Dragging out the details of the project can give  you a tangible view of progress. As a bonus set the smallest amount of time that you think you could truly work on your business or project and I mean be generous! For instance my least amount of time to work on a goal is 15 minutes, but you should choose what ever amount works for you. Then find the optimal space where  you could squeeze that time in into your calendar. If you’re the type of person who wakes up early can you squeeze it in in the early hours. If you’re the type of person that has a lot of free time after work where could you squeeze it in there. How does this project fit into your schedule on a daily basis or weekly basis?Choose whatever counts as consistent to you. Find those little in-between spaces  in your day where you can work on your business.

So that’s our One More Move for this month- Drag Out Those Details.

Stay tuned for our next meetup in Akron, OH last Monday’s of the month!

Join our Facebook group: facebook.com/groups/cultivatedsisters

One More Move: Let Out Your Excuses

Posted on by Zinga H

2018 was a year of introspection for me.

A new career, personal commitments, and community projects made me step back and assess what I was doing. I took time away from writing and  I focused on the internal and external challenges that I had to recognize and explore at the roots. I learned my main priority needed to shift towards projecting my truth into the world. Yet, I know my most truthful voice comes through my writing. Sure, for 2019, I set goals to communicate with my teams more and to make more videos, but deep down I could never escape my calling to write.

What is a part of your calling you could never escape?

Not sure what your calling is?

With time and observation you will hear your calling  within you or see it in the actions that you take. Yet, some of us do hear our calling and then we find ourselves avoiding, ignoring, or neglecting it. We fill our days with excuses to do other things besides what the universe gently asks of us.

So the One More Move challenge is to: Let Out Your Excuses.

 

dazzle

Notice I didn’t say Let Go (that’s another move), but to let them out. My mentor suggested I read The Goddess Warrior Training by HeatherAsh Amara. She discusses the importance of knowing the stories we lean on everyday to explain why we are the way we are. Knowing what those stories are is the first step to take before attempting to transform them. Listen to yourself throughout the week and observe where you stop yourself from taking action or where you make up an excuse for not moving forward on something . Hear those stories and write them down.

At the end of the week, look at those stories and ask do those stories still serve my growth? 

Your stories (including your excuses) are powerful tools to influence how you act in the moment. When you begin to identify how you use your stories on regular basis, you can begin to build the awareness that allows you to leverage them to build your progress towards success.

So want to hear more about 2018? Check out Cultivated Sisters group built for real women who aim to pursue their passion in an authentic way.

 

30 Things to Accomplish Before 30

Posted on by Zinga H

This will be a fun list for me.

So, thirty is eyeing me hard.

As it approaches, I mostly think…age doesn’t matter as much as it did when I was 16, but the magnitude of adulthood grows heavier by the day. Friends I grew up with are now a part of raising our future. College buddies are becoming local leaders. Every day,  I sense that now, more than ever, my involvement is needed in something bigger than myself.

That being said…
adulting is hard.

The pressures of leadership, the threads of consequential outcomes, and navigating the endless politics of people, and while just maintaining the basics of life could have oneself feeling stretched.  Our entrenched responsibilities pulling our energy and focus away from our long-term vision of success. Making it so easy to lose focus on our most honest desires.

When I start to lose focus…I make a list.

This list will be a mix of fun things and things I should have mastered by the time I reach 30.

Think something’s missing? Let me know in the comments.

So for me, these are the 30 things I want to accomplish or master before I turn 30.

