Mindset

12 Steps to Declutter your Life

July 30, 2018 By Joni Kinney Leave a Comment

There is so much talk about how to get rid of the clutter in your life. I’ve seen posts on pantries, offices, homes in general and just getting rid of stuff. I think decluttering is so much more than the “stuff” you keep around. Here are my 12 steps to Declutter your life.

Get rid of duplicates

Duplicate items take up space. If you don’t have a specific need for multiples, then get rid of them. Sell them, donate them, throw them if necessary. It doesn’t do you any good to have ten spatulas when you can only use one or two at any given time.

Have you used it in the past year?

Another tip to declutter, If you haven’t used an item in the past year, likely you don’t need it, especially if you can borrow that item from someone. For example, we don’t have a trailer and do occasionally need one to haul brush or bark chips. Instead of buying and storing the trailer, we borrow one from a family member or a friend.

Can you digitalize it?

A fast way to declutter all those kids paintings and pictures is to digitalize them. Do you need to keep 1000 of your kid’s pictures they drew growing up? Or can you take photos of them and create a scrapbook out of them to remember all those moments? Sometimes there isn’t a way to digitize something memorable, but for most paper type things you can. And you should! Those items will take up so much less space in a scrapbook or saved to your computer.

Are you only keeping this because you would feel guilty if you didn’t?

I know I’ve struggled with this. My friend, grandma, mom, sister, etc. gave me this item. Therefore, I can’t get rid of it. Well to tell you the truth, you can get rid of it and help declutter your house. Clean up the extra stuff you’ve held onto in your life and house, and stop being guilty about it.

Does it have a place?

Do you have a dedicated space to the item? If you don’t need it, get rid of it. If you do need it, find a place for it to live. If everything has a place it not only makes finding it more manageable, you know it’s important because you’ve made room for it.

If you saw this item in a store now would you buy it?

You may look at something and think I loved this so much. Well ok, but do you love it now. Does the retro bowl set that you’ve replaced still belong in your kitchen cupboard? If not help yourself declutter and donate that item. You never know when someone else might really need that retro bowl set.

Declutter: 1 in 1 out rule

The one in and one out rule seems so easy but can be so hard. If you buy a shirt, throw a shirt away. Found a great deal on a pair of shoes, awesome, but then as soon as you get home… toss an old pair. This way you aren’t bringing in more than you have space for and keep an inventory of what you need.

Know your clutter zones

Every house has clutter zones that we regularly declutter. These are those places that naturally seem to gather the things. For me, it’s our kitchen counter and our mail area. I feel like gremlins sometimes come in and just put things there so I’ll be annoyed and freaked out that I can’t seem ever to keep them clean. Knowing where these areas are can help you keep everyone aware and ensure that if you walk by and see stuff starting to accumulate that you immediately clean it up and return those items to their homes.

Create a goal list

Decluttering not only applies to physical things but to emotional things too. Create a goal list of things you are focusing on, so you don’t get sidetracked. If you haven’t yet check out our free ebook: Beyond Chaos to learn about how to create goals you can stick to.

Emotional Fitness

Take stock of your emotional well being. Are you able to physically remove items from your home? If you are feeling like this is a pointless task and not something you can accomplish reach out to find out what is causing the emotional block. You may find you are a hoarder and need to seek help. Tell your family or friends and get assistance if needed.

Motivate yourself

I genuinely believe that your mindset will set you apart from success and failure. Do you believe in yourself? It’s as simple as that. Being positive can and will change your life if you let it. YOU have to believe in yourself, your goals and your aspirations to achieve them. Check out our article on what is a vision board to help you visualize what’s most important to you.

Self Care

Last but not least, take care of yourself. If you aren’t taking care of your basic self-care needs, you may find yourself having a harder time letting things go. Find a few easy ways to reward and take care of yourself!

We hope you enjoyed our article on 12 ways to declutter your life. If you have other tips, contact us or leave us a comment down below.

Team Motivation for Direct Sales

July 8, 2018 By Joni Kinney Leave a Comment

Team motivation applies to everyone. Everyone is on or leads a team of some sort. You may be a team leader of your family, your friends, your town board or lead a group at a corporate job. No matter what having a confident team and team motivation determine how successful you are on a daily basis.

5 Keys to Team Motivation Success

Lead from the front – Don’t ask your team members to do things you wouldn’t do. If you aren’t putting your best foot forward your team and those around you will know it. Your team will feel like you don’t care and that is precisely the opposite of what you want.
There is POWER in staying POSTIVE. Negativity has no place in a team setting so keeping a positive mindset is critical. Find ways to encourage, work through issues and put positivity at the forefront of all the things you do.
Have a single mission. Everyone on the team needs to understand the big picture. What are you trying to accomplish? Having a purpose no matter what type of organization can mean the difference between success and failure, your mission can and should change over time. Whether your mission is to make it through the day with no boo-boos or to redesign the corporate logo you need to know what you are trying to accomplish.
Don’t spend time concentrating on things you can’t control. You can only control your reaction, your influences, and your attitudes. Don’t waste time trying to convince others you are right or your way is best. Merely lead the way, and they will get onboard with your vision or they will not. Exuding to much energy into something you can’t control is exhausting and won’t change the outcome anyway.
Gratitude! Showing others they matter means so much to them. It is your job as the leader to help your team stay positive and showing them they matter to you and each other. Team members who feel like they matter are more likely to want to stay engaged and part of the team. Help them see the vision, recognize their accomplishments (even if small) and encourage them to understand and accept others.

