As of this writing, on 6/1/2009, the night before at approximately 7:15 PM, my dear mother passed away. Suddenly, I was confronted with something that I had never been confronted with before…running my business when my mind was obviously somewhere else. Having a wife and daughter to take care of, as close as my mom and I were, I don’t have the luxury of throwing up my hands in the air and saying, “I can’t work anymore.” So today, this morning, I got up, and went into autopilot mode. It was something I had been preparing for ever since I started my business over six years ago. Let me explain.

In a perfect world, you wake up each day and you feel great, or at least okay. Sure, we all get sick from time to time, but we’re able to work through the sniffles and the coughing and whatever. But what do we do when our mind takes a serious hit, like when we lose a loved one? How do we cope? Trust me, if you’ve never been through it before, it’s not easy to concentrate when you’re brain is somewhere else. Today, I don’t know where mine is. Part of it is racing through the good times my mother and I had and part of it is dealing with knowing that I’ll never see her again.

So how do I do it? How do I sit here right now and go through my day’s activities, which granted is very light now that I’ve finally reached the success level that I’ve shot for? Well, having a schedule and a checklist is a great way to start. Each day, at the end of that day, I make my schedule for the next day. I make a checklist and number it from 1 to whatever. I then take each item in the checklist and do it until it’s finished or until I’ve reached my time limit for that task. Yes, for an ongoing project, I will allot X number of hours each day for that project.

And then I mindlessly go through the motions of doing what has to be done. When you’ve done this long enough, it becomes easier and easier. Today was my first true test of my process. So far, I am hanging in there. I’ve completed five of my eight items and am working on number six, writing my articles for the day. When I am done with number six, I will go to number seven…updating my blog.

If this seems all cold an calculated, to a degree, it is. It’s also good therapy. It certainly beats sitting on my couch thinking about my mother and crying my eyes out.

I don’t have a magic formula for you on how to get like this. You just have to make up your mind to do it. I think they call it discipline.

It sure came in handy today.

To YOUR Success,

Steven Wagenheim

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