LEAP

Life is good, guys. No—life is more than good, in fact, it’s more than great. It’s fantastic. Wonderful. Amazing. Phenomenal. Life is just one big phenomenal phenomenon. And I love it. I just absolutely positively love love LOVE life!

Recently I’ve been very blessed. I’ve spent the past week and a half in California, and have the rest of the week here as well, spending time with some of my dearest family members, which I have a feeling you’ll be hearing about next week.. Last week, I attended a leadership program called LEAP, which stands for “Leadership. Excellence. Accelerating Potential.” If you haven’t heard of it, I highly and even adamantly recommend it. Between all the organizations I was involved in all throughout junior high and high school, I’ve had a taste and definitely more than my fair share of leadership conferences. This week, though, was different.

Not to toot my own horn or anything, but the thing is, I’d never really been challenged. Nothing about those conferences really SPOKE to me, or made me reevaluate my life with some serious changes in mind. Those conferences never challenged or suggested I change my lifestyle, until now. LEAP did just that. Last week, I learned how to be successful, disciplined, and professional.

Sure, I had goals before—more like ideas in my mind of some things I wanted to do or achieve in both the short and long runs. But now, I have even more goals, greater ones, written down that I review every morning to keep in mind so I both consciously and subconsciously work toward them every single day. I don’t just have loose, dream-like goals anymore; I have tasks, a to-do list that I will complete.

Sure, I knew a little bit about networking. I mean, I was on the social networks. I understood that everyone in the world is connected. I never really realized, however, that with connections, you can get almost any job or meet anyone you want—if only you want it bad enough. Now, I know that I need to do a better job with keeping in touch with people, and how much it can mean on both ends, for many reasons.

And sure, I knew about time manag—oh, wait. No, no I didn’t know a thing about time management. Anybody who knows me, especially my bosses and teachers, knows how truly little I knew about the importance of time, much less how to manage it. Yikes. But the great news is, now I know what I need to do in order to schedule effectively, spend my time wisely, and make sure that I myself, in all aspects, am timely. And on time. And, you know, not fifteen minutes late for just about everything…

Most of all, though, I learned about success. I heard from so many successful people in so many different industries and professions, yet their messages were all the same: Focus, determine your own attitude, be full of gratitude, surround yourself with people you want to be like, make and reach goals, have confidence in yourself, and while you never want to compare yourself to others, make sure you are working harder than them if you are chasing after something you want more than they do. Last but not least, I learned the significance of self-talk as I repeated every morning, first to myself in the mirror and then again with five hundred others: “I am a ten. I walk like a ten. I talk like a ten. I do what I ought to do, when I ought to do it, whether I want to or not, with no debate. Because I am. A TEN!!”

Always, Anna