So right now, I want to talk about the steps I use in creating a Perfect Life. First of all, to discover the right mind set, be sure to sign up for our fr^ee 7-part audio mini-course on the home page of our new web site. This is important because it will help you take advantage of the "Law of Attraction" so that everything you want and need will begin to flow effortlessly into your life by creating your Perfect Life Elements. These are all steps in this journey of learning to live with purpose, passion and prosperity!

The next step is a combination of time management and energy management. Most of us are familiar with Franklin Planners, but I won't be talking about this. What I am recommending is creating a time and energy management system that is customized for your lifestyle and your unique needs. I am currently working on a Perfect Life Planner that will help you pull all these concepts together, but in the meantime, you can begin by incorporating some of these concepts into your life today.

For the last six years, I and my team have been working from a model we call our Perfect Week. We do this by first of all identifying our unique abilities and talents (what we love doing and are great at vs. what we don't enjoy doing and aren’t good at anyway!). Our goal is to focus 80% of our time on our unique abilities and talents and then delegate the rest (if possible!). Spending your time focused on what you love to do and what you are good at anyway keeps you feeling rejuvenated and energized.

Our goal is then to divide our time up into three types of days: Perfect Days, Prep Days and Power Days. The purpose is to schedule specific types of activities on each of these days. I guarantee that if you can learn these secrets and begin to implement them into your lives, you will experience more energy, joy and personal growth.

I am in the process of developing a mini course on this topic that will follow up on our "Perfect Life Focus" mini course that is currently featured on our home page. If you are interested in learning how to incorporate this time and energy system into your life and your business now, feel free to contact me for some personal, one-on-one coaching at katana@smartwomenscoaching.com or continue to read these articles regularly.

There is so much information that it needs to be broken down into small steps. This is why the fr^ee audio mini course is so effective. You learn step by step in little chunks of time...only 3-5 minutes at a time...but end up making huge changes in your life!

Be sure to visit our new Blog regularly for updates and articles as they are posted. This is a free resource that we have developed to help you create and live your Perfect Life.

Stay tuned for my next article when I will be helping you discover how to create and schedule your Perfect Week. You will be doing this by first identifying and creating Prep Days to keep you organized and prepared so you can then enjoy wonderful Perfect Days and effective Power Days. This stuff works, so stay tuned!

Again, be sure to contact me if you want some help immediately at katana@smartwomenscoaching.com

~ Katana

Katana is an expert in helping women prepare for taking care of their aging parents. She has been a featured speaker with the Area Agency on Aging as well as the Federal Reserve Board’s Money $mart Week. She will soon be launching a new program called, “The Designated DaughterTM— Living in the Sandwich Generation.” For more information, you can visit her website at www. Smartwomenscoaching.com

When:
Saturday, October 21, 2006
8:00am - 6:00pm
Breakfast, lunch, celebration included

Location:
LaSalle Bank
2600 West Big Beaver Road
Troy, Michigan

Be sure to tell a friend if they are in the greater Detroit area!

Smart Women's Coaching is a Community Partner of Life Moxie! For event details and registration, click on this link. Once there, to register: "Click to Register" then click on the "Community Partners" column to save $70!

If you do not see the event flyer above, click on this link: http://www.lifemoxie.com/images/ Detroit-e-flyer2006.jpg

Ultimately, Delgado says, her ordeal with cancer was more spiritual than physical, and left this already dynamic woman more balanced, peaceful and effective.

"I think I was so out of whack at the time," Delgado says. "Cancer was God's way to grab my attention. I had to be forced to stop and see the things I needed to see."

A cancer diagnosis is never happy news, but Delgado's came at an especially rough time: her business was struggling to recover from a downturn and her husband William, had just been notified he would be laid off from his job.

"I got a call and the doctor let me know I had breast cancer," Delgado says. "My world kind of went dark in that moment."

Much of Delgado's world until that call had been filled with work at her business, Staff Pro -- A Southfield-based staffing company that she started in 1992 and that took a major hit during Michigan's economic recession. To avoid laying off her staff, she kicked up her hours at the struggling company.

Most of her days began around 4 a.m. and ended when she collapsed into bed. She spent her life going "150 miles per hour," she says, and constantly working to complete an endless list of tasks.

"I got into this almost robotic state," Delgado says. "I was just going through life. I had no connection to anything except this task list I'd created. I was on a schedule even when I was on vacation."

