All About Women | Women

I have had the amazing pleasure of being a part of the W Magical List of Women Bloggers that is circulating around the blogosphere. I will take a page from my blogging sister, Kirsten Harrell of Thinking Positive! Blog to tell the origin of this list.

"Valeria Maltoni from the Conversation Agent wrote a post about the top 20 PR Power Women. This top 20 list was extracted from Ad Age's Power 150. Valerie had a brilliant idea to add to this list and get the ball rolling to create the "W" list - a list of Women Bloggers. The "W" list idea took off in the blogosphere and has grown into a fabulous list of women bloggers."

I saw this list on a few blogs and thought this is great. Then I saw it on a few more blogs. So, I said if I see the list on one more blog, I have to do something about it. I thought I would just re-circulate the list on a blog post. I didn't know what I was in for. I read Toby Bloomberg's Diva Marketing Blog. Toby gave a great history of the list along with a challenge: The following W Magical List is by no means the end list. It would be as, Jeneane would say, the bomb, if some smart diva could create a wiki to house the list.

So yours truly took the challenge. Now, I had no idea how to even create a wiki. But I was on a mission, I had a purpose, and I was passionate! I went to Google and found Wikispaces. I included Toby's history along with the list. I posted a comment to Toby's post and it has been truly magical! This list of amazing women is as someone said like fairy dust. It was sprinkled and magic happened.

I want to thank the many wonderful and awesome women who have held this list in such a sacred way. I am so honored to be in the company of such gifted and amazing women.

I give a serious wiki love squeeze to my sisters:
Toby Bloomberg
Valeria Maltoni
Kirsten Harrell
Kammie Kobyleski

Elysa of GenPink has amazingly put the list in catogories. I have a shout out to her to see how we can consolidate the list. Will keep you posted.

Check out the list at http://wmagicallist.wikispaces.com/ and celebrate these amazing women bloggers, who keep the conversation going. We have an awesome power at our disposal: the power of our words. And women are exercising that power abundantly. I am so humbled to be among them.

If you are a woman blogger, please add your voice and your blog. This is a living list and a living legacy to all women. Keep it alive and passionate!

Blog purposefully and with passion!
Coach Carolyn

Several years ago an amazing little book exploded on the scene and caused people to rethink what they were thinking about. It was Don't Sweat the Small Stuff by Dr. Richard Carlson. It is a book of meditations on keeping the proper perspective. Dr. Carlson reminded us that it's all small stuff in the bigger picture and not to let those little things become big things.

In the first of the 3-part series on Blocks to Living with Passion, the Becoming a Woman of Purpose Group gathered to discuss Overcoming Fears. It was a lively and very moving discussion. I was very proud of the way the women came together as total strangers to talk about something very personal and sometimes very painful. And they left knowing that they each were the keepers of something very sacred -- one another's inner light.

“Destiny is not a matter of chance, it is a matter of choice; it is not a thing to be waited for, it is a thing to be achieved.” ~ Winston Churchill

“If you want to be happy, set a goal that commands your thoughts, liberates your energy, and inspires your hopes.” ~ Andrew Carnegie

“If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.” ~ H.D. Thoreau

May your walls know joy; May every room hold laughter and every window open to great possibility. ~ Maryanne Radmacher-Hershey

Live passionately,
Coach Carolyn

"We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.” – Aristotle

I love this quote because this can be applied to all of the areas of our lives. Everything that we repeatedly do, we become masters at. This includes the constructive as well as the destructive behaviors and habits. When we repeatedly do things of excellence, then we become excellent people. Yet, when we repeatedly talk negatively about ourselves and others, this also becomes our reality.

It is said that it takes 21 days to break a habit. I personally don’t believe in breaking habits. I believe in replacing a destructive behavior with a positive, more constructive one. For example, if I am prone to speaking negatively about myself when I have made a mistake, instead of trying to refrain from saying anything negative, I can try a visualization exercise where I imagine the outcome I would have liked. I don’t beat myself up, I just imagine. And if I choose to beat myself up, I will use a feather.

As Aristotle says, excellence is not an act, but a habit. Perhaps we have been beating ourselves up for the last twenty years. It will take time to reverse the habit and replace it with a new behavior. The trick is not to give up when we fall short of the mark. We tend to give up way too easily. This is why diets fail to work. We try one diet, then if it doesn’t work within the first three weeks, we think well, it just doesn’t work. So we move on to another, then another, then another.

Imagine your inner child. She is learning to walk. She will stand up, take a few steps, and then fall. She will do this over and over and over again. Yet, you don’t condemn her, stop her progress or yell at her because she isn’t doing it perfectly. You allow the process. You allow the chance to make the mistakes because only in this will she learn. And you allow the learning and growing. It is a process. It is not about perfection. Life is not about perfection. Life is about the journey, not the destination. During the journey, there will be bumps, bruises, stumbles and falls.

Take the time to stop. Stopping is a spiritual action. When we take the time to stop, we can make the proper decisions. We have this incredible power, it is the power to choose. We can choose to take the next right action. We can choose excellence, if we will repeatedly do excellent things. Or, we can choose negativity by focusing on the negative.

The power is ours. The choice is ours. Choose wisely.