purpose

Challenge Your Habits 

Posted on by Zinga H

 

Happy 2019 y’all!

This year is almost over and all I feel is in awe. Awe for humanity, the amazing friendships and experiences I’ve built, and all the possibilities that lie ahead. 

How would you summarize your 2019? 

I am switching on my once monthly blog again!

2020’s theme word is: Challenge.

We’ll be sharing challenges all year to push ourselves, but first, December.

December ZInga Hart (1)

I’ve always had an interesting relationship with December. It’s either the last month to get it all in or get it all out. Over the past few years, my perspective has changed. Years no longer start and stop, like a circle is all a continuance. This shift has allowed for me to not treat December like an all-or-nothing month, but as away to sharpen my skills a little bit more. That said, it is still a great month for building on something you always wanted to work on. 

Get this, a lot of people wait until January to make the next big change! I’m proposing you use December to ease into change. What is it you want to change by next December? Build a business, write a book, invent something, get fit? Whatever it is, don’t wait until January 1, because that’s when resolutions start. Start today. Start slowly and build up to full speed ahead in January. 

How would you baby step into your big 2020 goal?

December ZInga Hart

If you’re unsure, one practice is to build or break any habit at all. So the one more move December is to: Build or Break a Habit that supports your 2020 goals. 

How to Build or Break a Habit:

  1. Decide exactly what you want to tackle. If you have an overwhelming habit, break it off into a digestible actions. For instance, one day I hope to give up dairy completely. Instead of going all out, I start with giving up milkshakes and pure milk products for the next 30 days. Instead of eliminating ALL dairy ingredients, we ease into the biggest culprits. If you are trying to break a habit, work to replace it with a healthier habit. Following the example above, one might go: instead of choosing milkshakes, I’ll make smoothies.
  2. Commit. A habit for one day, is hardly a habit at all. To really incorporate the habit change into you life you must commit for at least 22 days, preferably 30. You could do more than 100 days or anywhere in between. The goal is to give yourself some length of time for the change to take hold.

  3. Attach your habit to current habits. Find cues or triggers that you can use to remind you of your habit change. For instance, someone who wants to work out more, might find workouts that fit in between their favorite TV show break or during their lunch break.

  4. Plan for setbacks. Building a new habit may result in going back to the old one. We are what we repeatedly do, so forgive yourself if your path to change leads you back to familiar behavior. Find ways to acknowledge and accept your behavior, while nicely reminding yourself of your commitment. If you’re doing this in December, you could say, “This is a practice run for January” and get right back on track.

  5. Reset everyday and reward yourself for achievement. Whether you make a mistake or not, consider every day in your time period a fresh start. If you make it through the day and achieve the habit you are building, find little ways to celebrate it.

My sister and I will be going over our habits for December on CultivatedSisters. If you’re interested in the challenge calendar join our group to download the tool.

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 🙂

Reset

Posted on by Zinga H

Writing is a calling, not a choice.

-Isabelle Allende

I’ve written less since spring season.

New job, new challenges, and a big focus on the day-to-day of my passions pulled me into my introverted nature to sit back and take in my new surroundings.

So I made a decision, to give myself space from writing, while I adjusted to these rapid, yet pivotal, life changes.

After a while, though, the yearning returned. My true passion, writing to draw out your success. To make you, us, the world feel the inspiration and magnitude of pleasure from doing our greatest good.

These words do not come out, they escape, as if they were always there, a kyuubi, waiting for me to tap into its infinite power.  No matter how far I push it away from my deepest desire to write it pummels back to me.

What is a calling that you can not ignore?

Finding your calling may not always be easy, but following your calling is twice as hard, but you HAVE to do it for it to be realized in your life. So what do you do as an alternative to putting-it-off forever?

Take a break.

Find time to walk away in a calm, controlled, and consenting manner.

You may think …now Zinga…how could you suggest putting-it-off as a remedy to putting-it-off?

At first the idea does seem like a contradictory, but taking a break, involves some key factors to keep it from falling on the dark side of the procrastination line.

Here are some quick factors to taking a break:

Have a reset time. The main difference between taking a break and procrastinating forever is that you get back to doing what you were doing. Maybe you use an exact date and time, maybe you use an event in your life, or maybe you have a season in mind. Just know, visualize, and even write down when you will return to your original activity. Please note, the length of your timeline should be set realistically to how important it is that you get back to what you’re doing. For instance, if it’s your goal to get an A on a test in two weeks, but you need to take a break, then a two week break wouldn’t make sense.

Choose honor over guilt. Find the admirable reasons for making your choice instead of reasons that make you feel guilty. If you are in a state of rest then respect your wish to let your body restore itself. If you need to reshift your priorities for pressing matters, then appreciate your ability to adapt to new situations and see things through. Whatever narrative you build,  it should be one that is from a positive perspective.

Use what you learned. During your break, try to find one-to-two learning nuggets you can implement once you reset. Maybe it’s a shift in your schedule or reaching out to form new partnerships. This sets up two bonuses to your break:

1) You can be assured your break fits into your larger master plan

2) Your break serves an immediate purpose of helping to improve your your path to success.

So…this is how am I making an honest reset with writing for this page. I allowed myself to adjust to the pace my new situation before getting back to get back to writing. I committed to a goal to write again before the year was over. During my break, I learned that given the new responsibilities to be consistent, I will give myself time to ease into it, starting with twice a week! 

Are you ready to hit the reset button on something in your life, what is it?

