There's More Than One Way to Skin a Cat!

Posted on December 16, 2011 by kathrynkstrong

There’s More Than One Way to Skin a Cat!

That is not a very appealing phrase is it? Why would anyone want to skin a cat? But as a kid I heard this saying all the time from my mom. As I think of it I can see my mother’s face of determination, like she wasn’t going to be defeated! I can see her body posture like ‘you better not mess with me!’

(I’ve been writing about my mother a lot lately. She must be channeling through me! Hi Mom!)

But it’s all relative. I was working today and started to get in this panic mode and then I stopped and said, ‘I’m not going to let anything stop me! There’s more than one way to skin a cat!’

The panic was one I’ve had many times. I’m sixty years old, have been a sales person selling our earrings for 31 years and before that I had my own modeling school that I just decided one day I could do. Back then there weren’t computers. I hit the pavement to get business and still can to this day.

But the panic sets in because I’m seeing all these people in my community with great computer skills get up their awesomely beautiful and effective web sites, hold webinars and who are social media savvy. So I compare myself to them, thinking this is the only way I’ll be successful and that I’m stupid, slow, I don’t have the money to pay to learn, blah, blah, blah, blah and blah!

Well today I said no more! I can and will do this whether I have these skills or not! I just kept saying to myself “What else is possible?” and “How else can I get the results?” And, like my mamma taught me, there’s more than one way to skin a cat. And low and behold I started figuring this thing out!

First of all, I got back present to who I know I am! You might have read my blog about my being a Natural Born Salesperson. If you did then you know at age 8 or 9 I loaded up my red wagon with my mother’s tomatoes from her garden, without her permission, and went around the neighborhood and sold them.

I did a similar thing at the age of 30-ish. I cut myself off of welfare and started my own modeling school. I had attended Barbizon Modeling School to get some personal growth for my self. After I graduated from that I became one of their teachers for them for awhile. Then I decided to do this teaching of modeling play casino online on my own.

I put together a portfolio of pictures, a curriculum and a slide projector presentation and opened my very own modeling school. I called it Focus Modeling. Much like selling the tomatoes, I went around to high schools and gave presentations about modeling and enrolled girls & their parents to come for interviews and thus got girls signed up for my classes.

I had moved into a brand new two bedroom apartment that I couldn’t afford & had no furniture so I used one bedroom as my makeup room for my students and turned the combo living room, dining room into the runway and photography area. I connected with small clothing stores to get small jobs for my students. You know the store Bebe’s? Well Manny, the owner, used to be a very small boutique on Union Street in Cow Hollow. I used to get clothes from him for my models to use for shows & photo shoots!

Eventually I moved my school to a studio at second and Mission streets in San Francisco. The building I was in was damaged in an earthquake and was replaced with a new building, but it’s neat to know I had my own school in downtown San Francisco!

Back then I never sat around telling myself I couldn’t do it. Why have I been doing this now? Is it because I’m older and things have changed so much? That’s what I may have been telling myself, but now I say BS to that! Sam Walton didn’t need any computer skills, and neither did Oprah or a lot of other people to be successful! And neither do I!

I’ve got a plan. Part of it is I only compare my self to my self and my results to my last results compared to what I want! I learn as I grow but no more of this pussy footing around! I’m reaching out and if someone doesn’t want to play with me I’m going to the next person.

Nothing is going to stop this super star from delivering her message, empowering other people and living the life of her dreams! Damn straight! Thank You Momma!

 

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One of My Unique Gifts…

Posted on December 14, 2011 by kathrynkstrong

One of my Unique Gifts is that I’m a natural born salesperson! You know how I know?

Because if I had to speak to a group of people without any preparation or training right now, this minute, I could speak for HOURS about selling! And I would love doing it!

My first memory of being a Natural Born Salesperson is when I was probably about eight or nine years old. My wonderful mother, Violet was her name, always made sure every year we had a huge garden full of vegetables growing that would sustain us for the summer. She’d even can vegetables from this garden for us to have for the winter.

One summer there was this humongous amount of tomatoes. Oh my, they were beautiful to behold! There were so many, I thought, that I could sell them. I don’t remember at the time for sure, but I think I wanted to get something with the money. I pulled up my little red wagon, filled it with tomatoes and went boldly knocking on doors around the neighborhood selling these tomatoes, most certainly for way under their value, since I certainly had no sense of their value at that time!

Even though I had no concept of their value my mother did! I thought I’d sold ‘my’ tomatoes. But she saw things differently, especially since I’d not asked her permission to sell them in the first place.