After she received her diagnosis, Delgado's task-oriented approach initially was brought to her treatment plan, says her friend Jill Jordan, a personal branding coach who met Delgado four years ago through Inforum (formerly the Women's Economic Club). "I thought, 'What can I do, what can I say, how can I help her?'" Jordan says. "I remember her treating her diagnosis just like a business plan -- 'Here's the program, this is what I'm going to do.'"

But the business plan quickly ran into the physical changes wrought by Delgado's treatment. She has Stage 1 cancer, and within 10 days of her diagnosis she received the first of two operations. Then came chemotherapy, followed by radiation.

"She would get so weak," Jordan says. "She invited me to sit with her one day during her chemo when her husband's schedule was tight. I just sat there with her. All I could do was give her my presence and let her know I was praying for her and rooting for her."

The treatment process frequently left Delgado too weak to leave her bed, forcing her to rely on her husband and kids to take care of things at home and her employees to helm the ship at work.

Delgado's incapacitation gave her nothing but time to reflect on her life and priorities.

"I would have told you before that I was a spiritual person but this took me to a new place," Delgado says. She began meditating, reading spiritual books and reaching out to friends to ask for their prayers during her scheduled chemo treatments. She purified her diet, cut the caffeine and relied on visualization and integrative medical techniques to help round out her healing process.

Her struggle brought her closer to her husband and her daughters, Bianca, 11, and Faith, 5; that improved connection was "the best gift out of the whole thing," she says. It also connected her with her workers who successfully ran her company in her absence. When she came back to work in December 2004, Staff Pro had weathered the economic storm, and revenues in the first quarter of 2005 were up 20 percent over the previous year.

But the main changes were internal. "I'm so much more peaceful and balanced now," she says. "I have a much quieter existence. I say no a lot. I take time to think during the day. My workday is realistic now. And it means things don't get done -- if the dinner dishes sit for a while, so be it."

"It's a conscious decision to get off the ride," she continues. "Because that ride never stops. It isn't always about more -- I'm not stuck in a lifestyle. It's about how you feel and how you spend your time. It's about what's important to you and what you want your life to look like. Put yourself on your task list."

In honor of Breast Cancer Awareness Month, Smart Women's Coaching is proud to present an interview with Lesley Delgado, a breast cancer survivor and "thriver". Click the link below to hear Lesley's story of survival and how her battle with breast cancer has changed her life.

11:45 pm Christmas 2004. Let’s just say it wasn’t my best Christmas ever -- although it was certainly the most unusual.

Yesterday, Christmas Eve, got off to a messy start. There was a huge storm during the night whose powerful winds drove rain and mud through the opening around the door of my hut and flooded the entire structure as I soundly slept. I awakened to find two inches of muddy water everywhere. Many of my books, which lay in neat stacks around the perimeter of this place, were ruined, as were most lots of the things stored in cardboard boxes under my cot. Oh well, its just stuff. Fortunately, I’d stored all of the Christmas gifts and goodies in the main house.

What was very nice was the quick mobilization of friends to help me out. A group of folks came over (and mind you this was 5:30 am) as soon as they heard and emptied my hut of every single thing and helped me clean it all up. I felt very taken care of. By noon I was cooking and preparing for the holiday celebration. In the late afternoon one of the Sangomas came over and we packed my saddlebags with food, candy and toys which we delivered to families with children who were too sick to come to my Christmas party. I wished I’d had a pair of reindeer antlers to put on my horse but no one here would have gotten the joke. It was a nice way to end the day.

Christmas morning started out so much like home. Excited young ones were definitely the first up. Just before 5:00 at the very first light, I could hear voices of children outside my hut. I had spent the late evening blowing up balloons and decking my halls as best I could with holiday cheer. It really did look a bit like Santa’s workshop in here. The children were adorable. They formed a very polite long line outside my door. I brought them in a few at a time and let them choose their gift. Everybody got candy and cookies and some small gift. It was really fun. I asked them if they had been good and elicited promises of good study habits and perfect obedience to their parents for the year to come. I felt gently possessed by the spirit of our families favorite Santa, my beloved departed brother- in-law Bill Barnes.

