Archive for January, 2014

Feb 1 – Treat Others as They Want to Be Treated

Friday, January 31st, 2014
When someone you love, loves flowers, find ways to give them often.

When someone you love, loves flowers, find ways to give them often.

Cheetah Certified Project Manager (CCPM) Tip of the Day

Febuary 1 – The platinum rule: Treat others the way THEY want to be treated. Treating others the way you want to be treated is the “old” rule.

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Michelle LaBrosse, CCPM, PMP, PMI-ACP

We all have those internally-referenced triggers that help us feel all warm and fuzzy. In the work, “The Five Love Languages,” creator Gary Chapman has a quiz that shows your preferences for how people can express to you they care. My score is:

10 – Quality Time

9 – Acts of Service

7 – Words of Affirmation

4 – Physical Touch

0 – Receiving Gifts

YES – this means, since it’s my birthday tomorrow, that my friends and family have it easy – no need for a gift. To celebrate my birthday, I feel loved and adored when I get something as simple as a note telling me some way we’re going to do something fun together in the upcoming year and and how I enhanced your life this year.

What is your score on your language of love? You can take the short quiz with the link above. Share it in the comment section on the Cheetah Learning Facebook page.

We do something similar in the Cheetah Certified Project Manager course. You learn how to speed read another person’s personality type so, together, you can determine the best way to leverage each others’ innate strengths. You can choose a much more fulfilling way of working with others – check out www.cheetahcertifiedpm.com

Jan 31 – Clean Out Your Goal Closet

Friday, January 31st, 2014
Are You Holding Onto Old Goals?

Are You Holding Onto Old Goals?

Cheetah Certified Project Manager (CCPM) Tip of the Day

Jan 31 – Take time every day to take stock of your goals. Do they still fit for who you are and who you want to become? What has changed in your life that might change your desire to achieve a specific goal? Let go of the goals no longer serving your present or future life.

Michelle LaBrosse, CCPM, PMP, PMI-ACP

Do you have a place where you put those hobby or craft projects you are going to finish “someday”? Yes, you know what I’m talking about. That closet or that corner in your garage that holds the “someday” goals of yesteryear? Can you imagine a life without this goal graveyard haunting your very existence? I have a rule about my closets – if I have not touched whatever is in there for two years, it finds a new home. Other goals are the same way. But don’t beat yourself up too bad for hanging onto dreams that died long ago. The human brain likes consistency, and when you make a commitment to achieving a goal – even if that goal isn’t the right thing for you anymore – it doesn’t feel good to give it up. But giving up on the goals that you haven’t done anything to achieve in over two years, just like cleaning the closet graveyard, is crucial for you to focus on pursuing those goals truly important to you NOW.

Jan 30 – Sanity Comes in Threes

Thursday, January 30th, 2014
Choice Management Is More Important than Time Management

Choice Management Is More Important than Time Management

Cheetah Certified Project Manager (CCPM) Tip of the Day

Jan 30 – When you get over-committed with more to do than you have hours in a day, identify your top three goals. From there, decide the goal you feel is most important , the one you feel is moderately important, and the one you feel is least important. Focus your time and attention on your singular most important goal.

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Michelle LaBrosse, CCPM, PMP, PMI-ACP

Ahhhhhh… let’s all do a deep exhale here. Yes, we lead very, very busy lives. Busyness, however, does not mean productivity. Nor does it necessarily mean you are doing what it is you need to do to achieve your goals. I got to learn this lesson after I had my second child I am a completion nut and I can get stuff done even in the most chaotic of situations – a LOT of stuff done. Yet, having two young children under age two pushed me over the edge. And THANK GOD for that.

I had to learn how to prioritize what was most important to me in the moment. The reality is, it was my children. What was most important to me was that I raised children to become happy, self-confident, and self-actualized adults. Me being uber-busy trying to conquer the world when the children were very young was not going to help me achieve what I saw as my singularly most important goal: taking care of them. This was a gut-wrenching choice, as there were professional pursuits that were deeply important to me. I had gotten a nine-month leave of absence on my PhD when my second daughter was born. My adviser, also the head of the department, had just had a baby and he knew how hard it was for me to take care of two babies and write my dissertation. So he supported my leave of absence from the program. While I was on my maternity leave, a new professor took over as the department chair. When I was ready to come back from maternity leave, this new professor did not like my dissertation topic. Even though I had gotten the first part of my research accepted in a peer-reviewed journal and had it published. No, he wanted me to go back and take three more classes and re-take my qualifying exam. You see, my research invalidated his research. I didn’t have it in me to fight. I had learned what I wanted to learn in my PhD program. PLUS, I was firmly grounded in my most important goal – that of being there for my children.