Til the next time,

Zinga

one more move reset on zingahart.com

One More Move: Reset

Posted on by Zinga H

Hi everyone!

It’s been a while as I like to step back and observe during major life transitions.

What’s the big change?

Well, I managed to land a new role in higher education! Working with the College of Communication and Information to help serve our graduate student community. A dream opportunity, I am thrilled, excited, and pumped to embrace the new waves of change.

Working with the College of Communication and Information to help serve our graduate student community. A dream opportunity, I am thrilled, excited, and pumped to embrace the new waves of change.

A dream opportunity, I am thrilled, excited, and pumped to embrace the new waves of change.

Yet, at the same time, being an INTP (and a Taurus) I find sudden instances of change to take a lot of energy from my spirit. As an act of self-care, I go into Reflection & Rest mode.

I find ways to delegate projects, streamline tasks, and lighten up on meetings and events. I use the time to connect fully with family and take in the situations as they come.

we can't be afraid of change. you may feel very secure in the pond that you are in, but if you never venture out of it you will never know that there is such a thing as an ocean a sea joy bell c quote found on zingahart.com

How do you approach big changes?

 

Before this Rest & Relax phase, I do one critical task:

Set a deadline for when your “rest” phase ends. Eventually, you should get back up to your full speed.

Rest is a beautiful gift, but it is best balanced with the energy of creation. Creating your future, your business, your brand or whatever drives you forward towards your goals.

So…here we are…

Building back up to full speed for me means taking the time to build on my mission to draw out your authentic success. To remind you of the hunger your ambitions ignite and give you the tools that satisfy your desires.

So I share one more move that gets you a step closer to where you want to be.

So my one more move is a review of how to reset after an extended period of rest. Disclaimer:  This is the method I’ve observed over time and I fully encourage your customize a process that works for you.  With that here are some actions to take.

How to Reset

Brain Dump

Set aside 5-10 minutes to free write or map all of the things important to you and what you want to achieve.

Organize and Prioritize 

Group what you wrote in the first part into major domains and then order the importance of what you should achieve first.

Review Your Vision

Does your latest brain dump align with your ten-year vision? Use your long-term look to further refine your current priorities or re-strategize the long-term goals as needed.

Get to it.

Things won’t get done unless you do them. If after the first three steps, you’re still frozen in the act, let’s chat about it.

one more move reset on zingahart.com

 

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.

 

 

Daydream to Boost Your Most Passionate Career Path

Posted on by Zinga H

96% of adults daydream. If you are one of those adults, ask yourself: are you using this seemingly random activity to the fullest potential?

Like most successful activities, daydreaming to your favor will take practice, purpose, and persistence and, in this case, we’re going to focus on your career. How can you use daydreams to ensure you are reaching your career path’s most passionate potential? There are simple techniques to do so, but first a short overview of current thoughts around daydreams. 

What are daydreams?

Daydreams were discovered when scientists notice neural network activity while participants were not participating in anything at all. This came to the formation of the phrase “stimulus-independent thought,” which are thoughts created sans interaction or engagement with the environment outside of our minds. In this sense, daydreams may seem as if they are out of your control, and they can easily be, but the truth is our mind is a muscle and we work with it as we would most functioning muscles in our body.

So how can we use daydreams to create our best career path?

We must actively practice day dream by engaging in personal discovery sessions. This type of daydreaming is called positive-constructive daydreaming, which is the active reflection on our feelings, thoughts, imaginations, and other personal facets of our life in an open manner. This activity means letting go of any urge to stop yourself from thinking a thought or dreaming a dream. Studies found  this type of thinking led to an overall sense of well-being and furthermore it opens you up the possibilities of where you can apply your value.[source]

envision your career success

How can you use this on your career path?

 The answer is there are many ways to do it and you mustn’t stop at one! Experiment and continuously reflect on your career path throughout the time that you desire to earn a living for yourself. Two simple ways to incorporate this technique into your life is by:

Take a career quiz

Taking personality quizzes, like this one, or this one, and imagining yourself in the ideal roles that they describe for you. When it comes to career construction, my old mentor, Dr. Mark Savickas, told me they’re only about half right. Yet, this is a safe and simple activity to envision a future you.

Put yourself into the position and research it. Note what excites you and what doesn’t as you explore what the role has to offer.

The closest personality test for your work preference is the Holland Code, a model developed by John Holland and used by the military. My Holland Code was IEAS, most Holland Codes are the first 3 letters, which meant my career preference would be book restorer. NO!!! Don’t let online or even legitimate quizzes decide your career path,  in order to find your authentic value you must dream deeper into who you are.

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Career Path Dream Land

Asking yourself probing questions and then answering them until you reach a point of profound clarity is a thing. This is what is needed to really unearth the answers of who you are and where you are meant to bring value to the world.

A safe way to do this is what I call a mini-self-retreat. Find a way to get time alone and comfortable: send the roommate or partner out, find a baby or pet sitter, or go to a hotel.

Relinquish yourself from responsibility save for your Self.

Then have a nice thoughtful internal discussion about what you want. Stay with the discussion and record your answers for later use, listen to yourself with openness and innocence, as if within you there is a great warm source of your very own personal all-knowing. It can seem different at first, but this is just a surface level way to find your authentic value from within.

Will daydreaming get you a job? No. Constructive daydreaming and self-discovery will set you on a path to a career you are confident carrying as a part of your life’s legacy. If that’s something you think is worth having, let me know!

Comment and we’ll connect 🙂

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