1. Accomplish: Taking a girl’s trip
2. Visiting a friend in a foreign city
3. Go to Trinidad
4. Read fiction books again (3 before 30)
5. Finish 2nd draft of the novel I started
6. Have a good parenting routine
7. Have a consistent quality beauty regimen
8. Improve my morning and evening routine
9. Memorize an at-home exercise routine
10. Memorize a yoga set
11. Drink mainly water
12. Pay off 1/2 my personal debt
13. Follow a house maintenance and development plan
14. Boost Emergency Fund
15. Have a quality capsule wardrobe
16. Work with self-critic and turn it into positive
17. Visualize my big goals every day
18. Meet more people
19. Maintain a quality circle of friends
20. Look into the family tree
21. Visit family I haven’t seen in years
22. Buy another investment property
23. Be a better baker
24. Be a better-informed voter
25. Write the first draft of my story
26. Face my fear of a video camera
27. Take a parent to dinner (or both)
28. Do something random
29. Take a self-care weekend
30. Complete this list 🙂

Ask April: Get Comfortable With Your Ask

Posted on by Zinga H

When you embark on your passion project path you find yourself having to pick up many new skills and experiences. One constant is that you find yourself asking a lot of questions. Asking questions is the brilliance of our humanity. It gives the world in front of us pathways to possibility within a seemingly random world.

The act of questioning is a skill, and like skills can be lost without use. Good news is you can also build mastery in this skill. What you find is a well-crafted question will yield more meaningful results.

For Ask April, get comfortable with our ask. Here’s a method to do it:

  1. Ask away: Give yourself time and space to ask without limits. Set a timer for five to ten minutes and ask your self for and about anything. Grow on your requests or ideas to make them wow you. Bring in details and paint a picture or a story around your asks. If you ask another question allow yourself to move with the questions and then build on that.This practice is a bit of an asking brainstorm that encourages you and stimulate creativity in your questions.
  2. Focus your ask: Now that your question creativity is flowing it’s time to put your skill to good use. Consider a specific question you are facing in your life.

    What is the challenge you want to overcome or bring to fruition?

    For instance, you could be passionate about educational programs in your community. You want to build a local environment where everyone feels empowered to prosper.  You work with a nonprofit that organizes itself around that mission. Now you find yourself having to ask many questions. Now it’s time for your annual fundraising event and you’ve been charged with getting the community you serve to care.
    ZingaHart

    When making the ask to have people commit to the organization’s success you should focus your question in three ways:

    1. Know the who: There may be many people involved with your question or there may only be a few. Take note of who they might be and why they might care.
    2. Know the why: What is your connection to this? What makes you feel good about the efforts in place and what do you hope is the ultimate accomplishment?
    3. Know how: When you are engaged in conversation with your person, know how they can take the next step. Give them the action that brings them closer to the move you hope they’ll take: making a commitment in this case.
  3. Cut in clarity: If you’ve been taking notes throughout this process, you should have 3-5 minutes of free writing and around half a page of planning. Of course, you could and should extend your research, but the last move before taking action would be to bring clarity to your ask.

    Write your question in one concise, yet encompassing question. You may not always use this question exactly, but you will bring clarity to what your communicating should the opportunity ever arise.

*Bonus* To grow even more comfortable with the ASK think of little stories that elaborate what you’re saying.

What do you think about the importance of asking questions? Let me know below! 

 

 

The Simplest Way to Build a Discipline Map

Posted on by Zinga H

Zinga Hart Success Quote (2)

Let’s say you’re starting from scratch.

Sure you’ve gotten things done in the past, but your reliability is 50/50 on your good days. You know you need to get more done to get somewhere, but life — ever-distracting life — draws you away from your personal bigger picture. It happens to the best of us, as we make room for new family responsibilities, changes in professions, a call to civic duty, or the gamut of things we have to deal with as we paint our life vision into reality.

What keeps you going? 

For me, my biggest skill to develop has been the habit of discipline, which I see as doing something even though the thought of doing it brings one discomfort. Putting off that 50-page thesis or skipping a morning run all stem from the ideas that come into our heads when we think about doing them…

…ugh so many pages to write…

…but I’ll get all sweaty…

Whatever the situation or thoughts may be…it is the sensation of discomfort the forces us to choose whether to stay with the discomfort and do what is important anyway or find a way to escape the sensation by another binge session of Shameless on Netflix.

Discipline is the act of going forward anyway.

How does one use discipline?

While we can be sporadic about the ways we are disciplined (you should see me buy the whole town on Sims…), if you are interested in creating your authentic vision of success you exercise discipline in meaningful ways otherwise, you run the risk of life molding your discipline muscles for you. Creating a routine for yourself allows you to apply your discipline to your personal mission.