Not getting that PhD has helped me immensely. I went on to create an amazing business (partly based on what I learned in the pursuit of my PhD). The sanity lesson still comes in handy when I am super busy and can’t see my way to the light of day. I stop and take a huge exhale. And then figure out what the three most important goals in my life are. Do another deep exhale, and pick the most important one. Then, I focus my time and attention there. This has served me well.

Life presents us with an overwhelming selection of incredible things to pursue and experience. What I have discovered is that more important than time management is choice management. Learning how to make the choices that are right for you on a moment-by-moment basis creates clarity from the chaos. This is what you learn how to do by becoming a Cheetah Certified Project Manager (CCPM). Choose to check it out and see what amazing things you can do with your life. www.cheetahcertifiedpm.com

Jan 29 – Why Do You Pursue Your Goals? ($1000 scholarship for best answer)

Wednesday, January 29th, 2014
When in between goals and "resting,"  take time to evaluate the underlying reasons you pursue your goals.   It will give you renewed energy in your next big pursuit.

Take time when in between goals to rest and contemplate the underlying reason why you pursue your goals. This re-energizes you to go after your next big goal.

Cheetah Certified Project Manager (CCPM) Tip of the Day

Jan 29 – For many, it is the pursuit of meaningful goals far more than their achievement that brings the most satisfaction. So when you reach one goal, dream the big dreams that are right for you and set the wheels in motion to go for the next goal.

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Michelle LaBrosse, CCPM, PMP, PMI-ACP

What underlies your reasons for pursuing your goals? Is it to attain a deeper level of life satisfaction, the thrill of seeing something you dreamed of come to fruition, the challenge of the pursuit, or something else? Post your answer on the Cheetah Learning FB page comment section for this tip of the day. For the person whose comment receives the most likes, we are awarding a $1000 scholarship towards any Cheetah Learning course. The winner will be selected February 3, 2014 at 8 AM PST.

Click here to post your answer on the Cheetah Learning Facebook Page

Consider sharing this with your friends who are in a career transition, as the Cheetah Certified Project Manager program can help them find their way to the best fit career for them.

This promotion is in no way sponsored, endorsed or administered by, or associated with, Facebook.

Jan 28 – Identity Capital – Goal Setting At Every Decade of Life

Tuesday, January 28th, 2014
How  Do The Goals You Pursue and Achieve At Every Decade Define You?

How Do The Goals That You Pursue and Achieve At Every Decade Define You?

Cheetah Certified Project Manager (CCPM) Tip of the Day

Jan 28 – The goals you set in your 20’s most likely won’t be the same goals that bring you life satisfaction in your 40’s, 60’s, or 80’s. What goals bring meaning and engagement to your life at the age you are now?

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Michelle LaBrosse, CCPM, PMP, PMI-ACP

I am very lucky to enjoy the company of the 20-something crowd on almost a day-to-day basis. It’s an exciting decade and so full of hope and possibilities. In the book “The Defining Decade,” author Meg Jay addresses how crucial it is for those in their 20’s to develop their “identity capital” via the goals they both pursue and achieve. It isn’t so much what the specific goals are; it is that you have them, you go for them, and you create your spring board for your next goal from them. As I worked my way through her book, I realized that we are in a constant state of creating our “identity capital” in how the goals we are choosing to pursue define us, no matter what our decade.

For today, think about how the goals you are choosing to pursue right now create your identity capital. What type of foundation are they helping you develop that can launch you to your next goal? What is the story your past achievements tell about you? What is the new story you want to create about yourself? If you’d like help with any of this, check out the Cheetah Certified Project Manager (CCPM) program, where you’ll learn how to design the epic adventure that is your life – www.cheetahcertifiedpm.com.

Jan 27 – Will Your Way to The Top

Monday, January 27th, 2014
Learn how to  activate your will to achieve your important life goals.

Learn how to activate your will to achieve your important life goals today.

Cheetah Certified Project Manager (CCPM) Tip of the Day

Jan 27 – Achieving your goals is more about your will to achieve them than the way you can achieve them. You have infinite ways awaiting you.