Team Motivation Quotes

Your energy is contagious. Either you affect people or you infect them.
Replace “I can’t” with “How can I?”
If you love someone, do not let them settle for less than their best.
When “We” comes before “Me,” you become the person and TEAM you are meant to be.
One person can’t make the team, but one person can break a team.
Dream big, sparkle more, shine brightly.
A little progress each day leads to big results.
Excellence is not a skill; it’s an attitude
Believe in yourself
Be brave enough to believe in yourself.

Looking to set some team goals? Check out our free ebook: Kinney Chaos

Intrinsic Motivation

July 2, 2018 By Joni Kinney Leave a Comment

Intrinsic motivation sounds so fancy. When I first heard this term I was like whatever, what difference does it make to determine how you are motivated? Ummm… well… actually a lot.

What is Intrinsic Motivation?

This fancy term is a way of describing internal forces that make you want to do something. Or make you want to do it better than before. It’s what motivates you from the inside. External forces have no reign here (Money, people, etc). This is all about what’s inside of you that makes you motivated to achieve your goals.

**** Hey if you haven’t picked up our Free eBook: Beyond Chaos, now would be a great time!

Those who have strong intrinsic motivation do the task, activity solely because they love it. This can be reading, writing, playing sports. The list goes on and on and can be any number of things.

How to motivate others

Using intrinsic motivation to motivate others requires you to do some research. You have to figure out what that person loves, why they love it, and how to use that to help you achieve your ultimate goal. After all having employees or team members who love their position will often lead you to better collaboration, more innovative ideas and a better working team.

External Forces

You need to make sure you aren’t putting to much emphasis on these internal sources of motivation, doing so can actually make that item less rewarding. For example if someone loves to read for pure enjoyment and you offer to pay them to read a book for you. They may not get as much enjoyment out of it because there is an external force at play.

Here is a great TED talk about Intrinsic Motivation by Dan Pink

Comment below and let me know what you think – Do you know how you are intrinsicly motivated?

Positivity: How it can change your life!

June 29, 2018 By Joni Kinney 3 Comments

Have you ever had a moment of clarity? Something that happens that reveals something to your very soul that you knew and yet could never find a way to articulate? I had one of those moments this week. You see, this past week I’ve spent a ton of time talking to people both in person and on conference calls. During one of these conference calls, I had an epiphany. Now keep in mind this was at about 1 Am after not getting any real sleep for a couple of days straight. So I wasn’t sure at first if I was delirious or if I indeed had found one of those clarifying moments.

Moment of Clarity

So during this call, I was surfing the local news and came across an article about addiction. The article itself was nothing earth-shattering, but I realized something important. We have a horrible addiction running rampant through our lives. So what is this addiction? This atrocious habit is the need to tell and talk to anyone who will listen; all about our problems. It’s like we are drawn to the negative things all around us. The positives in the day seem to be too hard to find.

Positivity

So how do we get past this horrible condition? We start to focus on the positives all around us. I know some of you reading are probably thinking I have nothing positive in my life. That is such a horrible thing to say to yourself. Find something, anything that makes getting up each day bearable.

If you literally can not think of a single thing, then you need to seek medical attention. For those of you at that point in your life, please seek out the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-8255.

Benefits of Positive Thinking

Why thing positive? Positivity has so many benefits, such as helping you to be kinder. In my opinion, the most significant advantage is that you will find yourself happier and more productive. Having a positive mindset can cascade into benefits at home, work, relationships, and in seeing and appreciating your self worth. Positivity will allow you to have greater resiliency when things change and help you achieve success. I believe this is why Vision boards are so powerful.

How to Break the Habit

The first Key to breaking a bad habit is going through some Self Reflection on what is causing the habit.
Next decide that you are no longer going to let your had habit get in the way, and convince yourself that you want to change. I can’t change this for you; you MUST decide this for yourself.
Set some goals. If you haven’t yet grabbed my FREE ebook: Beyond Chaos – A guide to setting goals you can stick to! Right now would be a great time to do that.
Make sure you stay on track. Something that can help with this is using a Daily Reflection sheet to keep track of what is going on and making sure you recognize if you don’t see the positivity all around you.
Tell someone what you are doing even if that means you contact me. It’s important that someone knows and helps to hold you accountable.

Having a positive attitude doesn’t automatically guarantee that you will find success. Additionally, nothing provides instant success, you have to work towards it. However, having a negative attitude, focusing on all the problems, and concentrating effort into negativity almost always guarantees failure.