By 8 am there was a pretty big crowd here. Ntate Nena, the father of this house, who was home from his job as a South African mine worker for the holiday asked me to take a photo of this beautiful sheep (ram actually) that was being led around the courtyard. I took several. It was a magnificent animal with graceful curling horns and a gentle face. Then there was a bit of a ceremony as the patriarch of this family said this sheep was for me to formally welcome me to their home and the village. It was a huge gift and I was overwhelmed. I thought, ‘gee, this is great. I’ve got a horse and now this beautiful sheep. I wonder what I should feed it.” There were two Sangomas there (formerly known as witch doctors) both of whom did a sort of a chant and prayer. Then they asked me to say a prayer. I know very few. I recited the Christian Science Statement of Being followed by the Lord’s Prayer. I was feeling very grateful.

Then four big guys took my sheep, pulled it up by it’s legs threw it upon the ground and stuck a dull old knife into it’s neck. It was horrible. It made dreadful sounds as they sawed away at its throat. It took a long time to die. My tendency towards vegetarianism strengthened. I told myself that non-judgmental was the place to be and took photos. They are grisly.

The slaughtering process went on as I watched. Nothing is wasted. This was a very big celebration for this family. Nobody here gets to eat a lot of meat. With solemnity, they handed me, handed me!, the still warm liver. My ever-present tutor and cultural advisor M’e Matjeeka said it was now my honor to cook this for the assembled group. I took the bloody thing into my hut, set aside the mountain of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches I’d made and sliced and fried up these bits of my sheep. It really doesn’t do to get too attached to animals here.

From that point on it just didn’t seem like Christmas anymore. So much here is so strange. There was no recognizable music – just the incessant drumming. It was hot – almost stifling. Few words were spoken in English – I understand so little of what is going on around me. I longed for a real conversation, a Christmas carol, a twinkling light, a flake of snow, another white face.

Many wonderful friends and students from my classes and the project brought their entire families to visit. Some did traditional Basotho Christmas activities mostly centered on chanting prayers and singing. So many came, I really can’t say how many. It seemed like hundreds. I got so tired of it all. My hut was so crowded with sweating bodies – the body odor mixed with frying sheep got to be overwhelming. The children began to seem greedy as they snuck back into line for more presents. Some of them even changed their clothes to be in disguise. People I’d never met came to my house pretty much demanding gifts and food. Some were drunk; they asked for money; they didn’t get it. I did give away tons of stuff. I replenished my PB&J sandwich mountain several times. I cooked various disgusting parts of my sheep. I wished I were home. Twice during this long day I closed up my hut and headed for the mountain where I could get a phone signal but the connections were bad. I’m so happy today is behind me. By the end of the day I could feel myself morphing from the Christmas fairy to the Grinch.

I know I’ll never forget this Christmas but I’m trying to figure out what I’ve learned from it. Maybe nothing. Or perhaps something about how comfortable it is to be within our own culture and how easy it is to dislike that which is foreign to us. I really didn’t like some of these people today. These same Africans who have been so kind and warm and accepting of me today seemed strange and barbaric and seriously lacking in manners. But, being honest, they didn’t do anything that we don’t do. I’ve been to lots of crowded noisy parties that I loved –of course I could understand the language at those and most of the guests had recently bathed. Our kids are sometimes greedy, especially at this time of year. And who doesn’t enjoy a good rack of lamb now and again.

What was basically wrong with today was that it just wasn’t the way it is at home. So it would seem that viewpoint does indeed define our reality and is ultimately useless. It produces our prejudices. Without it we are all the same. So in the universal scheme of things maybe today wasn’t that bad.

I guess that’s just the Zen of it. Forgive this rambling. Tomorrow is another day. I’m hoping it will be a more enlightened one.

Love,
Peggi

“I don’t believe in mistakes. Sometimes things don’t go as planned, but that’s when the door opens, when the mystery occurs. I cherish the accidents.”

~Eve Ensler, who describes her hard-won escape from her father’s abuse in “Waiting for Mr. Alligator.”

How do you react to failure? Do you turn and run...give up...or ask yourself...“What am I supposed to learn from this and how am I supposed to grow?”

We'd like to hear from you. "What is the best mistake you have ever made?" Email your answer to info@smartwomenscoaching.com. The best answers will be published in next month's issue. Remember, failure, mistakes and problems are our best teachers!

Also, we are so excited about our new workshops. In November, we will be launching two new workshops, "Secrets of Successful High Earners— Going to the Next Level in Your Life" based on years of research by best selling author, Barbara Stanny and "Your Perfect Life—What’s Holding You Back?" based on “How Much Joy Can You Stand?” by Suzanne Falter Barns.

These two workshops will be launched in the Detroit area in November...we hope you will join us and tell your friends!