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Michelle LaBrosse, CCPM, PMP, PMI-ACP

I had a friend in my 20’s who used to tell me that just by setting your goal, you start the wheels in motion to achieve that goal. Yes, I’ve read all those books about believing it to achieve it. And for me, there is a deeper level of engagement that has to happen to make my goals a reality. I have to really really want it. Now, this might seem like common sense to most of you reading this. HOWEVER, sometimes people enter into my life who want me to jump on their wagon for their goals and make them my goals. Does this happen for any of you? The one factor they are missing is that the “will” I bring to achieving my goals is from my unique well spring of inspiration. In order for these folks to achieve THEIR goals, instead of trying to tap into my very well-developed “willing it to be” practices, they need to cultivate their own inner drive to see their goals through to completion. Whenever you rely on someone else to achieve your goals for you, you give away your power to make them happen.

This “will” is more of a learned skill than something I was born with. And we teach it to others, as well. My “will” gets the most activated on goals that are tied into my innate strengths in those areas where I am deeply passionate. For example, I am very passionate about helping people joyfully and skillfully pursue their dreams. So, any goal that I dream up, if it has this as a central component, it seems as if heaven and earth move to help me make it happen, fast. And this is what the Cheetah Certified Project Manager (CCPM) Program is about. Learn what is really possible for you when you activate your own little engine that could. Check out www.cheetahcertifiedpm.com

Jan 26 – Choose Wisely

Sunday, January 26th, 2014

Cheetah Certified Project Manager (CCPM) Tip of the Day

Everyday You Get to Make Choices To Achieve Your Goals, Choose Wisely

Everyday You Get to Make Choices To Achieve Your Goals, Choose Wisely

Jan 26 – Every moment of every day you make the choices that can bring you closer to achieving your goals – choose wisely.

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Michelle LaBrosse, CCPM, PMP, PMI-ACP

I heard a saying when I was younger that rich people make choices that impact three generations, while poor people plan for Saturday night. The number one thing the most successful people do is to keep making the choices that are aligned with achieving their most important goals. The choices you make in how you live your day-to-day life matter. Take a minute to contemplate if you’re making the choices that will bring you closer to achieving your goals.

Yesterday, I had lunch with a friend of my daughter. This kid had guts. She had spent a semester the previous year studying in West Africa. She came from a privileged background but that semester forever changed her. She was no longer happy with her small, private, protected college in a small community in the Northeast, much to her parents distress. In the middle of her junior year, she packed up her bags and headed across the country to a state college in Washington. She wanted to make the choices in her life that mattered to her where she could make a difference in the lives of many. She is choosing to follow her passions and follow the path of success for her. She is on the journey that is right for her. BRAVO!

How do you know if you’re making the choices that are right for you to achieve your goals? Check in with yourself. What choices make you excited while bringing you a sense of deep peace? We are each given, at the most, one hundred years on this planet – if we are lucky. It is your choice how you create the epic adventure that is your life. In the Cheetah Certified Project Manager program, you learn how to align your actions in the way that will create the most enduring success for you based on your strengths and your passions. Learn more at www.cheetahcertifiedpm.com.

Jan 25 – Continual Commitment

Saturday, January 25th, 2014

Cheetah Certified Project Manager (CCPM) Tip of the Day

Commit to your goals one step at at time to make it to the top.

Commit to your goals one step at at time to make it to the top.

Jan 25 – When you keep committing yourself to achieve your goals, what you need to do to bring them into reality happens in the most unique ways.

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Michelle LaBrosse, CCPM, PMP, PMI-ACP

What are the one or two goals that keep reappearing where you have a deep driving desire to accomplish? In the early 90’s, right after the birth of my second child, I was visiting my parents. In their guest room was an older copy of a Reader’s Digest monthly magazine. Thumbing through it, I stumbled upon an article about what can happen in your life when you identify your top 25 goals. Over the next several days, I worked on figuring out those top 25 goals at the time. I recall several of them and one was that I wanted to live on a lake. Relatives we were very close with lived on a lake and I had many fond memories of our times there. I wanted to create the same thing for my children.

Several months later, the drive to achieve that goal kept reappearing. And even though my children were still both under three, this feeling that I wanted to live on a lake persisted. Before year end, we had found the perfect slice of heaven to call our own. Within two years, our home was complete and we were living on the lake. Besides getting my college degree, it was the most arduous goal I had committed to yet in my life. I remember the sense of accomplishment and how it helped me realize that yes, I can achieve what I set my mind to, no matter what the external conditions are in my life. In those two years, I not only built my house – I also created the foundation of perseverance I needed to build Cheetah Learning.

