Michelle LaBrosse Blogs

2009 – The Year of the Ox

The Chinese New Year is the longest and most important celebration in the Chinese calendar. The Ox is one of the 12-year cycle of animals that appear in the Chinese zodiac related to the Chinese calendar.

The Ox is the sign of prosperity through fortitude and hard work. This is a GREAT year for the year of the Ox.   The Ox represents calm, hard work, resolve and tenacity.   While the mass media continues to spread doom and gloom news about the dire straights of our economy, I will  celebrate and live the year of the Ox.   Like most other folks on the planet who have lived at least four decades,  I have experienced numerous adverse situations.   It is through my desire to work hard and persevere that I developed my strengths that have helped me be successful today and will carry me through tomorrow.

To help Cheetah Learning students learn how to become as strong as an Ox this year, they can start off the Chinese New Year by:

A.  Taking a  survey to find out how we each uniquely use and develop our strengths. For people who take our survey, they can take a free 1 PDU class on doing risk assessments to reduce the risks that reduce their strength.

B.  Listening to a podcast that explores how we can become as strong as an ox by building up our unique strengths in difficult times.

C.  Downloading our  free “Worryometer” tool to help handle the worries of life.

D.  Getting a discount for our 30 hour Online Project Risk Management course.  Contact Rita Soto for more information.

The official name for my New Year’s resolution of becoming energy self-sufficient is now Project Energy Independence. My energy improvement activities are well under way with replacing hot water tanks with tankless hot water heaters and swapping out high wattage light bulbs and appliances with low wattage ones. The next phase of my energy independence project is to assess the opportunities I have at each site for creating my own power. Here is what I’ve found so far:

Nevada – great opportunities for solar. The only constraint is space and money to purchase solar panels. For both properties there I can meet all the electrical power needs with solar panels. On one property, there is sufficient space to put up several wind mills and consider installing a geothermal heat pump system as well. I created a free Solar Energy Smart Start Guide based on what I learned evaluating solar opportunities in Nevada – you can get it at www.cheetahpower.net.

Connecticut – good location to do a geothermal heat pump application. Favorable legislative climate for creating my own power from solar – so I’m looking at putting up both solar shingles and some ground mounted solar panels.

Alaska – I have numerous energy generating opportunities on the land up there. I might be able to power the entire town with the wind out on my point. I was looking at a potential hydro power application using rain catchment – it would only produce about 1/3 the electricity for a small home – but it may not cost that much to implement. And I have some great geothermal heat pump opportunities as well.

If you would like to see the details of what I have been evaluating – visit www.cheetahpower.net

One of my projects for this year has been Project Health.  In late April it was discovered that I had a tumor the size of a golf ball attached to my adrenal gland.  After extensive tests and a very minor intervention, the medical professionals determined the tumor was better left alone since the main problem it was creating had been corrected (extremely high blood pressure).   I got several opinions and there was general concurrence – continue to implement my project health practices and the tumor and I could co-exist just fine.  

In early November, I stumbled upon David Servan-Schreiber’s book – Anti – Cancer, a New Way of Life.  I’ve been slowly reading it over the past six weeks.  (I posted several blog entries on it).   I learned a tremendous amount on how to prevent cancer and shrink tumors from the book.  I decided to create a mind map summarizing the book so I would more easily remember and implement it.  

I highly recommend this book.   It seems that while a tremendous amount of effort goes into preventing heart disease, we’re still in the cancer is “god’s will” perspective on this disease.  This book shows you how you can adopt specific lifestyle practices that will help you prevent cancer as well.   What I’ve learned doing Project Health is that it is the choices I make every minute of every day that determine if I’m going to exist in a state of vibrant good health or a state of gradual decline.  I’m learning how to make the choices that lead to vibrant good health that are right for me.

I don’t purport to be the expert on what choices other people should make as we all are responsible for our own lives. So, please follow your own path to health (this is my general disclaimer). But I’m happy to share with others what I am learning on my Project Health efforts.

I was reading @zentropikCEO posts on twitter and he found the title of the book called the Science of Getting Rich misleading. His preference is that if people are going to use the term “science” that they have axioms, proofs, and theorms.

While I appreciate his desire for scientific purity, having been a research scientist at one point in my life,  Science is full of inexact hypothesis that one tries to prove or disprove through a variety of creative tests. Just because a hypothesis is still in the process of being proven, does not mean that science is not being practiced. Quiet the opposite – it is this fertile ground of experimentation that all new discoveries are made.

I was analyzing how to help project managers become more successful.  Five areas consistently created far more success for project managers (and for most other people as well).  Attached is the mind map from the presentation I delivered for thousands of project managers around the world for the past decade.   If you’re interested in a free Science of Success webinar or in person presentation for your organization  – contact us at 888-659-2013.

Learn how to use your unique strengths to become more successful on your important life projects.  Take our free PM Personality Assessment and see what you can do to achieve your goals at Cheetah speed.

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Being in the field of “accelerating” learning, I hear this question quite often. Accelerated Learning is just making it faster and easier to learn and master new skills. Learning has four basic components:

Awareness – people first become aware of what it is they don’t know. Just becoming aware of not knowing something isn’t enough to drive desire to learn more though. When combined with “purpose” – that is a reason to learn more, then people develop the desire to learn more about the topic.

Knowledge – this is where people accumulate facts about the specific topic. Knowledge of a subject is exhibited by the ability to recall facts and to synthesize the information in the area sufficiently to answer test questions on the subject, and to communicate about the subject.

Skill – this is where people can use what they know to accomplish a specific task.

Mastery – this is where people can achieve consistent results with their skills. Mastery is where power and success come with learning new material.

So Accelerated Learning in the way I’ve developed courses for Cheetah Learning means getting people to a level of mastery in the subject area very quickly.

I first became aware of the concept of Accelerated Learning in the early 90’s. By 2000, I had developed mastery in creating accelerated learning curricula. In 1998 I was a research scientist and started testing out some ideas on how to teach people project management in a way that they would develop mastery in doing the fundamentals of project management in one day. This means that they would be able to leave the class and the next day be able to achieve consistent results with their new project management skills. This became the basis of the Cheetah Project Management technique.

There are three fundamental components of creating accelerated learning courses so that people are able to master new skills faster:

1. Put the mind in a peak performing state.

2. Engage multiple forms of intelligence.

3. Set up the experience so that it makes it easy to recall and retain the new knowledge and become proficient in the new skills.

If you’d like to learn more, I discuss the topic of how we create our accelerated learning curricula on the radio show Power Learning co-hosted with Scot Nichols, the Executive Director of the Center for Advanced Learning Concepts.

I just wrapped up an interview with KCFV/WJXB Radio. The purpose of the show was to share how I turned my life around by mastering a technique called Cheetah Project Management. I created the attached mind map that shows how life is just a series of projects and how to achieve success by making it fast, easy and fun to do the projects of everyday life. If you’d like to learn more, check out how 30,000 other people have learned how to “be a cheetah” – using Cheetah Project Management.

Essentially, this mind map shows how to achieve a fulfilling, successful life by “being a cheetah” – where it becomes fast, easy and fun to complete important life projects by aligning and balancing the five main areas crucial to success (think car here – to get the best gas mileage and best wear on your tires, you need to have all four wheels aligned and each tire properly balanced):

Vision – live in alignment with your life purpose and innate strengths

Service – live in service to helping others succeed through sharing your innate strengths with others.

Learning – strive for mastery in the areas that are important to you in life

Completion – completing important life projects so that you leave a legacy of excellence

Gratitude – be grateful for your own innate gifts, and the gifts of others in your life.