I was very proud of myself, though. When I arrived back home and proudly showed her ‘my’ earnings from selling ‘my’ tomatoes, she abruptly put me in my place! “Those weren’t your tomatoes”, she explained. “Those were my tomatoes. I bought the seeds. I planted the seeds in the ground. I watered, weeded and fertilized them to become the delicious tomatoes that they were! Not to mention, you didn’t ask me if you could sell ‘my’ tomatoes. Now that you’ve sold them there’s not enough for all of us to eat and I’ll have to go to the store and buy more tomatoes! So you’ve actually cost me money! So you see, Kathy (I hated being called Kathy) that money that you australian pokies online collected for those tomatoes is mine. Hand it over!” She wasn’t exactly loving about it, either!

Well needless to say I was devastated! I really had thought those were my tomatoes and didn’t fully understand yet what my mother had just explained to me! But I was beginning to get the picture. It was slowly sinking in. ‘Oh yeah, those tomatoes cost something in time, energy & money that I hadn’t invested into making them become a sellable commodity, my mother had. And now because of my lack of thoughtfulness, or my arrogance or ignorance, pick one they all fit, mother was going to have to pay more money to get more tomatoes’. Yikes! I had really screwed up here!

Perhaps if I’d sold the tomatoes for more than their value she might have been elated and offered me a commission. Not that I knew what that was! At the very least she probably would have been super proud of me and given me a big hug. Who knows? That’s just not the way it went that time around.

It was a good lesson in the value of things, even if it didn’t feel good.

I’m still proud of myself for being bold enough to ask people for their money in exchange for giving them something of value.

Well hey, I said I was a Natural Born Salesperson, not a Natural Born Business person!

But thank goodness I understand a whole lot more about business now than I did then!

These are the kind of lessons that make us who we are today and from which we cultivate our unique gifts! I’m grateful for this precious memory and for the lesson my mother taught me. I’m happy she didn’t just let me keep the money. The lesson in the value of things was so much more valuable than the money!!!

What are some of your Unique Gifts and how did you acquire them? I would love to hear the stories behind them!

 

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Trusting Your Universal Manager…Law of Attraction

Posted on December 13, 2011 by kathrynkstrong

Enjoy the unfolding

It’s late Monday night and I’ve got tons to do still. I’m in a learning curve but I’m making lots of progress. It’s like things still a little dis-combobbled but yet it feels like they’re falling together. Then suddenly it dawned on me, ‘Oh yeah, I asked the Universe for something and this is the process of it unfolding. I almost didn’t recognize it because I wanted it to come a bit smoother and less bumpy.

You know what I’m talking about here don’t you?

It’s like when two years ago when I was 58 and it hit me I’m going to be 60 in just two years! Holy cow! I felt 35 inside. On top of that, I found out I couldn’t put off getting braces any longer, which I’d have to wear for two years! Damn it! (I just got them off! Yay!)

 

But then I decided, ok, I’m going to use this to my advantage and work on being the hottest, sexiest, healthiest 60 year old I could be. I wanted to change my identity of who I was. I’d never let myself step into that. If I didn’t do it now, when would I? So I really put my order ‘out there’ in to the Universe, to my Universal Manager.

I had no doubt I would become what I’d projected. I had used the Law of Attraction so many times when I coached my sales staff at our jewelry store. I’d say, ‘The Universe is just like a waitress….put your order out there and it’ll be delivered.’ Then they’d visualize a chalk board with the dollar amount of sales they’d want to walk in the door before they left for the day. One girl did this like clockwork because every time she would get what she ordered, and then some! Back then (20 years ago) we didn’t call it the Law of Attraction. It was something I understood and practiced. Something I believed in. It was what I used to get results in online casinos with no deposit bonus my life. Seemed natural to me then.

But, I’d put out this order for what I wanted in the next two years. Shortly after I declared it will all my heart and soul, the unthinkable happened! I was on vacation in Hawaii. It was January 1, 2009. A huge wave came up behind me and just slammed me down and I landed casino reviews online really hard on my tailbone. After that my back wasn’t the same. Four months later I awoke in such pain I couldn’t move. My husband inched me out of bed, got me to a doctor. To make a long story short, the doctor wanted to les machines a sous en france sever the nerves in my back so I couldn’t feel anything! I would have ended up slots in a wheel chair! There was nothing wrong with my back. It was a muscular problem due to a weak core, not a fracture or anything broken, although it felt like my back was shattered!

I was sure all my plans of being the hottest, sexiest I could be in two years were doomed! And I thought the Universe had turned against me.

But alas, this incident and having to get the braces were my saving grace in disguise! It was because of the fall that I started Physical Therapy, really committed to eating only real food and to losing weight to take pressure off my back. As I did my therapy twice daily I started to look toned, even sexy, and my back was getting better. And when I got my braces I ate less, not by choice but by necessity!