 So here goes, here’s the simple way to create that routine:

  1. Figure out what you want to do with your life (i.e. write your vision)
  2. Write out what you want to achieve in the next 10, 5,  and 3 years
  3. Develop goals to get done within 1 year
  4. Figure out what you need within 1 month
  5. Write down what you need by the end of the week
  6. Jot 3 things to get done by the end of your day
  7. Check 1-2 (once a year), 3 (once a month), 4-5 (once a week) and update 6 every day.

And we’re done. Sure there are tons of tools you can use, and please remember, you have to actually do the things on these lists for them to be real, but if all you had were a pencil and paper, this list is all you would need.

Build your routines around finding time to achieve what is on these lists and let life fill in the blanks.

Here’s a great article from ZenHabits on mastering discipline.

PS Posting are switching from Tuesday Mornings to Thursday mornings.

Free Higher Ed Approved Tools for Your Authentic Success

Posted on by Zinga H

If you’ve ever connected with me on LinkedIn, you know I am a proud higher education professional. I honestly believe improving the higher education industry will help unlock the purposeful potential of our nations. So far, it’s been a long journey of leadership, suppression, growth, challenge, contradictions and support. It is an industry that frustrates and excites my energies to no end, and I will not stop until I figure out how to tie higher education to the trillion-dollar ROI it can naturally and organically produce?

Wondering what is a higher educational professional? 

Essentially, we staff colleges and universities in the various roles and positions needed for the organization to effectively and efficiently run. We are the admissions counselors who talked you through the ins-and-outs of campus living or the advisor who helped you consider majors. Our role also extends to presidents, government consultants,  faculty, and residence services. A higher education professional is many-faced, multifaceted, and mold-as-you go role that truly attracts those who are flexible, service-oriented, and enjoy problem-solving as a whole.

zinga hart higher education winter is coming joke

Credit: WinterisComing.Com

For me, it is a career interwoven with my destiny.

What have I learned so far?

Ever since 2013, when I made it my personal mission to show the world the value of education,  I studied and obtained my M.Ed. in Higher Education, with a focus on adult development and success. From my journey, I have learned many things, but the first thing I would tackle in my mission is sharing the tools we use to help develop others. It amazed me, how Meyers-Briggs was only taught for the first time in college and Holland was discussed only in a career-development course in graduate school. These are tools that could be freely accessed by anyone, but only randomly encountered on a syllabus for some students to see.

Well, today, I see and share, so that you can take one more move towards building your authentic legacy of success. Check out three of my favorite tools to use that will help you unearth your inner brand and tap into your personalized success strategy.

Your Learning Style

There are certain ways that people process and use new information. If you want to make any form of learning easier on yourself, discover your learning style and implement any useful techniques immediately. The VARK test was first shared with me by my biology professor, who I later discovered would teach me a lot about learning. VARK stands for Visual, Auditory, Read-Write, and Kinesthetic. These are four basic domains or learning and familiarizing yourself with your special way will cut down on a lot of the time it takes to build new skills, like skills you will need to achieve your final vision of success.

Try the VARK Quiz

Your Work Preference 

The Holland Code was named after John Holland, a person who used military job duty classification to devise a test for work preferences and how they affect success in certain roles. From this research, he came up with six main types of preferences: Realistic, Investigative, Artistic, Social, Conventional, and Enterprising.  These six preferences will help you narrow down and understand why you prefer to crunch numbers over writing songs, or why helping people motivates you every day.

Discover your work preference with O*Net.

Your Personality

Myers-Briggs is more popular, but it is still not as widely-used as I’d prefer. This inventory is longer but allows you to understand and describe some of your personality traits and how they interact with others. One, great version of this test is through 16-personalities. What’s your type?

All three of the options are useful tools for discovering and articulating your uniqueness. Of course, everyone is a bit of everything so nothing will be a 100% accurate to you, but it gives you a great headstart.