Learn how to keep committing to the goals that are right for you in the Cheetah Certified Project Manager program. Lead the epic adventure that is your life in the way that is uniquely right for YOU. Check out www.cheetahcertifiedpm.com.

Jan 24 – Leap off the Shoulders of Giants

Friday, January 24th, 2014

Cheetah Certified Project Manager (CCPM) Tip of the Day

Create Your Success from the Shoulders of Giants

Create Your Success from the Shoulders of Giants

Jan 24 – Build off the shoulders of giants. Take the time to acknowledge and celebrate others’ achievements and see what you can adopt to help you achieve your own goals.

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Michelle LaBrosse, CCPM, PMP, PMI-ACP

What fascinates me when I read books from people who study and report on success is how many other giants they studied to get to where they were. Two of these were Dale Carnegie and Napoleon Hill. These two sages from long ago did not just study how one person became successful – they studied how hundreds of very successful people got to where they were. And there is a common element to all the stories – building off of the success of others.

Recently I was reading about the habits of wealthy people. What, precisely, do wealthy people do differently than people who don’t realize as much financial prosperity? There are two things they do differently. The first is they set goals. The second is they read books on how people get to be successful and they read them prolifically. It’s not that they just read one or two books on how to create their own success – they read multitudes of them. And they don’t just set one or two goals, they set multiple goals.

In the Cheetah Certified Project Manager you learn these two crucial skills. You learn how to set the right goals for you and achieve these goals in the right way for your unique strengths. You also learn how to “cheetah” read books. While this skill comes in handy to read the books associated with the program, it also stays with you for a lifetime. It allows you to quickly read, understand, and remember any book you read in the future.

If you want to create a better life than you are currently experiencing, check out the Cheetah Certified Project Manager (CCPM) program at www.cheetahcertifiedpm.com. Start today to create the epic adventure that is your life.

Jan 23 – Inner Resiliency

Thursday, January 23rd, 2014

Cheetah Certified Project Manager (CCPM) Tip of the Day

You have amazing powers to achieve your goals when you learn to tap into all your resources.

You have amazing powers to achieve your goals when you learn to tap into all your resources.

Jan 23 – Setbacks are those things in life that test your resolve to achieve your goals. When you persevere despite setbacks, you develop the inner resiliency required to go for it.

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Michelle LaBrosse, PMP

The stories you remember and repeat are what get wired into your brain as the way you operate. To improve your inner resiliency, learn to tell stories of how you overcame adversity to persevere. One of my favorite stories is how I earned the nickname “Betty the Bureaucracy Buster.”

I was building a home outside of Seattle, Washington in the mid 90’s. At 8 AM, the day after the sale on our existing home went through, the county “red flagged” our project. That means they forced us to halt construction. They claimed our construction project was responsible for a cloud of run-off into a nearby stream. Furthermore, they said they did not have the resources to come back and evaluate if we had properly remediated the problem for two weeks.

This would not do. So I packed up the toddlers (my children were 2 and 4 at the time) and we made the 25 mile drive to the property with camera in hand. (We did not have digital cameras back then but there were one-hour photo stores). I fully documented it was a county road improvement project causing the run-off into the stream, NOT our construction project. By noon, I had the pictures in hand. The girls and I had a quick lunch and went over to the county building permit office. Lucky for us, the inspector who had red flagged the project was in his office and he agreed to see me. It was now getting close to the toddlers’ nap time. And they proceeded to do what fussy, tired, and cranky toddlers can do. While the inspector and I went over the pictures that clearly showed which project was causing the run off, the girls managed to find their way into all types of very interesting things in his office. I let him know that I would be back there every day with more evidence until he saw his way to removing his “red flag” and allow us to continue our building project. Not being able to miss the chaos ensuing in his office with the tired toddlers, he realized just who he was up against.

We were able to restart construction on our house the next day, thanks to quick action, documentation, and timing. The seasoned carpenter helping us build the house said, “Lady, I need you on all my jobs – you are like Betty the Bureaucracy Buster.”

Never underestimate the power of your own creativity using the resources you have at hand – even if they are only 2 and 4 years old. Want to learn how to make your own projects happen no matter what is thrown at you? Check out www.cheetahcertifiedpm.com