I realized I’d put my order out there and the Universal Manager had set up the exact events that had it come to fruition! And that is what I realized again tonight. I have this ‘feeling’, like a remembering, that it’s all falling into place, I just need to allow it to unfold and remember who I am and that I can have this, as it unfolds.

So when you’ve asked for something don’t be stuck or fooled on how it shows up or what the unfolding of it looks like. Keep the faith that it’s coming to you. Keep focused on and going for what you want.

What look like obstacles are really the stepping stones to your results!

 

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Remember?

Posted on December 12, 2011 by kathrynkstrong

Now why am I here, again?

Remember?

What you can”t see causes you suffering. What you can see you can shift.…Barbara De Angelis

What is your highest remembrance?

Do you remember who you really are?

Do you remember why you are here in this lifetime, on this planet at this time?

It is our purpose and our time to remember to remember.

A few months ago I got to be in the presence of Barbara De Angelis for three days as part of her Wisdom Weekend she presented in San Diego. This weekend was about transitions in life. Barbara is all about getting down to the nitty-gritty truth by digging deeper beyond what it looks like on the surface. Barbara is a very important spiritual leader of our time and she is one of my spiritual teachers. If you ever get the opportunity to work with her jump at it!

Barbara shared with us how she’d recently been on a small jet airplane flying from San Jose to Santa Barbara. It was an incredibly beautiful day with the sun shining and the sky was so blue and full of spectacular clouds. The small jet flew low, so she got to enjoy the beautiful view of the California coastline. But she couldn’t help but observe the strangest behavior of a man who took a window seat nearby. The shade was partially drawn closed when he sat down. This man obviously wanted to look out the window because he was bending down and doing all kinds of contortions in order to see the view through the approximately six inches window that was open for viewing. She watched in amazement that for the whole flight he did this. She couldn’t figure out why he didn’t just pull the shade up all the way. Then it occurred to her that the thought of pulling the shade up so he could take in the whole view didn’t even enter this man’s thought process. This is how he was ‘wired’, or conditioned to behave.

It’s kind of like the baby elephant story, you know, the baby elephant is tied to a post by a chain leash all its infancy. When it becomes an adult elephant the chain is removed, yet the elephant doesn’t venture beyond the casino greece boundary of the distance dictated by the chain it had worn for so many years. It has a ‘wired’ in boundary limitation and doesn’t even know it so it just behaves this way.

Just as the man on the airplane had a ‘wired’ in boundary for not changing his environment to expand his view. He adjusted to fit within the environment that could have been easily adjusted and allowed him to experience more joy, expansion and comfort as well as a whole new perspective!

One of my take-a-ways from the weekend; Just how much we are conditioned to stay casino online within limiting boundaries and how that is so opposite of who we are and why we are here. It is our job in this lifetime to wake up and remember that we are pure love, at our highest online pokies play vibration. Our conditioning blocks us from experiencing this most of the time unless we become very conscious of it, which most people don’t.

Each moment we want to be aware of how much our window shade is closed and remember to open it as far as possible. We want to become more and more aware of the ‘muck’ there is on our window of life and how that limits our view and thus prevents us from seeing, cuts us off from our feeling and blocks us from our knowing. All of this limits our expansion, which is our moment to moment purpose.

The ‘muck’ shows up for many as negative self talk. When we let that take charge of us instead of standing up to it, saying, ‘Wait a minute. This isn’t true and it’s not who I am or what I want to experience. How do I want it to be right now? How do I want to feel right now? How can I make it better right now? I choose happiness for ME right now, despite the circumstances. If there’s a lesson in everything, what can I learn from this?’

How Barbara put it, how much is your window shade of life drawn? What you can’t see causes you suffering. What you can see you can shift. How much dirt & grime and old patterns can you clean from your window of life? Wisdom is everywhere. It’s about living life consciously or unconsciously. It’s about remembering, recognizing more and more who you/we are.

How much further can you lift that shade and be willing to see the truth? To this degree you will expand, and only to this degree.

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Unleash Yourself!

Posted on September 6, 2011 by kathrynkstrong

Ever wonder why some people, who have the same training and opportunity as others, yield such extremely different results? There are those that will take the information and achieve high levels of success and others that will explain all the reasons why they can’t make it happen. When the rubber meets the road it aussie slots isn’t how much training you have had, slots where you went to school, your zip code or your parentage. It is all about knowing who you are and mastering ?????? ????????? your mindset.

Welcome to my site. I”m Kathryn K Strong. I”m here “Because YOU Matter”. My mission is all about sharing the secrets behind showing up powerfully, with confidence beyond belief, to create the results you desire in every area of your life!

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