Self-Reflection: Why do I need it?

June 20, 2018 By Joni Kinney Leave a Comment

It is so easy to come up with a list of reasons we aren’t successful or doing the things we want in life. We have all done this, some do this all the time. We say to ourselves things such as:

They or this thing prevented me from being successful
If only they would have hired me, helped me or did this thing for me
No one cares; I’m all alone, I’m only one person

People are continually trying to find reasons about why their lives are the way they are. We look for others to solve our issues, give us validation and justify why what we have is enough. But… what if the problem isn’t with other people? What if our dilemas are because of our own internal dialogues? We need to find a way to change our internal justification to be about things we control. We need help determining what is truly important to us, and guiding our lives to be fulfilling. To do this we need to know, understand and realize that we are working for the things that are most important. Take control of your life and your situation by asking yourself, what is my role in my current situation and what could I control that might change the outcome. One way we do this is through Self Reflection.

What is Self Reflection?

Self Reflection is the process of looking deep into yourself to understand your fundamental values. You need to dive into your thoughts, feelings and personal goals to understand your core visions and values. Often we hear these terms thrown around at work or in business settings, but they are equally important in your personal life. Self Reflection is something I’ve come to realize we don’t perform often enough. Not knowing your goals and setting time aside for self reflection can have a negative impact on your mindset.

Time Commitment

Self reflection doesn’t need to be big and scary. People are always using the excuse that they don’t have time to do things. Like with most things if you find it important enough you will make the time. With that said, this process does not need to take up a bunch of time, be a burden or seem daunting. The easiest way to start this process is to take 5-10 minutes to write down some daily thoughts. As you let your mind wander, ask a few directed questions your goals and core values should become apparent. If you struggle with this, I’ve created a quick and easy Daily Reflection Journal template for you to use if you need help getting started.

Eliminate the Blame Game

You can only control so many things in your life. Making excuses and blaming others doesn’t get you results. For you to be successful in setting your goals and visions, you need to eliminate the blame game. Stop wasting your time, setting yourself up for failure, and blaming others and external factors on why you can’t be successful, positive, etc. Take the time you need to determine what is important to you.

Determine your sphere of influence

Many things are outside of our control. Stop focusing your energy on those things. It’s draining and makes you mentally and physically tired. Your sphere of influence, those things you directly control are the things you need to focus all your effort. These should be the areas of highest concentration as you look deep into yourself and indeed put your self reflections efforts into. If you look into a goal or a vision and you don’t feel as if you can have any direct control over it or the outcome you want. Then you need to change your sphere of influence, make that one of your goals if you feel that strongly about a particular topic. Seek new opportunities, meet new people or join new organizations so you can be in control again.

Do some self reflection and determine what is really important to you. Something else that may help you achieve your goals and finalize your vision is creating a Vision board. Additionally, grab our FREE ebook Beyond Chaos: A guide to setting goals you can stick to.

Vision Board: What is it?

June 13, 2018 By Joni Kinney 2 Comments

If you have found this board, you might have some idea of what a vision board is. At the very least you’ve heard about the concept, whether you believe in it or not is a different discussion. So what is a vision board and how can it help you?

What is a Vision Board?

At its very core a vision board is a tool used to declare what you want to the universe. This belief is based on the Law of Attraction and that what you claim to the universe will be delivered to you. Those who believe this practice believe that if you put positive mental visualization and attention into your goals, you will attract what you want. Therefore, providing your visions to you. If you think this sounds great and that you can just tape or glue a few pictures to a poster board and suddenly gain success you are kind of missing the point.

How do I create a Vision Board?

Creating your vision board can be as easy or as complicated as you make it. However, at the very core of a Vision Board, you need to be clear about what you want and put it where you can see it. This will remind you to put your positive energy into the goals you want to achieve. As you go through the process of creating your vision board, don’t just think about objects. Think about your mindset, business goals, self-development. What do you want to achieve? The images, quotes, objects or reminders of what you want should be the things you want to spend time working on.

You do not have to have a big giant piece of cardboard covered in magazine clippings. (Although you can if you want.) Personally, I love my vision board, and for me, it’s an app on my phone. Find what will work for you, you can do something super simple such as creating a picture collage. Do what works for you!

What if something happens and my goals change?

Honestly in all likelihood at some point in your life, this will happen. You will decide on something great, and then some other external factor will change your perspective, outlook or current situation. At that point your goals change, and so should your vision board. If you haven’t reviewed and updated your vision board in more than six months it’s time to reassess if those goals and visions are still accurate.

Will it work?

I can’t answer this for you. It isn’t enough to visualize the outcome; you have to WANT to work towards the end result. Keeping focus helps me work towards the things I want to achieve.

Other things to consider

We can only control ourselves. Our thoughts, our actions, our dreams. Set them and see what happens.
Occasionally review your visions, your priorities may have changed.
You must be willing to put in the work.
Mindset is a real thing. If you don’t believe you can achieve – you won’t.

Don’t forget to grab our free ebook about setting goals!

« Previous Page