It seems a lot of people are feeling anxious at the moment… about their jobs, the economy, their future,  their childrens’ future and the list goes on.  But ask anyone who has been struck by adversity and come out the other side of it and they will likely tell you that through the experience they discovered themselves to be more capable, more resilient and more resourceful than they’d previously imagined. The fact is, inside everyone of us are the resources to deal with whatever problems come our way… one day, one problem at a time. 

Of course it’s not just about trusting yourself to deal with unwanted challenges. It’s also about trusting yourself to take on new challenges.  Challenges that inspire you but simultaneously stretch you; challenges that require you stepping away from the familiar and beyond the realm of ‘guaranteed to succeed ‘ in which most people like to stay (for obvious reasons!).

The Chinese philosopher Loa Tsu observed very astutely Read the rest

Greetings from the wireless zone in Albuquerque airport where I’m planted for a couple of hours waiting for my flight home. I flew over to New Mexico last night to speak at a school principals conference today at the fabulous Hyatt Tamaya Resort. I love doing work that takes me to such interesting places. I also love getting the opportunity to speak about things that I’m so passionate about.

This morning I spoke on “Courageous Leadership.” One of the things I shared was how the way you see yourself determines how others see you. If other people aren’t giving you Read the rest

Last Friday I flew in on a red eye flight from L.A. to D.C.  I had a meeting that morning and when I mentioned I’d just come in from California (which was on a Swine Flu Emergency Health Alert at the time) the person I was speaking to said, sort of jokingly but not really, “I hope you didn’t bring the swine flu with you.”  The next day, at one of my sons soccer games, I was introduced to someone and when I extended my hand to shake theirs, they said anxiously, “I don’t think we are supposed to be doing that anymore.”

“Struth!”, I thought to myself, “Talk about paranoid.”

Which got me thinking, how come everyone is so fast to panic about all the bad things that might happen to them? What’s with the hyper sensitivity to catching a virus that quite frankly, isn’t that likely to be caught! Why is everyone so preoccupied with all the bad things that might befall them?

Now I’m sure that you aren’t one of those people whose been walking around with a gas mask, sterilizing your hands at every stop light and refusing to shake hands, but perhaps you have found yourself  feeling Read the rest

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not anti-guns…I grew up with them!  Going rabbit shooting on my parents’ farm in rural Australia was a regular (and favorite) pastime (sorry rabbit lovers… that was just the way it was growing up in the Aussie bush).  But last week I heard a very tragic story that has compelled me to get on my soap box on the issue of gun control.  It seems that with all the focus on things like swine flu and recession, we missed the recent 10  year anniversary of the Columbine massacre along with the progress (or rather, lack thereof) on the gun control issue.

The topic of gun control creates a lot of conflict and incites a lot of fear. Much of the fear is driven, in my humble opinion, by the pro-gun movements’ belief that restricting the availability of guns is an infringement on one’s individual freedom limiting our ability to protect ourselves.  But their equation that gun access equals safety and freedom quickly proves itself false when you look at the facts and take the rhetoric out of it.  For instance, did you know that the United States has, as a percentage of population, 32 times more gun homicides than the UK each year  and that Americans are over four times more likely to die of gun death than Canadians? How can anyone say guns create safety and freedom with statistics like that. 

Here’s a few more to  (sourced from Coalition to Stop Gun Violence):

• With every day that passes, 8 children and more than 70 adults in America die from gun violence .
• In 2004, guns murdered 37 in Sweden, 56 in Australia, 73 in England & Wales, 184 in Canada and a staggering 11,344 in the United States.  
• A 1998 report found that the rate of firearm homicide in the U.S. is nineteen times higher than that of 35 other high-income countries combined. 
• American children (age 14 and below) are sixteen times more likely than children in other industrialized nations to be murdered with a gun, eleven times more likely to commit suicide with a gun, and nine times more likely to die from firearms accidents. 
• To top it all off, 40% of gun sales nationwide take place without a criminal background check

Can the current status quo continue at the cost of human lives for the sake of ‘guaranteeing freedom’ as the pro-gun lobby maintains?

The story I mentioned involved an Easter egg hunt gone tragically wrong. A three-year old Read the rest

Earlier this week I was speaking to a woman who had just gone through an acrimonious divorce. She shared how she felt completely bruised and battered by the process of ending her 8 year marriage and that while she knew that the future was her own making, she felt really unclear about what she was going to make of it. Her self-esteem had taken a beating. Needless to say, she wasn’t feeling very powerful. I suggested that she think about the character traits that would describe the kind of woman she would like to be – her ‘ideal self’ – in the face of the challenges she was dealing with. I also suggested that she write down how that ‘ideal self’ would see the world and in particular, how that ‘ideal self’ would step forward to rise to her current challenges.
 
The next day, she emailed me to tell me what a powerful and empowering exercise it was. She shared that she’d written down how she’d like to be more courageous, more confident, more assertive, passionate and self-assured. If she was being all those things she knew that she’d focus in on what she cared about the most, she’d stop getting upset by the things her now ex-husband had said, she’d get herself a bright new handbag that she’d carry to bright new places, that she would call up some old friends and do some of the things she’d been wanting to do for years but never gotten around to. She’d also quit worrying about what everyone thought of her. 
 
Which begs the question… if you were being the courageous version of yourself, the ‘you’ that didn’t give in to self-doubt and cynicism, resignation or procrastination and that held fast to the belief that you could change those aspects of your life that you didn’t like, what would you do?

Four years ago, when I began writing my book Find Your Courage, little did I realize that it would be published during a period filled with so much adversity, uncertainty and fear.   And while I know that job insecurity and economic instability are never easy to handle, I am grateful that my book can serve as a valuable and empowering resource to help you meet today’s challenges with greater courage, hope and resourcefulness. 
 
To help you take that first step towards a more courage-filled life, I am offering over $2000 in bonus gifts with the purchase of Find Your Courage. Buy the book today and you will:
>>> Get an invaluable resource that will empower you with the tools you need to do more, be more and give more! If you already have a copy, then buy a copy for a friend who is in need of courage
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Now more than ever, it’s time to live your life with courage! For more details on this special limited time offer and to get your bonus gifts, go to www.margiewarrell.com/findyourcouragepromotion.htm.

Perhaps your idea of power relates to people in positions of high office and formal authority…. politicians, company presidents, policemen and the like. But I define power not as formal authority, but as one’s ability to affect change. In other words, being powerful is far more than a job title; it’s an attitude. To me, truly powerful people are those who live life on their terms, who are comfortable in their own skin, clear about what they want, courageous in how they go about achieving it and very conscious of the power they have to choose their response to their circumstances.

I guess it goes without saying that there are many people in the world who don’t live their lives powerfully. People who: Read the rest

Do you ever deal with difficult people who seem to be unnecessarily hostile, petty or offensive? Ever find yourself wanting to dish out your own snide remark or act in a way that you know is childish? Go on, admit it, of course you do! We all find ourselves, on occasion, feeling tempted to act in ways that are ’small’, particularly when there is someone who seems to be acting that way with us.

It’s inevitable throughout life that there will be people who, at times, leave you feeling wounded, under attack, deflated, disappointed or just angry. Anyone come to mind? Regardless of who it is, or why they upset you, or how much you believe that they are in the wrong (and you in the right!), these people all have something important to teach you, offering you a truly valuable opportunity to evolve into a bigger, wiser and more powerful person. Here are four things to keep in mind next time you are confronted with such a person. Read the rest